So I found this in amongst the unfinished fics…pretty sure at one point this was going to be the beginning McFassy Epic Universe of Porn AU, if they’d met much earlier, before they were famous actors and just after James had walked away from that Awful Unnamed Ex and basically collapsed on Michael’s doorstep in the rain…

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James smiled at him again, in the morning.

Technically it was closer to afternoon than morning, but the sunlight was being lazy too, meandering in belatedly from the window to trail across the floor, and the air was still and serene and warmly expectant like the beginning of a fairytale, and Michael woke up to the scents of cinnamon and coffee and toast drifting around the flat and finding spaces to settle in and call home.

He lay there blinking at the ceiling for a moment, utterly confused and wondering if he might be somehow actually still asleep, or if there really were cinnamon rolls in his kitchen and if so why and where and how, and then he woke up a little more and remembered. Everything.

Spectacular eyes. Drenched hair, dark and flattened from the rain. Blood. Fear. Trust. James.

He’d offered James the bed, last night. That’d got a headshake—“No, it’s your bed, I can’t, you’ve done enough”—and Michael’d wanted to argue, but the blue eyes were astonishingly stubborn, and he’d settled for every extra pillow and blanket that he owned, instead.

He’d wanted to ask. About the bruises, purpling over pale skin. About the blood. James had flinched, not from Michael’s hands or the sting of antiseptic, when he got as far as, “Who—” and he hadn’t wanted to push. He, James’d said. He hit me, and I left, I did leave, but…

He who? And why? And why didn’t James have anywhere else to go?

James, evidently, liked to talk with his hands, with his eyebrows, with his entire body; head-tips, brief unwary lip-licks, unconscious gestures when searching for a word or emphasizing a phrase or attempting to say thank you. Michael’d caught one of those hands mid-wave, because it was shaking, and James had started shaking everywhere else too, and Michael’d whispered, “Your hands feel cold, you must be cold, come on, shower,” and had wanted to kick himself for not thinking of that earlier, James all soaked through with the iciness of the storm.

James’d stayed in the shower for a long time. Long enough to make Michael, pacing in the hallway, start to mentally panic all over again: what had he just done, letting a stranger, a random man off the street, a man in some kind of mysterious trouble, into his home? Into his shower? When, exactly, had he lost his much-treasured sanity, again?

But the door’d opened, and ocean-colored eyes peeked at him through clouds of steam, and that luscious accent, richer and warmer than the water-heated air, ventured apologetically, “I might need to borrow some clothes…” and Michael’d found himself smiling. That voice made him want to smile, for no good reason at all.

He’d run down the hall to his closet, and, after some frantic excavations of the depths, discovered a fuzzy pair of pajama pants, and one of his oldest t-shirts, worn to friendly softness by time. James would appreciate the softness, right? He hoped they’d fit; James was, he’d discovered, an unexpectedly tiny person, beneath the layers of sodden sweater and waterlogged jeans.

They had fit, or well enough. And James’d given him that near-smile again, sliver of warmth like the edge of the luminous moon, reflecting shy sunlight to earth.

Michael hadn’t expected to sleep, himself, that night, after he’d tucked James into a pile of blankets on the couch. He’d stood there watching, for a minute, the rise and fall of fabric with each breath, the steadiness of exhaustion, James too tired to fight off sleep. Had wondered, yet again, what the hell he was doing, and then had found himself simply gazing at damp hair and a few fingertips, all that was visible beneath all the blankets.

James had folded himself up in the wool and plush and down as if turning each layer into a shield, defense, ragged armor. And all the blankets seemed not to mind.

Michael’d breathed out, and gone back to the bedroom to start cleaning up all his hastily flung clothing, finally, and he’d meant to just sit down for a second and stop to think, but the instant he’d let the bed take his weight, the impact of the long day and the shock and the worry and the unanswered questions, he’d tumbled helplessly into dreams.

And now he was awake. And James was still in his flat. Which for some unimaginable reason smelled like cinnamon rolls.