Chapter 21 #3
Every other time May had been in Cassiel’s apartment, it was dark or darkish, the warm lamp light Cassiel kept the place dialed to.
But in the afternoon the bay windows filled the living room with grey light through the French doors, and it reached all the way across the bedroom floor, catching dust, landing on everything—the desk and the nightstand and the CD player. The annoyingly tidy bed.
May stood in the bedroom doorway holding the bag with his father’s jacket in it and his Otagiri mug he’d just filled with water from the kitchen. Cassiel was behind him, and the apartment was quiet.
May set the mug on the nightstand and dropped the bag on the floor as Cassiel hung up his coat, revealing a dark blue button-down, a nicer version of the one May owned.
He was right there. Close enough that May could smell the cologne on his neck, fresh, not just a residue on a jacket. He turned and May placed his hand on Cassiel’s chest. Under the button-down, his heart was racing.
“I missed you,” May said.
Cassiel’s hand came up and covered May’s, pressing it flat against his chest. The look on his face was the one where he was clearly working on saying something.
But he chose not to. He leaned forward and kissed May, and May’s other hand came up to the back of his neck, and the kiss was unhurried and warm and tasted like choco mint. May laughed—cackled—into it because he was so fucking glad this person was still here, still his.
Cassiel’s hands went to May’s waist and pulled him hard against his chest, Cassiel’s back against the doorframe. May’s sweater was untucked and the fingers on the skin above his hip were annoyingly cold. May groaned.
One upside about the weird layout of the apartment was that it was very easy to stumble to the bed.
May pulled Cassiel down with him onto the covers, the afternoon light on both of them, overcast daylight, and he could see everything—the mole at the hollow of Cassiel’s throat, the tension in his jaw, the way his eyes actually looked lighter the closer you were to him.
May’s sweater rucked up, the shirt underneath it too, and Cassiel discarded his own shirt much more efficiently while May worked on the belt.
His hands fumbled, laughing again because the buckle stuck and Cassiel’s mouth was on his neck and it was hard to multitask when one of those tasks involved wet, wet tongue.
Impatient, or just showing off, Cassiel removed the belt himself, pushing May’s hands aside. Then soon enough—or finally—his skin was against May’s skin, the full length of him hard against May’s thigh. May shuddered, rolled his hips up and—
—and Cassiel shifted, reaching past him to the nightstand drawer for the lube, and May snapped his teeth at him.
Then the drawer closed, Cassiel was back, any other thoughts banished to the shadow realm as Cassiel’s hand moved down and wrapped around him.
May’s back arched off the mattress as he keened.
He could feel it. All of it. His body was his body, his brain was his brain, and the hand on him was Cassiel’s hand and he was not watching this from somewhere else, he was not outside the room looking in. He was in the light.
Cassiel’s breath came ragged against his throat.
May reached between them, found him hard, and the sound Cassiel made when May’s hand closed around him was fantastically wrecked.
They moved together—rhythm found and gone in the next instant.
May’s free hand gripped the back of Cassiel’s neck to hold him there, to hold anything, and Cassiel’s forehead pressed hard into May’s shoulder.
May came first—that never happened—the tension cresting and breaking, his whole body curling inward, Cassiel’s name squeaked into the air between them. Cassiel followed against him, hips stuttering, hand tight enough to bruise on May’s thigh, and what came out was closer to an exhale than a moan.
They lay there. May’s chest was sticky with sweat and fluids and he didn’t care. His unsticky hand found Cassiel’s fine hair, fingers moving slow, tracing the shape of his head.
“Tissues,” Cassiel murmured.
“In a minute.”
“The sheets. Your—”
“In a minute,” May groused, shifting up to nip at Cassiel’s chin. “We can get messier.”
Cassiel exhaled through his nose, meaning he was allowing it, that the mess could exist for sixty whole seconds before the need to address it became an issue.
May smiled at the ceiling. He rolled onto his side.
Cassiel’s face was right there, flushed, hair mussed.
His eyes were half-closed and his mouth was soft.
May traced his cheekbone with two fingers.
“Put the CD on?” he asked. “From the start.”
Cassiel looked at him. The desk was four feet away. The CD player was in the bedroom, the mixtape still in the tray. May watched Cassiel do the math—get up, cross the room, press play, come back—and decide it was worth it.
The first notes filled the room through the speakers, a song about a small city. It wasn’t sex music. It was settling music. May’s eyes fell on his mug still on the nightstand, the little pink house inside a room singing about a city inside a house and May was a body in the house watching the—
He exhaled as Cassiel came back, the warmth of his body returning to May’s. They were two bodies.
May lay in the afternoon light in a bed that smelled like both of them and sang along to the song.