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Bofur is eating a raspberry tootsie roll, and it’s stained his lips and tongue a bright, tempting crimson. Bard cannot stop thinking about kissing him, about how fucking good it will feel to suck the saccharine sweetness from his mouth later, sink his hands into his hair, breathe him in and pretend he gets to have this every night. He watches the clock, and tries not to meet Bofur’s dark, glittering eyes across the room too many times, because it just makes his stomach plummet, which in turn makes his heart race, which makes him antsy. He doesn't want to be antsy, he wants to enjoy every second of this, while he has it.
Eventually the kids crash hard after their sugar high wears off, and he tucks them each into bed before hitting the lights and heading back out into the living room. Bofur is in the kitchen scrubbing the slow-cooker out, hair still half-slicked back from his Dracula costume. Bard sneaks up on him from behind, loops his arms around his waist, and buries his face in his neck. “I would make a vampire joke but m’too exhausted to be funny,” he mumbles.
“Exhausted?! The spooky magical Halloween vibes aren’t filling you to the brim with uncontainable excitement? Because I dunno about you, but I was planning on staying up until at least midnight marathoning scary movies. Or taking you to the Bone Zone. One or the other,” Bofur says, his voice rumbling under Bard’s lips, his smile an audible thing.
“The Bone Zone?! I don’t think you’re qualified to make that joke. It’s a dad joke. Dads only,” Bard says, peeling away and raising a critical eyebrow hoping that he doesn't sound too much like he’s saying marry me and adopt my children, which he is definitely like, subconsciously implying.
Bofur holds up his hands, “Oh sorry, ok, sorry I trespassed into your horrific pun territory without a warrant. That was rude. No Bone Zone for me, I guess.”
Bard crowds him up against the counter, truly incapable of staying away very long. He spends every fucking moment he’s with Bofur wanting to get him alone and touch him. He’s not going to let precious time go to waste. “Bone Zone later, maybe, once I've recovered from trick or treating and get off my feet for a few hours. Movie marathon sounds nice, if you pick the movie.”
“Fabulous, I can wait for the boning. I’ll just finish up cleaning and meet you on the couch,” Bofur says, eyes fixed on Bard’s mouth, half lidded, soft. Bard loves that he can tell when Bofur is thinking of kissing him, even if he doesn’t always suck it up and do it unless he’s kissed first. He licks his own lips, slowly, intentionally. He wants to be tempting. He wants Bofur to think about kissing him as much as he thinks about kissing Bofur.
“Leave the mess,” he offers in a low voice. “Come lie with me instead.” It makes Bofur blush, and Bard is very pleased with himself about that.
Marry me and adopt my children, he wants to say, with his lips pressed to the shell of Bofur’s ear so the words cannot touch the air, instead tucked away safe here, in the protected heat of their bodies.
Bofur does kiss him, then, with those raspberry stained lips, and Bard melts into it, his heart hung on one thousand wishes, sugar on his tongue.
They eventually do make it out to the couch, where Bofur leans over his laptop, squinting at the screen as he finds a link to pirate. Bard sits very close, their thighs pressed together. “What are we watching?”
“Halloween III: Season of the Witch,” Bofur declares with absolute certainty. Bard has never heard of it, and thinks Bofur is joking until he adds, “It’s the best of the Halloween movies in my opinion, though everyone else says it's the worst, because Michael Meyers isn’t even in it. It’s not a slasher movie, really, which in this case is a strength, because Michael Meyers is the most boring slasher of all the 80s slashers.” He explains this very very charming authority, and Bard feels his heart clenching up.
“You know so much about horror,” he says fondly, smoothing his hand up Bofur’s arm, moving the hair against the grain.
“Well I am in a horror metal band,” he says, shrugging. “I only really like 70s and 80’s horror. The cheesy stuff with the wild effects,” he explains. Then, he raises his eyebrows, smoothing the tips of his mustache between his thumb and forefinger the way he always does when he’s about to drop some truly fantastic deep cut trivia about something. Bard doesn’t care one bit about horror, but he would happily sit through an entire lecture on it if Bofur was the professor, and he got to see him to the mustache thing over and over again. “Are you ready to hear the plot of this movie? It will blow your mind.”
“I am ready,” Bard says, eyes wide, voice very sincere. “To have my mind blown.”
“Ok. So: plot of Halloween movies I and II is Michael Meyers, sociopath, killing teenagers. Very typical slasher stuff. But. The plot of Halloween III: The Season of the Witch, is that some Irish Satanists put pieces of Stonehenge in Halloween masks so they can activate its massive, supernatural power and manifest snakes inside children. I think ultimately for like, witchcraft reasons.”
Bard snorts. “That’s what we’re watching?!”
“Yeah. It’s great. Trust me. Perfect Halloween movie,” Bofur promises.
The thing is, Bard doesn’t even care what they watch. He just wants to be close to Bofur. To lay his head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat. To trace up and down his ribs. Bofur lets him do all these things, which gives him hope that this maybe, maybe could be permanent. He knows he fell too hard too fast, but he's willing to wait it out. He’s willing to stand here, arms outstretched, until Bofur falls into them.
Bofur starts the movie, and situates himself at one end of the couch, lap splayed invitingly. Still, Bard waits until the very creepy and entirely too-long opening credits are done rolling before he decides to spread out, head pillowed on Bofur’s thigh. “Is this ok?” he asks, just to make sure. He doesn't want to assume that just because Bofur has allowed him lap privileges a few times before this, that he's just entitled to such things. It’s important to him that Bofur knows he respects his boundaries—that he’s patient. That this doesn’t have to happen all at once, if Bofur isn’t ready.
Luckily, Bofur just smooths his guitar-rough hand down Bard’s neck, sighing as his thumb nudges up against his Adam’s apple. “Definitely ok. Is this ok?” he asks, sneaking his finger tips under the collar of Bard’s shirt, petting experimentally over his collar bone. “Me touching you like this?”
“God yes. Feels very nice,” Bard admits, eyes fluttering closed. He’s missing the beginning scenes of the movie, he can’t help it. Bofur feels like heaven and his voice is so soft when he asks if things are alright, like if he says it too loud it will shatter the moment, and—Bard shivers, skin erupting into sudden goosebumps. God. He is so in love. “You can touch me whenever you want, you know,” he says quietly, breath coming out in a hiss as Bofur traces sweetly over the hinge of his jaw.
“I’ll try and remember that,” he says, “Even if it seems fake.”
Bard smiles against Bofur’s black jeans, and tries his hardest to watch the movie, but it’s impossible with all the gentle stroking, the idle fingers sifting through his hair, warm and comforting. He wants to stop time—live in this moment where October is giving way to November and Bofur is ignoring the screen to look down at him, study the line of his profile, the grey in his hair. “What are you looking at?” Bard murmurs without opening his eyes, only lying there knowing he’s being stared at, and hoping, hoping. He wants to be tempting. He wants Bofur to think about kissing him as much as he thinks about kissing Bofur.
Bofur chokes out a self-deprecating laugh that’s mostly a cough. “Oh, the usual. That you’re so handsome it hurts.”
“It hurts?!” Bard asks, grinning, reaching blindly up to smooth over Bofur’s stomach. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Bofur laughs. “S’fine, I’m masochist,” he says. Then he pauses. “No, actually m’not. That’s a joke you can only make with someone you’re not sleeping with, I guess. Lest they get the wrong idea and try to spank you.”
Bard smiles, rubbing his face into Bofur’s thigh. Someone he’s sleeping with. He’d like to be more than that—so much more. But even hearing him say that out loud, acknowledge what they’re doing together? It feels good, warm and fluttery around his heart.
“Ah, I see. I’ll leave my whips and chains behind, then, when we meet in the Bone Zone, “ he offers, before turning his head and kissing the inside of Bofur’s thigh, hot and lingering. He thinks he’s just teasing, but Bofur huffs out a breath, tenses, makes a fist in his hair. And those are things he can’t really ignore, so he kisses him again, this time a bit higher, a bit longer.
Bofur curses, and hauls him up to press their mouths together.
Bard never sees any Irish Satanists use bits of Stonehenge to brainwash children using Halloween masks. In fact, he misses the movie entirely. And he’s perfectly fine with that.