Chapter 10 #3
August makes a sound he's never made before.
A small, broken, desperate thing that isn't pain and isn't relief.
It's want. Pure, undisguised, stripped of every defense he's ever built.
It come from the core of him, from the wreckage of every wall, from the place where a dying man has finally stopped pretending he doesn't need this, doesn't crave this, doesn't want these hands on him for reasons that have nothing to do with healing.
He lifts his head from Vale's shoulder.
Vale is already looking at him. This close, August can see everything, the amber of his irises, the faint scar along his jaw, the way his pupils have blown wide and dark.
Vale's breathing isn't steady. His hands aren't steady.
The control that August has watched him maintain through three days of escalating intimacy is fracturing visibly, cracking along lines that have been forming since the subway, since the warehouse, since the library chair at two in the morning.
August looks at him with everything he has. No walls. No defenses. No careful, practiced blankness to hide behind. Just want, raw and terrified and undeniable, written across his face as clearly as the corruption that's fading under Vale's hands.
You're going to break me. He'd said it as a warning. As a prediction. He hadn't realized it was already too late.
Vale's eyes drop to August's mouth. And August watches it happen, watches three hundred years of discipline lose the war against whatever this is, in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
Vale kisses him.
It's not tentative. Not careful. Not the gentle, questioning first contact August might have imagined in the rare moments he let himself imagine anything at all.
Vale's mouth covers his with the certainty of an answer to a question August has been asking with his whole body for days, and the moment their lips meet, the power between them detonates.
Holy magic and death magic surge through the point of contact, not opposing, not canceling, but fusing.
A rush of energy so intense that the air around them vibrates with it, that the residual death energy on the platform evaporates in a wave of radiant warmth, that the emergency lights flare and pop and plunge them into a darkness that neither of them notices because the light is coming from them.
From where their mouths meet. From where Vale's hands press against August's skin. From everywhere they touch.
August kisses him back.
There's nothing careful about it. Years of isolation, of touch-starvation, of holding himself together because there was no one to fall apart with, all of it fractures at once and August pours the wreckage into Vale's mouth.
His hands fist in Vale's coat, dragging him closer, and the sound Vale makes against his lips, low, rough, wrecked, is the most devastating thing August has ever heard.
He kisses Vale with the desperate focus of a man who has been dying and has just been given a reason to live.
Vale's arms tighten around him. His hand spreads wider against August's stomach, fingers pressing into the skin, and August arches into the touch with a gasp that Vale swallows.
The corruption that's left, the stubborn remnants clinging to August's sternum, his lungs, the deep places that touch alone hasn't reached, yields.
Simply gives up. Lets go under the combined force of holy and death magic working in tandem, in harmony, in a fusion that shouldn't be possible and is, apparently, the most natural thing in the world.
When they break apart, they're both breathing hard.
August stares at Vale. Vale stares back. The Templar's expression is utterly wrecked, all pretense of composure abandoned, centuries of carefully maintained control shattered, and behind it something so raw and open that August's chest aches with the need to touch it.
"We should—" August starts, and doesn't know how to finish.
"Yeah," Vale says roughly. "We should."
***
They barely make it out of the station.
Afterward, August won't be able to recall the details clearly: the climb back up through the maintenance tunnel, the emergence into cold night air, the walk through the rail yard.
What he'll remember is the electricity between them, the unbearable awareness of every inch of space separating their bodies, the way his mouth still tastes of Vale and his skin still burns where those hands had been.
They move quickly through the streets. Not running, but not walking either, something urgent and barely controlled, two people trying to maintain the appearance of composure while every cell in their bodies is pulling them toward each other.
Vale's hand is on August's lower back, a point of contact that sends warmth radiating through him in waves, and August can feel the Templar's pulse through the touch, racing, rapid, nothing like the steady man he pretends to be.
August's apartment is fifteen minutes away. It feels like a hundred years.
They make it to his building. Through the front door. Into the stairwell, where the lighting is dim and the air smells of old wood and the world outside contracts to the narrow space between the walls.
They make it up four steps.
Then Vale's hand tightens on his back, and August turns, and whatever Vale sees on his face is apparently the end of his restraint.
Vale crowds him against the wall.
The brick is cold against August's back and Vale is hot against his front, his body a solid wall of warmth, his hands finding August's hips, his mouth finding August's mouth.
It's harder than the first kiss, more desperate, three hundred years of self-denial collapsing into a single point of contact.
Vale kisses him with the accumulated urgency of every healing touch and every careful boundary and every moment of restraint, and August makes a sound against Vale's mouth that he'll never admit to later, something between a gasp and a plea, and it undoes something in Vale that August can feel physically.
A shudder that runs through the Templar's entire body, his hands tightening on August's hips, a low sound against August's lips that's more growl than groan.
Vale presses him harder into the wall and August goes willingly, his back arching off the brick, his hands dragging up Vale's chest and into his hair.
"Vale—" His voice breaks on the name. He can't breathe.
He can't think. Vale's mouth moves to his jaw, his throat, the place where corruption used to crawl and now there's nothing but warm, sensitive skin that's never been touched like this.
August's head falls back against the brick and the sound he makes echoes in the stairwell and he does not care.
Vale's hands slide from his hips to his thighs.
And then August is off the ground, lifted with an ease that makes his stomach drop, and his legs wrap around Vale's waist on instinct, ankles locking at the small of his back.
Vale's hands grip the backs of his thighs, holding him up, and August is pressed between the wall and Vale's body with his fingers in Vale's hair and his heart hammering so hard he can feel it in his teeth.
Vale kisses him again, deep and thorough and devastating, and then pulls him away from the wall and carries him up the stairs.
August clings to him, mouth against Vale's mouth, against his jaw, against the scar along his jawline that he's been wanting to trace with his lips since the kitchen.
He's making sounds he'll be embarrassed about later, breathless, needy, completely beyond his control, and every single one draws a response from Vale that he feels in the tightening of those hands on his thighs, in the roughness of his breathing, in the way he takes the stairs two at a time.
Third floor. Hallway. Door.
The door swings inward and Vale carries him through it, kicking it shut behind them with a force that rattles the hinges.
The apartment is dark. August doesn't care.
Vale doesn't stop. He carries August through the living room, past the couch where they've sat reviewing research, past the kitchen table where they've shared tea, past the map on the coffee table that charts the destruction of a rogue Templar who, right now, feels very far away, and into the bedroom.
Vale lowers him onto the bed, and August pulls him down with him, and the weight of Vale above him, solid, warm, alive, his, is the most overwhelming thing August has ever felt.
More overwhelming than the corruption. More overwhelming than the healing.
More overwhelming than five words spoken in a library that had cracked them both open and left them bare.
Vale's forehead rests against August's. They're both breathing hard, chests heaving, the air between them charged and close.
Vale's hand finds his face, thumb against his cheekbone, and August turns into it, pressing his mouth against Vale's palm.
He kisses the center of it, then the heel, then the inside of Vale's wrist where his pulse is hammering, and he feels the Templar's breath stutter against his mouth.
"August," Vale says. Just his name. The way August had said Vale's in the warehouse, when one word had been enough to bring him running.
Vale says his name as though it's the only word he knows. The only one that matters. As though three hundred years of vocabulary have been rendered irrelevant by two syllables.
August answers by kissing him, slow this time, deliberate, learning the shape of Vale's mouth by heart.
Their lips slide together, softer than before but no less hungry, and August lets himself sink into it, lets himself feel without flinching, lets himself want without apologizing for it.
He opens his mouth and Vale's tongue finds his, and the taste of him is warm and faintly sweet and addictive in a way that makes August's hips roll up involuntarily, seeking friction, seeking more.