Epilogue #3
Knox turns his head and catches Dimitri's mouth in a kiss that is clumsy and wet and desperate, all teeth and shared breath and the taste of water and want, and through the bond Dimitri feels the moment Knox breaks.
It crests like a wave and Knox comes with a shattered moan against Dimitri's mouth, spilling over his fist, clenching around him with a force that rips Dimitri's orgasm out of him like a physical thing.
He buries himself deep and comes inside Knox and the bond detonates between them, pleasure so intense it's almost pain, reverberating back and forth until Dimitri can't breathe and Knox is trembling in his arms and the water is still falling and the steam is thick and the world outside this room does not exist.
They stand there. Breathing. The water runs over them, washing everything away, and Dimitri keeps his arm around Knox's chest and his face pressed into the side of Knox's neck and doesn't move.
Eventually Knox reaches back and turns off the water. The silence that follows is ringing and warm.
"We should get out," Knox says. His voice is hoarse. Satisfied. "Before we prune."
Dimitri does not let go.
"Dimitri."
"One minute."
Knox's hand, still resting on the back of Dimitri's neck, cards through his hair once. Gentle. Patient. He says nothing, and he doesn't move, and he gives Dimitri his minute.
***
They end up on the couch.
Knox is in his lap, with his back against the armrest and his legs stretched across Dimitri's thigh.
He's wearing soft flannel pants and a T-shirt that's too big for him and his hair is down and damp.
He has a cup of coffee in his hands that he holds with both palms wrapped around the ceramic like a small animal cradling something precious.
Dimitri is also wearing pajama pants, which is new and a testament to just how far into this angel’s world he's fallen.
They are dark gray. They are soft. They have a drawstring.
They appeared in the bathroom without comment or explanation, folded neatly on the shelf beside Knox's towels, and Dimitri had stared at them for a full thirty seconds before putting them on and never acknowledging their existence to Knox.
He knows Knox bought them. Knox knows he knows.
Neither of them has said a word about it, because the alternative is admitting that his angel bought him pajama pants and that Dimitri is wearing them and that the simple domesticity of it makes his chest ache in a way that nothing has prepared him for.
He cards his fingers through Knox's hair.
It's become a habit. He doesn't know when it started or how, only that at some point his hand found its way into Knox's hair and stayed there, and now it's the thing he does when they're still.
Long, slow strokes from the crown of Knox's head to the ends, damp gold slipping through his fingers, and the bond hums with Knox's quiet contentment, warm and steady and constant, and Dimitri lets it wash over him like the tide.
"I'm worried about Newt," Knox says.
"I know."
"That incubus—"
"Is going to have his hands full." Dimitri's fingers catch on a small tangle and he works it loose with a care he would disembowel anyone for witnessing. "Newt is a ticking time bomb with an affinity for catastrophic magical accidents. If anything, the incubus should be more worried."
Knox hums. He takes a sip of his coffee and the feeling that comes through the bond is pensive, turning something over. "He barely knows what he's doing. And now he's bound to something powerful enough to—"
"To what? Teach him control? Give him a partner who can survive the blast radius when he inevitably blows something up?
" Dimitri tugs a strand of hair gently. "The boy needed a familiar.
He got one. It's wearing leather pants and has a worrying interest in his virginity, but the world is imperfect. "
Knox snorts. It's an indelicate sound, and Dimitri is inordinately fond of it.
"He's also got bad luck," Dimitri continues. "Catastrophically bad luck. The kind of bad luck that summons a demon instead of a cat and then soulbinds the demon to a nephilim Templar. Any entity choosing to contract with that level of chaos deserves whatever happens to it."
Knox is quiet for a moment. Then he shifts in Dimitri's lap, resettling, and looks up at him. Green eyes. Damp hair framing his face. The lamp on the end table casts warm light across his features and he looks—
He looks like everything Dimitri never knew to want.
"It's not all bad luck," Knox says.
The affection that pours through the bond from Knox hits Dimitri like a wall of warm water.
It floods his chest, his throat, the spaces behind his ribs that used to be empty and sharp and are now full of something he doesn't have a word for.
It isn't the bond generating it. It isn't blood magic or sex magic or the mechanics of their connection manufacturing an emotion from nothing.
It's just Knox. Just the genuine, uncomplicated, breathtaking warmth of a man who looked at a demon and saw something worth saving and never once flinched from what he found.
Dimitri swallows hard.
"Maybe not," he says.
Knox smiles. Not a grin, not a smirk, just a smile and he turns his head back against the armrest and takes another sip of his coffee and lets the silence settle around them like a blanket.
The bond between them is whole. Complete.
Unbreakable. Dimitri can feel it in every cell, every fiber, every atom of his existence—not a chain, not a leash, not hooks or barbed wire or a pull that demands obedience.
It is a river. A current. It flows between them with the patient, unstoppable certainty of water finding its level, and at the bottom of it, steady as bedrock, is the simple and impossible truth that Dimitri belongs to Knox and Knox belongs to Dimitri and neither of them wants it any other way.
Dimitri cards his fingers through Knox's hair.
And for the first time in a thousand years, he feels like he is exactly where he is supposed to be.