FicWad

Title: The Many Nuances Of ‘Love Me’

Author: Allison Wonderland

Rating: NC-17

Summary: After Raven has recovered from a serious case of pneumonia he still insists on crawling into bed with Taylor.

Warning(s): Language, homosexuality, consensual sex between two adults of the same gender.

Disclaimer: Raven Reyes and Taylor Rochette are my property, as is their fashion label Fantasticka. Do not use them or it without my permission.

Note(s): Whatever.

It had started out as ‘just for one night’ when the doctor had given Raven a clean bill of health but he was still exhausted from being ill and not yet feeling like his normal cutely annoying self. He had just wanted someone to hold him for that one night but it had turned into ‘just one more night, please, Taylor?’ and ‘but I think I might be coming down with something again, can I sleep with you tonight too?’ After a week Raven ran out of excuses but by then Taylor expected to have his bed invaded every night after the lights were turned out. Their relationship had become more than the simple friendship it had been for the past year but it had not gone back to the way it had been before either. It seemed they had stagnated, unable to go forward into a romantic relationship but unable to go back to being just friends either. None of their friends believed them when they denied the accusations of a romantic relationship. After all, Raven’s and Taylor’s behavior in public hardly supported their just friends claim. There was hand holding on the runway, the way they danced when they were out together that only escaped being called sex because they were fully clothed while it was going on, and the way Raven decided he belonged in Taylor’s lap every time the younger man sat down. And as if that were not proof enough of a romance that did not exist, Raven, never able to keep anything to himself, let slip in one of their interviews that he and Taylor were sleeping in the same bed.

But Fate, never content to leave things stagnate for long, always finds a way to intervene.

In the middle of the never-quite-dark New York City night Raven emerged from the deep sleep he was only able to fall into in Taylor’s arms. Still not fully awake he rubbed his eyes as he wondered what had caused him to wake during the night. Since they had started sharing the same bed again he had fallen asleep in Taylor’s arms every night and stayed that way until the harsh buzz of the alarm clock dragged him kicking and screaming into wakefulness the next morning. He flung out his arm in the direction of the rest of the room, as that was the side of the bed Taylor usually occupied, letting Raven snuggle between Taylor’s warmth and the bedroom wall where he felt most comfortable.

His hand found only empty space and fell on the rumpled sheets where Taylor had been when Raven had fallen asleep. Raven whined, a sound that was not altogether unfamiliar to their apartment. With his left hand he pushed himself into a sitting position on the empty bed, blankets falling to around his waist. His right hand rubbed his eyes again. “Taylor?” he called plaintively, his voice slightly hoarse from sleep. His sleep-fogged mind was sending him mixed signals. Taylor had left him. But Taylor never left when he promised he would stay. That meant Taylor had to be around here somewhere but Taylor was gone.

The bedroom door opened and a shadow appeared in the doorway. “It’s all right, honey. I’m here. I haven’t left.” The shadow came closer and Taylor sat down on the bed beside Raven. “Lie down, Raven,” he said, doing so himself.

Raven obeyed and Taylor pulled the blankets over them again. “Where were you?” Raven asked in his tiny half asleep voice.

“Kitchen,” Taylor said, turning on his side and reaching for Raven. He would have gone on and explained that he had only gone into the kitchen for a drink of water except Raven appeared to be satisfied with the simple one word explanation. Apparently he was still mostly asleep. Taylor hugged him close like a child with a teddy bear – or, on occasion, like Raven with one of his Care Bears – and started to drift off, the man in his arms a warm, somehow comforting presence in the dark. He had just entered that place between sleeping and wakefulness where thoughts became dreams when he heard a whimper and Raven, already deeply asleep, jerked awake in his arms. “Shh,” Taylor murmured. “It’s okay.” He hugged Raven tighter, knowing that, if anything, would comfort him. The mini-nightmares had become an almost normal occurrence every night since Raven had first become ill. The doctor had attributed it to the medicine he had been taking and claimed it would stop in a few days when the medicine Raven was no longer taking completely left his system.

Still mostly asleep, Raven rolled over in Taylor’s arms and rubbed his face against the other man’s shoulder, seeking comfort from the only source he had. He murmured something that sounded vaguely like, “Taylor.”

“Shh,” Taylor tried again. “Whatever it was, it was just a dream.”

“Promise?” It was the most childish thing he could have possibly said but it was the only thing his barely awake mind could come up with. Raven wriggled into his favorite after-nightmare position – left arm around Taylor with his hand hanging on to the back of his shirt in a death grip, right arm curled between them with his hand clutching the front of whatever shirt Taylor was wearing in much the same way, and the rest of him snuggled as close as he could get with his head just beneath Taylor’s chin and their legs so tangled together it was impossible to tell which limb belonged to who.

“I promise,” Taylor tried to reassure Raven. He hated seeing his best friend suffer so often. “It’s just a dream,” he said again. “Do you want to tell me about it?” Raven never wanted to tell him about it but Taylor always offered his attention anyway.

The terror of moments ago had passed. “I don’t really remember.” He rarely remembered after waking up. Taylor had chased away any lingering fears. Raven stretched and his toes wiggled against the tops of Taylor’s feet. Then he tangled his legs with Taylor’s again and relaxed his grip on his best friend’s tee shirt. His whole body relaxed slowly and he yawned. He felt relieved knowing that it had been just another dream and the sleepy, safe, content feeling he only experienced when Taylor held him was starting to set back in. “Taylor?” he asked, his eyelids already so heavy he was having trouble holding them open.

“I’m here.” Taylor ran his hand up Raven’s spine beneath his shirt then back down again. He found himself thinking about the soft porcelain-pale skin beneath his hand but quickly stopped himself. There would be time enough for that later when Raven was neither scared nor half asleep. For now comforting him was more important. “Is there something you need?”

“Raven wriggled. “Crushing me,” he said in a sleepy, barely audible voice. For the first few minutes after he woke up from a nightmare Raven liked to be held so tightly it interfered with his breathing but once he realized it was only a bad dream being squeezed became uncomfortable.

Taylor loosened his hold on Raven enough that he was no longer crushing him but not so much that Raven would feel as if he were letting go. “Is that better?”

Raven hummed softly, a sound Taylor knew from experience meant yes. Content once again he settled into Taylor’s arms and rubbed his face against his shirt, breathing in the familiar yet entirely unique smell. There was the smell of their laundry detergent – a smell that made Raven think of rain and green growing things – but that was to be expected. After all, his nose was pressed against a tee shirt. However beneath that was something solely Taylor, a smell Raven had tried – to no avail – to recreate with colognes and perfumes and scented candles. It made him think of the outdoors and warm fall days and Taylor-is-holding-me-so-everything-must-be-okay. And it made him long for things they had once had together, things they could have again if only one of them would stop stalling and make the first move.

The decision came easily. It was really no decision at all. Even teetering on the edge of sleep he knew exactly what he wanted. “Love me,” Raven requested in a soft voice.

“Of course I love you.” Taylor would have kissed Raven had he been able to – because kissing was within the rules of their strange relationship – but the top of Raven’s head was less than an inch beneath his chin and made kissing entirely impossible. So instead he slipped his hand beneath Raven’s shirt again and traced the words on the bare skin of his back, the same way he had accidentally acknowledged that he still loved Raven two weeks ago.

“Nooo…” Taylor could practically hear Raven’s eyes rolling. “Not that way.” Raven moved away from Taylor far enough to look up at him. “Love me,” he repeated, staring at his once and hopefully soon-to-be future lover and willing him to understand.

Taylor did. Months ago when they had still been romantically involved he had come to understand Raven’s own personal language. Even when it seemed he was just babbling excitedly every word he said had meaning, sometimes more than one. To most people ‘love me’ the way Raven meant it just now meant the same thing as ‘fuck me.’ But to Raven – and Taylor because he had, to some extent, come to understand how Raven’s mind worked – they meant two entirely different things. ‘Fuck me’ meant he wanted to be tossed on the bed without any regard for safety and fucked so hard it still hurt days later. ‘Love me’ meant exactly the opposite. It meant Raven wanted to be held, wanted affection and to snuggle into Taylor’s arms and to be made love to so slowly it was almost painful.

“Taylor, please,” Raven begged when Taylor did not respond fast enough, “love me.”

Still, Taylor remained indecisive. He rolled over, gently dislodging Raven from his favorite position to lie flat on the bed halfway beneath him and propped himself up on his forearms so he could look at the blonde. He studied Raven’s face, trying to decide if he were awake enough to be taken seriously. Raven appeared to be awake, more awake than he usually was at 3:00am anyway. And yet Raven never begged. When he wanted something he demanded it be given to him right now. “Are you sure?” Taylor asked.

Raven nodded. He was being surprisingly docile but that could have been due to the lateness – or earliness, depending on how you looked at it – of the hour. “More sure than I’ve ever been about anything,” Raven answered with so much certainty that all doubts about what he might or might not want were completely driven out of Taylor’s mind.

In Taylor’s eyes – and probably in the eyes of a lot of other people but they did not count because they were not here – there was nothing more beautiful than Raven. Even before they became romantically involved the first time and Taylor was still firmly convinced of his own straightness there had been something appealing about Raven, something that drew him to the almost irritatingly happy blonde. With his right hand Taylor brushed sleep mussed pale blonde hair away from Raven’s face and gently kissed him. He received a deceptively angelic smile in response and Raven’s arms wrapped around his neck to pull him down for another kiss.

Pale, long lashed eyelids slipped shut over bright blue eyes. Taylor pressed a kiss to each eyelid and Raven made a sound very much like a purr. As Taylor moved away again the heavy eyelids opened and Raven gave him another of those sleepy, way-more-innocent-than-Raven-himself-could-ever-possibly-be smiles. “Are you tired?” Taylor asked. Usually Raven went back to sleep after a nightmare without ever having really woken up and did not even remember it the next morning. He kissed the tip of Raven’s nose, something he had not done in months.

Raven wrinkled his nose, one of the cutest expressions Taylor had ever seen cross his face. “Kind of sleepy,” he admitted. But he hugged Taylor even closer. They had come so far in just the last few minutes. Raven had asked Taylor to have sex with him, not something he did lightly, at least not anymore and never in the way he had just asked Taylor. He would never asked anyone to ‘love’ him if the emotion was not there too and, despite claims to the contrary, he knew only Taylor had ever really loved him. With that in mind Raven decided they were not going back to that strange more than friends, less than lovers relationship they had been living with for the past two weeks. And Raven always got what he wanted.

“Too sleepy?” Taylor asked. “Do you want to stop now and go back to sleep?” He mentally kicked himself the moment the words left his mouth. The past several nights Raven had come crawling into bed and snuggled against him had been hell. It was one thing when he was sick and needed the constant attention but Raven craved attention whether he was ill or not. And having him snuggled so close night after night but not touching him – at least not the way Taylor wanted to – was unspeakable torture. But even worse was waking up – or waking up to – a sleepy, cranky Raven. Because despite the enormous ‘look-at-me-I’m-little-miss-sunshine’ smile he presented to the world at large there was a pissed off toddler inside Raven lying in wait for a chance to rear its ugly little head the first time he was denied having his own way.

Raven lifted his head to kiss Taylor and his tongue flitted into the younger man’s mouth. Then he pulled away. “No,” he said in answer to Taylor’s earlier question. “We can sleep later.” It was Friday night and Fantasticka Headquarters was closed for the weekend. They could sleep tomorrow. He wrapped his arms around his partner’s neck to prevent him from leaving – not that he imagined Taylor was going to go anywhere – and said, “Finish what you started.” Then to prove that he was more than ready to get on with it, Raven arched up off the bed, rubbing himself against Taylor through the few layers of clothing between them.

Caught by surprise, Taylor moaned loudly. He involuntarily lowered his head to rest on Raven’s shoulder, his face against the blonde’s neck. It did little to help his sudden desire to just fuck Raven and get it out of his system now so they could go slower and take their time later. The strawberries and cream smell he had come to associate with Raven and the soft, pale skin against his own not-quite-as-soft, tanner skin was intoxicating. “What I started?” Taylor asked. He lifted his head and looked at Raven in the mostly darkness of what had become ‘their’ bedroom.

“Yes.” Raven giggled. “It’s all your fault.” He pulled Taylor’s head down to his own again and pressed their lips together before sliding his tongue into the other man’s mouth.

Taylor let his right hand wander up beneath Raven’s tee-shirt, fingers tracing the delicate muscles of his stomach, up his sides over his ribs until his fingers found a hardened nipple. Raven whimpered softly as Taylor’s calloused fingers touched his skin and Taylor congratulated himself on remembering all of his lover’s most sensitive spots even after almost a year of not having used that knowledge. His other hand roamed downward, across the hardness beneath the silky fabric of his lover’s boxers.

And stopped.

Taylor frowned. Raven never wore boxers; he preferred fancy, frilly, lacy things, specifically those of the pink variety. Except before their break up. A year ago it would not have been unusual to see- Right. Taylor smiled. Somehow he had failed to notice when Raven had started ‘borrowing’ his clothes again. He had always thought himself more observant than that.

“Taylor!” Raven whined. “Get on with it already!” He never could be patient long.

Taylor ‘got on with it.’ His hand on Raven’s – or Taylor’s, depending on how one looked at it – boxers moved, squeezing gently.

Raven made a sound that was half whimper, half sigh and arched his hips up off the bed to push himself into Taylor’s hand. Taylor’s touch became firmer and he moaned loudly. It was such an erotic sound that Taylor reflexively pushed his own hips against Raven’s. The fingers that had been gripping Taylor’s sides hard enough to leave little half moon marks where Raven’s nails had dug into his skin moved to pull on his shirt. Taylor knew instinctively what he wanted and shifted to an almost sitting up position to allow Raven to pull it off. The blonde tossed the offending garment toward the foot of the bed and ran his pale hands over the skin he had just uncovered to wrap his arms around Taylor’s neck again. He tugged the other man in closer for a kiss.

Taylor slid his tongue between Raven’s soft pink lips. It connected with Raven’s own and he could feel the blonde smiling into the kiss. At the same time Taylor’s hands pushed Raven’s shirt – one he was sure was not Raven’s if the boxers had been anything to go by – up his stomach to his chest. When it became clear it could go no farther they reluctantly pulled apart so Raven’s shirt could be disposed of much the same way Taylor’s had.

With that obstacle out of the way Raven tried to pull Taylor back to him for yet another kiss. Taylor eluded his grasping hands, moving down instead to press his lips to that pulse where Raven’s pulse beat so strongly. Raven whimpered. That was another one of those sensitive spots. He kissed the spot where neck met shoulder, the same spot where his head had rested only a minute ago, then fastened his mouth to the same spot, biting but not hard enough to cause real pain, with every intention of leaving his mark there. “Mine,” he told Raven when he finally released the soft flesh.

“Yes, Taylor,” Raven gasped. “Yours.” He loved Taylor’s possessive side. Taylor’s mouth on first one nipple then the other had him gasping and moaning again but the attention was all too brief. The wet heat left those oh-so-responsive points and traveled downward via the center of Raven’s chest and stomach to his navel. Taylor’s tongue dipped into the tiny depression, causing Raven to giggle but his giggle was cut off halfway by another whimper. Not only was that another of those most sensitive areas but his stomach was ticklish as well. “Taylor, please,” he begged for the second time that night. “Please.” His hands tried to tug Taylor closer. “I want you so bad.”

Taylor’s kisses stopped at the elastic waistband of Raven’s borrowed boxers. There he stopped and hooked his fingers in the silk covered elastic band. Raven lifted his hips from the bed to allow the last piece of fabric between his skin and his lover’s hands to be pulled off.

They were tossed to the foot of the bed then, to Raven’s utter astonishment, Taylor followed them. “But…Taylor…what…” he protested, the normally loquacious man for once completely unable to form even a single sentence.

Taylor laughed softly. “I’m coming back, Raven,” he said. There was no way he was missing this, not when he had, in hindsight, wanted it practically since the moment of their break up. He padded barefoot across what was, in the daytime, green carpet with Raven, propping himself up on his elbows on the bed, watching the whole way. He went to the dresser in the corner and, opening the top drawer, took out a small white tube. He started to shut the drawer then, with a sigh, reconsidered and pulled out a thin foil wrapped package.

Before their breakup Raven and Taylor had agreed to be completely exclusive and because of that had determined that it was safe not to use condoms, which neither of them were particularly fond of anyway. But since their break up almost a year ago Taylor had been with his now ex-boyfriend Galen and one other guy whose name he no longer remembered whom he had met in some random bar the night of the huge fight that had sealed the fate of Taylor’s romantic relationship with Raven. And then there were all the guys Raven must have slept with. He was the most sexual person Taylor had ever met and on top of that, he craved affection. The number of people Raven must have slept with was enough to make Taylor cringe every time he thought of it. He forced that thought out of his mind because that period was over now. They were back together – well, sort of – and after tonight they were going to be having a serious discussion about what came next. But right now Raven was waiting on him – and growing more impatient by the second.

Taylor rid himself of his own boxers and left them lying on the floor. Then he joined Raven on the bed again. He settled himself in much the same position he had just left and placed the condom and lube on the unused pillow beside the one Raven’s head rested on.

“Taylor,” Raven complained. He wriggled impatiently and his breathing became ragged and harsh just from the feel of Taylor against him after such a long time apart.

“Shh,” Taylor murmured. He brushed his lips against Raven’s just enough to assure him that more was coming but not enough to satisfy him. “I thought you wanted me to love you.”

“I do! But you could love me faster.”

Taylor gave in. He had never been one to hold out against Raven for long. “All right,” he agreed finally.

Without having to be asked, Raven found the lube and unscrewed the cap. He squeezed a generous amount onto the fingers Taylor offered for just that purpose then tossed the no longer needed tube over the side of the bed. Taylor smeared the icky clear gel around on his fingers, warming it in the process. As cute as Raven’s squeak always was when cold lube touched his skin, he tried to avoid it as much as possible. Raven’s legs opened wider as Taylor reached between them to circle one finger around his entrance. Raven’s eyes slid shut and his hips moved, trying to get closer to that finger or, at the very least, to persuade him to just hurry up and get on with it. Taylor smiled and, not wanting to let Raven get too impatient, he slipped one finger into him, almost but not quite brushing against Raven’s prostate.

Raven moaned loudly, partly from disappointment and partly from the almost sensation of Taylor’s finger being so close to where he wanted it. Taylor took his sound as the okay to insert a second finger. This time both fingers brushed against that tiny spot that produced so many huge feelings and Raven pushed against Taylor’s hand, trying to further impale himself on the fingers inside him. Taylor added a third finger to the two already stretching Raven’s insides almost to the point of pain. Still he found himself unable to stay still and wriggled against Taylor’s hand again. After not being with Taylor for such a long time it was not the other man’s fingers he wanted inside him and now that he was so close to getting what he really wanted, his impatience was growing, even with the pleasant feelings Taylor’s fingers were producing inside him. “More, Taylor,” he demanded. “Please.”

Taylor smiled. As much as he loved it when Raven begged, it was the demanding drama queen he had fallen in love with. Almost painfully slowly he withdrew his fingers and pressed his painfully hard throbbing cock against Raven’s tight hole.

Raven made a soft sound halfway between a whimper and a gasp. He reached for Taylor, hugging him with both arms and legs. Taylor pressed forward, passing the first ring of muscle with an inaudible pop. Beneath him Raven went still and whimpered in something that sounded a lot like pain. His hands clenched against Taylor’s back, not quite hard enough to draw blood. “Stop. Please, Taylor,” he entreated.

Taylor went completely still. There was something shining in Raven’s eyes that looked suspiciously like tears and he never begged Taylor to stop. But this was so gentle. They had been many times rougher in the past and Raven had not complained; he had liked it. “Are you okay?” Taylor asked, propping himself up on his forearms again so he could look down at Raven but not moving otherwise for fear of hurting him. “Does it hurt?”

Raven wanted to say everything was okay, that he was fine, that it did not hurt at all. He was terrified that Taylor would refuse to continue if he said anything else but their newly rekindled romance was still at a fragile stage and he did not want to jeopardize it by telling Taylor anything less than the truth and the truth was that it hurt worse than it ever had since he had lost his virginity to some faceless man in the back of some nameless bar in Los Angeles. He knew that would stop Taylor cold and they would likely never have sex again. So he settled on something a little less descriptive. “It’s…a little uncomfortable.”

“Why?” Taylor asked, concerned. It had never been uncomfortable before.

That was a question Raven really could have been happy not answering. “It’s just that…well, you aren’t exactly small and…” He could definitely do without admitting the next bit. “It’s sort of…been a while.”

Instead of fixating on the first part like Raven had hoped Taylor seemed only to hear his confession. “How long?” he asked. To Raven a week was a long time to go without sex, although in this case he had been ill so maybe…a month.

“Umm…about…a year?”

In a few days it would be a year since their break up. That meant Raven had not been with anyone since the last time they were together. But that was impossible. Sex was, for Raven, the equivalent of food. He craved affection and close contact with another person whether it was a three-year romance or just for one night.

Taylor’s train of thought was interrupted suddenly when Raven wriggled experimentally beneath him. That little wriggle of his hips combined with the tightening of his legs around his lover’s waist pulled Taylor farther into him, past the second ring of muscle with another inaudible pop. Taylor groaned as he settled into the hot tight heat. Raven whimpered, in pleasure this time and his fingernails scratched along Taylor’s shoulder blades. Taylor became just as still as he had a moment before. “I thought you said it hurt,” he reminded Raven. He moved again, the smallest possible movement, and kept his eyes on Raven’s face the entire time, watching for any sign of pain.

Instead Raven made a noise almost like a purr. It was all the assurance Taylor needed and he began to move inside his lover, a maddeningly slow pace and exactly what Raven had asked for. “Taylor,” Raven moaned, his voice coming out strangled and his eyes squeezed shut.

Taylor’s hand came to rest on his lover’s erection before beginning to move, stroking from head to base and back again with a familiar touch, his hand keeping pace with the movements he was making inside Raven. “I want you to come for me,” he whispered after what seemed like several endless hours but what was in reality no more than a few seconds. Taylor quickened the pace both inside Raven and around him. Raven made a whining noise again. His eyes slid shut and his toes curled so tightly they were in danger of breaking. One more thrust had him coming all over Taylor’s hand only a moment before Taylor went completely still on top of him and Raven felt himself filled with liquid warmth. It was then that they both remembered the condom they had not used but it hardly seemed to matter.

Neither of them moved for several minutes afterwards. Even then Raven only wriggled his fingers to be sure his French manicure had survived. It had, though he was sure there were scratches on Taylor’s shoulder blades. It took a few more minutes for Taylor to recover. When he did he kissed Raven’s shoulder – the same one his head had fallen on when he had collapsed bonelessly atop Raven – and started to move away.

“No!”

Taylor found himself suddenly held in place by Raven’s arms and legs again. “Raven,” he began.

“No, Taylor, don’t. Stay in me just a little longer. Please.”

Taylor gave in. “Just for a minute,” he agreed. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You aren’t that heave.” Raven liked feeling Taylor still half on top of him. He felt safe.

Taylor chose not to reply. Instead he lay still, feeling himself soften further inside Raven and little hands with sharp fingernails tracing ‘I love you’ over and over across his shoulders as he drifted off to sleep.