24. Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Four
I wake up to the sound of Tobias whimpering and the bed shaking with the force of his movement. As soon as I open my eyes, the fog of sleep clears away so I can see what’s happening.
It’s not like he wasn’t having nightmares before. It’s possible he always will, although I’m not exactly an expert on the subject. I know still have nightmares about shit that wasn’t anywhere near as visceral as the trauma he’s carrying.
I watch him in the low light for a few minutes, running my fingers gently down the side of his face. It’s so dark, all I can see of him is shades of gray, but it’s more than enough to make out his anguish. He’s curled on his side, with small, raw noises coming from his mouth while his fingers flex in front of his chest. Part of me thinks he’s reaching for me in his sleep, while another part dismisses that as part of my savior complex.
It’s impossible to know when to trust my own judgement where Tobias is concerned. After all the work we did to sew that particular bag of issues shut, it’s been ripped wide open again. I’m right back where I started, weighing each thought and decision to see if it’s genuinely in his best interest, or if I’m really motivated by my own wants.
It’s terrifying. Utterly, bone-chillingly terrifying. If there’s one thing that makes me want to retch, it’s the thought that I could let my worst impulses get the better of me. Even if my impulses aren’t garbage ones like wanting to fuck him… I don’t care if he never wants to have sex again. That’s not the point. I’m more concerned about the deep-seated desire to center myself as the hero of his story.
The thought twists in my head until I’m scared to move or breathe or even touch him sometimes, which doesn’t help him either.
He came to me. He wants me. Denying him the comfort that he wants isn’t any better and is just as much of a fuck you to his autonomy as the rest of it.
I have to walk the line. To be the man he deserves without letting it feed my own ego, or all this falls apart.
I’m still stroking his skin as I think this through. I’m not supposed to wake him. I read it online when I was deep diving into trauma recovery. It’s not like this is a brand-new subject for me, but I’ve never been this closely involved before. Normally, I limit myself to offering a place to stay, maybe a job, and the occasional shoulder to cry on.
I work very hard not to get invested. With Tobias, I’m lying here, wide awake and more invested than I’ve been in my life.
Tobias opens his eyes, although he stares at me like he’s not seeing anything for a long time. Then he takes in a small, sharp breath, and the world seems to come into focus.
“Gunnar?”
“Yeah, baby,” I say, keeping my voice soft and low as I take his face in my hands. “It’s me. You had a nightmare.”
He shivers, working his body closer to mine under the covers before finally fisting my shirt in his hands the way he was trying to in his sleep.
“Okay.” The word comes out muffled, because he’s already sinking lower and pressing his face against my chest.
I can see light creeping in around the curtains, so at least we made it through most of the night before he woke up. Between the time I spent before bed making him eat, shower, and hydrate, then a decent amount of sleep, he’ll at least have been able to metabolize all that fucking vodka.
I assume he’s trying to fall back asleep, so I shift until my arms are wrapped around him and hold him tight. But his breathing doesn’t even out again. It stays fast while he keeps squeezing me to him, and for a second, I wonder if he’s having a panic attack.
Just when I’m about to lean back and look at him, though, I feel his teeth scrape across my chest through the fabric of my shirt. At the same time, his deft fingers dig into my ribs, and he drags his hips against mine in a way that can only be described as seductive.
It’s so fucking unexpected, I freeze. He keeps going for a few more seconds, teasing my nipple through my shirt and making arousal shoot through me when I wasn’t prepared for it. I gasp, before palming the back of his head and tugging him up where I can look him in the eye.
“Baby, what are you doing?”
His voice is quiet, still sleep-soft and thick with his own arousal.
“Fuck me, Gunnar,” he murmurs, grinding against me again for emphasis.
My brain goes entirely blank at the thought; I’m so caught off-guard.
What do I do? My body is already on board, lighting up at the barest touch from him, like always. So much of me wants to be that close to him, like it’ll cement the connection between us in a way that no one can rip apart.
But I never expected him to want it so soon.
“Maybe we should talk about it first,” I say, still holding him close because the last thing I want is for him to feel like I’m rejecting him.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” he says before kissing me, plunging his tongue into my mouth while he continues to grind against me, his hands sliding down to squeeze the flesh of my ass. “I want you— mmph —inside me.” Now his cock is half-hard, and he drags it slowly against me before wrapping his legs around my hips as well as he can in this position.
I kiss him back, letting my hands roam up the expanse of his back while he squeezes me tight.
“Fuck, I want you too, baby,” I whisper in between kisses.
I can already picture it. He would look so beautiful beneath me, flushed with arousal and begging for more.
But that mental image triggers another one—the memory of how he froze up when I accidentally put too much of my weight on top of him. I still ache from the guilt of making him feel that way. How much worse would it be if we got halfway through sex and he started to panic?
The memory would be tainted forever for both of us. It could set him even further back in his recovery. It could make him frightened of me.
Or even worse, he could start to panic and not tell me, pretending everything was fine. Because he’s strong and I know how much he wants to feel ‘normal’ again.
Fuck.
I want this more than anything, but I don’t want it to be a disaster we can never recover from.
He’s still kissing me, slowly but deeply enough to make my head swim a little. We don’t break apart until he starts tugging my t-shirt over my head. It gets thrown somewhere on the floor. Then his hands are all over my chest, palming my pecs and teasing my nipples, quickly being joined by his eager little mouth. We’re side to side, but he’s hooked his leg over my hip until he’s almost entirely wrapped around me, and it already feels like we’re a few thin layers of fabric away from this new kind of intimacy.
When he reaches down to shuck his sleep pants, I snap out of it. The arousal and apprehension are neck and neck for control of my emotions.
“Tobias, wait. I wanna talk about this first.”
He freezes, looking at me. Not upset, per se, but with something cracking in his expression. When he kisses me again, it’s more fevered. More desperate. He keeps talking, but only in breaks between having his lips on my lips and his tongue in my mouth, with his hands clutching every part of me as close as it can get.
“No,” he says. “Please, I need this.” He grinds his hips against me again, his heels digging into my ass now, like he’s trying to roll my weight on top of him, although now I can feel him trembling. “I need you. Fuck it out of me, please. I want it out. I want it all out.”
His voice gets more ragged and breathless in the worst possible way the longer he talks. His movements are sloppy and desperate, and everything starts to feel off.
Eventually, I pull his hands away from me as gently as I can and hold them between us. He’s shaking obviously now, his breath coming rapidly in the panicked way, not like he’s turned on, even though he keeps trying to grind against me and his cock is still hard.
“I want this too, baby, but we should slow down. You don’t look—”
“What?” He interrupts me, a sudden sharpness to his tone that I’m already intimately familiar with from the many, many other times I’ve underestimated him and pissed him off. “I don’t look okay? I don’t look normal? I’m not fucking okay. I’m not normal. I’m shit, and I feel like shit, and I’m asking you to help me feel better. So, unless you secretly like it when I feel like shit, or you’re now so fucking repulsed by me that you don’t want to touch me at all—”
“Hey,” I snap, because it’s my turn to cut him off. “Stop. Don’t put words in my mouth. None of that is true. But you’re shaking and you just woke up from a nightmare because you walked your ass back here from a three-day, all-expense-paid vacation to sexual assault land! I don’t think it’s particularly radical for me to suggest that this isn’t the best time for me to bend you over and get my rocks off.”
I regret everything I say the second I say it. The words feel like poison on my tongue. Not just what I’m saying, but the anger as I say it. Because it sounds angry to him and any other rational person, but only I know that I’m not really angry, I’m fucking terrified.
I’m terrified all the time. Like I’ll breathe wrong or touch him wrong or make yet another shitty choice, and he’ll be hurt because of it.
Bottling up all that fear was a terrible choice, because he looks well and truly hurt, and it’s all my fault. I can see the pain in his face for a few seconds as I reach for him, already trying to apologize, but he immediately tries to cover it with anger. He rolls over like he’s about to get out of bed, and my heart pounds with more guilt and fear.
“Wait, Tobias,” I say, forcing myself to sound calmer than I feel. “I’m so sorry. That was shitty, and I didn’t mean any of it to come out like that. Please don’t go.”
He freezes, half-off the bed already. Slowly, though, he lets his weight drop back down and turns to face me. He’s not touching me anymore. Instead, he’s sitting cross-legged on the mattress, pulling a pillow into his lap to hold. It’s better than running away, though.
“I’m scared,” I tell him, going for naked honesty. “I want you so much, and I want to feel that close to you. But I’m scared to hurt you or frighten you or make things worse between us. I know that’s selfish, but it’s true.”
“I thought after we talked last night, we were good. I thought things were normal between us. I want to go back to normal.”
I frown. “We are good. But we’re not normal. I don’t feel fucking normal either. You’re not the only one. And I don’t want you to force yourself to do something uncomfortable because you think I want it.”
Tobias avoids eye contact at all costs, tension obvious in every muscle of his body.
Finally, after a long silence, he mumbles his words to the comforter.
“What if I want it?”
I reach out, placing my fingers beneath his chin to tilt his face up so I can see him. “What?”
“I’m not always doing things just to appease you. What if I asked because I want it?” he asks, more sure of himself now. “Does that make me some kind of pervert? Like I’m sick for not wanting to spend all my time crying in a corner?”
He sounds angry, but I can’t tell if he’s angry with me, himself, or just the universe.
“Am I, Gunnar? Am I a freak?”
“Oh, honey,” I sigh, reaching out to pull him toward me. “You’re not a freak. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to feel after going through a bunch of fucked-up trauma. I just want to give you what you need—what we both need, probably—without triggering you or fucking everything up.”
After a few more moments of silence, I realize what’s been staring me in the face this whole time.
“What if you fucked me?” I ask.
Tobias leans back, looking at me with bloodshot eyes.
“What?”
“You said you’re ready to have sex and you want to feel something different. Why don’t you fuck me? Then you’re in control, but it’s still bringing us as close as it would the other way around.”
Tobias is still staring at me like I’ve grown a second head, and I’m not sure if he hates the idea or is just confused.
“You’d let me?” he finally asks.
Oh, my sweet baby gay. Sometimes I forget how inexperienced he is.
“Of course,” I say, taking his face in my hands and sweeping my thumbs over both cheeks. “People like different things. I know I like to top a lot of the time because I kind of have a thing about control, but it’s not like a rule. I’ve had a great time bottoming before, and even if I’d never tried it, I’d damn well be ready to do it for you, if it was what you needed.”
Tobias still looks uncertain, chewing on his bottom lip, which I didn’t totally expect.
“Unless you don’t want to,” I add. “Have you ever topped before?”
“Uh, a girl, once. In high school. Or maybe girls don’t count. It was awful, anyway.”
He blushes, and I fight to keep a straight face because it’s fucking adorable, but I don’t want him to think I’m laughing at him.
Instead, I pull him into a kiss. I tease his mouth open with my tongue, getting him to open up to me slowly, until we’re both distracted from all the awkwardness I just brought crashing down on us.
By the time we break apart again, he’s panting and I can see his erection tenting his sleep pants, convincing me even more that this is what he wants.
“Please, Gunnar,” he says. “I want more.”
We go slow. I focus on keeping him close to me, holding his gaze and making sure he’s not checking out the way he’s done before. But he’s present the entire time. The more of my attention I give him, the more worked up he gets until he’s grinding shamelessly against me, humping his leaking erection against my bare thigh, fingering me open while I whisper gentle praise in his ear.
Once I’m ready, I grab a condom that I fished out of the nightstand from next to the lube and watch him put it on. He looks nervous, but not scared. And the overwhelming aura of desire in the room is choking the life out of any other emotion that tries to butt its way in right now.
I arrange myself on my front so he has easy access and spread myself open for him, enjoying the feeling of his slender body weighing me down.
“That’s it, baby,” I say as he finally pushes inside me.
His fingers are kneading the flesh of my sides like a nervous tic, but I love it. Just another reminder that he’s here with me, and nowhere else.
“You’re okay?” There’s a quiver to his voice when he speaks.
“I’m okay.” I turn around, looking at him over my shoulder. He looks phenomenal. Arching his back while a flush crawls over the pale, sand-toned skin of his chest. The muscles in his arms defined by how hard he’s holding on to me, and his abs tensing and relaxing over and over as he tries to hold himself in place. His mouth is open just enough for him to pant and for me to catch a glimpse of that pink, wet tongue that I wish was in my mouth right now, and his eyes are at half-mast. “You can move, Tobias. Please.”
The first thrust he gives is tentative, but it still feels good. I wasn’t lying when I said it had been a long time since I’ve bottomed, but I had missed it. Pleasure is already unfurling deep in my gut, and my hips are loosening as I rock back into him.
“That’s it, baby boy. Don’t hold back. Fuck, you feel good inside me.”
The words end on a moan. He picks up the pace, his movements becoming more confident the longer I encourage him with my words and all the noises he’s pulling out of me.
“Fuck yes. Right there,” I moan as he starts hitting me at a different angle.
Tobias drapes his body over mine, so we’re skin to skin. I can feel his hot breath puffing on my ear, and I want to turn around and kiss him, but I feel like he might be lost in the moment. He’s squeezing the skin on my sides so tightly it’s going to bruise, but I don’t care.
His lips find the back of my neck, but he can’t seem to concentrate enough to kiss me, instead mouthing at the skin as he breathes heavily. He pistons his hips, pumping into me quickly now, matching his puffs of breath and making little grunting noises that would be adorable if I weren’t too distracted by how fucking good this feels.
“That’s it, baby. Are you gonna make me come?” My cock is hard and heavy, pointing down at the mattress and drooling precum, so I find his hand blindly with mine and guide it to wrap around my length. “You feel so good. Be a good boy and make me come, then give me everything you’ve got. I want every drop in those tight little balls deep inside me, got it?”
Tobias makes a noise that might have been uh-huh but might have just been an exhale. He gets to work jerking me, tossing my body back and forth between the two points of pleasure until I’m moaning loudly and rolling my hips into every thrust he gives me.
“Oh fuck, perfect, Tobias.” I barely manage to spit the words out before I’m spraying cum over the sheets, every muscle in my body tightening.
I can hear Tobias gasp as I unconsciously squeeze his cock, and his thrusts pick up pace even more until he’s fucking me with a kind of messy desperation that I find impossibly sexy.
“Can I?” he asks in a cracking voice. “Please.”
“Go on, baby. Fill me up. Give it all to me, like a good boy.” I milk his cock with my ass as I say it, joy filtering through me as his pace stutters and he thrusts as deep inside me as he can.
He’s so quiet, I wouldn’t know he was coming if I couldn’t feel it. Not that I can feel the cum itself with the condom in the way, but I can feel the throb and twitch of him unloading inside me, as well as the stiffness of his whole body as he squeezes me impossibly tight.
He doesn’t even take a breath until he’s done. Then he takes in one long, heaving inhale, followed by another. I can’t tell if it’s a good thing or not without looking at him, so I gingerly pull myself forward until he slips out of me, before turning over to face him.
It isn’t panic on his face. It’s not quite pleasure, either. It feels like it could go either way, though, so I do my best to nudge it in the right direction.
“Come here, baby,” I murmur, holding out my arms to him.
He collapses on me immediately. His body is in between my legs, the condom an unpleasant tactile sensation where his softening erection is pressed against me that I choose to ignore. His arms wrap around me the same way mine wrap around his, then he’s nosing his way into the spot between my chin and shoulder. The spot that he always seems to seek out and fit into so perfectly.
“You did so well, baby.”
I run my hand up and down the long line of his back while he continues to breathe. I murmur more soothing nonsense in his ear the whole time, telling him what a good boy he is and how good he made me feel. I tell him we can do that as many times as he wants, or we don’t have to do it again if he doesn’t want to.
Slowly, he sags. The tension leaves his body and his breathing evens out.
I finally chance a look at him, craning my neck.
“Are you okay?”
He nods, his face serious but his eyes clear.
“I’m okay. Thanks, Gunnar. That was good. That was a good idea.” Tobias blows out a long breath and his mouth tilts up at the end like he’s almost trying to smile, but he looks too exhausted to get very far. “I feel a little better now.”
“Do you wanna get cleaned up?”
Tobias moans. “No, but I think we have to.”
He pushes off me, groaning some more with the movement. I snag his wrist gently first though, pulling him into a kiss.
“What was that for?” he asks when I break away.
“I think you’re pretty fucking awesome,” I say, because it’s true, and it’s the only clear thought in my head right now. There are other words—words that spilled out of me by mistake last night and we both ignored—but I manage to keep them in for now.
He blushes. This boy has the audacity to blush right after he just fucked me like his life depended on it, and it’s adorable as sin.
“Yeah, well. You’re one to talk.”
I can’t help but smile at him. I’m aware that he’s only really good with words when he’s telling me to go fuck myself. Then, he’s shockingly loquacious.
You’re one to talk is still one of the sweetest things he’s said to me, and I’ll carry it around in my heart forever with all the others.