Chapter Fourteen If Not For You
chapter fourteen
If Not For You
Aaron was dazed.
No. Spent.
Utterly, exquisitely, mind-breakingly spent.
His whole body sang with it. Wrecked, still begging. He felt greedy and empty at the same time: a little fuck with nothing left in the tank and every nerve sparking like a live wire. Needing to feel it all, to have it all. To find out how far Kenny could take him and still catch him.
Kenny had done this. Only Kenny could.
What Kenny gave him wasn’t just sex. It was something dangerous. Sacred. Uncharted.
He’d come multiple times before, sure. Twice, maybe three times on a good night.
Sleepy dawns and teasing, soft and easy.
But this was different. Four times back-to-back.
No mercy. No escape. Praise and restraint, Kenny’s voice like heat and hypnosis pulling him under until he broke, sobbed, shook, and came until his soul went quiet.
And still he wanted more.
He wanted Kenny inside his body, not just his head.
But half-draped across Kenny’s lap, sticky and undone, the after-ache humming low in his spine, he couldn’t move. His pulse hammered like a war drum. Head swam; skin had wires under it. And there was this metallic tang in his mouth. He wanted to laugh or curse or sleep and couldn’t choose which.
Kenny cupped his face, then pressed a thumb to his wrist, counting.
Of course his pulse was sky-fucking-high. It felt as if it was trying to punch its way out of his throat. And if Aaron had even an ounce left in him, he’d have smacked Kenny’s hand away and told him he was a smug bastard.
But he didn’t.
So he lay there. Useless. Letting Kenny fuss.
As if he was some spoiled prince on a velvet throne. A sloth prince. Crooked crown, drool down his chin, twitching like a broken toy.
“How you feeling?”
Aaron exhaled. He could have lied. Laughed it off. He didn’t. Not to Kenny. Not after that.
“...Like you rewired my brain.” A beat. He tried to shift, gave up, fell back into Kenny as if he was his personal pillow. “Like if you let go, I’ll fall a-fucking-part.”
“Then I won’t let go.” Kenny held a drink to Aaron’s lips.
Aaron drank. Clumsily. The sticky liquid dribbling down his chin and onto his chest. Jesus, he was a fucking state. But Kenny wiped him clean as if it was nothing. As if this was normal.
He took a sip himself, then adjusted Aaron to lay flat against his chest, him propped up by the headboard, pulling Aaron in tighter to his chest, tucking his legs either side of Aaron’s.
More upright, more grounded. And maybe it was the daze, the aftershocks still buzzing through his limbs, or the way Kenny’s body felt so steady around him, but Aaron let the thought loose, anyway.
“What the fuck was that?” His voice didn’t sound like his.
Nothing did right then. “Before. After I came. I couldn’t…
I dunno. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t talk. Thought I was dying or floating off or some shit.
Like my skin didn’t fit. Couldn’t tell where I ended.
” He let out a laugh snagged halfway up his throat, ugly and broken.
“Felt high. Off my tits. That normal? Or did you break me?”
Kenny didn’t laugh. Of course he didn’t. He kissed Aaron’s temple instead, then smoothed a hand over his damp hair.
“Somatic release. A full-body response to emotional and physical overload. Happens when your nervous system finally gets permission to stop surviving.”
Aaron blinked. “So what? You edged me into a therapy session?”
“No.” Kenny didn’t rise to the bait. “I held you through one. Big difference.”
Aaron stilled. His body wasn’t done buzzing, as if strung with wires. Some places numb, others raw and oversensitive. His thighs twitched every few seconds. His hands didn’t even feel like they belonged to him.
And yet… he didn’t hate it. He folded into it. Let it happen. As if this was where he was meant to be. As if safe didn’t need to be earned.
“It felt like I left,” he said finally. Quiet. “Like I was gone. And then I came back and it was…fuck. Too much. Good. But fucking scary. Didn’t know I could come that hard and feel… everything.”
“That was your body letting go. You’ve been holding yourself in pieces for so long you forgot what soft feels like.” Kenny kissed the side of Aaron’s head. “You let yourself feel without filtering it.”
Aaron shut his eyes. A stupid little lump sat in his throat and he swallowed it down how he’d been taught to swallow everything else.
Of course Kenny had the words. Of course he’d know how to make Aaron feel seen and small and safe all at once, which pissed him off and made him want to cry in equal measure.
“It felt like dying.” He shivered. “I’m not being fucking dramatic. It felt like dying.”
Kenny tightened his hold, chin heavy on the crown of his head. “That’s because it was. But only the part of you that thought you had to survive everything alone.”
That line hit different. Something crumbled in Aaron that wasn’t really about sex or pain. A softer, older part he’d wrapped in barbed wire. He felt it give way, and with it came a clarity making his chest hurt.
“You…have all this power over me.” The words were raw and stupid and true. Not like power as in control—though yes, Kenny did that too—but power that could split him open and put him back together, same hands, same face. He hated how grateful that made him.
Kenny stilled. Waited. Of course he did. He always gave space before he spoke, searching for the right words, the meaning tucked underneath. That was Kenny’s magic. His mind-fucking superpower. He could dissect a person down to their soul with a single sentence.
“I don’t take it from you.”
“I know. You get me to hand it over.”
“Because you want to.”
“Yeah.”
Kenny leaned down, lips at Aaron’s ear. “But, in truth, you have the power. You give it to me. You control how much you can take, how far you want me to go. You control me. You have the word to make me stop.”
A breath. “Yeah. Which is…weird.”
“Why weird?”
“’Cause giving power to someone is dangerous.”
Kenny held him closer. “Do you feel this is dangerous?” He kissed his neck. “Me?”
“No. Obviously not.” Aaron hesitated. Then, quieter, more broken, “The danger comes when you leave. When I’m taken out of this safe space and told to fend for myself.”
Kenny exhaled. Aaron could feel the rise and fall of his chest behind him, steady and sure.
Calculating, yes, but never cold. The cogs were turning with that familiar hum of Kenny analysing not the moment, but him.
Trying to find the words that would land without breaking him open too far.
And Aaron braced for a throwaway promise.
I’ll never leave you. I’ll always love you.
Something sweet and easy.
Something untrue.
Like what his mother used to say when she locked him in his cupboard.
But Kenny said, “Do you know why I wanted to try this?”
Aaron didn’t need to think about it. “To wear me down. Smooth my edges. Make me easier to love. Easier to… manage.”
“No.” Kenny turned his face towards him, meeting his eyes head-on. “I love you, Aaron. The way you are. Every ragged, difficult, brilliant part of you. And everything in between. I’ve never—never—felt like this about anyone. And it hurts.”
Aaron’s breath caught.
But Kenny didn’t let him look away.
“It hurts because one day you might not need me. You’ll be strong enough to stand in the world without flinching.
You’re young and beautiful. And I’m…older and weathered.
And if you do choose to walk on your own, I’ll be proud.
But devastated. Because this… right here…
this is the best I’ve ever felt in my life. ”
Aaron swallowed, the words thick in his throat, and leaned back against Kenny’s shoulder.
Not because he knew what to say. He didn’t.
Not because it made everything better. It didn’t.
But because there was something in Kenny’s voice, low and aching and raw, tugging parts of Aaron that never really stopped bracing for the next blow.
He didn’t know how to take it. How to hold it.
That kind of love. The aching, terrified kind.
A love that came with vulnerability. That Kenny feared an end to this, too.
That belonged to other people. People who hadn’t been built in the shadow of blood and cold hands and childhoods spent watching for danger in the smiles of people who were supposed to care.
Of course he knew Kenny loved him. He said it often enough.
Without flinching. No hesitation. But knowing it and believing it were two different beasts.
Aaron could repeat the words in his head, hear Kenny’s voice saying them, and still feel the quiet churn of doubt underneath.
Still wonder if it was habit for Kenny. Another role he was good at.
Another way he gave structure to someone else’s chaos.
Kenny had loved before. Been in relationships.
Carried people. And even though he never spoke about them in any real depth, that knowledge sat in Aaron’s chest like a splinter.
Proof that maybe he was the next patient on the table.
The next project. That what felt world-ending to Aaron might, for Kenny, be another page in a well-thumbed chapter of knowing how to love people who were broken.
Then Kenny said, “I don’t often turn the mirror on myself.
Not because I don’t know who I am. I do.
I like control. Structure. Holding the threads that keep everything together.
Some of that’s training. But a lot of it?
That’s me. It’s always been me. And it’s true when I say you fit so easily into me, into what I want, who I am.
Your thorns slot into me and I soften them. ”
Aaron stilled. Caught.