Chapter Text
"You know, for someone so repressed you're not so bad with this cuddling thing. Can't say I wasn't surprised, of course, but I’ll admit it's my fault for judging a very aloof very attractive book by it's just as attractive cover-"
"Wu, if you don't shut up I'm pushing you off the bed. And I’m not cuddly."
Sean interrupted his tirade, sleepy and sated, just a touch of crankiness in his voice. It was a skill, Drew thought. The man still managed to sound like a disgruntled commuter stuck in traffic despite having been fucked silly into the mattress thrice that night.
"Yes, you are. Besides, can't a man bask in the afterglow of mind-blowing sex and engage in some pillow talk? For all your high-brow and sophisticated speak you're sorely lacking in that department. Figured it was my job to step up to the-"
Sean kissed him, something sweet and chaste, interrupting him yet again.
Drew smiled into it.
"Is this your way of shutting me up, Captain?"
"Don't expect me to do the same at work."
Drew huffs a laugh at the mumbled reply. He looked down, nearly going cross-eyed, just to watch the other man.
Despite the height difference Drew was aware that Sean enjoyed being held and made sure to do it every chance he got. Even before the Royal and wesen heritage was revealed, he knew the other man had always been a little too removed in the matters of love and affection. Being introduced to his Royal family was nothing short of eye-opening, if a bit traumatic.
He idly stroked Sean's shoulder with a thumb and felt a heady rush of affection when the other man cuddled closer, muscled arm heavy on his torso, Sean’s lovely patrician nose coming to rest on his collar bone.
Somewhere along the way of their partnership, the separate promotions that wedged a gap between them, all the wesen things and weird pseudo-betrayals and no small amount of drama that came after, Drew realized that he’d always had an easy camaraderie with the man.
Their familiarity became each other's comfort.
In bad cases, the captain can often be found with a spare cup of coffee on his desk, should the sergeant ever need the companionship. After particularly rough meetings, where the captain would shoulder the faults of his men at the cost of his pride, Drew always made sure to regale the man with increasingly ridiculous stories from his childhood. When that failed to ease the man’s worries, he busted out unfortunately funny anecdotes from past relationships. On more than one occasion, Sean would openly laugh at his jokes and respond with his own dry gallows humor.
The distance between them lessened over time. Fingers brushed as they passed things along. Gentle smiles and inside jokes. There wasn’t any surprise burst of emotion, the ‘oh shit I love them’ moments he’s had in past relationships. They just were.
Months after Jack and having seen Sean so rattled terrified him. And okay, for a while he’d been jumpy around the guy, having expected to get shanked by whatever it was that possessed the Captain. But after his own wariness eased, Sean’s trauma never seemed to go away.
So, like any self-respecting sergeant and one of the few friends Sean had trusted enough to show his back to, Drew clung like a limpet and made sure the man wasn’t alone.
There was a shift. The one step that changed their relationship. Sean had called him at three in the morning in panic after a particularly bad nightmare and Drew wasted no time driving over to hold his hand.
There was no second guessing, no words shared between them. A kiss, an embrace, and Drew woke up the next day to find himself trapped under the sleeping man and all the wonders that came with him.
“Stop thinking, I’m trying to sleep.” Sean said, breath warm against Drew’s neck.
“You know, if you’re gonna keep interrupting me in this relationship, I might as well get something out of it.”
Ever the drama queen, a fact that the Captain so vehemently denied, Sean sighed with all the faux reluctance he could muster and kissed him on the jaw.
“You’re unbearable, you know that?”
“Yes. But you love me anyway.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“If it wasn’t love that let me get away with making you snort coffee out of your nose in front of the entire precinct last month, then I don’t know what is.”
It was a good joke, a little raunchy and sudden, about royalty and the affairs of bastard sons, delivered at the precise moment Sean took a drink (iced coffee, he wasn’t a monster). The man promptly snorted in shock to everyone’s horror, coffee spraying out of his nose and narrowly missing Griffin. Sean glared at him, teary eyed and nose dripping with coffee.
There was a nervous silence as the other officers waited for Drew to get chewed out. Instead of admonishment, Sean laughed, bright and open, ever the caring Captain he presented himself as, gratefully taking the napkin Drew provided, and everyone followed suit.
Drew didn’t know it was possible to fall even more in love.
“Burkhardt and Griffin couldn’t look me in the eye without snickering for an entire week.” Sean replied.
“Alas, some people aren’t privy to the intricacy behind declarations of love.”
“The way you think alarms me.”
“Pot, kettle."
"I'm not kidding when I said I'd push you off."
"And yet I'm still in this ridiculously hedonistic bed, up to the neck with a cuddly half-Zauberbiest captain and his unfairly long limbs.”
“This cuddly half-Zauberbiest captain can snap your neck if he wants to.”
“Aha! So you admit you’re cuddly.”
"It's your RDO tomorrow and by keeping me up late you want me to sleep in, don't you."
"And this is why you're captain, Captain."
Sean snorted. Drew felt the width of his smile against his skin.
“If I sucked you off right now, would you promise to shut up and let me sleep.”
Drew choked on his saliva, gulping as he tried to pull himself together. Sean really had a way with words.
“With all my heart and soul, I promise I won’t make another peep.” Drew replied, voice shaky. He gestured a cross above his heart for good measure.
Sean laughed and sat up to look at him, the bedside lamp giving him an ethereal glow. Even rumpled and half-asleep he still looked regal as ever, his eyes warm with affection. His smile was wide. His cheeks flushed and so endearing. At this moment, Sean doesn't look like a man haunted by demons, on the run from the world and all its horrors. He looked happy.
Okay, Drew decided. It was indeed possible to fall even more in love.
“I love you.” He blurted out, positively smitten. And because he'd never boasted about having the ability to shut up, continues to talk. “Have I told you how much I love you because I feel like it's something you need to hear every minute of every day-”
Sean interrupted him again with a kiss, the curve of his smile soft, his hands large and warm on suddenly feverish skin, and replied,
"I love you too."
He proceeded to repeat Drew’s declaration back at him between kisses. In every language he knew.