Chapter 35 #2
Levi was watching his mouth. Asher could see him doing it — the eyes tracking the shape of the words, the pupils slightly fixed, like Levi was trying to read the truth of the sentence off Asher’s lips, because he could not yet trust the sound of them.
“You can ask me one now if you want. You can wait. I’ll be here either way. ”
Levi opened his mouth, then closed it. He didn’t try again.
“That’s fine. Take your time,” Asher said. He picked up a fork, got a small piece of meat on the tines, and held it to Levi’s mouth. “Try it.”
Levi shook his head. “I can’t.”
Asher sucked his upper lip between his teeth. That’s not the right response either. “Please try it?” That one usually worked.
“Asher, I — I can’t chew. I can’t swallow food. Every time I try, I —”
“Did something happen to your teeth?”
Levi blinked at him. “What?”
“Your teeth. Did you lose any, did one crack from when you were intubated? Or is there an infection?” Asher set the fork down. “Open your mouth, let me see.”
“No, it’s not — there’s nothing wrong with —” Levi pulled back in the chair again.
Asher’s hand was already moving to Levi’s jaw; Levi made a small sound and tried to turn his head. “It’s me, relax,” he said. “I just want to look. Open.”
He pressed his thumb against Levi’s lips, pushing in so he could hook his thumb past the lower teeth, and pulled Levi’s jaw open wider.
Even in the candlelight, his teeth looked fine.
He asked that question because he wanted the answer, because if there was something wrong with Levi’s teeth, that was a problem he could fix. But he didn’t know what the fix was. He would have to find out.
Asher didn’t pull his thumb back yet, because Levi’s mouth was suddenly very distracting.
He shifted his grip as he kept holding Levi’s mouth open, saliva welling in the webbing in between Asher’s thumb and forefinger.
He slid two fingers in past Levi’s lower teeth and pressed them down onto Levi’s tongue.
It was hot, wet, and soft in the specific way only a tongue is soft. The taste-buds at the tip caught the pad of his index finger and Asher’s entire body went somewhere else.
Oh.
He had thought about this — about Levi’s mouth as a category, about his cock in Levi’s mouth, about kissing, and sucking, and biting this tongue — but he hadn’t specifically thought about what Levi’s tongue would feel like under his fingers.
Now he was thinking about it, and the thinking was — no, thinking was not the right word for what was happening in his body. He was experiencing Levi’s tongue.
He stroked it, slowly, once.
Levi made a sound, like one of those desperate whines he let out when he was too embarrassed to say he wanted Asher to fuck him.
Asher felt it travel into his fingers and up his arm, so he did it again, deeper this time.
“You’re doing so good, baby,” Asher whispered, leaning closer to watch his fingers slide back.
Levi’s hands came up and pushed at Asher’s wrist.
The push was nothing. Asher could feel the weakness in it — the muscle that wasn’t there, the grip that had no force. Levi couldn’t stop him if he wanted to, and he knew Levi didn’t actually want him to stop.
He stroked the tongue again, further back.
Levi was making a sound now that was protest-shaped, a small mmm repeating, and his eyes had gone wet, and Asher was inside him, two fingers deep in his mouth, and the part of his mind that had been planning the night was no longer in charge of the night. Levi had a strange effect on him like that.
Will I feel the tube?
The thought arrived so cleanly and so specifically that Asher almost laughed.
His cock was hard in the sweats he had borrowed from Levi, his fingers pushing back further because he wanted to and Levi knew him—he didn’t have to control his impulses around Levi.
He wanted to find out right now. If I fuck his face right now, will I feel the tube? Will it feel good?
“Wider,” Asher murmured as he pushed his fingers a little further back. “You’re so beautiful Levi, every fucking time.”
Levi gagged. The reflex was beautiful. The reflex was Levi’s real body responding to Asher being too far in, his eyes watering, his cheeks bright red….
Look at you.
Asher forced himself to pull his fingers out, because if he kept this up, he was either going to shove his cock down Levi’s throat or he was going to cum in his very borrowed pants. Both options meant skipping dinner altogether, and that didn’t seem like proper first date etiquette.
Levi coughed a few times before pursing his lips closed, his head bowed and his eyes downcast. Asher always liked this part too. Levi must have grown up in a very conservative household, because anything involving sex always made him look so ashamed and embarrassed.
Asher loved it.
What he didn’t love was how Levi wasn’t looking at him right now. “Look at me.”
Levi shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut.
“I don’t understand…” Asher trailed off. There was something wrong with his boyfriend. This was not what he expected at all. He grabbed Levi’s hair and wrenched his face forward.. “You are going to look at me when I am looking at you. Do you understand?”
Levi’s eyes were on his when he nodded.
He kissed Levi’s forehead, smoothed down the hair he had displaced, and went back to his seat across the table. Levi’s voice, when it came, was hoarse.
“Are you going to hurt me?”
“I don’t want to,” Asher began, then cocked his head, tracking the tears down Levi’s face. Be honest. “Not that much.”
Levi closed his eyes. His hands were still shaking. The tube shifted on his face when he swallowed. Asher waited. He had been good at waiting once, in the game, on patient nights. He was getting good at it again.
“What do you want from me?” Levi whispered.
Asher could have said a lot of things. He had a list growing in his mind that had no organization to it, because it seemed like every few minutes he thought about a new thing he wanted to experience with Levi out here.
But he knew how Levi liked things to be answered, what sort of things he needed to be told to feel okay while his mind adjusted to what was inevitable.
Asher hadn’t been able to answer him properly on so many important things in the game because he had been so lost in there.
He was going to do better.
“Do you remember what I said in the sanitarium?” he asked. “I told you that meeting you made everything hurt a little bit all the time. Do you remember?”
Levi’s eyes welled up again as he nodded.
“I said it was okay, because we have each other now, forever, and we can make each other feel better,” Asher reminded him.
“I meant that. It was a promise, and I’m here to keep that promise.
” Levi closed his eyes and more tears slid down his once-full cheeks.
Whatever was happening inside him was big.
Asher couldn’t see it and Asher didn’t need to see it.
The promise had been delivered. The promise had been received.
The promise was going to keep being true for the rest of their lives, and Levi could close his eyes if he needed to, but Asher would always make him open them again.
Asher reached across the table and wiped a tear off Levi’s cheek with his thumb, smiling to himself that Levi hadn’t flinched.
When he pulled his hand back, his thumb was still wet from Levi’s mouth and now the tears, and he only looked at it for a fraction of a second before deciding to lick it clean while he waited for Levi to open his eyes again.
He could wait.
He had practiced.