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Ted wasn’t surprised when Booster followed him to the embassy after they got back home. It felt – tentatively – like old times again, when he could turn and always be assured of Booster grinning back at him.
The words of that poor kid from the night’s still completely mysterious battle floated back to him.
“Neither one of us is gonna be alone anymore!”
He’d been lonely, too. At first he’d assuaged the loneliness by assuming that Booster would come back once he cooled down. But the days turned into weeks, and suddenly there Booster was with a new team and a new partner and –
Booster’d said he’d been hurting. He wasn’t the only one.
“Part of each other again – the way it used to be!”
In the kitchen they put their feet up on the table and popped open a couple of beers. Booster told Ted about the kids – because they were just that, kids – in the Conglomerate, and Ted filled Booster in on the stuff he’d missed, like Max and Guy and the four hundred mistakenly-ordered Venusian goats. When the other Leaguers drifted past the kitchen making going-to-bed noises, Ted and Booster moved to Ted’s room, which was off of the central hallway and far enough away that they wouldn’t disturb anyone.
As the night wore on the conversation grew silly, and with two or three beers in him Ted was loosened up enough that Booster’s hand on his thigh took longer than it normally would have to register. He looked down at the warm weight of it, then up at Booster’s eyes, their own true blue without the distortion of their discarded goggles and masks.
“I missed you,” Booster said softly, and Ted swallowed past the lump in his throat.
“I missed you t – ” he started to say, but then Booster was shifting, off the bed and onto his knees on the floor in front of Ted.
And okay, no buzz could make that not weird.
“Booster, what – ” Ted started again, then trailed off, caught between staring at Booster’s face and at his hands, free of their gloves, running lightly up and down Ted’s thighs.
Booster’s eyes met his, then dropped significantly to Ted’s lap. Ted stared cluelessly back at him, and Booster, apparently taking Ted’s confusion to be about Booster’s intent rather than his motive, pressed a hand to Ted’s crotch.
“Booster!” It was supposed to be a shout, but came out as more of a strangled whisper. “What are you doing?”
“Getting on my knees,” Booster said, his thumb tracing Ted’s inseam, and oh, even through the heavy material of his costume and a jock that felt entirely too good. “Like I said I would.”
Ted fought the distraction, tried to remember…right. In the Bug. “You don’t…I was kidding,” he said. His costume was starting to feel constrictive. “You’re forgiven. We’re…we’re okay. You don’t have to…” He licked his lips, throat dry.
“I know.” Booster smiled up at him, but there was something uncertain in it. “I want to.”
Ted couldn’t stop his hips from twitching up into Booster’s hand ever so slightly, couldn’t stop his own hand from burying itself in the sun-gold hair behind Booster’s ear. “Well, in that case…”
The uncertainty faded, replaced by something else that Ted couldn’t quite place, and Booster turned his head to press a kiss to the thrumming pulse in Ted’s wrist. Ted’s breath caught in his throat.
Then Booster set to work unfastening Ted’s belt and pulling down the bottom of his costume – with some guidance from Ted, because he’d made the thing pretty non-intuitive. Ted lifted his hips off the bed so that Booster could ease the costume over them, and there he was, legs spread, tights around his ankles, and Little Ted at full attention.
Booster grinned. “Well, hello to you too.”
Ted scowled at him and nudged him with a booted foot. “Tease.”
“Who, me?” Booster asked mischievously, close enough that his exhalation gusted over Ted’s bare skin, and Ted gasped.
“Evil, evil man – “ he started, and then Booster’s mouth was on him, a light kiss and then a wet, clever tongue circling the head of his cock, one strong hand holding the shaft, the other steady on his hip. Ted choked out a sudden moan.
He felt Booster’s smile. “Evil, huh?” Booster mumbled against Ted’s cock before running his tongue along the underside, base to tip.
“So evil,” Ted agreed through the hitch in his breath. “Unh – the best kind.”
He could see that familiar glint in Booster’s eyes, that look that meant that Booster had a witty retort all ready to fire back, but instead Booster just took the head of Ted’s cock in his mouth and began to suck, which was almost undoubtedly better than any joke would have been, and besides, that left Ted with the last word. Even if that word was “Hhllalrgh,” or something very similar.
Booster’s mouth was hot and wet as it moved further along Ted’s dick, and Ted fisted the bedclothes beneath him to keep from grabbing Booster by the hair and yanking him down, which would have been terrible manners. But oh, it was hard – heh – with Booster so golden and pliable beneath him, and Ted settled for moaning more of those nonsense words, with a few approximations of “yes” and “please” and “more” thrown in for good measure.
He made the mistake of looking down. Ted had always known that his best friend was unfairly and distractingly beautiful, but here, his eyelashes crescents of feathered sunlight, his mouth red and wet and stretched, it was too much.
“Booster…” Ted managed once, and Booster’s eyes flickered up towards him, blue as gas flame and hazy with lust, and that was it, Ted was gone, it was all over too soon and he barely had time to grunt out a warning.
When Ted came back to himself Booster was wiping that too-red mouth with the back of his hand. He looked both smug and desperate, more so than usual, and as Ted freed a shaking hand from its death grip on the bedspread and touched it tentatively to Booster’s face, something seemed to snap. Booster scrambled over him, pulling Ted’s shirt over his head, yanking his own costume off until he was beautifully, gloriously naked –
– and then Booster was kissing him, and there was a musky, bitter taste in his mouth but that didn’t make it any less wonderful. Ted pulled him close and they went tumbling over backwards onto the bed, Booster’s own erection hard against Ted’s thigh and leaking.
Ted reached down, Booster spread out beneath him, and wrapped his hand around Booster’s cock, pumping without grace or finesse, but Booster didn’t seem to mind. He clutched at Ted, arched up and mewled, biting at Ted’s jaw, and groaning his name before coming with a shout.
Ted let himself collapse, forehead pressed to the sweaty curve of Booster’s shoulder, and waited for his heart to return to something close to normal. It took longer than he would’ve thought, and it skipped every time he remembered Booster’s lips gentle on his wrist, remembered that poor doomed kid from before.
“We can be together again!”
Eventually Booster groaned, shifted, and reached out for the tissues on Ted’s bedside table. He cleaned them up half-heartedly while Ted kicked the bits of costume onto the floor and peeled the blanket and top sheet back.
“Staying here tonight?” Ted asked, and it came out as something halfway between a question and a request.
“Mmprgh,” Booster said, face already half-buried in a pillow. “I’m sleeping.”
Ted pulled the blanket over them. “Are not.”
Booster reached out an arm and pulled Ted close again. And – okay. Ted’s head did fit into the crook of Booster’s shoulder quite nicely, and Booster was warm against the cool of the night, and it was like being home. “Well, I’m almost sleeping.”
“Mm.” If he stretched, he could just reach the switch and turn the light off.
He thought Booster was asleep for real, but – “We are okay, right?” Booster asked, and Ted knew Booster’s pretending-not-to-be-concerned voice as well as his own.
“Us?”
“Neither one of us is gonna be alone anymore!”
Ted smiled against Booster’s shoulder. “We’re perfect.”