Chapter 13 #4
Sidney's hands work the button of Erath's trousers and Erath lifts his hips so Sidney can pull them down.
The fabric drags over his thighs, and Sidney has to lift up off him to get them all the way off, and when he settles back over him Erath is bare and waiting and unbelievable.
His thighs are heavy and dusted with the same dark hair, and his cock is hard against his belly, thick and flushed and already wet at the tip, curving up toward his stomach.
Sidney's mouth goes dry just looking at it.
Sidney loses a second just looking at all of it.
Erath's hands return to Sidney's waist, to the borrowed denim there, and his fingers pause at the button and his eyes find Sidney's face.
Waiting. Always waiting. Sidney nods, and Erath opens the button, and Sidney is the one who shifts to push the fabric down, who works it past his hips, who kicks it away along with everything else, who comes back to straddle bare thighs with nothing between them.
The first full press of skin against skin pulls a breath out of both of them at once and Sidney has to brace one hand flat against Erath's sternum just to steady himself against the sheer overwhelming amount of him, all that warmth, all that bare skin he is suddenly allowed to touch.
Erath's cock is hard against the inside of Sidney's thigh.
Sidney can feel the weight and heat of him, the wet smear where the head presses against his skin, and the knowledge that Erath wants this does something to Sidney that no reassurance could have done.
Erath doesn't press up into him. Doesn't grind or chase.
He stays where he is, hands at Sidney's hips, thumbs resting in the dips of his hipbones, and lets Sidney feel the want without being subjected to it.
Sidney rocks down, experimentally.
He watches Erath's jaw go tight. Watches his eyes flutter half-closed and his fingers flex against Sidney's hips.
He does it again, slower, dragging his own cock along the length of Erath's, skin sliding against skin, and the friction lights him up from the inside.
Erath exhales through his teeth like the restraint is costing him something.
His head tips back against the cushion, the long line of his throat exposed, and a flush has come up high on his cheekbones, and Sidney watches a single bead of sweat track down his temple into the dark of his hair.
It is costing him something. Sidney can see it. The careful stillness of a man holding a flood behind his ribs, and the sight of it undoes Sidney more than any roughness ever could.
He reaches between them and wraps his hand around Erath's cock.
Erath's whole body goes rigid. A low sound breaks out of him and his hands spasm at Sidney's hips.
He's heavy and hot in Sidney's palm, thick enough that Sidney's fingers don't quite close all the way around, and already so slick.
Sidney spreads the wetness with his thumb, watches Erath's mouth fall open, and starts to stroke him slow.
He learns the weight of him, the velvet shift of skin over the hard length underneath, the way Erath's stomach jumps when his thumb finds the spot just below the head.
He watches Erath's face the whole time. Watches the god of death come apart by inches under his palm.
Watches the dark eyes go unfocused, the lashes flutter, the lips part on every downstroke.
The expression on Erath's face is something Sidney has never seen on anyone, let alone on him: stripped bare, helpless, grateful, like he is being given something he didn't dare ask for.
I'm doing that, Sidney thinks, with a kind of wonder. He has all the power in the room. The man who could unmake him with a thought is lying beneath him offering up his throat, his cock leaking into Sidney's fist, and Sidney is the one who decides what happens next.
Erath's hand comes up, slow and visible, to Sidney's face.
A question. Sidney turns his cheek into the palm and Erath's thumb brushes his lower lip, and Sidney takes it into his mouth without thinking — sucks lightly, tongue curling around the pad of it — and the sound Erath makes is wrecked.
His hips finally lift, helplessly, pushing his cock up through Sidney's slow fist.
"You can," Sidney says against his thumb. "You can move."
Erath moves. He rolls his hips up into Sidney's hand and into the cradle of his thighs, slow and deep, and his other hand finds Sidney's cock and closes around it and Sidney's breath stutters out of him because oh.
The warmth of that grip, the deliberate care of it, the slight roughness of his palm and the way his thumb sweeps in a slow circle on every upstroke.
Erath watches his face the entire time, gauging, adjusting — a tighter grip when Sidney's breath catches in approval, a slower pull when his eyes flutter closed.
He is learning Sidney the way a scholar learns a difficult text, patient and exact.
They move together like that, both of them caught in the other's hands, foreheads close, breath mingling.
The firelight shifts over Erath's chest, over Sidney's spread thighs, over the slick place where their cocks slide alongside each other and where their joined hands work between them.
Sidney can hear the small wet sounds of it — the slide of skin, the catch of Erath's breath every time Sidney's thumb finds that spot that makes him twitch in his fist.
Erath's hand slides from his hip to his ass, fingers pressing along the crease, slow and asking.
Sidney gasps in a breath and presses back against his fingers, seeking, guiding.
Erath murmurs something under his breath, low and unhurried, and his fingertips go suddenly slick.
Warm and luxuriously wet, with the faint shimmer of something Sidney can't quite see in the low light.
Sidney snorts, breathless. "Did you just summon lube into existence?"
"Mm." Erath's mouth twitches at the corner. "Would you prefer I go and find a jar?"
"Fuck no. Don't you dare leave."
"That's what I thought." His thumb circles, slow. "Convenient, isn't it?"
"Show-off."
"You like it."
He does. He really does. He's about to say something else cutting and then Erath presses the pad of his finger against him and the words evaporate.
Erath's eyes lock onto his and don't leave. He circles first, just pressure, just letting Sidney feel him there, before the first finger eases in to the second knuckle and stops.
Sidney exhales, and nods, and Erath sinks deeper.
He works him open one knuckle at a time, careful, patient, his other hand stroking idle and gentle over Sidney's thigh, his eyes never leaving Sidney's face.
When he adds a second finger Sidney's breath hitches sharp, and Erath stops instantly and waits.
Doesn't pull out, doesn't push further, just holds, and watches, and when Sidney nods again he resumes, slower this time, scissoring gently, finding the angle that makes Sidney's mouth fall open and his hips press back down onto Erath's hand of their own accord.
Nothing has ever felt like this — being stretched open by a man who keeps checking his face, who stops the instant Sidney's breath changes, who waits for the nod before going deeper, who treats the inside of him like something sacred and not something to be conquered.
"You're so tight, Sidney," Erath says through his teeth. His voice is gravel.
"Keep going." It comes out broken. "Don't stop yet."
A third finger, slicker than the last — Erath murmurs the word again, low, and Sidney feels the rush of warmth against his rim — and his head drops forward against Erath's shoulder.
He breathes him in, clean skin and that mineral sweetness, and Erath's free hand comes up to cradle the back of his neck, just resting there, just being a steady warm weight while his other hand works Sidney open with infinite patience.
Sidney can feel Erath's cock still hard against his belly, untouched now, leaking onto his own stomach.
He keeps opening him, slow and slow and slow, until Sidney is panting into the curve of his neck and rocking back onto his fingers, whimpering, and finally lifts his head and says, "Fuck, you have to get inside me—"
Sidney lifts up and reaches back and lines Erath's cock up beneath him. Erath's hands return to his waist and they shake.
Just slightly. A fine tremor through the broad palms, the long fingers — the first tremor Sidney has ever felt in him, the only crack in all that control.
And Sidney sinks down onto him slow, taking him by inches, breathing through the stretch of being filled.
Erath is thick and hot inside him and the slide is impossibly smooth from whatever he's conjured, and Sidney watches the god of death's careful composure splinter completely.
Erath's eyes go wide and then squeeze shut.
His mouth falls open on a sound that has no shape.
The cords stand out in his neck. His hands at Sidney's waist tighten as Sidney's body takes him in inch by inch and his every instinct screams to thrust up and bury himself.
He doesn't. He waits. He lets Sidney take him at Sidney's pace, all the way down, until Sidney is fully seated and they are both shaking, and only then does Erath open his eyes and look at him, and the look on his face is so naked Sidney almost can't bear it.