Chapter Six Fall Into Me
Chapter Six
Fall Into Me
It took exactly seven minutes to draw the bath.
Kenny had timed it before. Not because he was obsessive, but because he knew the exact threshold before Aaron’s patience wavered into insecurity.
That tipping point between brat and abandoned.
And he added a few drops of eucalyptus oil to the water, the one scent Aaron would never admit soothed him, then lit the candle they’d bought at the local Christmas market smelling of smoked orange peel and spiced wood, setting it beside the tub.
Yes, he wanted him.
Of course he did. His cock ached with it.
Whole body humming on a low, relentless frequency tuned to Aaron.
And only Aaron. Which was new. Unsettlingly new.
Gone were his days of bleeding off pressure on a stranger against a wall or in a dark corner, a nameless body serving as a fix for his restless heart.
Now he had Aaron, the compulsion for newness, for faceless bodies, had gone quiet.
What burned in him now wasn’t about scratching an itch, though. Nor was it even about his own desire.
It was about Aaron’s.
What he needed.
What he asked for in the way his body trembled, in the sharpness of his defiance, in the cracks of his surrender. And Kenny wanted all of it, wanted him, in every way that counted.
Kenny had spent years learning Aaron. Not only loving him but studying him.
Watching the shifts. Mapping the rhythms. Listening to the silences between the sarcasm.
He’d learned how Aaron used sex like a sedative.
How he chased it when his thoughts grew too loud.
He used pleasure like a scalpel, carving out the noise in his chest until all that was left was sensation.
Aaron’s arousal was often a mask. A clever one.
But still a camouflage for emotional dissonance.
Not unlike how he’d used to seek the thrill of a backroom fuck, but Aaron also needed to feel safe when he let go.
So he poured all his energy into Kenny. And if there was any hope of this lasting, of them building something that wasn’t built on heat and panic and need, then it had to shift.
Not completely. Not overnight. But gently. Intentionally.
Truth was, they were already halfway there.
They’d slipped into it without fanfare. Without labels.
Kenny had been shaping the edges of what they were becoming, careful not to call it by name.
Not because he didn’t know—he did. But because Aaron wasn’t ready to hear it.
Not yet. Naming it might startle him, make him recoil from something he didn’t fully understand.
So Kenny moved slowly. Cautiously. Dipping into this new dynamic the way he sank naked into the bath right then.
Deliberate, measured, letting the warmth rise around them until it wrapped them in an unbreakable cocoon of heat.
Tonight, he’d give Aaron what he needed.
Not what he thought he wanted.
And especially because Aaron hadn’t learned the difference yet.
Settling back against the porcelain, Kenny closed his eyes, steam curling around him, and listened out for the footsteps to arrive.
When Aaron appeared in the doorway, two glasses of red wine cradled in his hands, Kenny beckoned him forward with a playful wiggle of his fingers.
Aaron stepped in, placing the glasses on the shelf behind the bath.
Then he stripped, folding himself down into the hot water, fitting neatly between Kenny’s legs.
He pressed his back to Kenny’s chest, shoulders loosening under the heat and contact, and Kenny swept Aaron’s damp hair aside to kiss his temple before reaching for the glasses and handing one over.
Aaron accepted it without looking, sipped, then drifted his thumb along the rim, lost in the wine’s swirl.
“Nice wine,” Kenny said after a sip, trailing his fingers idly down the length of Aaron’s arm. “Good choice.”
Aaron didn’t respond with words, but Kenny felt the shift. Subtle, but there. The slight melt of muscle beneath his fingertips. The way Aaron leaned deeper into his shoulder. A fractional surrender. Not relaxed. Not yet. But easing. A loosening that only came after weeks of gentle persistence.
Aaron had been carrying tension lately. Braced for something.
Kenny wasn’t sure what, exactly. Probably a combination of the holidays pressing in and the creeping unease at the dog shelter where he worked and had found a purpose.
A skill. A reason to be. New management, new eyes, though.
And with it the rising dread that someone would see too much. Know too much.
Which was why Kenny had started shifting their rhythm.
Subtly. Intentionally.
It hadn’t started as a decision. More a reaction to the way Aaron withdrew the tighter the world pressed. And it was working. Gradually. Aaron wasn’t offering words, but his body was speaking. Less fight. Less facade. More of that quiet, aching stillness only surfacing when the mask slipped.
Kenny kissed the back of his neck. Let it linger.
He was close. He could feel it.
That sweet, suspended moment before surrender. When Aaron stopped trying to perform or protect, and simply… was.
His heart swelled. Not with triumph. With tenderness.
And yes, other parts of him stirred in kind, but he let that feeling hum beneath the surface.
Aaron shifted. The water swirled. “You know I can feel that, right?”
Kenny smiled. “I’d be worried if you couldn’t.”
“So why not get it over with? Why not… let me have you?”
Kenny traced a circle on Aaron’s arm with his thumb. He understood the question beneath the question. This wasn’t about sex. It was him wanting to feel something familiar. Fast. Loud. A shortcut to closeness. And sometimes, yes, he gave him that.
But not tonight.
Not when they were so close to something that couldn’t be undone.
He brushed his lips over Aaron’s temple. “Because we’d miss the best part.”
Aaron huffed, shifting again. “You and your fucking delayed gratification.”
“It’s not about delay. It’s about depth.”
“I could bend over this bath right now, and you could be inside me in thirty seconds.”
“And it’d be good.” Kenny sipped his wine. “Brief. Blinding. Over.”
Aaron tilted his head enough to glance at him. “You think you can top that?”
Kenny dipped his hand beneath the water, gripping Aaron’s thigh. “I think I can take you somewhere you don’t come back from in a couple of minutes.”
Aaron went quiet. Not in defeat. In consideration.
“You’re… slow-cooking me.”
Kenny’s smile curved into the rim of his glass. “Something like that.”
Aaron leaned his head back, exhaling a breath filled half with frustration and the other half awe. “How do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“Make me want things when I don’t even know what they are.”
“Because, hopefully, by now, you trust I deliver.”
“Why the fucking wait then?”
Kenny drifted his fingers again, trailing from Aaron’s hipbone to his knee under the water, and tried to think how best to explain.
“You get raw when you’re like this.” He kept his voice light. Intimate. How could he not with how they were right then? The bath. The scents. The wine. Aaron all…pliable. “All your edges go soft. Your jokes fade. Your breathing changes. You stop fighting me. And the world.”
“And that’s what you want?” Aaron tilted his head back to look at him. “Me to be less… prickly?”
“I want you. Unarmoured. Unhurried. Honest.” He let that sit for a second, then added, “Doesn’t mean I don’t love your prickly side. I do. It makes me smile. Laugh. Occasionally makes me want to shove you in a bin. But it’s one part of you. A smaller part. And I want the rest, too.”
Aaron took a long sip of wine, then set the glass down on the edge. “You’ve already got me.”
Kenny studied him. The curve of his throat. The quiet flutter of his pulse. “Maybe. But I can still go deeper.”
Aaron groaned, tipping his head back to land on Kenny’s shoulder. “Christ, you’re filthy.”
Kenny chuckled and held him closer. “I mean, I can find more of you to love.” He pressed a kiss behind his ear, where he knew it landed somewhere between tender and electric. Then he went quiet. Let it all hang.
Let Aaron hang.
Then, because he knew Aaron would need more. Need reassurance, and his own chance to analyse what was happening between them, he said, “Okay. Talk to me.”
Aaron narrowed one eye at him.
“Tell me where you are. And don’t say ‘in the bath’ trying to be clever. Nor what you’re consciously thinking, which I imagine is a colourful list of curse words aimed at me for trying to get under your skin. I mean where you are. Right now. How you—”
“If you say the word feel, I will hold your head under the water.”
Kenny smiled. “…Feel.”
Aaron rolled his eyes, but the threat stayed unfulfilled. Instead, he exhaled, long and shaky, sinking lower into the bath. Not for effect. Not to hide. But because letting the surface hold him felt easier than staying upright.
Kenny didn’t touch him. Didn’t press. He waited.
Aaron’s silences weren’t barriers. They were bridges being built one plank at a time.
“Torn,” Aaron finally said. “Part of me wants to crawl out of my skin and take control…” He floated off. Mentally, that was. Trying to figure out how to put into words what he believed would make him vulnerable right then.
But Kenny wanted that part. So he probed, “And the other part?”
“The other part is yours already. You know it is.”
Kenny kissed the edge of his jaw. “That push and pull? That’s what we’re navigating. Together.”
Aaron gave a bitter laugh. “Don’t gift wrap it like a fucking Christmas present. You’re edging me.” He glanced behind him. “I know your game.”
Kenny smiled into his skin. “It’s not a game.”
“Feels like one.”