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Just when Bard’s kisses are starting to get deep and rough and promising, he reaches over Bofur to flick the bedside lamp on.
Bofur squints in the sudden spill of light and hides his face in Bard’s chest. “Um, mood killer,” he says, swatting at Bard’s ass before sneaking a hand in the back pocket of his sweats.
Bard laughs, rolling off Bofur so they’re facing each other, blinking blearily as their eyes adjust. “Sorry,” he says, thumbing over Bofur’s lower lip. “I just. I wanted to see you.”
And—it should be sweet. It is sweet. Bofur’s not sure why it also makes him nervous, why his heart so suddenly clenches up into a defensive fist, mouth flattening out. “You see me all day. Plus, m’not much to look at.”
“You are to me,” Bard says, shrugging. The playful glint to his eyes is gone though, replaced with that worried shadow he gets when he can sense something is wrong. And of course, Bofur feels shitty about that. He doesn’t want to trouble Bard, he doesn’t want to complicate softness with the sudden, sharpened ache of concern. He doesn’t want to be like this. “Hey,” Bard says, threading his fingers through Bofur’s hair and gently untangling it as he studies his face. “What’s wrong?”
Bofur shakes his head, realizing he’s the mood killer, not the bedside lamp. “It’s stupid,” he warns. “But sometimes—when you’re especially nice to me, I guess—I get worried this thing is too good to be true, or something. Like, if you turn on the lights too many times you’ll realize I'm not whatever wonderful, sexy guy you seem to think I am and that m’just me and not worth all the fuss.”
Bard’s dark eyes get even darker, gaze softening around the edges as he settles closer, twining their legs beneath the covers. He lets out a long, low huff of breath before kissing Bofur’s temple and murmuring, “If it makes you feel any better, I do the same damn thing all the time.” Bofur snorts, because it seems impossible that Bard could share his insecurity, that he could suffer from imposter syndrome. He’s so good, so objectively handsome, so perfect. But before Bofur can dispute the point, Bard hooks a finger in the worn out collar of his shirt and says, “I worry every day you’re gonna decide it’s too much trouble to be with a guy like me. Three kids, two jobs, no fun.”
“Plenty of fun,” Bofur reminds him, reaching around his hip to grab and squeeze his ass, lifting his eyebrows suggestively. It’s always easier to make a joke than sit in the discomfort of talking honestly about their relationship. The things that work, the things that don’t, not yet.
Bard shifts into his touch, grinning against his temple before pulling back to look at Bofur, expression sobering. “No, really though. I have never, for a second, felt like I’m good enough for you. I just feel lucky you like me enough to not care. But m’working on not letting it get to me, I guess, and just trusting that for whatever reason you really do want to be mine for the long haul and marry me and raise my kids with me. And just being grateful for that.”
It sort of makes Bofur want to cry so he tilts his head back to look at the ceiling instead of Bard’s infuriatingly sincere and pretty face. “Ugh. Why can’t I do that? Why do I always let my doubts just—eat me up until I get all weird when we’re kissing and turn make-outs into therapy sessions? It’s fucking annoying. I just want to suck your dick, I don’t want to be sad about it.”
Bard takes his hand and kisses it before rolling away a bit, onto his back so that there’s a few inches between their bodies, and ugh. Bofur doesn't want to push him away, he doesn’t want to give him the impression he needs space, but that’s what he does. He’s very good at taking care of people, but not at all good at accepting it. He always does it all wrong.
“I don’t know. I don’t know why you do this to yourself,” Bard says thoughtfully, smoothing a hand up Bofur’s forearm. “And I’m happy to reassure you every day for the rest of our lives that I love you with my whole heart, if that’s what you need. But I also—I don’t know. You don’t deserve to make yourself miserable all the time. You deserve this, you deserve this and more, and I just wish there was a way I could help you realize that.”
Bofur swallows and swallows again, trying to fight down the sudden thickness in his throat enough to speak. It’s a slow, painful process though, so in his silence Bard frowns, and thumbs over the bone of his wrist before asking. “Is there—did something happen? I know we don’t talk much about romantic histories, but I’m here to listen, you know. If there was anything you wanted to share. I’d like to better understand.”
The question catches Bofur off guard, a little. He’s never actually thought about there being a reason he’s like this—he’s just spent his whole life believing it was something fundamental, something in his blood. That he is innately inferior in some way, and that his awareness of it fuels everything he does: he has to be funny so that people will keep him around. He has to give and give and give without expecting anything in return because that is the only way he can make himself valuable. The thought that something could have made him feel this way feels impossible. He just is. But now that the question is being posed, he’s rifling through his past anyway, thumbing through memories the way his mother used to thumb through recipe cards in the Christmas tin she kept on the microwave when she was looking for something to cook, in the rare event she ever did so.
It’s a very odd image to come into his mind, something regarding his mother, and so he resists it. This is why he doesn’t like thinking about his past. It feels like a minefield, an avalanche, a storage closet piled high with dusty, half forgotten relics poised to collapse and bury him. “I don’t think anything happened,” he finally says. “I’ve never really thought about it before. You’re the first serious relationship I've ever had.”
“But that—that alone says something. You’ve been pushing people away for a long time,” Bard murmurs, inching closer. Bofur can feel the huff of his breath on his own lips, now, and it’s comforting. I want you close, he thinks of saying, but it feels like a lot to ask, right now. Or maybe it always feels like a lot to ask, because Bofur fundamentally believes he’s not good enough to take up space. “You don’t trust people to love you,” Bard says then.
Bofur sighs sharply, and the tail end of it tapers off into a groan. “I don’t know. It’s not that I don’t trust people. It’s not about them. It’s about me. I feel like I just—don’t deserve stuff.”
“But you do,” Bard murmurs. “I just wonder—something had to make you feel that way. And you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but I’ve actually sort of been wanting to ask.”
“Ask what?” Bofur ventures with his heart in his throat, steeling himself against whatever might follow.
“Were you ever cheated on?” Bard poses the question so gently, but still it hits Bofur in the chest suddenly, with a force he didn’t expect.
He sputters, shaking his head, face very hot and scalp very prickly. “No!” he says, and it feels like the truth, in some ways. The sort of truth he’s told himself long enough to end up believing, anyway. Still, after the fact he adds, “Never. Not really.”
Bard’s eyes flash before he narrows them. “Not really?”
“No,” Bofur clarifies, pursing his lips, irritated at the way his heart is pounding in his chest. Decades-old pain shouldn’t be able to rocket so intensely back into his body, he thinks. “I thought I was, once, but it wasn’t like that. Back when I was really young—like nineteen, twenty, I was seeing an older girl I thought was my girlfriend? But she wasn’t. Turns out she was sleeping with a lot of other guys, the whole time we were together. I had to get tested for STDs, it was fucking scary. But it wasn’t cheating, I don’t think.” His skin is crawling; he hates talking about this, it always makes him feel like a wounded teenager again, confused, foolish, too stupid to understand what was going on.
“Bofur,” Bard says, sitting up, looking down at him with eyes so pain-dark with sympathy it makes Bofur reel.
“Hey,” he says, holding up his hands. “I don’t need pity. It was a long time ago.”
“I don’t pity you, I—how is that not cheating, though? Did she tell you she was seeing other people?”
Bofur shrugs. “Maybe. When I found out she said she’d already told me, but I don’t remember it? But I dunno, I’m a stoner and I was definitely using other drugs at the time, too. My memory was a mess.”
“She probably knew that and took advantage of it. You said she was older? How much older?”
“Not much, mid twenties,” he offers, astounded they’re talking about this. It feels like such a dirty, shameful, embarrassing chapter of his history. One of the ugly bits he doesn’t want Bard to know about it because it is too banal, too raw. But Bard is asking, Bard is talking to him and trying to understand, and that’s absolutely more effort than anyone has ever expended trying to figure him out. It seems like the least he can do is answer the questions and keep himself from shutting down. He owes Bard that bare minimum, meeting him halfway in his very earnest attempts to communicate. “She wasn’t like cradle robbing or anything. I was a dumb kid, misunderstood what our arrangement was, and I got my heart broken. Happens to everyone. M’not special, it wasn’t like, traumatic or anything.”
“You weren’t a stupid kid, though, you—I just know if you did care about her, you would have remembered if she told you the relationship was open or whatever. No matter how many drugs you were doing. It’s far more likely she was cheating, and tried to get away with it or misplace the blame on you when you found out. That’s fucking terrible,” Bard says, very gently. “No wonder you’re so—why you don’t think you deserve good things. Why you put yourself down all the time. That sort of situation is traumatic.”
Something reflective and bristly unfolds in Bofur’s chest, like steel wool. “But it wasn’t—it wasn’t like that. She told me one hundred times, I was just too serious, in it too deep, made assumptions. I was just stupid about it. I believed she meant it when she said she loved me and stuff.”
“I know you,” Bard murmurs, holding Bofur’s gaze, grave and firm, so intensely it makes Bofur’s insides wither. “And you are not like that. You’re not stupid. If she said she loved you and then took it back when you caught her lying, that’s on her.”
“It was a long time ago,” Bofur mumbles, hating how hot his cheeks are, how much this still makes him feel foolish and ashamed to talk about. “Maybe she didn’t tell me she loved me and I just remembered stuff wrong. Heard it because I wanted to hear it. None of this matters, though, it’s not why—why—”
“Bofur, listen to me,” Bard says, reaching out and cupping Bofur’s face between his palms, his hands cool and callous-rough and so lovely and soothing Bofur actually feels his heart stutter in his chest, trip and slow down to something manageable. “You are blaming your nineteen-year-old self for what happened because I think—I think that’s easier for you than admitting someone hurt you. Because you always see the very best in people, and you’re so good and kind you want to think everyone else is, too. Or maybe you’re protecting yourself, taking responsibility for something awful that happened. . Either way, you deserve so, so much more than what she did to you. And I’m so terribly sorry you were treated that way. And whether or not you admit it, this is tied to the way you think of yourself now and it’s provided insight, for me. So thank you for telling me.”
Something fractures inside Bofur’s ribcage, and before he can stop himself he’s letting out a great, shuddering breath, and there are tears at his eyes, then on his cheeks, and then in Bard’s shirt because his face is quite suddenly pressed into his shoulder, strong arms tight around his back. “Fuck,” he mumbles, sniffling. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Bard murmurs against his ear, pushing a hand beneath the hem of his shirt to rub up his back, skin to skin.
“Because we were gonna have sex and then I got weird and now m’crying about some girl who cheated on me in the fucking 90s.”
Bard kisses his brow and hums, the sound of it reverberating through his body, sweet and warm. “I do very much enjoy having sex with you,” he says. “But more than anything I want to know you, know every little bit of you. Your past hurts and what drugs you did when you were nineteen and what this girl’s name is so I can put a casual hit out for her. Also, good on you for calling it cheating. It was cheating. And she sucks for trying to convince you otherwise.”
Bofur wipes his eyes, forcing a wheezing laugh. “It’s very cute that you want to defend my honor.”
“I hate the idea of you being hurt. It makes my chest ache,” Bard explains, peeling back to study Bofur’s face. “I love you so, so much.”
It makes his insides squirm, the tender heat to Bard’s gaze, the way he’s so clearly just being honest. He really does love Bofur this much, no matter how improbable it seems. Not improbable, Bofur tells himself, shaking his head, remembering he’s supposed to quit beating himself up at every opportunity.“Well, I love you back,” he says, thumbing over the shell of Bard’s ear before dipping in to kiss him.
Bard deepens it immediately, cards his hands through Bofur’s hair, rolls him onto his back to bracket him between his long, willowy legs. “So we don’t have to have sex,” he says, mouthing down the hinge of Bofur’s jaw, thumbing over his mustache. “We can keep talking. Or put on a movie and do something entirely different. Or, we can have sex and I can shut the light off, if that would make you feel better. I just—I want to make you happy, so tell me what you need.”
Bofur hooks a leg around Bard’s thigh, digging his heel into the back of it and dragging him down. “You make me crazy happy. Delirious with it,” he promises. “So, mission accomplished. I’ll take a rain check on the sex, but you’re welcome to leave the light on and kiss me and look at me as much as you want.”
“Mmm,” Bard mumbles, licking a stripe up Bofur’s throat before claiming his mouth, rough and sweet, the sincerity of his feelings bleeding through so even Bofur can’t trick himself into thinking he’s faking it. “Sounds like heaven, truly,’ bard murmurs, and then he pulls away to look down at Bofur, tracing the arches of his eyebrows reverently. “You know, part of why I like to have the lights on is because you feel too good to be true, and I can convince myself it’s a dream if I can’t like. See you. Your smile and the way you flush and your lovely hands fisted in the sheets. It reminds me it’s all real. You’re real, and you’re mine.”
Bofur’s throat is tight again at that, his hands trembling as he brushes them down Bard’s neck, over the flutter of his pulse, to his collarbones. Every inch of him fiercely warm and wonderfully alive and all his to touch, somehow. “Very much yours,” he promises.
“90s girl’s loss,” Bard says with a shrug, before dipping down and catching Bofur’s mouth again, so much pressure and certainty behind his kiss, it’s like a healing balm, a shot of brandy, a whole unwritten future stretched ahead of them, brimming with promise.