Chapter 17 #5
Zach reached for the nightstand. Condom, lube, quick and practiced. He pressed Adriel's thighs apart with a flat palm and Adriel went. Then Zach's fingers were pushing inside him, two at once, and Adriel's breath hissed out through his teeth.
He gripped the sheets and breathed and waited for his body to catch up to the pace Zach had already set.
He got there. Mostly.
Slower, the thought said again.
He let it go.
When Zach pushed inside him it was in one long, decisive stroke, and the sound that came out of Adriel was genuine; torn from him, unguarded, his back arching off the mattress.
The fullness of it was overwhelming, more than he'd had time to fully prepare for, and he lay there for a moment breathing hard, adjusting, waiting.
Zach didn't wait long.
He set the pace immediately; deep, driving, the rhythm of someone chasing his own pleasure with focused single-mindedness.
His hands gripped Adriel's hips, holding him in place as he moved, and the friction was good, it was genuinely good, Adriel's body lighting up.
He made sounds. Real sounds, helpless and unintentional, pulled from somewhere below thought.
But his hands, when they came up to find Zach's back, pressed there and found nothing back. No response. No shift in attention. Zach's eyes were closed, his face tipped forward, somewhere Adriel wasn't.
He was alone in this in a way that had nothing to do with the body above him.
He turned his face to the side. Let the sounds come when they came.
Let his body do what it was going to do.
Zach's rhythm built and built, harder now, the headboard tapping softly against the wall, and Adriel gripped the sheets and held on and told himself this was good, this was wanted, this was more than he deserved to ask for.
When Zach came it was with a low grunt and three final hard thrusts and then he stilled, heavy and warm over Adriel for a moment.
Adriel lay beneath him, breathing hard, his own body unfinished, aching quietly in a way he already knew he wouldn't mention.
Afterward, Zach rolled away, reaching for his phone on the nightstand, the screen lighting his face with that familiar pale glow. His thumb moved as he scrolled.
Adriel lay on his back beside him and stared at the ceiling.
The sheets were cooling. His body felt strange, like something that had been briefly and thoroughly occupied and was now empty again, quiet in the wrong way.
Zach's breathing had already slowed and steadied beside him.
His phone screen went dark. He set it face-down, closed his eyes.
The ache in Adriel's chest pressed outward. That tight, specific thing, sitting just below his sternum.
He named it satisfaction.
∞∞∞
Present
He came awake gasping.
A sharp inhale, the tail end of something he couldn't hold onto; a dream dissolving before he could name it, leaving only the tightness in his chest and the disorientation of not knowing, for a moment, where he was.
He blinked at the ceiling. Waited for his heart to slow down. Then he registered the arm across his waist.
He went still.
He looked down at it slowly, like it might disappear if he moved too fast. Landen's forearm, resting against his stomach. He could feel the warmth of it through his shirt, steady and grounding, and he lay there and breathed and let that single fact settle over him.
Still here.
He turned his head.
Landen was asleep. In sleep his face was just a face. The lines of his jaw, the slight part of his lips. His hair falling across his forehead in a way Adriel had never seen during waking hours, wheat-gold and soft and wild.
He looked younger.
Adriel's chest did something he didn't have a word for.
He watched him breathe for a while. The slow, even rise and fall of it. The pulse at the base of his throat, just visible in the grey light coming through the curtains.
The dream was already gone. The tightness in his chest was still there, but quieter now, losing its grip degree by degree. Because Landen hadn't moved.
This is different, something said, very quietly, in the back of Adriel's mind. He didn't answer it. But he didn't argue either.
Then Landen stirred. A small shift. His breathing changed. His eyes opened slowly, finding the ceiling first, then sliding over to find Adriel's face.
They looked at each other in the dark. Landen's expression was still soft with sleep, still open in that unguarded way, and something in his eyes when they found Adriel was; simple. Uncomplicated.
His lips parted slightly. Adriel kissed him before he could speak.
He didn't know what Landen was going to say.
Maybe something true. Maybe something that would have made this more real than Adriel knew how to hold right now.
So he leaned in and pressed his mouth to Landen's, and Landen kissed him back immediately; slow and warm, sleep-soft, his arm tightening at Adriel's waist and pulling him closer without any urgency.
Adriel exhaled into it.
The grey light held. Outside, somewhere distant, the city moved. He pressed closer and kissed him and let everything else wait.