It didn't happen all the time, just every so often. Lance would always be the first to notice, seeing as how he was always the first awake. "Chris!" he'd shout, and even though it happened fairly regularly, the shout was always the same: raw and frightened. Chris would raise his head from his pillow, rub his eyes, turn toward the sound, and blink. Then the voice would register in his mind and he would be in the kitchen in seconds.

"Again?" he'd say, scrambling up beside Lance at the windowsill, looking out onto the lawn. This time was a bit different, however. Instead of the typical smattering of letters and "you suck!" posters, the lawn was strewn with yellow wrappers. Lance looked a bit closer. Wait. Those look familiar. Chris started giggling.

"What's so funny?" Lance demanded. Chris was laughing so hard his hands were frantically swiping at the countertop to keep from hitting the floor, but to no avail. Chris' sides started hurting, but he could do little about it, due to the paroxysms of laughter that currently had him in a quivering mass on the hardwood floor. Lance just let out an exasperated sigh. "Chris! Whatever's gotten into you, get it out. Now get your ass up here and tell me what's so goddamn funny!"

"You... and... oh..." Chris wiped at his eyes as he rose from his position under the dishwasher, where he had somehow managed to fit during his laughing fit. He paused to breathe, and giggled again. "They're, um, candy wrappers. M&Ms. You know, the kind with the peanuts?" He giggled again. "Not your typical fan tribute, but I never look a gift M&M in the package."

Lance looked at him in shock. "You're just going to... go out there? And eat them?"

Chris shrugged. "Why not? An M&M is an M&M is an M&M, right? Come on, I'll teach you to eat an M&M seductively." He grinned, and suddenly Lance was reminded of an impish little elf, but an elf who could define sex just by raising an eyebrow.

"You could do just about anything seductively, Chris," Lance drawled, in the extremely low register of his voice that he knew... there it went.

"Stop it, Bass, or I'm going to fuck you right here."

"Gonna make good on that, cowboy?" Lance asked lazily.

Chris leapt at him, catching him full in the chest, and immediately went for Lance's neck in a way that had Lance moaning in seconds.

Lance's voice always got a reaction.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you got me in bed just to keep me from going outside," Chris said, afterward.

"Well, technically we never made it to the bed. So you're wrong." Lance just looked up at Chris, who was bouncing on the balls of his feet not half an hour after he'd shown Lance something worth skipping the M&Ms for.

"I'm still going out there."

"You can't! It's probably dangerous."

"How dangerous can peanut M&Ms be?"

"You might be surprised. It might be, um, poisoned. Or something," Lance finished, rather lamely.

Chris just raised his eyebrow skeptically, causing Lance to surge with lust. It just wasn't fair, how someone that incredibly sexy could do that to him on a regular basis, with just one movement.

"Looks like someone's ready for round two," Chris said rather snarkily.

"You're damn right. Now don't make me get up, alright?"

Four hours later, Chris had come three times, Lance twice. But. "Don't think I haven't forgotten about the M&Ms, Bass."

Lance groaned. "How can you possibly think of candy right now? I'm not moving for another month. Your fucking hips, Chris. Good God."

"Hey, you got it? Then use it, eh?" Chris half-leapt, half-rolled out of the bed, where they had finally made it after the third orgasm had subsided and Lance was reduced to a monosyllabic drawl that Chris said he could hear when he masturbated. Lance's jaw had dropped at that point, and things had been pretty intense until the end, about fifteen minutes before.

So now Chris was pulling on his shorts and slipping a rumpled, sweaty t-shirt over his head, and Lance thought he couldn't possibly look better, but spoke up in spite of himself, "Shirts and shorts are in the dresser," he said.

Chris shot him a look that clearly said, "Oh really? You want me out of these clothes?" but stripped again and rummaged through Lance's chest of drawers for a shirt and pair of shorts, dressing slowly in front of Lance. When he had finished, he turned to face Lance, smirking at the glassy look on Lance's face. "Back in a few," he flipped over his shoulder as he tromped out of the room.

Lance just lay on his bed, letting the afterglow envelop him.

Chris returned about ten minutes later, and Lance's first instinct was to make some sort of snarky comment about taking his sweet time, when he saw the look on Chris's face. "What's up?"

"There's this girl at the front door, and, um, she won't go away."

Lance shot Chris a confused look. "Um, then call the guardhouse. Why are you shaking?"

"She, um, wanted to know how many times you came."

Lance sat up in bed. "She what?"

"Yeah. She, um, won't go away. She seems rather nice, but she just... won't leave until she talks to you. And she has the M&Ms." Chris produced a package from behind his back. "So in a minute, you're going to go down there, but for right now, I've got your M&Ms, baby. Now this is how you eat an M&M seductively." He tore open the package with his teeth, and spilled one of the large chocolates into his hand. It was yellow. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and rested the M&M in the hollow of Lance's neck. "Now don't move," he advised. And then he proceeded to eat the M&M right off of Lance, licking afterward to remove any incriminating chocolate.

"Now that," he said, matter-of-factly, "is how to eat an M&M seductively. It works better with the small ones, though. The Minis. When they're all over you and I just lick them off in a whole line..."

Lance, Chris could see, was getting glassy-eyed again. Chris dragged Lance out of bed, stood him up, and began to dress him. "You don't want to be completely out of it to meet this girl." His businesslike tone snapped Lance out of the complete daze he had been in.

"Um, Chris? Why the hell are you doing this?"

"Doing what?"

"Making me meet this girl who neither of us knows. Eating M&Ms off my shoulder. Dressing me." Lance shrugged. "Why any of it?"

Chris appeared to ponder for a few seconds, then swatted Lance on the ass and pushed him out the door, calling after him, "'Cause you're damn cute, Bass. Now get rid of her so we can get back at it!"

Grumbling, Lance descended the stairs.

Lance swung the door open, revealing a rather attractive young woman in a tank-top and shorts. "Yeah?" he asked.

"Oh, hi Lance! I hope the M&Ms were useful." She grinned wryly at him, and held out her hand. "I'm Missi, from the University of Michigan Puppy Studies Department, and I've just got a few questions for you. We need these to finish our research."

Lance blinked and held out his hand, which she took and shook. "Puppy studies?"

Missi sighed. "Just answer the questions, okay? It'll be easier that way."

Lance rolled his eyes. "Just what kind of questions are we talking about?"

"You are just no help. You can't even answer a question without bringing another question into it. I suppose that's all the answer I need." She turned and strode off the front porch, shaking her head. Halfway down the walk, she turned around to face Lance and said, "Oh, thank you for seeing me. And have fun with Chris." She winked at him, spun on her heel, and retreated to her car.

Lance blinked.

Afterward, while lying with Chris in bed, Lance thought about it. Puppies? Hell yeah.