2020-01-16 - Netflix and Chill

(TXT to Dante) Cristobal : Come play nursemaid.

(TXT to Cristobal) Dante : Nursemaid? Is this a new sex game you've invented?

(TXT to Dante) Cristobal : Suppose it can be.

(TXT to Cristobal) Dante : Are you hurt, seriously?

(TXT to Dante) Cristobal : You bring Elias, I may shoot on sight.

(TXT to Cristobal) Dante : You do realize I've no medical training, yes? If you need someone to get you ice chips, that's about the extent of my nursemaid abilities.

(TXT to Dante) Cristobal : I need someone to get me ice chips.

(TXT to Cristobal) Dante : Are you at home?

(TXT to Dante) Cristobal : Yes.

(TXT to Cristobal) Dante : Be round shortly.

Dante is in fact, at Cris' place within thirty minutes. His souped up Yaris pulls into the drive and the Brit exits, carrying a bag of something. He raps on the door. His hair is mussed and he's wearing his glasses, along with a gray cashmere sweater and skinny dark wash jeans.

As soon as Cris hears footsteps on the porch outside and a Dante shaped shadow pass in front of the curtained windows, he yells, "It's open." Because Cristobal sure as hell isn't going to get out of bed to answer the door. He's laying on a twist and knot of blankets in a pair of flannel pajama pants, looking down the length of his apartment to the TV hanging on the wall in the living room area. Currently flipping though the Netflix menu, he can't seem to settle on anything and is restless during his forced time down. His torso explains why: there is a bandage on his side which means it's injury instead of illness that's keeping him in bed.

Dante pushes open the door a bit cautiously, then goes in all the way. He takes a moment to take in the scene, and frowns at the bandage. "Do I want to know what happened?" He sets the bag down and shrugs off his wool jacket, slinging it over a nearby chair.

Cris lifts his head if only to tuck a hand beneath it on the pillows, giving Dante a sort of wry smirk. "I guess that depends. Does curiosity kill the Brit? Because I kinda like you rushing over here when I text." Even if thirty minutes isn't really a rush. There is an interested glance given to the bag, "You didn't have to bring your own ice chips, y'know."

"You said you weren't in imminent danger, so I figured you needed a restock. I stopped at the shop." Dante steps inward, frowning a bit. "Does knowing make me an accessory?" He sets the bag down on the table and pulls out a few things. A pack of assorted muffins, mini carrot sticks and hummus, orange juice, cheese, a loaf of bread. "If you won't eat some of this, I'll take it home with me."

"I'm not even really laid up, just took the day off to make sure I don't rip my stitches and was bored, but damned if I don't like you shopping for me." Cris says a bit smugly, "Do you want to be an accessory?" He continues answering questions with more questions. "The Bonnie to my Clyde?"

"I don't want to do anything that might get me deported, no," says Dante dryly. He motions to the groceries. "Will you actually eat any of this?"

"Every bite. Though you better still find me attractive after I eat all those carbs, because ab work won't be in my immediate future." Cris' hand lazily strokes down the plane of his stomach, which will take more than muffins and bread to disrupt fully. "C'mere now."

Dante moves towards the bed, frowning more as he gets a closer look at the wound. "Did someone who knows what they're doing at least patch you up?" Because he's not an idiot. He doesn't think Cris went to the hospital. "How bad is it, really?"

Cristobal presses his chin into his collar bone, looking down at the edge of the gauze. Without preamble, he lifts the edge of the tape and peels it back to show rather than tell a laceration about 3 inches in length that's been stitched closed. "Oh sure as hell knew what he was doing alright. And it's even relatively straight. They missed anything important." Clearly referencing two different people in the same breath.

Dante sits on the edge of the bed, then reaches out to press the bandage back over the wound after he's had a glimpse of it. His jaw tightens. "I'm glad you didn't call me. I'm no good with blood. I'm a terrible wimp with blood and all that. The non-fiction kind anyway. I'm fine with the imaginary kind and the sort on television made of cornstarch and dye."

As Dante presses the bandage back, Cris snags the man's wrist and gives him a little tug so that he'll need to lean his weight onto his palm, and thus onto the wound. The latino gives a little grunt of pain, but it's making him smirk all the more. "You really are the worst match for me, you know that? I probably bleed at least once a week from some fight or another."

"Oi," Dante pulls his hand back as soon as he can keep himself propped up. "Do you want your stitches to get popped so you're stuck in that bed even longer?" He takes in a breath and frowns again. "Yes, well, I think we've both been aware of that since the moment we met. You sought me out specifically because you thought I'd probably fight you, remember?"

"If you were the reason my stitches popped, I wouldn't complain." Cristobal runs his tongue over the front of his teeth and shifts his hips over on the mattress to make room for Dante down on the mattress. "What's a little pleasure without pain to make the difference so much sharper." He makes a curl of fingers and holds open his arms. "Come wrinkle your pleats." Does cashmere wrinkle? Or pleat?

No, but it does shrink. But no danger of that right now. Dante looks at the wound, at Cris, then sighs and tries to lie down without jostling Cris or getting too close to that wound. "A little bit of pain, but there's a point. And for me, that point involves blood and stitches."

Cris tugs up Dante into his side whether the Brit likes it or not, although no more direct attention is given to making Dante disrupt the wound. He's merely laying his cheek on the top of Dante's head and scratching his stubble against that perfectly coifed hair. "My dapper dandy boy. Where do sponge baths rank on your prim and proper list, hmm?"

"Yes, well, I've never pretended to be anything other than a dandy. Except for that brief period where my wife and my publicist were trying to make me into Stephen King with better hair." It's a little less perfectly coiffed than usual, though it does smell like that shampoo they both got intimately acquainted with. He chuckles. "Mhmm. We both know a sponge bath would do nothing to speed your recovery."

"You're far too attractive to be Stephen King anything, and a great deal less pedantic and formulaic in your writing." Cristobal crooks up Dante's chin with the curl of his index finger so he can steal a light kiss. "I'm more interested in your companionship. Will you give me that at least, or do I need to beg? I can do amazing things on my knees."

One side of Dante's lip curls up into a little half-grin, showing a hint of pearly whites. "I'm here, aren't I? And I brought you hummus." He pats him on the knee. "In one breath, you ask me to do something not-sexual, and then you make it sexual. You're incorrigible."

"Don't ask a cheetah to change its spots." Cris says simply and hugs Dante tighter. Apparently this kiss wasn't a preamble and he was somewhat serious about needing the companionship. He reaches for the remote and flips some more. "I was stabbed doing some collections by an over eager Butcher." He says casually.

"Collections," Dante echoes. Cris can feel a little tension in his body, but he forces himself to relax. "Any worry he'll come back for your kidneys?" He lifts a hand and slides long fingers over the back of the other man's head, around to the side, pressing gently.

Cris notices that tension alright, and part of him was expecting it. It doesn't stop the slight frown from touching his lips. "Not if he wants to keep the rest of his fingers." Or continue breathing, but at least Cristobal leaves that part off. "If you want to go, I won't like it, but I will understand."

Dante inhales and turns his face against Cris' shoulder. He then lifts his head. "I'm not going to pretend to be comfortable with what you do. It's dangerous, for one. I'd rather be over here because you wanted a nice evening, not because a butcher gave you a new scar. Well..." his lips twitch. "That's something of a lie. Some part of me finds the danger a bit exciting. But you have to understand, I've never so much as witnessed a roberry. It's all pretty far out of my frame of reference."

"I did invite you over for a nice evening, it just has to be a nice sedate evening." Cris shifts his shoulders away slightly so he can look into Dante's face, pawing the side of it. "For all intents and purposes, I'm a bouncer at the Platinum Club. I just happen to do a little side work for some very interesting people with less than legal pursuits. None of it will come back to you, I promise you that."

Dante's glasses have slipped a bit down his nose. He reaches to push them up again. Then he catches the hand pawing his face and press a kiss to his wrist. "Part of why I'm attracted to you is because you've got this air of danger around you. So I'd be a bloody hypocrite if I started moralizing at the very bad boy I'm shagging. But..." a long breath, "I do worry. Because I'm old enough to realize that the bad boy lifestyle can have very bloody consequences. Or legal ones."

"And like I said, none of that will come back to you, legal or otherwise. I'm careful and the people I work for protect their assets. If you can't tell, I have a very nice Ass. Et." Cris slants a mischievous smile and darts forward to take a more intent kiss from Dante's mouth, that's meant to be reassuring and would probably be more successful if it didn't include a press of his tongue.

"Despite my comment earlier, I'm not really worried about me, you..." but whatever very English thing Dante was about to call Cris gets cut off by the kiss. He does pull back after indulging the tongue for a moment, because he knows from experience how quickly things can get out of control. "My great secret is that I spend a lot of time thinking up dark things and dark deeds but am somewhat fearful of the real thing."

"And you're worrying about caring whether or not something happens to me? Is that it? Well, I hate to tell you, Dante. It's too late for that. You care." Is Cris teasing him? Probably. At least the smirk is tempered with a bit of a storm in his blue eyes. "You brought me groceries, the same reason why I bought all of your books and am eating reading them up."

"No, I already worry. So yes, it's too late for that." Dante makes a soft sound and flops back onto the bed. He stares up at the ceiling. "You know I won't be insulted if you don't like certain ones. I'm aware they're of varying quality. And any deficiencies you might find I'm probably well aware of."

"You mean like the non-fiction ones." Clearly Cris has gotten to them, delivering the words with a smile. "Look, man, I'm no book critic. I'm reading them because they're yours, so I'll enjoy them one way or the other. You do realize what this means, right? I get to be your muse for some of those dark things and deeds."

Dante chuckles and closes his eyes, hand to forehead. "Those books only seem lacking to you because you know some of the spooky truth behind it. That, and some of it is clearly hyped up, but it does sell." And his novels do have real darkness in them - disturbing storylines where people wrestle with their inner demons. And sometimes literal demons. He's no stranger to exploring dark psyches and humanizing them. "What, like a story where a bouncer gets possessed by something dark and mysterious?"

"You know...now that you say that...you're kind of dark and mysterious." Cris reaches for Dante's arm to draw it over his midsection and they can wrap each other up in a hug that comes complete with Cristobal winding a leg into one of Dante's. "Wanna possess me?"

"Me?" Dante exhales a laugh. "Dark and mysterious? I've practically laid out my life story to you and we haven't known each other very long. What about me is mysterious?" He allows himself to be rearranged, but he does so with an awareness of the injury. "Or was that just a segue to trying to get yourself laid despite the stab wound in your gut?"

"I'd settle for some good old fashioned snogging. That's what you Brits call it right?" And for Cris saying just making out with Dante would make him happy is saying quite a bit for a man that typically thinks, acts, and lives by his crotch.

"Just keep your hands north of the border. Because if you come close to popping your stitches, I'm going to call halt. My nursing skills begins and ends with hummus." Then Dante gives a little nuzzle with a nose that while it isn't Itzhak-level glorious, is not insignificant. And then he kisses gently.

Cris makes a little grunt noise of reluctant acceptance, because of course now that Dante put that limitation on it, that's all he's going to be thinking about: all the glorious enjoyable ways to accidentally bust his side back open. But fiiiiine. Just making out. Who needs the Netflix part when you got all the chill you can handle.