Washington, D.C. 9 pm

Hyphenated names were for the feminist set, they agreed, and Fox Skinner was just a bad joke. When Walter Mulder made Fox call him Muddy Water for a week, Walter Skinner was more than happy to post the extra fee for the name changes, and their middle names were forever forsaken.  Walter Sergei and Fox William became Walter M. and Fox S. respectively, and kept their surnames. Three days later they were married, in a simple civil ceremony with just Scully and Kim to witness it, and a honeymoon plan that included nothing more than returning to their home, where Walter was happily retired and Mulder worked online.

Mulder was already in bed, duvet pulled up to his waist, his attention alternating between the television on the dresser, and the simple gold band on his left hand.  He didn’t look up when Skinner entered the room, stripped with the military efficiency he’d never really lost despite the fact that his stint in the Marines was a lifetime ago, and slipped into bed beside him. He twisted the ring on his finger as Skinner pulled him into his arms.

Walter opened his mouth and Mulder pressed a finger to it before he could speak.

“If the first words out of your mouth are Mrs. Skinner, sir, then this honeymoon will be over before it even starts,” he warned. The soft laugh Walter huffed out over Mulder’s finger made him shiver.

“How about ‘it’s legal now, Agent Mulder, your ass is mine’?” Walter offered.

“Ah, romance. That’s nice; really nice, Walter.” The warm look accompanying Mulder’s words belied the sarcasm, and Skinner ignored it in favour of rolling Mulder over onto his back, clasping their left hands together just to relish the soft sound their rings made as they brushed and kissing him breathless.

“Chief?” Jim Ellison called out as he entered the loft, mail and keys in one hand, grease spotted bag of Chinese take-out in the other.

There was a thump from upstairs, then another one, louder, causing Jim to turn down his hearing automatically, so that the curse words that followed were muffled even to him, and then Blair was tripping down the stairs, all tight jeans and bouncing curls.

Jim just had enough time to drop everything onto the brushed metal tabletop before he had an armful of warm Blair and his mouth was being devoured by said armful.

Blair tasted like toothpaste and apple juice, bean sprouts and—ugh—tofu, and coffee—Peruvian and Kona. He smelled like cinnamon and patchouli and sandalwood and unscented—yeah, right—Downy.

Before Jim could start naming the shades of red highlighting Blair’s brown hair, or zone out on the sudden rush of pheromones that Blair was now emitting, Blair pulled away with a wet smack and grinned up at him.

“I’m glad you’re home, man.  I’ve been going a little nuts around here today. I mean, I did laundry for Pete’s sake—does that tell you anything?  I know mandatory leave is for another three days, but I’m starting to crawl the walls here--” He stopped abruptly and frowned. “Jeez, sorry, man, listen to me whining—how was your day? Did Rafe do okay? No problems?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle, Chief,” Jim assured him, kissing him again and then steering him into the kitchen.  Blair was at the fridge a moment later, pulling out two bottles of dark sauce with Chinese labels, and two bottles of beer which he took over to the table. He came back and grabbed napkins off the counter, ducking easily under Jim’s arm as the taller man pulled plates from one of the cupboards. They moved gracefully around one another, Blair opening the cutlery drawer while Jim fished out two pairs of lacquered bamboo chopsticks, and then they both sat down at the table, chairs close enough together that their legs were touching. 

“So, do I want to know what you were doing upstairs, Chief? ‘Cos it sounded a bit like bowling for a minute there,” Jim teased as he starting pulling cartons out of the bag. He felt all the rough spots of his day smoothing away with the scent of Kung Pao Chicken and the sound of Blair in storyteller mode, and he couldn’t help but grin.

Cardiff, Wales 1 am

Ianto swiped at his forehead and his hand came away sticky with blood.

He knew it wasn’t serious—he didn’t feel dizzy or nauseous, and he had more than a passing acquaintance with weevil scratches, so he wasn’t fussed.  He doubled checked that the weevil in the back of the SUV was well and truly unconscious, and then locked up the boot with a slam. He was just coming around the SUV on the passenger side, arm already extended to reach for the door, when Jack stepped up in front of him and caught his wrist before could turn the handle.

Jack pulled him a step away from the car and demanded, “Are you okay?” He was still holding Ianto’s wrist in his left hand, and now he brought his right hand up to Ianto’s forehead.

“Jack, stop! I’m fine.” Ianto brushed the hands away, but Jack wouldn’t be dissuaded. He grabbed Ianto around the waist and pulled him into a fierce hug.

Confused but willing, Ianto stood pliant in Jack’s arms while Jack seemed content for a moment just to hold him tight and snuffle warm breath into the crook of his neck.

Ianto felt the breaths change to whispered words and at first he couldn’t make out what Jack was saying.

“…I saw the blood and I thought—hell, I don’t know what I thought—I just—I—I thought we’d never do this again—that I’d never have you back and—and now—now—I can’t lose you, Ianto—I—”

Ianto tugged Jack’s head off his shoulder and with both hands on either side of Jack’s face, he forced his lover to look at him. Jack’s blue eyes were wide and frightened, and Ianto hated it. Jack was supposed to always be the big damned hero, and Ianto knew it was his job—no, his pleasure—no, his desire—to make sure of it.

When Ianto kissed Jack, it was rough, and demanding, and as full of love as Ianto could make it. Jack responded in kind, and they might have stood there for the rest of the night demanding with wet sloppy movements of their lips and tongues and teeth what they couldn’t get from words, except that the quite forgotten weevil in the back of the SUV came awake and started growling and rocking the car in a desperate though futile escape attempt.

Ianto disengaged himself from Jack reluctantly and glanced down at the obvious erection tenting his trousers.

“Now look what you’ve done, sir,” he murmured.

Jack laughed in spite of himself, but before he could comment on Ianto’s arousal, or his own, or do anything about either of them, Ianto kissed him again, softer this time, and said, “What did the Doctor tell us?”

“Time can be rewritten,” Jack replied in a tone that suggested this wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation.

Another gentle kiss. “And?”

“And.” Jack smiled. It was a ghost of his usual cocky grin, but better than the wide eyed terror he’d expressed previously. “Life is made up of good things and bad things.  They’re fixed and he can’t touch them. Luckily, he has carte blanche for the stupid things.”

“That’s right. So, if it’s all the same to you, let’s get this bad thing—“ he waved a thumb in the direction of the weevil. “—back to H2, and then I believe you have a ‘good thing’ that you need to take care of.”

Jack laughed again, less careworn this time, gave Ianto’s cock a quick grope and then walked around to the other side of the car.

“Let’s go,” he exclaimed, slipping into the driver’s seat.

New York, NY 9 pm

Peter heard footsteps at the front door and glanced at his watch. He knew it was too early for El to be home from the gallery opening even before the knock that told him it wasn’t his wife. He set aside the file he’d been reading with a frown and rose, stretching a kink out of his back that told him he’d been sitting in one place too long.

Neal was standing on his front step, hat in hand, smiling his patented “Don’t pretend you’re not excited to see me” smile.

“Neal,” Peter wondered if adding his home to Neal’s radius had been a mistake.

“Peter,” Neal replied, still smiling. “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

Peter realized that Neal was swaying just a little.

“What are you—no, never mind that. Neal, are you drunk?” Even as he spoke, Peter belied his exasperated tone by stepping back and then catching Neal’s arm as the other man stumbled slightly on the threshold.

“I don’t think an Esprit de Beaucastel 2008 would cause anything as uncouth as public drunkenness, Peter,” Neal admonished as Peter led him to the couch. Peter gave him a look, coupled with a raised eyebrow.

“Uh, no?”

Another look, one that Neal recognized from the office.

“Yes?” He tried his winning smile again, and figured he’d at least placed when Peter pushed him down on the couch and sat down next to him.

“So, Neal, just a night out on the town with Mozzie—“

“No Mozzie,” Neal interrupted him.

“A dozen supermodels, then, and a fine red wine—“

“No supermodels.” Neal was starting to a) remember why he’d come to Peter’s house in the first place and b) regret being in Peter’s house immensely.

“Okay, Neal, this isn’t making any sense.”

Neal was suddenly aware that being here was the cherry mistake on a whole ice-cream sundae of mistakes, and he wished he could just stand up and walk out. He even gave a silent command to his legs to lift him off of the sofa and make it happen. His legs ignored him. And when Peter put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, those same legs suddenly opted to turn into water.

“Neal, look at me.”

Neal didn’t look at Peter.

“Whatever it is, we can figure it out.” Peter’s hand moved from Neal’s shoulder to the nape of his neck where he tried to convey reassurance from his fingertips to Neal’s Atlas vertebra.

“Peter,” Neal was still staring down at his hands where they were twisting together in his lap.

“Tell me.”

“I wish—no—no. I am just so—so—” he choked out. Every bit of smooth talking conman deserted him, and he knew that it was just the first of so many things in his life now that he was going to lose if—if he—

“Peter, I am so sorry.” And he threw himself, sobbing, into Peter’s arms.

Peter had never seen Neal so out of control, so broken.  Not over Fowler, or Kate, or even when he was drugged to the gills by a shady transplant doctor.  He floundered for a moment, unsure of what to do for his—friend? CI? employee?—his Neal. But only a minute later he found it easy to guide Neal’s head down to his chest and wrap his arms around Neal’s shaking shoulders. It was simple enough to run his hand through Neal’s hair, and whisper soothing nonsense sounds while Neal’s tears wet the front of his t-shirt.

When Elizabeth got home hours later, she found them both asleep, Neal curled up tightly in Peter’s embrace, and she wasn’t surprised.

London, England 1 AM

“Unique. Certainly unusual for me. Vaguely disturbing, combining visual hallucinations with such a gross lack of motor control, but as I know where your gun is located and given that you are situated between myself and the door, not particularly dangerous.” Sherlock paused then, a small frown on his face.

“Upsetting?” John asked, pulling Sherlock a little closer. The only response was the press of Sherlock’s oddly cold nose behind his ear. John ran his hand over Sherlock’s thin shoulders and down his back in what he hoped was a soothing manner. “Uncomfortable?” he tried. A snuffling noise and a sigh. “Not worth repeating?”

Sherlock pulled his head up abruptly and stared at John, his face scant millimeters from John’s own. He had that look on his face, the one with the slightly widened eyes and the peculiar curl of his lips that John had secretly titled his “you’re a bigger idiot than Anderson” face.  Usually Sherlock reserved that look for the criminals he uncovered, D.I. Dimmock, and once, Mycroft, when his brother had suggested that Sherlock must be bored with having such a ‘common’ flatmate.

After several minutes of staring, which John was more than a little familiar with and had stopped being uncomfortable with months ago, Sherlock took John’s face in his hands, pressed their foreheads together and said, “Well worth repeating.”

The kiss was soft, but not tentative. Sherlock pressed his mouth to John’s, tasting first his upper lip, then his lower. He opened his mouth and swiped his tongue carefully over both, then settled on nipping gently at the lower one. When John opened his mouth obligingly, Sherlock curled his tongue around John’s and settled in for a luxurious and unhurried taste.

Oahu, Hawaii 3 pm 

Danny was lying on his side facing away from the door when Steve came back to the bedroom and slipped into bed.  He acknowledged Steve’s presence with a grunt but didn’t turn over, and when Steve replied with a contented hum and wrapped his arms around him, Danny flinched.

“Hey, babe.” Steve tightened his grip. “Did I wear you out?” He brushed his nose through the short hairs at the nape of Danny’s neck. Danny shivered. Steve smiled and mouthed small kisses along Danny’s shoulder.

Danny pushed at Steve’s arms and sat up. “I should go,” he said, looking everywhere but at Steve. He spied his boxer shorts crumpled on the floor at his feet and bent to pick them up, then got out of bed and stepped into them.

“What’s going on, Danny?” Steve sat up and Danny saw that he was wearing a variation of his aneurism face. Danny had categorized it as Wary SEAL Face #6—Confused, but Stoic.

“What’s going on, Steven, is that I am going to get dressed, go home, try to make my apartment presentable before I have to pick up Grace in—“ he glanced at his wrist, realized he wasn’t wearing a watch and tried to cover it. “In some hours that are not nearly enough to ensure a healthy environment for quality time with my little girl, but I will do my best to ignore the roaches and instead give all my attention to Grace for the forty eight hours we are allotted for said quality time—there may even be shave ice—but mostly this is about the getting dressed and the leaving and forgetting that this sudden and insane bout of afternoon delight ever happened.” Danny was speaking quickly and loudly, as he was wont to do, as if he thought Steve might interrupt him at any moment with a percussion grenade or a hail of gunfire.

Steve didn’t interrupt. He waited until Danny had found his shirt and was fighting to turn the sleeves right-side out.

“But” he said.

Danny didn’t look up from his shirt.

“Danno,” he said.

Danny looked at him then, and Steve saw anger and frustration, which was pretty common on Danny’s face, but he also thought he could see something that looked like tears, and that was just ridiculous, because—because he and Danny—they were--

“I thought we were doing a thing—” Steve waved vaguely over the bed, and himself, not sure how to convey exactly how important this ‘thing’ was to him.

“That’s just it, McGarrett,” Danny replied. “The thing is, with you, everything is a thing.”

Steve frowned, tried to make that sentence work on any level, gave it up as futile and opted to try and get more intel instead. “I—Danny, that doesn’t even make sense.”

Danny scrubbed his hands through his hair, even more frustrated and embarrassed. “Look, I get it. I do,” he tried to sound calm and casual and had a feeling that it wasn’t working. “We’ve been dancing around this thing for months, and that’s gotta be frustrating for someone whose all shoot first, ask questions later—if at all. Birds gotta fly, itches gotta be scratched. I get that.”

Steve was starting to get out of the bed and Danny had found his pants and his socks. His shirt was on, but unbuttoned and he jammed his feet into his shoes and backed away, still looking at Steve.

“But I am not wired that way, Steve. I can’t just—there’s no wham bam in me, and I don’t think you get that. I’m not Catherine.”

Steve was standing in front of him now and Danny didn’t know where to look that he wouldn’t get an eyeful of ridiculous tattoos, tanned skin, sculpted muscles.

“Danny, that’s not—I can’t believe you think that I—Christ!”  Steve reached for him and Danny sidestepped and moved quickly to the door.

“Look, it’s cool. We’re good. I’ll just let myself out, and I’ll see you on Monday.”

Steve glared at the sudden lack of Danny in his bedroom, and when he heard the front door closing with a lot more force than was warranted, he slammed his fist into the wall.

“Fuck.” Now his hand hurt, he was still desperately in love with Danny, and he had no idea how he was going to make his partner understand that.