Work Text:
Just five more minutes, Maddie, Buck thinks when he feels the light touch of fingers running through his hair. He knows that’s wrong even before the thought gets half-way along the path from his frontal lobe to his mouth.
He does feel warm and safe, just as he always did when Maddie let him crawl into her bed on the weekends, and then pretended to believe he was asleep as she teased him with feather light touches that tickled the soft hairs on his cheeks and around his mouth and he tried not to giggle. Buck had nearly forgotten that childhood tradition until Chimney showed them all a video of a giggly Jee Yun in her dinosaur pyjamas and Maddie’s sleep-tender voice saying: “Is my little Jee still asleep? Is she pretending? Hmmm, how can I tell? I know! Everyone knows that when little girls are really really deep asleep, they always twitch their nose!” They were up in the loft and the air smelled of the fragrant shallots Bobby had just added to the olive oil, but the almost forgotten memory stung in Buck’s nose with his mother’s old fabric softener, bringing tears into his eyes.
The fingers in his hair now don’t belong to Maddie, because Buck isn’t five years old like in the dreams his mind puts on for him when he falls asleep feeling warm and like everything is right with the world. The calluses on them catch a little against the shell of his ear, pause, and then continue their journey ever softer.
Tommy.
Buck can’t help the little melody that escapes him along with the next breath as he rubs his face against the pillow and arches into the touch. The fingers settle in his hair again with short blunt nails shiveringly nice against his scalp.
“Mmmmzzt?” Buck says through his barely opened mouth and feels an absurd sense of accomplishment when it makes Tommy let out a short rumbly laugh, the current number 5 in the top 10 sounds Buck can make come out of Tommy’s mouth.
“‘S early. I didn’t mean to wake you.” Tommy’s voice gets closer and softer as he speaks. “Go back to sleep.” His lips land close-mouthed on Buck’s temple and he squirms into the touch, whines a little when his blanket slips as he turns onto his side to get closer to where he senses Tommy in the pre-dawn dimness of his half-raised eyelids.
Tommy huffs out another laugh and then Buck’s side is duveted once more, this time with Tommy’s wide palm underneath radiating the warmth of late night memories and even later morning promises through the layer of cotton on Buck’s shoulder, flailing a little when Buck relaxes into the momentum and lets it carry him over until he flops onto the nearest part of Tommy and burrows closer.
Tommy smells of sleep and a little bit like his shower gel and a lot like sweat and sex and all like Tommy. Buck doesn’t want to go back to sleep.
This is so much better than the hazy world of Maddie’s birthday pancakes, getting medals for his projects in Art in elementary school, or even the one instructor in the Academy who hated him watching with grudging respect as Bobby pins a shiny award on his dress blues, and then applauding with all the rest.
But he doesn’t want to wake up all the way either.
Buck raises his head and opens his mouth the smallest amount to inform Tommy of his plans, but gives up half-way through when he feels his lips come into contact with tantalizing warm skin and downy hair. It’s only been a couple of months but already his body has adopted new unconscious rituals, these automated motions; like grabbing the largest plate out of the cupboard for Tommy when they have croissants for breakfast because the maniac likes to unravel them in a spiral, flinging flakes all over the kitchen island, or like now when his lips make contact with Tommy’s skin, and the new directive his body obeys without thinking is to kiss, caress, taste…
Buck sighs, kissing, caressing, tasting, sluggish mind trying to place the coordinates of the hair, of the soft skin, the cushion of the sleep-warm muscle underneath onto the map of Tommy’s body that lives in his mind. Tommy lets out another loud exhale in what might be amusement or approval or both and buries his fingers back in Buck’s hair, so Buck digs the knee he can feel resting next to Tommy’s thigh into the mattress and shimmies a little higher, and then he’s home, chin resting above a clavicle, mouth free to explore and rediscover the place on Tommy’s neck where the carotid artery pulses beneath thin tender skin and the scratchy beginnings of a stubble.
Tommy flexes his fingers in his hair and Buck hums, shifting his hips again, grinding a little, reminded of those same fingers clenching in his hair, and Tommy’s voice above him, breath hitching: “You’re doing so- so well- fuck, baby- can I- oh fuck- so good, so hot. Christ, I’m gonna- So good-”
Tommy shifts underneath him, and moves his hand to Buck’s jaw, cradling it, raising it. Buck finally opens his eyes just before their lips meet, just in time to smile at Tommy’s bedhead. The angle is awkward until Buck persuades his right arm to bend at the elbow and support his weight a little, and then their lips align again, noses brushing in greeting, and they’re both wincing into the kiss a little, grimacing at the sour notes of sleep, having to pull away because they’re laughing too hard to keep going. Well, at least Buck is, since Tommy’s mouth chooses that moment to unhinge, and he yawns his morning breath directly into Buck’s face.
Buck’s eyes are barely open and yet they water at the stench, his arms lose all strength and he lets his weight drop again and hides his snorts of laughter and disgust in Tommy’s neck.
It’s among the top 5 worst kisses Buck’s ever received.
“Christ, I’m sorry, baby! Come back, we can do better.”
Buck shakes his head, scraping his nose on Tommy’s stubble, then tilting his head to taste the same spot. He can’t not.
“Good morning,” he croaks into Tommy’s ear and then cackles when he feels him tense and squirm away.
In fact, right now, it’s shaping up to lead the charts of the best mornings of his life.