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They’re watching a movie. Nick’s half-asleep in a way that he’ll say he’s not sleepy, if Matt asks. Some little brother things remain. His big little brother, he’s got his elbow on the arm of the couch, head in the palm of his hand, staring but not taking a whole lot in, that kind of sleepy.
It’s not important, the movie, Matt’s content just tucked under Nick’s arm, the heat of his body warming Matt’s back. Better and longer lasting than those stick-on heating pads, and more reliable than a hot water bottle. Neither of those things come with free intermittent I promise I’m paying attention to the movie head-kisses, either.
They didn’t pick the movie. They just put on the television, flicked to a channel, said, Okay, cool, a movie, and that’s it, a free (well, cable’s not really free) excuse to cuddle and complain about advertising. They don’t need an excuse. They’re both very comfortable just asking for time together, for together time, but it’s nice to just… do something instead of making demands on each other’s time.
That’s the one problem with their jobs, really. They spend a lot of time in the same room for work, but that’s not the same thing, and they’re so busy that there’s never really a clocking off time, not once you add in travel and hotels and … they do have to ask. They have to book separate rooms and let each other in.
So – this – being a couple, like a normal couple that can just sit down on a day off and watch a movie impromptu together, It’s few and far between. He doesn’t mind that Nick’s sleepy. Doesn’t mind that he isn’t. At least one of them should be able to say they watched a movie and remember what it’s about, anyway.
On the screen, a father, smeared in dirt and grime and the PG-13 suggestion of blood, finally wraps his arms around the child he’s been looking for the whole movie. He got all the bad guys. He did it. He’s back with his kid.
He doesn’t know what makes it come out of his mouth. “You ever think about kids?”
Nick’s silence is very long, but Matt knows he’s not asleep. He’d know Nick’s breathing if he’d fallen asleep. He waits. Finally, Nick answers, “Well, not really,” a little perplexed, like it’s obvious that he wouldn’t have thought about kids. He clears his throat. Matt can feel his head lifting out of his hand, and twists just enough to watch Nick rubbing his eyes.
A little surprised, Matt prods, “Never?”
“Not never,” Nick says, dropping his hand to the arm of the couch and looking down at Matt. He’s frowning a little bit. Thinking very carefully, something gently faraway in his expression. “When we were kids, having kids was the thing I liked about the whole, traditional family thing. The idea of it, anyway. Then AEW kind of ended up being our baby instead. I guess I assumed we were both okay with that. Are we?”
“Yeah,” Matt agrees, earnestly, sitting himself up better so he can look at Nick properly. Nick’s arm stays looped over his body, never leaving him if he has a choice in the matter. “No, we’re okay. I promise.”
Nick’s frown is not disappearing. No good. Matt wants to smooth out the furrow with kisses. Or at least find some place for Nick to put that kind of energy where he’s looking at Matt like that. “Then what?”
“I guess,” Matt starts, then falters, then remembers it’s Nick. For crying out loud. It’s his Nicky. “I guess I always kind of wished we could have kids. But not really. We can’t, we have the wrong equipment, and even if we could, we shouldn’t, obviously. And even if we should, I mean, look at our lives, we’d probably miss half their growing up, there’s no real getting around the schedule we have.” Jeez, he’s really rattling off. He takes a breath, and adds, a full stop sentence: “Plus we should’ve done it ten years ago, probably.”
“Not adoption, not fostering,” Nick says, cutting through everything Matt’s saying to what he’s actually saying, a kind of quasi-telepathy that isn’t finishing sentences but the more crucial thing of just knowing someone really freaking well, “but having a kid. Biologically. Not even raising a kid, but just… having one.”
“Yeah.” He’s relieved. Nick gets it. “Our baby. I would’ve liked that.”
Something sly enters Nick’s voice. “You want me to get you pregnant.”
Well, hold on now. Matt’s turn to frown. “I didn’t say that.”
“Sure,” Nick says, coaxing Matt to lay back against his chest so that they can watch the movie credits, at least. “Don’t worry. I’m just playing.”
Matt’s not entirely convinced.
***
Nick does seem to let the subject go after all. Days off pass and dwindle. Work is the unrelenting kind of busy that never really seems to have dull periods, all peaks and no troughs, which is – well. Good business is good for business.
It’s great, they’re both happy. Booked and active, doing creative stuff. When he’s not grounded on the ring mat or doing tandem superkicks, Matt gets to watch Nick do incredible high-flying manoeuvres; they’ve been doing this – wrestling – since they were kids, and he’s never tired of watching how Nick makes it look easy.
He never really wanted to wrestle by himself. Nick wanted that, for a while. Never took a formal class and learned it all from Matt and got the yearning for being a singles star from that, too, like all the greats, all their heroes. Matt’s glad things worked out the way they did.
It’d be a whole lot harder for them to be together if they weren’t tagging, besides. Nobody’s ever surprised to see them spending so much time in the same places. That’s the Bucks, Matt and Nick Jackson, glued together at the hip, often mistaken for twins, never mistaken for people who aren’t related.
It’s not weird for Nick to visit Matt at one in the morning. It’s not unusual how often Nick is seen leaving Matt’s room in the mornings. He goes to Nick sometimes, but more often it’s like this. Matt’s never really thought about why. Maybe it goes right back to the first night they slept in Japan, how Nick was worried and couldn’t sleep alone. He’s better with direct gestures, anyway. For every time he can’t use enough words or shape his face into the right emotion – not that it matters, Matt’s always known what he really means – he makes up for it with the physical act of saying I can’t sleep without you.
“Hey,” Matt says, opening the hotel room door, cool as a cucumber.
“Hey.” Nick doesn’t wait for a formal invitation to come in. He nudges past Matt, towards the bed, automatically toeing off his shoes. They’re nice shoes. They can afford that kind of thing now, easy.
Matt’s already barefoot, boxers and a t-shirt that he only put on because he likes it so much when Nick takes it off him. He closes the door, drifts through the space, climbs back into bed, pulling the covers over his hips and watching Nick with a kind of anticipatory anxiety. Always like this, always a little live wire with waiting, wanting, hoping.
Nick gets down to his boxers, slips into the bed and then kisses Matt down into the pillow pile without waiting for permission. Matt’s sigh is shivery, his arms going around Nick, palms pressing insistently, certainly into warm skin. He hasn’t figured out how to explain that moment is maybe his favourite moment: the bit where Nick doesn’t hesitate or ask. That he wishes he could magnify it by a thousand, sometimes.
Nick’s hand gets up Matt’s shirt fast, his fingers pressing into the divots of hip, waist, ribs, flesh. Matt hums, eyes closed, head tilted back against the pillow. Nick’s mouth is on his throat, and when he talks, he can feel his voice buzz against the press of his lips. It makes the hairs on his arms stand up. “Hey, can we do it with me on my front?”
“Uh-huh.” Nick’s temporarily more interested in getting Matt’s shirt off. He pauses to look at the design on it, pulling the fabric taut and grinning: “Is this one of the shirts I made?”
The shadows cast by the bedside lamp make him look particularly smug and menacing, and Matt shoves a paw at his face, pouting. Nick kiss-licks his fingers before just manhandling Matt around, dragging him upright to pull the shirt off, turning him over onto his front, pushing him down into the pillows.
Matt tries to pull his knees under him, push his butt in the air, make it easy for Nick to get close to him and bait to take his underwear off, but Nick’s hand presses firmly down into the small of his spine, flattening him. He squeaks, startled, complains, “Hey.”
“Quiet, you like it.” Nick pulls his hair aside, kisses the back of his neck, the warmth of his body all along Matt’s body. Matt will not be and has never been quiet, but a whiny sigh is as good as agreement, and he can feel the shape of Nick’s grin between his shoulder blades. His fingers squeeze Matt’s hips. “I can get real close to you like this. On top of you.”
Airless: “Please.” Impatient, squirming, and Nick’s answer is to put all his weight on Matt, dead weighting and kissing under his ears. It steals the breath out of Matt’s chest, turns the air thin, dizzying to be so warm and under pressure. It’s a lot and not enough, Matt’s breath quickly warming the pillow under his face, Nick’s weight solid enough that his wriggling is just friction against the mattress.
Nick somehow always has a bottle of lube that Matt never notices him bringing in – doesn’t pay enough attention, admittedly happy to rely on Nick to just sort of fix most things so that Matt doesn’t have to lift a finger or look at how much things (hotels and dinner and snacks and new gear) cost unless he really wants to.
He’s always gentle, always only a little bit rough. Nick handles Matt like he knows exactly what Matt’s limits are, stops just shy of mauling him. Sometimes he thinks a mauling might be nice from time to time, but he’s never been unhappy pace they go, the way Nick’s so lovely but mean, encouraging Matt into place and poking at all his nerves.
At least familiarity means that some things are easy. Not autopilot but effortless. It allows for the ebb and flow of things. So sometimes they can take their time. Sometimes they can have a quickie. Sometimes they’ll be so tired that they can turn their brains off entirely, go on touch and smell like animals.
Tonight, familiarity means Nick knows exactly how to work Matt open, how much lube he needs, how he likes the press of Nick’s hand in the small of his back. It’s slow, how he opens Matt up with his fingers.
“Hurry up,” Matt hisses, trying to sound authoritative and coming out whiny instead.
“Goin’ as fast as I can,” Nick answers, sounding calmer than really feels fair, and not going quickly at all. He digs his teeth into Matt’s shoulder, repeated little bites, nothing to break skin. Kind of gnawing on him in time with the press of his fingers.
It’s maddening. Nick’s maddening. He can cool himself off the moment that he knows Matt’s getting needy or pathetic, just to see him squirm more and worse. Matt loves him so much he can’t stand it, and he can’t stand Nick’s weight on him either, how two and then three fingers still leaves Matt feeling a peculiar kind of empty. Not solid enough, not deep enough.
“Nicky, stop, come on—” Matt complains, “c’mon, I want it, I’m ready—"
Nick’s teeth leave his shoulder. His breath is hot and damp against Matt’s ear instead. He doesn’t sound calm anymore; he’s got a heated, rough edge to his voice that makes Matt feel so freakin’ dizzy to listen to. Not one other person gets to hear Nick like this. “You want it that bad?”
Want it, sure, but better and right to say, “Need you,” and that gets Nick moving, that gets Nick leaving Matt empty and unmoored only for long enough to get inside him, back on top of him, his arm looping around Matt’s throat like a chokehold but it’s so he can get close, so he can nuzzle into Matt’s hair.
Nearly overwhelming, all of it, the heat and the intimacy, and Matt knows the whimpery-startled moan is too loud and that whoever is in the room over will probably hate him soon if they’re not going to sleep with earplugs in. He’s responsive like a cat in heat to every roll of Nick’s hips, there and please and maybe half a curse.
He doesn’t think it’s any of the guys they work with in the room over. Right. He’s pretty sure. (But what if it was. What if someone next door realised they were listening to two brothers? There’s a hot feeling, something like shame and something just like heat, and Matt thinks he gets a little louder when he next cries out Nick’s name.)
Nick’s less noisy, all breath and hands and movement instead. Unless he’s talking. Matt wasn’t sure Nick was in much of a talking mood, but out of nowhere, there he is, talking: “Do you want to have a baby?”
Matt feels like there’s fizzing in his ears. He had to have heard him wrong. Panting: “What?”
“M’not wearing a condom,” Nick says, like he’s explaining something. Like it’s the start of something obvious. Matt’s struggling to follow, struggling not to just collapse into a whiny heap. Grasps at Nick’s forearm with his fingers as if it’ll help. There’s no clarity, just heat and being so full and covered and held in a way that makes him so dizzy, so happy.
But they don’t wear condoms. They’ve never worn condoms.
Nick keeps talking.
“Didn’t wanna stop to put one on, in too much of a hurry to get in you.” He nuzzles, bites the shell of Matt’s ear. “If we keep goin’ like this, I’m not gonna be able to stop. Gonna make a mess of you.”
Matt bites down on Nick’s arm to muffle himself. Nick’s not done, Matt’s not sure he gets it, but he fruitlessly tries to press his hips back anyway, like, yeah, yeah, make a mess, but Nick keeps going like Matt’s teeth aren’t buried in his skin: “You want that? You want my baby?”
The realisation follows all hot-and-cold: Nick didn’t let the conversation about kids go. Or what he said about Matt wanting to be pregnant. Matt squirms unhappily. Didn’t agree to this. Not fair to drop this on him when Matt’s, like, vulnerable. “I don’t know,” he says, desperate and pathetic, fingers digging into Nick’s wrist where it locks under his chin, grasping for purchase. Of course he wants Nick to finish in him, that’s what feels right, but the other question—he doesn’t know.
“Yeah, you do,” Nick exhales, encouraging, not letting up for a moment. “You know, Matty. You just gotta admit it.”
Matt squeezes his eyes shut, sniffles. He ends up crying during sex more often than he really cares to admit but especially if Nick challenges him one way or another, if Nick puts him on the spot and makes him look for something and—admit something, so dizzy he feels nearly faint, “We can’t, we’re not supposed to—"
“Too closely related?”
“You’re my brother,” Matt gasps. He stutters, for a moment fumbling around for the right thing to say, lands on: “You can’t finish in, in me, it’s not – we can’t risk it, Nick,” and he’s so unbearably turned on and frustrated and humiliated and overwhelmed all at once even with the distinct feeling that Nick won’t let it go here.
Sure enough, Nick comes back immediately with: “That’s not the same as not wanting it.” Then he’s quiet – only long enough to adjust his position, his hold, does something that drives him deeper into Matt and makes him nearly wail with the feeling of it. “You like that your little brother can give you everythin you need.”
Matt does like it, bites down on Nick’s arm again. Wishes he liked it less but wasn’t he just thinking hotly about someone realising they were brothers? He’s pretty sure he’s rubbing a wet mark on the sheets, cock pinned between his stomach and the mattress. He doesn’t know where Nick gets the nerve from to say this stuff but it’s driving Matt insane.
And so Nick asks again. “You want your brother’s baby?” Matt makes a wretched, pathetic sound and nods. Nick’s other hand is abruptly in his hair, twisting around a long fistful of it, pulling his head back, forcing him to let go of Nick’s arm. Firmly: “I wanna hear you say it.”
Matt sniffles. His mouth is all wet. He’d gotten drooly with his teeth on Nick. He’s a mess, and Nick only ever wants him to be a bigger mess. Usually in service of a happier, more complete kind of mess. He knows what comes after this if he’s just good enough to admit to things, and the idea that Nick will hold him softly and kiss his damp cheeks after this is like a promise.
“I wanna have your baby,” he finally says, tongue thick and heavy in his mouth and the rising shameful thing that this is so stupid and so weird even for them. His inhale is all shaky, hiccup-y. “Want my little brother to get me pregnant, please, Nicky,” and some kind of floodgates open and he must be doing the right thing because it feels so good even with the shame, because the more he talks the faster Nick moves into him, the more ragged Nick’s breathing gets, “want it so bad, you feel so good, don’t care about the risks—just want—”
He's stopped by his own shuddering moan, everything too freakin much for him to deal with. Nick picks up where he left off. Nick goes further with it than Matt anticipates, and the shame evaporates, feeling stupid or weird evaporates, because for everything Matt’s ever wanted it seems like Nick wants it too and that’s all that matters.
Nick’s saying: “We’re gonna have a baby,” eager and warm and ragged all at once, saying, “you’ll look so good pregnant, promise I’ll take care of you,” saying, “you’re all mine,” calling Matt his big brother, calling him pretty.
Matt thinks: it’s not supposed to be allowed. They’re not supposed to find being related any kind of turn on, they’re supposed to look at the blood relation and move past it, or like, consider it some extra strength of their bond, but not sexy, even though it is, even though his little brother’s been taller and bigger than him forever and Matt likes that, likes to let Nick hold him face down and come inside him for exactly that reason.
Nick loosens his grip in Matt’s hair, instead getting a hand between him and the bedsheets. It’s not exactly jerking him off, it’s more just giving him the ends of Nick’s fingers to hump against almost uselessly, but it’s everything in combination with being so full and deliriously turned on.
“M’close,” Matt slurs, “You gotta come first, I love you, I need, um, mhm, need to feel you,” doesn’t think he can come right now, even leaking and pathetic as he is, if he doesn’t have Nick buried flush, pressed all the way home, “need my l-little brother to fill me up, please?”
Nick kisses behind Matt’s ear. He’s erratic, now, the way he moves, taking Matt hard and fast enough that tomorrow this will hurt. Matt couldn’t be happier. He can feel how close Nick is, from that. Nick groans, “Call me that again. Keep talking,” and so rare, from Nick: “Please.”
He wonders how long Nick has wanted to talk about that. This. To have Matt say, “My little brother,” to say, “please, I want your baby,” to have Matt begging to be filled up in such a specific way, in a way they’re not supposed to do this, in a way that they will anyway, no matter how little sense it makes.
Nick buries his face in the crook of Matt’s shoulder, sinking on top of him, and comes with a kind of feral animal noise, rutting, rolling his hips, getting as deep as he can, pressing as close as he can. Doing his best to make sure it’ll take. It sparks off Matt’s orgasm in turn, has him melting and groaning under Nick’s weight. Spills over Nick’s fingers, stains the sheets more than he already has.
Nick starts to move, when they’re both silent except for panting, and Matt grabs at him, panic rising. “Stay,” he says. “Stay inside me.”
They can’t sleep like this. It’s not that comfortable to be so completely crushed under Nick, and yet Matt thinks he might be the happiest he’s ever been. He adds, so that Nick doesn’t have to find the words to tell Matt it’s not realistic, “Just for a while.”
He wants to keep his little brother close.
***
Matt starts the next morning feeling kind of weird.
Not a bad kind of weird, but a tired dopey kind of weird. A little out of it. He spends twenty minutes re-arranging the pillows on the bed in a way that he likes while Nick makes a breakfast run. He insisted. His treat. Matt is not immune to the promise of a little treat.
He switches in five-minute bursts between pacing the hotel room and laying pathetically in his pillow pile, but it’s all missing Nick. Matt understands what he’s doing: nesting. He feels morose any moment that he’s not creating some hypothetical space where he could exist all pregnant and joyful.
He’s started feeling silly again. It might be Nick’s absence making it worse, but it’s stupid for Matt to want to be pregnant when he doesn’t even want to be pregnant. He meant it. He doesn’t really want kids. That ship has sailed. Not least because there’s no situation in which Matt could actually be pregnant – that might be the thing making him feel silliest of all.
Matt is starting to worry himself into a spiral when Nick comes back, a bag of food in one hand and something large and rectangular stuffed under the other. Matt is sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, wearing Nick’s shirt from last night and refusing to touch any of his nesting pillows anymore. He blinks up at Nick, his expression pathetic, trying to ignore the prickling in his eyes.
“I think what we did last night is driving me insane,” he says, as Nick’s putting the food down on the little hotel table. “I know I can’t actually get pregnant and I know I don’t even want a kid so why the hell do I feel like—like I could be. Or like if I’m not, then I need you to try again and keep trying.”
Nick can’t really answer that. And Matt knew that, before he started talking. Nick’s already, always doing more than enough understanding of Matt’s emotions for him, even though Nick sits at a distance to his own. He just comes over to the bed. Sits down next to Matt.
He holds something out. Matt registers that he is holding a cushion that is covered in a case made of granny squares, crochet or knitting Matt doesn’t really know the difference but he can see it’s handmade, can see it’s nice. It’s perfect. Exactly what Matt’s nest was missing.
He takes the cushion in hand. “Where did this come from?”
“It was in the window of a thrift store,” Nick says, then admits, “and I spent the whole time I was out worrying about if you were going to go insane by yourself. Think I’m probably losing it, too.”
Matt realises: Nick’s feeling like nesting, too. He’s just finding a different way of saying it. Matt turns and places the pillow into the pile. It’s perfect. They weren’t missing specifically a granny square cushion, but they were missing something that was theirs to tie to the hotel. It might be second-hand, but it’s theirs now.
“I love you,” Matt says.
Nick nods. Sometimes he can say it. Not always. Matt doesn’t need him to say it back; Matt just has to say it or he might explode. Nick shows Matt that he loves him all the time, and that’s good enough.
Matt tugs on Nick’s wrist and encourages him close enough to kiss. He wants the bed to smell like them. Maybe more accurately continue smelling like them. He exhales against his mouth, then settles back into the pillow pile. He pulls his little brother down with him. Quietly firm: “And I definitely need you to try again.”