Chapter 25 #3
Just his name. Low and broken and reverent, spoken against his hair, and Sidney shakes.
He shakes and his hips stutter and his arms tighten around Erath's neck and he's close, so close, the pleasure coiling tight at the base of his spine, his cock aching between their bodies, and he can feel Erath there too, can feel the tension in his thighs, the tremble in his arms, the way his breathing has gone erratic and his hips are pressing up in tiny, involuntary thrusts that he can't quite control anymore.
Sidney lifts his head from Erath's shoulder.
He pulls back just enough to see his face, close, so close, their noses almost touching, and Erath's eyes are dark and wide and ruined, and Sidney looks into them and thinks I love you.
He thinks it clearly, deliberately, without flinching from it.
He doesn't say it. He's not ready. The words are too big and too terrifying and they sit in his chest burning.
But he thinks it, and he lets himself think it, and he doesn't try to take it back.
Erath's forehead tips against his. Their mouths are centimeters apart and they're breathing the same air, fast and hot and ragged, and Sidney moves in his lap, one more roll, two, deep and grinding, and says, voice wrecked, barely a whisper:
"Don't let go."
Erath's arms crush him closer. His hand presses hard between Sidney's shoulder blades and his other arm locks across Sidney's lower back and he holds on with everything he has, and Sidney feels it, the totality of it, the safety of it, the absolute promise in his grip, and he breaks.
He comes between their bodies, shuddering, his orgasm tearing through him in waves that start in his core and radiate outward through every nerve.
He spills against Erath's stomach, hot and slick, and his body clamps down around Erath and his mouth opens in a silent cry against Erath's lips and his arms tighten around his neck until there is nothing left, no boundary, no distance, no space at all between them.
Erath follows. Sidney feels it, the stutter of his hips, the catch of his breath, the groan that starts deep in his chest and tears free against Sidney's mouth, and the heat of Erath finishing inside him is intimate and overwhelming and Sidney holds him through it the way Erath holds him, arms around his neck, forehead pressed to forehead, breathing together.
They don't move.
The room is quiet except for the sound of their breathing, syncing gradually, slowing together, the frantic pace easing into something measured and deep.
Sidney's thighs are trembling against Erath's hips and his arms are locked around Erath's neck and Erath's arms are locked around his body and neither of them lets go.
They sit there on the edge of the bed, tangled together, skin to skin, and Sidney's face is in the crook of Erath's neck and his eyes are closed and he is shaking, not from the cold, not from the exertion, but from the thing in his chest that he still can't say.
Erath's hand moves. Slowly, gently, from between Sidney's shoulder blades up to the back of his head. His fingers thread into Sidney's hair and cradle his skull, and he holds him there.
"I'm not letting go," Erath says. Quiet. Final. A promise and a statement of fact delivered in the same breath.
Sidney breathes against his neck. In. Out.
Sidney lifts his head. His eyes are wet.
Not crying, his jaw is tight, his expression controlled, the discipline holding even now, but wet, and he doesn't try to hide it.
He looks at Erath and his mouth shapes the word he can't say, the one he's been carrying, the one he thought in the dark when Erath's eyes were ruined and close and looking at him with everything.
His lips part and his throat works and he can't. Not yet.
But he presses his mouth to Erath's. A kiss that is soft and trembling and tasting faintly of salt, and it says everything the words can't. Erath kisses him back with his hand in his hair and his arms around his body and they stay there, on the edge of the bed, in the dark, in the underworld, held together by the thing neither of them has named.
Eventually, Erath lays them down. He lifts Sidney off him gently, a soft sound from both of them at the separation, and pulls him onto the mattress and into his arms. Sidney goes without resistance, without pride, without the instinct to roll away and reclaim his own space.
He presses his back against Erath's chest and pulls Erath's arm across his body and laces their fingers together against his sternum and Erath's chin rests on top of his head and the dark is warm and quiet.
Sidney doesn't try to convince himself this is temporary.
He doesn't catalogue the ways it could end. He doesn't run the numbers on his own inadequacy. He doesn't lie awake waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Sidney closes his eyes. His hand tightens around Erath's fingers. And for the first time since this started, since the bar and the subway and the underworld and the warehouse and the circle and the fear and the running and the floor, he sleeps without bracing for what comes next.