Chapter 12 #4
May’s breath came out—short, not quite a laugh. “I’m thanking you for not—for not being an asshole about it and arguing.”
“I wanted to.”
“I know.” May’s hand circled Cassiel’s wrist. His left, where the pulse sat close to the surface. May’s thumb traced the tendon once and stayed. His hands were still steady. The argument had run through his voice and his bottom lip and his eyes and had not reached his fingers.
Cassiel didn’t move. The notebook sat on the couch behind May.
The turntable sat silent at Cassiel’s back, the needle parked at the end of Side A.
The arithmetic was still in the room—correct, rejected.
He didn’t know if the hand on his wrist was forgiveness for something he hadn’t sought or something else altogether.
May kissed him. It was nothing like the first one.
This was May’s weight shifting forward, his hand leaving the wrist and finding Cassiel’s collar instead.
He pulled, and Cassiel’s lower back hit against the arm of the couch behind him.
Then May’s knee came up over Cassiel’s thigh.
There was still you don’t get to in his grip, the argument’s heat still in his mouth—warm, breath quick, mouth tasting of grape soju, a man who had been running hot for the last five minutes and hadn’t yet come down.
Cassiel’s hand went to the back of May’s neck and stayed, the ring warm against skin.
His other hand found the buttons of the blue oxford, his fingers working the first one open and the second one, and his hands were not as steady as they should have been.
The buttons were standard, 11.5 millimeters, four-hole.
His fingers knew buttons if nothing else in this moment, and still the third one stuck because his thumb pressed too hard and the fabric pulled instead of releasing. A quarter-millimeter deviation.
May made a half-laugh sound against his mouth, then his hand covered Cassiel’s on the button and undid it for him. The gesture was generous and terrible.
The shirt opened. May’s chest was narrow, the skin warm, a mole below the left collarbone that Cassiel’s thumb brushed over. He would put his lips there later, maybe his teeth.
Cassiel moved from the arm onto the couch cushions, May falling with him. May’s hand was on his belt.
“Bedroom,” Cassiel said.
The word came out brusque, the same tone he used when telling Peter to close the door. He heard it. May heard it too. His mouth twitched, the grin threatening to surface, and the mirth in his eyes said he’d seen the mismatch and was choosing to find it charming rather than bossy.
“Copy that,” May said.
They got up. May pulled him by the wrist—down the hallway, past the bathroom, through the red curtain into the bedroom where May dragged him onto the bed and hit the lamp.
Warm. Not 2700K—closer to 3000, maybe higher, an approximation that would have mattered an hour ago.
Cassiel swallowed hard and felt his shoulders drop.
The lamp was one right thing in this unfamiliar space.
The bed was a queen with flannel sheets, hastily made.
They were not his sheets in his apartment under his light.
Everything stripped away except the person, the real right thing, pulling him down by the front of his shirt.
May started a joke. Cassiel heard the intake of breath, the setup—and then that breath and those words stalled and what came out instead was a low, unsteady exhale against Cassiel’s neck, against the cologne there, which under May’s warmth smelled like something he didn’t recognize as his own.
A few seconds later May tried again and his own breathing overrode it. Whatever the sentence was, it dissolved. Cassiel kissed him before May could try again and when he leaned back all that remained was May, breathing too fast, skin flushed.
Cassiel’s hands moved. His mouth couldn’t form language and his fingers couldn’t stop.
The not-speaking was just fine. That, at least, was familiar.
His hands knew how to handle small things, the tolerances, the points where pressure produced response.
But May’s body was new and Cassiel’s predictions kept being wrong.
His hand found a hip and the angle was off, the bone not where he’d anticipated.
May’s skin under the lamp showed scars that Cassiel had only glimpsed.
The one on his left hand was familiar, one he hadn’t learned the story behind, if there was one at all.
There was a longer one along the left side of his ribcage, raised and smooth, healed clean.
Cassiel’s thumb found the ridge and traced it.
May’s breathing changed under his thumb.
The geography made sense to his hands in a way it couldn’t to his mouth.
Something opened, something repaired, something closed again.
Cassiel had seen a flash of it, months ago, when May’s shirt had ridden up mid-stretch and he hadn’t been able to look away. And now he touched it freely. He stayed on the scar, because the body was telling him something now. He noted the scar’s coordinates. He would return to them.
May’s hand came to the back of his head, fingers curling in Cassiel’s hair.
“Drawer,” May muttered, then when Cassiel didn’t move immediately, reached for the drawer on the nightstand himself.
Cassiel’s hands always wanted to be doing something. The fidgeting, fixing, often deliberate, sometimes involuntary. This was far from involuntary. Cassiel poured the lube, coated his fingers as May lay back, dark eyes fixed on him.