Chapter 10 #3
'Here.' Rory took his hand. Guided two of Neil's fingers, slick now, behind his balls and lower, to the tight muscle, and pressed them there. The heat of it. The way the ring of muscle contracted against his fingertips and then, as Rory breathed out, opened.
One finger. Rory's face changed. Concentration, not pain. His hips shifted, tilting, a practiced adjustment. The jaw loosened.
'Another.' A fact, not a request.
Two fingers. Resistance, then give. Smoother than skin inside, the muscle gripping then yielding as Rory's body accepted. Neil curled his fingers, uncertain of the angle, and Rory's whole body flinched.
'There.' A sound that wasn't quite a word. 'Christ. Right there.'
Neil kept his hand still. The muscles in Rory's thighs locked, stomach contracting, the cock that had softened with the first finger now fully hard again.
The pad of his fingers pressed against a firmness that wasn't muscle, and when he rubbed across it, Rory's back arched off the mattress and the sound he made was so stripped of the charm that Neil almost came from it alone.
'Now.' Rory's hand gripped his wrist. 'Neil. Now.'
The condom. His fingers were slick and the wrapper slid. He tore it with his teeth. Rory lay on the pillow, eyes half-closed, his cock hard against his stomach, his body open and entirely without shame. Wanting to be fucked and not pretending otherwise.
Neil rolled the condom on. More lube. Too much. It ran down his shaft and dripped onto Rory's thigh, cold, and Rory laughed. A real laugh. Brief and low.
'You'll get better at that.'
'Shut up.'
'Make me.'
Neil lined up. The head of his cock against the opening, the yielding heat, and pushed. Inch by inch. The resistance was real. Rory's face tightened. His hand came to Neil's hip.
'Wait.'
Neil stopped. Every muscle screaming to push forward, his cock half-inside, tighter and hotter than anything. He held still. The slight furrow between Rory's brows, the jaw working, the breath through his teeth.
'Angle.' Rory reached behind himself and grabbed the pillow, shoved it under his own hips with a practiced efficiency that said he'd done this before, he knew his body, he knew what worked. The tilt changed everything. 'Now. Slow.'
Neil pushed again. Rory's body taking him in, the muscle releasing in stages, and Rory's face going from concentration to something else entirely. His eyes shut. His hand on Neil's hip stopped resisting and started pulling.
'All the way.'
Neil bottomed out. His breathing stopped. He couldn't move. Too complete, every nerve ending in his cock firing at once, and if he moved he'd come in seconds and this would be over before it started.
'Stay.' Rory's voice had dropped into a new register. His eyes opened. Green, blown wide. 'Stay there. Let me feel you.'
Neil stayed. Rory shifted beneath him, small adjustments, rolling his hips in a way that moved Neil inside him without Neil thrusting. His breathing changed when he found it.
'Move.'
Neil moved. A shallow pull, not all the way out, and back in. The pillow meant the thrust hit something that made Rory's whole body respond. Fingers digging into Neil's biceps hard enough to leave marks.
'Harder.'
Neil went harder. The restraint cracked.
Rory's legs came up, knees against Neil's ribs, heels pressing into the small of his back, pulling him deeper with each thrust. The bed frame knocked the wall.
Neither cared. The pace built itself. Neil's hips finding a rhythm that was less thought and more instinct, the body learning what the mind had agonised over, and Rory underneath him, meeting every thrust, his cock trapped between their stomachs and leaking a slick trail across both their skin.
Rory's hand went to his own cock. Stroked himself in time with Neil's thrusts, fast, graceless, chasing it. Rory's face was where the truth was. Eyes squeezed shut, mouth open, the ring catching lamplight every time his head turned on the pillow.
'I'm close.' Barely a voice.
'Don't stop.' Rory's eyes opened. Locked on his. 'Come inside me.'
The words hit the base of his spine and detonated. Neil came with a rough sound torn from his gut, his hips stuttering, his cock jerking inside Rory's body. Full-body. A thing that started at the root of him and wrecked everything on the way out.
Rory followed seconds later, his cock jerking in his own fist, the spill of it hot between their stomachs, and Rory's body clamped around him as he came, tightening in waves. Neil stayed inside him through it.
They stayed. Breathing. The room settling around them.
Rory moved first. Of course he did.
He eased Neil out of him, careful, a hand on Neil's hip to control the angle, and dealt with the condom himself.
Peeled it off Neil's softening cock, knotted it, wrapped it in tissue, dropped it in the bin.
Neil lay on his back and let him. His hands wouldn't still.
Not nerves. Aftermath. His whole body buzzing like a struck tuning fork.
Rory padded to the bathroom. The tap ran. He came back with his stomach wiped clean, a glass of water in one hand. He set the glass on the nightstand, Neil's side.
'Drink.'
Neil sat up enough to drink. The water was cold. It tasted of nothing and everything. Rory took the glass back, drank the rest, set it down.
Then the duvet. Rory pulled it from the end of the bed where they'd kicked it, shook it out, and drew it over both of them in one practised motion.
Rory lay on his side. Pulled Neil against him, arm across his chest, and Neil went. No resistance. His back against Rory's front, the bigger body curled around him, Rory's mouth against the knob of his spine where neck met shoulder.
Neil's hands were still trembling. Rory covered the nearest one with his own. Didn't squeeze. Didn't lace their fingers. Just laid his palm flat over Neil's knuckles.
'Breathe.' His chest expanded against Neil's back.
Neil matched him. One breath. Two. The tremor eased by the third. The tuning fork quieting.
'You all right?' Rory asked. His mouth still against Neil's spine.
'I don't know what I am.'
'That's all right. You don't have to know tonight.'
The lamp stayed on. The room smelt of sex and woodsmoke and the lube that had dripped onto the sheets. Rory's heartbeat against his back, steady as a clock.
'Stay,' Rory said. Not a question.
Neil didn't dress. Didn't check his phone.
'Yeah,' he said.
The first whole night. They fell asleep with Rory's arm across Neil's ribs, Rory's palm still flat over his hand, and woodsmoke still in their hair.
Morning. Grey winter light through the curtains. Neil woke first, the internal clock that had never failed, not once, not in thirty-three years, and lay still.
Rory's arm across his chest. The real, physical weight of a sleeping man's forearm. The hair on Rory's arm tickled his own skin. The body beside him, radiating through the sheets. The breathing, deep, slack-jawed, undefended.
Still.
He'd never woken up next to another man and been allowed to lie there. The car parks had no mornings. The marriage had mornings but the body beside him had been wrong, wrong in the way a left shoe is wrong on a right foot.
This fit.
Completely.
Rory's breathing, deeper than Gemma's, the chest rising with a different rhythm. He lay in the grey light and noted the differences.
He stayed for an hour. Watched the light change. Rory's face in sleep was younger, less guarded. Mouth slightly open. The muscle at the hinge of his cheek had gone slack. Neil had never seen it slack. The sheet had slipped to his waist. The tree tattoo on his ribs rose and fell with each breath.
When Rory woke, he didn't know where he was. His eyes opened to the ceiling first, unfocused, the slack confusion of someone surfacing from deep sleep. A beat. Then the room came back to him. Then Neil.
His eyes found Neil's. The mouth curving before the rest of his face caught up.
‘Morning.’
‘Morning.’
‘You stayed.’
‘I stayed.’
‘How long have you been awake?’
‘A bit.’
‘A bit. Watching me sleep.’
‘Observing. There's a difference.’
‘There's not a difference. You've been lying there watching me sleep like a man in a film.’
‘I've been lying here for an hour appreciating the noise. You snore.’
‘I do not snore.’
‘You snore like you've been sleeping in a studio with turpentine fumes for ten years.’
‘That's not how snoring works.’
‘How would you know? You're asleep when it happens.’
Rory's mouth curved. He pulled Neil towards him by the back of the neck and kissed him, morning-breath and all. A kiss that tasted of last night and meant today.
Rory pulled back.
Rory pulled back just enough to breathe. Said it into the pillow, almost offhand.