Work Text:
They’re gaming in the Jongcheveevat living room, legs entwined and feet resting on the coffee table. Or, well: Gulf is gaming. Mew is occasionally helping and mostly getting ganked.
“No!” Mew moans as he gets sniped (again), and he hides his face in Gulf’s shoulder.
He’s laughing about it now, but Gulf knows it’s only a matter of time before he starts planning elaborate sabotage even though they’re meant to be a team, because he is a shameless overcompetitive cheat.
“You’re so terrible at this game, P’Mew,” he says happily, and cackles as Mew blindly tries to bop him on the head with his joystick.
“You said you’d never played before, you liar,” Mew grumbles back. He still hasn’t moved his face away from Gulf’s shoulder, so it comes out muffled, and Gulf can feel his lips move against the skin of his arm where the sleeve has ridden up. Nice.
“Aw, poor Phi.”
Mew’s free hand has begun a slow, stealthy migration around his waist, Gulf notes fondly. There’s a good chance he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, though you can never be too sure — cheaty cheating cheater, and all that. It’s not like Gulf minds either way.
Then a whole patrol of goblins rounds the corner, and Gulf has to let go of the thought and concentrate (crouch, find cover, three shots with his crossbow as the first goblins come into range; two down, switch to quarterstaff, a cantrip to distract the new guys coming down the hall and shit, how did that guy get there — )
Mew drags himself slightly more upright, sighs, and respawns. He leaves his head on Gulf’s shoulder though, turning from time to time to bump him companiably with his chin.
Mew kills exactly one of the twelve goblins, and then the patrol is dealt with. He has the audacity to look proud of himself.
For what feels like the millionth time, Gulf wonders what being inside Mew’s brain is like. Lots of math and intensity and scheming and Feelings, probably. Vast deep lakes of Feelings that light up like it’s lantern festival whenever he gets to touch anyone he cares about. The thought warms him, and he smiles down at the top of Mew’s head.
Mew cares. Gulf has never doubted that; even when they fight, it’s only ever really about how they care, or how much. Besides, Mew’s not exactly subtle about it: it’s in the way he reaches out for Gulf whenever he’s in range, those abortive bumps with his nose and cheek and chin that Gulf is almost positive are meant to be kisses, all the insinuations and endearments and touches he slips in on-camera, where they can (sort of) be played off as part of the job.
So Mew cares, and Mew wants him. Probably. Maybe.
Gulf isn’t sure if those two are separate in Mew’s head. They’re definitely not separate in his own.
Mew’s kill has dropped some really good armor, Gulf sees as they’re about to move on. He equips it. He loves Mew, but there are limits.
That thought is still new enough (yesterday morning, in fact, thank you very much) that it sends a little thrill through him. Because he does — love Mew, that is. At least, Gulf thinks he does.
This is all so different than it was with Poom, all so confused. At some point, that liminal version of himself he wears for work (Gulf but with Type’s want, Type’s possessive confidence) seems to have crawled into his chest and settled there permanently. Mew has been good from the start, warm and protective and faintly ridiculous even when he didn’t mean to be, and beautiful too: eyes you could get lost in, nice broad shoulders, all that. But now Gulf looks at Mew and thinks “Mine” with heated pleasure. He thinks of Mew’s fingers in his hair and his hands bracketing Gulf’s jaw, his freakishly (endearingly) big head and the stupid way he flops over when he laughs, the wide splay of his legs when he idles at a red light.
So yeah, maybe Gulf loves him. No big deal.
The tell-tale clangs and hisses of another approaching patrol pipe in through the sound system, and Mew elbows him in the stomach. “Stop zoning out, Nong,” he says ruefully, “You know I need you.”
Gulf smirks. Ain’t that the truth.
… Wait. Ain’t that the truth?
It hits Gulf suddenly, hits him like a freight train, that maybe he has been making this more complicated than it needs to be.
He swaps back to the crossbow, finds cover again, and lets the thought sit for a moment. He lets it sit for the time it takes him to snipe four goblins and nearly fall into a tiger pit he hadn’t spotted. Unfortunately, this does not yield any further revelations.
Oh, fuck it. Why not?
“P’Mew.” He can feel Mew stiffen slightly when he hears it, feel the caution with which pushes himself upright. Of course Mew would immediately guess this was something serious; Gulf can’t tell if that’s scary or somehow moving. He lures a fifth goblin into the tiger pit, listens to its phony, gurgling scream. Breathes in. Just say it. “P’Mew, you know I wouldn’t say no if you wanted more than this, right?”
A beat. Gulf listens to his heart thumping in his ears. He fizzes with adrenaline, half-dizzy, armpits prickling. Was this one of those ideas he thinks are good but are actually terrible?
It wasn’t, he tells himself firmly. You know I need you here.
Mew’s eyes are closed, his expression almost a flinch. Gulf wonders, with only a little ungenerous amusement, if he’s about to cry. He kills his sprite off so he’s free to observe, just in case.
Mew looks tired. The hair at his nape is in need of some serious neatening, as always, and there’s a zit coming up near his temple. Gulf really wants to kiss him, preferably when they both have their retainers on, just to see what those narrow wires would feel like in someone else’s mouth. He wonders if they could get stuck that way — that would be pretty funny. And also maybe hot?
“Gulf,” Mew says, voice low and tight. It’s not exactly an answer, and after a moment Gulf realizes that it might be because he’s moved in quite close to Mew’s face.
Oh well. Mew was the one who’d explained they needed to “use touch to break down the barriers between them”, or some other equally wordy excuse for why he needed to mash his face into the crook of Gulf’s neck twelve times a day. Gulf puts a hand on Mew’s cheek, just to watch him twitch into it on reflex. See? This was a good idea. This was a great idea. He can feel himself blushing again, but that’s basically a fact of life at this point.
“Gulf, stop,” Mew tries again, opening his eyes, and he gently tugs Gulf’s hand away. It’s a move they’ve never tried, and it’s delightful.
In the background, Mew’s sprite is getting clubbed to death. There are lots of thuds, and the occasional wet, squelching sound. Gulf decides that despite this, the moment is fairly romantic.
“What’s this about?” Mew asks. His sprite is dead now, and they’re back on the savepoint screen, its jangly tune playing on loop as their sprites spin under digital spotlights. There’s an option to change their default weapons, which Mew will need to do before they try again, because that broadsword is just not cutting it against the archers on this level.
(Pun very much intended.)
Gulf blinks. “How do you mean?”
Mew looks at him, looks at the TV, and swaps his joystick for the remote to turn it off. Fair enough.
Another silence. It lasts longer than Gulf would like.
This was a good idea, he tells the small, queasy tilt of fear in his belly. But he also knows that Mew is… tricky sometimes, overcomplicated in ways Gulf can’t predict. He prays this isn’t one of those, and tries to stop his leg from bouncing.
Mew passes a hand over his face. It makes him look worn, and kind of fragile. Gulf doesn’t like it. “Let’s… Can we do a check-in?”
Gulf swallows. “Of course,” he says, “Whatever you like.”
‘Check-ins’ hark back to the very beginning of their working relationship, when they were starting to workshop the love scenes and Mew was trying to juggle being an actor, being a mentor and just being really, really scared.
(Not that Gulf noticed any of this for the first few weeks: he’d been too busy trying not to die of embarrassment, lying there on the floor while someone — someone with a dick! — sucked on his top lip, and Tee and Jane argued passionately about whether he looked turned-on enough.)
Anyway, Mew had insisted they do these check-ins every time they finished a session, either before they went home or on video chat after.
The first time, he’d had the questions they were meant to ask each other in the Notes app on his phone — Gulf could see them upside down from where he’d been sitting. The formatting was kind of wacky, like he’d copy-pasted them from somewhere. He probably had, looking back.
They’d sat across from each other on the floor of the now-deserted rehearsal room, further apart than they had been in hours, and for the first time Gulf felt what Mew kept saying about touch being its own form of communication. He was exhausted, and just then the two feet of space between them seemed like a wall.
Something was off about Mew too. His posture was usually good when he wasn’t deliberately lounging (freakishly good, in fact, probably to show off how flat his stomach was or to pretend his abs were so strong they just… held him up that way or something) but that day there was something particularly upright about it. A tightness, as if he was trying to draw a line between the guarded guy with Notes up on his phone and the one who kept his hands on Gulf’s waist even after their kiss rehearsals ended, drawing little circles into the skin with his fingertips.
It had all made Gulf deeply uneasy.
Mew said something about communication and boundaries and stepping in and out of character, but Gulf tuned most of it out. It wasn’t new — it was the same thing Jane had told them, only with a kind of shiftiness he didn’t understand, something in the stillness of Mew’s face and the way he wasn’t quite making eye contact. Instead he watched as Mew rubbed the pad of his thumb along the edge of the phone’s lock button, over and over and over again until it left a deep white ridge in his skin.
“Gulf,” Mew had barked eventually, breaking into his daze of discomfort. His voice had been too sharp, too sudden, and Gulf had jumped despite himself.
And suddenly he’d had enough, enough of this stupidly long day and this tension he didn’t understand and Mew’s temper on top of it. No, he thought, anger a hard lump in his throat, and the refusal rang through him like a bell, clear and cold and deep. “Whatever this is, you do not take it out on me.”
For a long moment, Mew only stared at him. Then he began to crumple. His posture didn’t even change, really — he just seemed to grow smaller, to hunch in on himself in some indefinable way, to grow tired and worn and afraid.
“I’m sorry,” he said eventually, voice pitched low. Even back then, Gulf had half-wanted to hold him. The anger had flowed out of him, and left him empty and oddly tender.
“Read me your questions,” he had told him, as gently as he could, and Mew had.
Did anything we did today make you feel uncomfortable? How can I avoid that in future?
The two basic questions never changed, after that. They had asked them of each other in a kind of ritual well into the first weeks of filming, in conversations ranging from easy to awkward to bruising, but he had been grateful to have them. They had felt like a framework, like safety, like at least one of them knew what he was doing.
Now, of course, he realizes Mew was just in a guilty half-blind panic, and that seasoning this situation with the occasional drop of distance and clarity was never going to be anywhere near enough.
“ — Gulf, please.”
In the here and now, Mew has something of that stiff discomfort back in him. Seeing it makes Gulf wants to squeeze his knee, or let Mew hug him. He wonders what is allowed, whether this was a mistake after all. But it had seemed so stupid not to try.
“Sorry, Phi. I’m here.”
The TV is off, but Mew is still staring at it. His jawline is honestly ridiculous, somehow so straight it’s practically concave. Gulf wonders what would happen if he nibbled at it, or puked from nerves. He wishes Mew would look at him. Is he meant to be asking their questions?
“Why are you telling me this?” Mew asks. He sounds like he’s talking to himself. “Have I — I thought we — ” He breaks off, rubbing a palm over his knee.
“You haven’t. Or, well, I think you haven’t? I’m not too sure what we’re talking about.”
The rasp of skin on denim seems too loud, too immediate, almost textured in the quiet. It yanks at Gulf’s attention like a hand on his collar. Please, he begs of no one in particular, I need to concentrate.
Mew makes a noise in his throat. “I meant if — ” he breathes out explosively, “If I’ve been making you feel uncomfortable or pressured or — or confused — ”
And there’s the condescension. Prick, Gulf thinks, and the annoyance mixes in with the — god, everything else he’s feeling right now.
“I’m not confused,” he retorts, which isn’t a lie in the ways that matter, “And I’m old enough to know my own mind, why would I feel pressured — “
“How could you not? Fuck, this is my fault. I should have — I should have — ”
Mew’s palm is still moving over his knee, over and over, each rasp driving Gulf more surely out of his mind.
“Stop,” he interrupts, “That’s not the point, you’re missing the point.”
“How can that not be the point?”
(His OSK buddies have been flooding the groupchat with gifs and memes of him and Mew ever since the series aired, mostly to comment on how stupid Gulf’s faces and outfits and make-up look, but occasionally tipping into the kind of ‘your husband’ jokes they would almost certainly not dare make to Mew’s face.
‘You sure know how to pick’em,’ Sirichai posted yesterday in a rare show of restraint, under a picture of Mew staring at the side of Gulf’s face with comically flared nostrils, and even though the context was different Gulf is really starting to see what he meant.)
“The point,” Gulf says, “Is that I’m pretty sure I love you. And I could be wrong, but I feel like you probably love me too. And if so, then, you know — let’s stop tying ourselves in knots, and do this?”
He sits back. There. Not the most romantic speech, maybe, and he sounded a bit too unsure at the end, but he’s always been crap at talking anyway. Hopefully it at least got the point across, and they can stop getting sidetracked.
“You lo— pretty sure? ‘Do this’?!”
Except Mew sounds slightly hysterical, so maybe they can’t. His eyes are darting all over the place, like a panicked horse or one of those genius kids who do math in their heads on TV. Somehow he makes even that look good, which just about sums up this entire situation.
Gulf thinks of Tharn, confessing over and over when Type was not yet ready to hear him. A solution tumbles out of that thought and falls straight into his lap.
“I could kiss your ankle, if that helps,” he offers. Mew makes a small, punched-out sound but doesn’t say no, so Gulf goes to slip down onto the floor.
“What the — Gulf, stop!” Mew’s hand wraps around his arm and yanks him back up, hard. Gulf has just enough time to think about big hands and grabbing and how they really don’t do it enough, and then he’s back up on the couch and Mew is scowling at him. “What are you doing?”
“Kissing your ankle? It looked like you weren’t sure I was serious,” he explains, with what he feels is commendable patience.
Mew makes a sharp, abortive move towards Gulf’s shoulder, as if to shake him, then puts his hand back on his knee and starts up on that goddamn rasping again.
“What’s the problem?” Gulf finally demands, annoyed and scared all at once, “Why are you being so — ?” he gropes for the word he wants, fails, gestures weakly.
Rasp. Rasp. Rasp. Gulf never wants to see a pair of jeans again for as long as he lives. Isn’t Mew’s palm oversensitive and tingly by now? Rasp. Rasp.
He reaches over and grabs Mew’s hand before he quite realizes what he’s doing. It’s cool to the touch, because Mew is panicking for absolutely no reason.
For one long, airless moment, neither of them moves.
“It’s just so sudden,” Mew murmurs eventually, stricken.
Gulf gapes at him.
Maybe it’s Mew’s stupid comment, or maybe it’s just the relief of finally getting to touch him. All at once, Gulf feels like he’s been bodyslammed by the sheer ridiculousness of this situation; it’s a near-physical thwack, stealing his breath and shocking him out of that awful fear.
We’re dumb as dirt, but we’re going to be okay, he thinks with sudden clarity, and the laughter bubbles out of him before he can stop it, giddy.
“Phi, what world are you living in? We’ve been balancing on the edge of dating for months now, we date semi-professionally, what did you think was going on?”
“That’s not — that’s different — shit. Gulf, wait. I need a second.”
Mew closes his eyes, and Gulf keeps himself occupied with the play of tendons under his skin, by tracking the way his fingers slowly untense. They may be dumb as dirt but they’re trying, and the fierce joy of it sits hot in his belly.
(One part of him, the deep part that hoards all of Mew’s cheesy, over-the-top attentions with smug pleasure instead of mockery, suggests Gulf kiss his hand. Gulf kind of wishes he dared.)
When Mew reopens his eyes, he looks calmer, though only by a little. “…I guess I thought we were never going to talk about it,” he admits sheepishly, and the corner of his mouth curls up a tiny bit.
Gulf squeezes his hand. He almost wishes they could skip straight to kissing, but he also really wants to hear Mew say a few things out loud first.
“Can we? Talk about it?” he asks.
Mew sighs, nods. “Sorry. You’re going to have to — to run me through it again.”
“Okay, well, I love you,” Gulf repeats dutifully, “And I think — ”
“You love me how?”
What the hell kind of question is that? “Uh. I don’t know? I think about you all the time, I care about you being happy, I jerk off a lot to that one time we were kissing and the — ”
“To me, or to Tharn?”
Oh wow, this is worse than Gulf thought. “Mew,” he says gently, trying not to smile, “You know Tharn isn’t real, right?”
“Fuck off.” Mew scowls, but there’s no real heat in it; only that same pleading, angry, ragged fear as before. Gulf doesn’t like it any more now than he did then. “Don’t tease me. Are you sure? How can you be sure?”
Would lying be easier?
He thinks better of it.
“I can’t be,” he admits, and he aches a bit at the way Mew’s fingers jerk beneath his own, at the way his shoulders rise, “I’m not. But I know I want to kiss you again. Or just kiss you full stop, if you’re saying that was Tharn before: I don’t care either way. I want to — I don’t know! Hold your hand and cuddle and make out and finally have sex with you so I can stop masturbating to memories of a TV show? I can’t believe you’re making me say all this, what the fuck. Don’t — don’t you want that too?”
He’s out of breath, by the end of it, and his voice has gone all unsteady, so maybe he’s less filled with joyful certainty than he had hoped. Mew looks pained again, and really, this should be way, way easier. Gulf is going to lodge a fucking complaint, with Mew or Art or his own dumb brain, he doesn’t even know.
“I do, of course I do.” Mew’s voice is low, quick, almost impatient (like it’s obvious, like it doesn’t make a huge knot loosen around Gulf’s chest so he can finally breathe again). “But what if you wake up tomorrow and realize that it was just… I don’t know, the job, coloring your judgement?”
Gulf is doing his very best to focus through the loud chorus of ‘he does want me back’ playing on a loop in his brain. Which is hard, because there are sirens and fucking fireworks up there right now.
All the more reason to make sure we have sex tonight, he almost says, but for once in his life his brain kicks in and he bites it back. This is what this has all been about, the locked box they’ve tiptoed around as long as they’ve known each other. He needs to do it right.
He turns on the couch to face Mew fully, hooking a leg into his and pulling it up onto the cushion to encourage him to do the same. He grabs Mew’s other hand as well, rubs gentle thumbs over Mew’s knuckles, over the soft branching of his veins. He thinks about being known, and about being understood.
You love me, you idiot, he thinks, but it's gentler now.
Cross-legged, with their hands clasped between them, it feels like an eerie mirror of that very first workshop, almost a year ago.
“You know it’s not like that, Phi. The separation, it’s not that neat. You were the one who told me the job was going to be that way. You told me it was going to be confusing and hard to keep separate and you were right, okay? You were right. I couldn’t do it.”
Mew opens his mouth, and Gulf shakes his head quickly.
“Just listen for a minute, you know it takes me a while to make sense. Of course the job is — how did you put it? — ‘coloring my judgement’. But I don’t think that matters. Isn’t most of what we are, of what we feel, colored by what we’ve done? Or what we’ve said about ourselves? I have friends I made because we liked the same things, and friends I made because I was lonely, and friends I made because we were stuck sitting next to each other in class and it was just easier that way. They’re all still my friends, it doesn’t matter how I — I don’t know how to explain this to you.”
That brilliant clarity he felt earlier keeps eluding him. It’s like a fish in a murky pond, one he can only see in brief, quicksilver glimpses — he keeps grasping for it and coming up empty.
“I thought I’d be better at convincing you than this,” he mutters. “Shit, are you sure I can’t just kiss your ankle?”
Mew laughs, startled. It’s the first time he’s done that since this conversation started, and it changes something about the air between them, makes Gulf feel like he’s on less of a tightrope. Or at least, like Mew might be right there with him when he falls.
“I just don’t want you to feel like the job has trapped you into — like I’ve trapped, or pressured you into —” Mew's mouth works, and he falls silent. At least Gulf is not the only one struggling with his words.
“The stuff you’re worried about,” he tries again, “It’s not the right stuff. I promised I would tell you if I didn’t want something, right? And I’m telling you I do want this. If we don’t live based on what we want, then what’s the point? I promise I’d let you know if that changed. We could — we could start doing check-ins again if you wanted, whatever you need, I — ”
“No, it’s me,” Mew interrupts him (thank God), “I’m sorry, I know it’s me, I just. I don’t want — I don’t know if I can take it if you hold it against me, later.”
Maybe Gulf does know who he’d like to lodge that complaint with.
“It won’t happen again,” he says fiercely, “Not like before. You’re different, and I’m a whole separate human, remember? Maybe we’ll fight, maybe I will change my mind, but not like that. Never like that.” He squeezes Mew’s hands again, gives them a little shake. “Okay?”
Mew stares at him, searching, serious — and slowly, so slowly, something loosens in the set of his shoulders.
“Okay,” he whispers, and looks down.
“Okay,” Gulf repeats quietly, relieved, and then: “Wait… ‘Okay’ as in okay okay?”
Mew blinks. “I — what — um, yes? I think so? Okay. We're going to take it slow, though. Really slow.”
Holy shit. Just. Wow.
If Gulf had thought he’d ever experienced relief before, he’d been deeply, hilariously wrong. It swamps him now, inescapable and dizzying. It takes his breath away, makes every joint go weak and rubbery. He has a huge headache, he realizes now, and the back of his neck feels like it’s made of cement.
“Oh my god,” he says, and the words rush straight out of him in a torrent, “I’m exhausted, you’re exhausting. That was so stressful. You owe me a massage. I can’t believe I had to talk this much and you didn’t even say ‘I love you’ back, wow.”
Mew — wonders never cease — actually blushes.
“You know I do, I’ve said it enough,” he counters, which is just not on.
“Nuh-uh, you don’t get to play that card after you’ve just had a whole breakdown about the difference between who we are for work and in private. No way. Do better.”
Mew looks mortified, which is deeply satisfying. “Fine.” When he looks at Gulf he’s serious again, earnest and focused: “I love you.”
Gulf takes a long moment to savor that, and then grins. “Love me how?”
“Gulf —”
“Love me how, Phi?”
“Like this,” Mew says, and then his hands are at Gulf’s jaw and and at his nape and he’s planting one on him, deep and fierce and toe-curling. He’s probably trying to get his man points back, or something, but Gulf is definitely not complaining.
“God,” Mew mumbles when they part, panting, "Your mouth."
“Another one,” Gulf demands, but then he suddenly remembers something and changes his mind, halting Mew with a hand on his chest. “Wait, when you said you didn’t want me to feel like I’d been trapped into anything — that whole thing with Poom was… well, really shit, but — were you afraid I was asking you out because I thought you were my only option now, or something?”
Mew just looks at him, and really that’s answer enough.
“Why would you even — I can masturbate! I happen to be very good at it, by the way! If anything I was kind of hoping you’d let me show you — ”
“Gulf,” Mew says quellingly. He’s blushing again, which really is absolutely delightful. It’s probably just the shock, or something, but Gulf intends to enjoy it while he can.
“What, you don’t want to watch me get myself off? That’s fine, I guess, though if you’re okay with it I’d love to watch you — ”
“Gulf,” Mew begs, hiding his head in his hands, and in this new context Gulf discovers that he likes that. He likes that a lot.
He bounces a little, buzzing with energy. He’d been sure this was a good idea, right from the very start.
“You can cry if you need to, Phi,” he declares magnanimously. “But after you’re done I think we should kiss, or bang, or something. To celebrate.”
Mew makes a choking noise, and kicks him weakly in the knee. His socks are covered in pink and green sharks with loads of teeth. Gulf grins. He has the best boyfriend ever.
“P’Mew,” he wheedles, grabbing at one of Mew’s wrists and tugging, not hard enough to actually pull his hand off his face but hopefully enough to annoy him into getting it together, “C’mon, look at me.”
“I’m never calling you quiet again,” Mew says, muffled, “Because clearly you never shut up.”
“P’Mew — ”
“Fine, you — Fine!” and when he straightens Gulf notes with deep satisfaction that his eyes are shiny. “You’re awful,” Mew says, kind of wetly. Gulf feels like he could score a goal from the halfway line right now, or wrestle one of the sharks on Mew’s socks and win. He beams.
“You don’t really think that,” he says, “You love me. Can I wipe your tears away with my thumb? I’ve always wanted to try that in real life.”
“Awful,” Mew repeats, and kisses him again. It’s gentler this time, slower. Gulf shivers at the barely-there scrape of nails across his scalp and grabs for Mew’s arms, his back, his cheek.
He does kiss a bit differently than he had for Tharntype, it turns out, but Gulf feels like it’s probably more about the lack of onlookers than anything else. He still seems just as obsessed with Gulf’s top lip, which is the main thing.
“Don't forget to check in and tell me if I do anything that makes you uncomfortable,” he whispers into Mew’s mouth, giggling, and then he tugs and they’re both lying back on the couch, Mew’s weight fully on him for the first time since that one glorious experiment in workshop. God, it’s even better than he remembered, like Mew is the world’s most touchable weighted blanket, and they’re well into another astoundingly good kiss when Mew suddenly pulls away.
Gulf keeps on mapping every inch of his back with his hands and plants a biting kiss at the hinge of his jaw, instead, because minor setbacks are to be expected and he will navigate them.
“Wait,” Mew says, resting his forehead on Gulf’s shoulder, “I think — I think the maid is here.”
Cockblocked by Mew and the entirety of his household, what a life.
He kisses Mew’s temple and its cute little zit, presses his lips to the top of Mew’s head.
“We should go to your room,” he suggests, slightly muffled by Mew’s hair. What even is that shampoo? It smells like a pharmacy. He'd forgotten, after so many events where all he could smell was Mew's hairspray. “You could carry me, to show your gratitude for all the important and tiring work I did today.”
“I am not carrying you anywhere,” Mew returns primly, already beginning to straighten, “You had way too much for lunch and I don’t want to throw my back out.”
Gulf takes the hand he’s offered and rises, crowding up against Mew’s chest.
“My poor Phi and his bad back,” he laments. He wants to touch Mew everywhere, all the places he was allowed before and all the new ones. He really hopes Mew is also down with this agenda. “I hear that does happen with advanced age. Should I be calling you Grandfather?”
“I hate you,” Mew mutters, and then because he is hilariously vain and predictable he does pick Gulf up, tightening his hold on the top of Gulf’s thighs just like he always does, and when Gulf wraps his legs around his waist he gasps and totters slightly. (Gulf isn’t sure if it’s the change in weight distribution or the firmer dick-to-ab contact, but he knows which of those he’s hoping for.)
“Not sure I’ll make it all the way to the bedroom.” Mew is talking into Gulf’s tee-shirt as he walks, his breath hot through the cotton, and Gulf finds himself nosing again at the top of his skull. He even loves the shampoo, apparently. Heaven help him.
“Just put me down whenever you need to, old man,” he says reassuringly, and Mew actually lets go of him on one side (they wobble for a second, then get it back) to smack him on the ass. It feels surprisingly good, and he stores that information away for later.
They cross out of the living room and into the unlit hall and Chopper comes running, yipping, nails clattering on the tile. He slides to a messy, tumbling stop at Mew's feet, and barks.
Mew huffs. "I have to put you down. What if I step on him?"
"Sure." Gulf unhooks his ankles, lets himself enjoy the slow slide down his front. At their feet, Chopper loudly protests what he seems to believe is Gulf's arrival.
"I do love you," Mew whispers. His face is half in shadow, but his eyes gleam, and when he slips gentle fingers behind Gulf's ear and into his hair Gulf presses into the touch.
"I know," he says. He bends to give Chopper a quick scratch, then takes Mew's hand again, wraps it around his waist. "Let's go to your room?"
"Yes."
Mew's grip tightens as they go, until he's plastered along Gulf's back from throat to groin (nice), chin hooked over his shoulder. They can barely walk like that, only shuffle, and it's so dumb and so familiar that Gulf can't help smiling, turning his head to land a quick kiss at the corner of Mew's mouth.
“Hey, Phi,” he suddenly remembers, “You keep your retainer in the bedroom, right?”