hayley ☾⋆˙⟡

You’re barely able to stutter out a sound of surprise before Ryland seals his mouth over yours. He kisses you like a drowning man coming up for air. You can practically taste the desperation in him. Its sharply metallic tang has always been there, omnipresent under the surface of this thing you’ve got going on. You’ve tried to ignore it, but there’s no washing the taste of blood from your mouths. What you have with Ryland is alive, for now, and so it bleeds.

You came here to be a friend to him and offer him a shoulder to cry on about this whole difficult, supremely shitty situation. That's what you should be doing, instead of letting him dig his teeth into your bottom lip. To your credit, you really do try. You pull away, even though everything but the small part of your brain that is still thinking clearly is telling you to sink deeper into the kiss. “I… I wanted to ask if… do you maybe need to— to talk?”

Ryland groans as if even this small bit of distance physically pains him. “I don’t.”

“Ry—”

“There’s nothing you can say that’ll fix this. I don’t need to have a conversation, I need—” He cuts himself off, dodging your gaze while his eyes dart around the room, as if hoping to find the words he’s searching for hiding somewhere among the sparse furniture. When he speaks again, he is quieter, and what he says sounds like both a warning and an admission. “I think I need to hurt you again.”

Your breath, still a bit ragged from the way he kissed it out of you, stutters.

Tension coils in his shoulders, a tight band ready to snap, and his eyes are wide with an intense cocktail of fear and fury and want. He's scared, yes, but not prey animal scared. His is the terror of a cornered predator, a fox in a trap — the kind of scared that wants to claw and bite and draw blood.

You do the only thing you can to smooth the tides: you tip your head back and offer him your throat. “So do it. Hurt me.”

Ryland practically pounces on you, drawing you in again by his grip on your jaw. You press yourself against him, wanting to feel him, his warmth, his skin, his beating heart against your palms as you slide your hands under his shirt, up his chest. He breaks from the kiss for a moment to throw it to the ground, and in the split second you have to catch a glimpse of him before he dives into you again, you find him looking utterly ravenous.

His hands are everywhere, your hair, your back, your waist, your chest, your ass. He's angry and he's greedy and you like it that way, because it's better than apathy and resignation. It's alright, you try to tell him as you let him move you, following his backwards shuffle until he's braced against his desk. Everything is spinning out of control, except me. You can still control me; I will let you.

“Get on your knees,” he growls, still half into your mouth. When you don't respond right away, dazed as you are, he repeats, “Get on your fucking knees.”

You've never heard him swear like that. So far, there have only been softer curses between ragged breaths and stuttering thrusts, and a few times when his habit of middle school teacher pseudo-swearing found its way into the bedroom. Like that one time he said “fiddlesticks” while buried to the hilt inside of you, and both of you couldn’t help but burst into giggles. Those simple, silly moments with him are what you think you’ll miss most of all.

You’ll also miss sinking to your knees in front of him the way you’re doing now. You lean forward, looking up at him with the biggest, most pathetic eyes you can muster, and press your cheek against his thigh, like you’re a cat, rubbing against him. Ryland pets you like a cat, too, tenderly and affectionately, brushing your hair back in the process.

But then his fingers tighten and he guides you to the increasingly obvious tent in his jeans. The whimper he lets out when you kiss his bulge, mouth hot and wet and only a few layers of fabric away, is nothing short of delicious. And, god, you want to taste him. You want to trace the vein at the underside of his cock with your tongue. You want to drool all over him. You want—

He pushes away your eager hands, which have moved to try and undo his fly. “Hands off. Want you to use your mouth.”

You blink, confused. “How am I supposed to—?”

“You’re smart, you can figure it out.” It's clear he means to sound dismissive and flippant, but there's a warmth there, buried under the condescension. He really does think you're gifted with the mental acuity and mouth dexterity to figure this out.

And who are you to disappoint him? You kiss up his bulge, a quick trail right next to his zipper, and try to catch the button between your teeth.

Keyword: try. It keeps sliding out from between your lips, and even when you manage to hold on, you just can’t turn it to fit through the buttonhole. It doesn’t help that you’re drooling a little, making everything slippery, and you’re panting out shaky, heated breaths against Ryland’s crotch, and you can feel the hardness of him, so damn close and yet completely out of reach. It’s distracting.

From the back of your throat rises what you think will sound like a frustrated groan, but comes out as an utterly pathetic sob. You mewl and nuzzle his clothed erection and mentally take back every nice thing you have ever said about how good his ass looks in those stupid jeans. You can’t muster up anything except hatred for them right now, no matter how absolutely delicious they make him look.

“Doesn’t feel good, huh?” Ryland mutters, hand still fisted in your hair. “To need something so badly it tears at you, and to only ever almost have it?”

It doesn’t. It feels like torture. Mouthing at his bulge, you blink up at him, and there’s something about the way he looks at you, with a wanting so great it burns him, like Icarus must have looked at the sun, that makes you wonder if he’s talking about you. But he has you, damn it, right here, on your knees for him, ready to do anything he wants. If he would just—

“Help me,” you whine. “Can’t do it alone, I’m sorry, please, I need you to help.”

“Got a lot of people asking me for help today,” he observes passively. “But you’re the first one to beg.”

And you plan to keep up both begging and trying. The metal of his button clinks against your teeth, and you do your best to keep eye contact as you tug and try to work it past the denim with your tongue. Your already borderline incoherent pleading doesn’t get any more comprehensible either, now that your mouth is occupied. Your face keeps rubbing up against the denim stretched over his cock, and occasionally he lets out the softest little groan. You feel tiny and pathetic and somehow both useless and like he’s not actually letting you be useful.

The world is small, about the size of a button, and you are smaller.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Ryland decides and pushes you back on your haunches. He undoes his fly with a single flick of his fingers. Your cheeks burn; you took too long, clearly, and now he’s bored of watching you struggle. “I’m a little disappointed, but at least you tried.”

No, no, no. That’s worse. That’s so much worse. You can handle angry, but you hate the idea of disappointing him. Indignation rises inside of you like bile. “You’re not supposed to give people impossible tasks. You’re a teacher, you should know that.”

The tug he gives your hair makes you hiss. Good. You want him to get mad, and to focus all of that rage on you, spill it into you, lose it inside you. “Telling me how to do my job now?”

“It wasn’t fair!”

“None of this is fair,” he replies bitterly.

He reaches into his boxers and his cock springs up, long and girthy and perfect, and even though you’re still kind of huffy, you can’t keep your mouth from watering. Ryland grips it at the base, and just when you part your lips, thinking he’s finally, finally going to guide it into your mouth, he taps it against your cheeks. Surprised, you flinch a little, but Ryland holds your head in place. It’s not painful, — he’s very gentle, for obvious reasons — but the humiliation of being smacked in the face with his cock burns through you harder than any actual slap might. His precum leaves a wet trail on your skin, and he quite literally rubs it in using the head of his dick. And just like when he hits you with his palm, it goes right to your cunt.

The glare you throw his way is half-hearted at best. Truth is, you’re soaked. If this goes on for much longer, you’ll be humping the floor like a dog in heat. Knowing Ryland and the mood he’s in right now, though, you have a feeling he would probably enjoy that. Bastard. You adore him.

“Are you going to be good and suck my cock now? Can you do that, at least?” Ryland finally asks.

You nod as frantically as your already bruised ego will allow. “Yeah— yes. Please.”

All in all, you'd like to think you're pretty good at giving head, earlier button-related humiliation notwithstanding. You've certainly never had any complaints before, especially not from Ryland, who, even now, looks down at your kneeling form with an elated sort of disbelief, like you're his most audacious wet dream come to life.

You flatten your tongue against his shaft and soften your mouth around him as you take him in. As he always does, Ryland brushes your hair back to keep it from falling into your face, and the gesture is so weirdly tender despite the way he pushes forward to feed you his cock, it feels kind of absurd to you.

Even when he’s dominant, snarling at you and ordering you around, there’s a softness to him. When he had you bent over his workstation one night, held down by the back of your neck, he still leaned in and kissed your shoulder blades mid-thrust. When he bites you, he always immediately soothes the pain with a kiss. And now, when he begins to roll his hips, he whimpers loose, fragmented praises like he’s in awe of you — and of getting to do this to you, with you, here and now.

You do your damn best. You know he gets caught up in his own head, even during sex. Sometimes, reality’s sticky tendrils manage to creep in through the cracks of your cozy illusion of simplicity and twine themselves around his thoughts. You're not letting that happen today. You moan lowly around his cock and pull back to swirl your tongue along the head. Look at me, focus on me. Let yourself fall into my orbit. You make yourself an anchor, the way he has been for you so many times, bossing you around and saying mean things and inflicting the most delicious pain on you, so you can focus on something other than the whirlwind of your thoughts for once.

It’s easy to get caught up in it, in the slide of him against your flattened tongue, the stretch your lips, and the sounds that he pants into the back of his hand. You’ll never understand why he’s so afraid of how vocal he is. To you, there’s no sweeter sound; you especially love the way his voice gets low and a little breathy when he’s getting close.

Today, you only get to hear it for a few moments, alas. His hand leaves your hair to tap your shoulder, and you pull back somewhat reluctantly. “Don’t want to come yet,” he says by way of explanation. “I need to get inside you.”

Any disappointment you may have felt about not getting to make him finish with your mouth disappears, just like that, as if with the snap of a finger. You can feel the way your underwear clings to your wet pussy as you shift your weight around, and suddenly there is almost nothing in the world you want more than to squeeze your achingly empty walls around every inch of him.

Your knees are perilously wobbly, so you're grateful for the hand Ryland holds out to help you stand up. His eyes rove over your face, your flushed cheeks and your swollen lips, and if you were standing in front of literally any other man, the smug look on his face wouldn't be nearly as charming as it is on Ryland.

“You look good, all wrecked.” Gently but possessively, his thumb traces your spit-slicked, puffy bottom lip.

“All because of you,” you breathe. It’s exactly the right thing to say; something about the reminder that he’s the only one who gets to treat you like this always gets to him. Being who you are, you use that piece of knowledge very liberally.

Ryland kisses you, gropes you, undresses you like he owns you. In a way, he kind of does. It’s not just that he’s the last person you’ll ever be intimate with, it’s because he has bumbled and joked and science’d his way into your heart, where a piece of him will always stay, to take with you to space and to wherever you go after, if there even is anything after this existence. He’s right there under your skin, which he uncovers and strokes with his fingertips, until you’re naked save for your panties and arching into him with need.

There’s nothing quite like being manhandled by Ryland. Him and his stupidly hot arm muscles, which scoop you up, turn you around and set you right down on his desk. Your legs part for him and he steps between them, roving mouth trailing its way down your body. As he goes, he flicks one of your nipples — sensitive and drawn taut — with his tongue, making you keen. You arch your back like a cat, meeting the softness of his kisses and the ticklish scrape of his stubble as they move lower, lower, lower.

When he reaches the hemline of your underwear, he lifts his head. “Did you get this wet just from sucking me off?” He rasps, sounding somehow both full of awe and full of himself. “Whore.”

Whore, whore, whore.

The word thumps through you in the same rhythm as the throbbing of your clit, which Ryland sucks through the cotton. “Fu-uck,” you moan, voice quavering, back arching off the desk. Only a whore for you, is what you want to say, but you don't know if you can form anything more substantial than incomprehensible syllable-salad right now.

Trembling thighs clench around Ryland's head, and he digs his fingers into their flesh to push them back apart. “Legs open. Do you want me to eat your pussy or not?”

Of course you do, damn it. In fact, you’re pretty sure might die right here on the spot if he doesn’t.

His tongue laves the soaked fabric, and it feels so much more purposeful than whatever it is you were doing when you tried and failed to get his pants open. When he steps away for a moment to peel the garment off your hips and down your legs, it feels kind of pointed. Unlike him, you’re easy. You didn’t make him work for it. He can just undress you and put his mouth on you, and you will not only let him but thank him for it, because he’s so damn good at it.

A ravenous want overtakes his features as he kneels down and throws your legs over his shoulders. A starving dog at the edge of a feasting table, and he bites his way up your thighs, sucking bruises into the sensitive skin. God, you love when he does that, love pressing your fingers into the red and purple marks days later and remembering how they got there and who put them there.

You had to have a deeply embarrassing private meeting about that with Stratt once, after Ryland got a little carried away biting your neck. Following a stern talking-to about how much of a PR-nightmare it would be if pictures of one of her astronauts covered in bruises and fingerprints got out, you had to promise to keep any lasting visible marks contained to more discreet parts of your body. Thus, he keeps his bites concentrated on your inner thighs. You don’t mind it; it’s a little like he’s marking his territory, and the mild pain of it only enhances the pleasure of being eaten out by him.

Strong hands grip your hips and draw you down towards the edge of the desk and towards his mouth. Rough stubble grazes your upper thighs and the friction of it only makes the fire in you burn hotter. At last, his fingers part your glistening folds and his tongue runs up their cleft, encircling your clit. Helpless, you buck against the touch and plead for more, which is he more than happy to give you.

Ryland presses his face into the apex of your thighs and groans into your cunt like he’s trying to lose himself in you. It’s frantic and desperate and you can feel the fear turned anger turned hunger, gathering at the tip of his relentless tongue. If this is his last meal, he is sure as shit making it count.

“G-god, please,” you yelp into the back of your hand and reflexively clamp your legs shut again.

Ryland tuts and rewards you with a swat to your thighs for your indiscretion. Sharp pain shoots through you, making you squirm, and he repeats the action once, twice more. “What did I just say? Keep your legs open. I’m trying to make this good for you. I could have just bent you over the edge of my bed and used you like a cheap toy. You’d have let me. Wouldn’t you?”

You try to shake your head, but he smacks your thigh again, this time closer to where you’re still wet and wanting for him. “Y-yes, Ryland.”

“And you’d have enjoyed it, too, because you just love being useful, don’t you, baby? But I’m better than that.” He pries your thighs farther open and strokes your folds. “I want to be nice, make this feel good for you, too. If this is the last time I get to do this, I want to make sure you never, ever forget it.”

“Could never have forgotten you anyway,” you say, and the honesty of your own words takes you by surprise. Neither of you talks about feelings much. It’s better that way, easier. But it’s likely that this is the last time you’ll get to do this, no matter the outcome of Ryland’s choice. Even if he agrees to be the Hail Mary’s scientist, it's not like a suicide mission including several years of artificial coma and sharing extremely cramped quarters with two other people is going to be some sort of honeymoon. If this is goodbye, in a way, maybe a little bit of honesty is a good thing. Maybe it’ll provide some sort of closure.

Ryland leaves an oddly tender kiss just above your pubic bone. “Let me try to make sure, anyway. Better safe than sorry.” With that, he slowly eases a single digit inside of you.

It’s not quite enough — you’ve been aching to be filled for a while now — but does slake at least some of your thirst for more. You lift your hips up to meet his pumps at the same time that he draws your clit between his lips and sucks.

It takes him no effort to find that one perfect, spongy spot that makes stars dance in your eyes. Your breathing grows fractured. You’re so fucking wet for him; it coats his fingers and whenever he comes up for a second to look at you, you can clearly see it glisten on his chin and smirking mouth. And, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, all the Gods that must have turned their backs on humanity to let something like the Petrova problem happen, you’ve never wanted anything more than him, like this, forever.

Your orgasm catches you completely off-guard. It comes on suddenly, draws tight in your lower belly and rushes through you with the force of the tide sweeping in. Toes curling, head falling back, panting his name, you come all over his hand and his mouth and his stupidly adorable big glasses.

He licks you through it until the rapturous rolling of your hips ceases, and when he sits back and wipes his glasses, there’s a distinctly self-satisfied glint in his eyes. “There we go,” he says, casually, like he’s just telling you both “good job!” and hasn’t just made your vision white out for a second. Your chest heaves with it, but the climax didn’t temper the flame of your want so much as stoke it — you still need him, and judging by the jutting hardness of his length, he needs you just as much.

You watch him rise to his feet and as soon as he’s within reach, you draw him into a kiss. The taste of your wetness hasn’t yet left his mouth, and it mixes with some remnant of sweetness from the frankly absurd amounts of candy you’ve seen him snack on. Your combined tastes claim your mouth and you want nothing more than to anchor the memory of them there, to keep this with you, along with the slide of his lips and the stroke of his tongue.

You feel him try to move away and tighten your legs around him in protest. His hands move down to your knees to push them away from where they’re locked against his hips. You whimper defiantly when he breaks from the kiss. “I’m just going to get a condom,” he explains in a tone so easily and casually authoritative it sends a warm prickle up your spine.

“You don’t have to,” you supply.

Ryland freezes.

The information takes a second to click into place, but when it does, his brain visibly kicks up several gears. “Are you sure?” His voice is deadly calm.

You nod. There’s no risk — not a physical one, anyway. Your regularly mandated medical examinations are very thorough and Stratt has been extremely diligent about making sure you get your prescriptions refilled, with good reason. Neither you nor Ryland has been with anyone else since you met on the aircraft carrier. You haven’t really spoken about it, but lately, condoms have become more of a formality between you two than anything else. They’re a way to keep at least some distance, put up a literal barrier between you two. But there’s no need for that anymore, now. Like a dog tasting blood, you are in too deep, with no choice but to dig your teeth in even harder. The world cannot be what tears you apart if you get to each other first.

“Okay,” he breathes.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, yes, heck yes, I— fuck.” For a second, he needs to close his eyes, ground himself again, as if the mere idea of what you’re proposing might bring him to his knees. The gaze his fixes you with when he opens them again is nothing short of predatory.

He takes his cock in hand and guides the head to rub up against your clit, then down along your slit. The pre drooling from it mixes with your juices, and fucking hell, that sight shouldn’t be nearly as hot to you as it is. You feel yourself clench around nothing. “Please, Ry, please—”

“Please what?” There’s a clear undertone of condescension in Ryland’s voice, but you can tell, just from the way his voice breaks at the end of the question and the tight grip his other hand has on your inner thigh, that he’s barely holding on himself. “Use your words, baby.”

Noiselessly, your lips shape the words ‘fuck me’ once, twice, before you can gather the presence of mind to meet his eyes and say, with a tone so pathetic you might as well be pleading for your life and sanity, “Please fuck me raw, Ryland.”

Ryland groans like you’ve gut-punched him. He leans forward, shifts closer, notches his tip at your entrance, and then, finally, mercifully, he’s plunging into you in one long stroke. You’re so full, overstretched around the girth of him, and it is— holy fucking shit, it’s intense. Without the thin layer of latex between you, you can feel everything. Every ridge, every vein, every inch of skin against yours.

You’re not the only one struck by the intimacy of it; Ryland nearly tumbles forward, but catches himself with one arm. He’s gripping the side of the desk so hard his knuckles turn white, and you watch his jaw work as he grits his teeth. “You’re going to ruin me.” And then he says your name, like a prayer, a curse, an invocation.

You run the pads of your fingers over his stubble and muster up just enough defiant energy to make your next words sound like a challenge, “So ruin me back.”

And then he’s moving, and it’s everything, more than everything, it’s almost too much, but only almost. You feel your walls clench in ripples around his pistoning cock, and you have to brace yourself back against the desk to keep halfway upright. The sly little smile falls off your face as quickly as it crept onto it, because your mouth draws open in a staccato series of moans.

“I will,” Ryland grits above you. His voice comes to you like someone speaking through a dream. “I will ruin you before anyone else gets a chance to. You’ll be sent into space with my marks on your skin and my cum inside you.”

“Uh-hnng,” you respond inarticulately.

“Then again,” he goes on, eyes moving down to where he’s driving himself into you, “maybe I shouldn’t let you go at all. Maybe if I knock you up, neither of us has to leave. Even Stratt couldn’t make us go then.”

His words wash over you in a hot, dizzying rush. It’s a fucked up thing to say, you know that, but right here, in this moment, you want nothing more than to indulge in the fantasy of having an easy out, of not ending today in heartbreak. You feel every inch of the bare skin of his cock, and all you can think about is that this is what it would feel like if he were to actually get you pregnant.

“Do it.” Your breathing shakes with a tremor when he angles himself just right. You’re pretty sure you’re seeing stars — the good kind, the non-darkening kind, the kind you won’t have to die among. He’s so deep inside you, you could swear you almost feel him in your throat. “Do it, do it, do it. Breed me.”

“God. I will, baby, don’t worry. I’ll keep you here, all damn day if I have to, stuffing you full of my seed. Have to make sure it takes.” His voice vacillates between breathy sighs and low growls. “Could watch you go all round with it. Everyone would know what I did to you, that you’re all mine and she can’t take you away anymore.”

They would know, wouldn’t they? Neither of you has been particularly subtle about your ‘definitely not anything more than friends with benefits’ arrangement. On Friday nights on the aircraft carrier, Ryland used to put his hand on your knee when he thought no one was watching. The first (of many) times Olesya caught sight of it — incidentally also the first time he did it, because, yeah, discretion isn’t really Ryland’s strength — she raised her eyebrows and toasted to you in a ‘good for you’ sort of gesture. Once, you convinced him to sneak into a storage closet to make out in the middle of the workday. Carl didn’t so much catch you as watch you drag Ryland off and wait outside the door, only to knock and very politely ask you to get a move on when you took too long. And that’s to say nothing of the last New Year’s Eve party, where Ryland put his arm around you during the countdown and, when it hit zero, kissed you right there, in front of everyone — god and Stratt (increasingly the same thing) and the world.

Point is, you’ve always liked it. Being his, in whatever small way you can be. Other people knowing you’re his. So you know for certain that you’d like this, too.

Your hand finds your lower belly and just for a moment, you imagine it: rounded with child, with a life that is equally yours and his, a life he put inside of you. You imagine a house with a garden, day trips down to the beach, squealing children, gray hairs on your heads, falling into his arms in a dying world.

“I wish,” you start to speak, but your voice falters, “wish I could have that. A future with you.”

The admission hangs between you, honey-sweet and sticky. And just like that, the roughness gives way to a tender intensity. Ryland chokes out a sound, something like a sob, and reaches for your hand. Normally, he would do that to pin it above your head, but this time, he only twines his fingers through yours and holds it.

When he kisses you, you can almost taste every unspoken word on your commingling tongues.

The stroke of his cock is slower now, but deeper somehow, like he’s really trying to bury something of himself in you. You kiss him back, close your eyes, and try to disappear into him, the drag of him in your sensitive cunt, the teasing edge of his tongue, the scent of his skin, the sound of his moans.

His hand, the one that isn’t still holding yours and propping him up over your body, moves between your bodies, finds your clit and rolls it between his fingers in that one specific rhythm that he knows drives you insane. Just before your eyes flutter shut, they meet his. Tears are clinging to his lashes.

This isn’t hooking up anymore. This isn’t casual, and it hasn’t been for a long time. It’s not rough, desperate sex born out of a desire to have some kind of control over a truly horrible situation. Neither of you is trying to forget yourselves anymore; if anything, you want to be present for this, remember every part of it, because — trite and clichéd and juvenile as it may sound — you’re making love, or the closest thing to it that you’re able to give each other.

The magnitude of it all crashes over you at the same time your orgasm does. You writhe and you curl your toes and you cry out Ryland’s name, all throughout your peak, because what else can you say, when his name, to you, means love and hope and heartache and awe and pain and ‘goodbye’ and ‘don’t go’ and home-away-from-home?

He comes inside you moments later, and you shudder with the feeling of his warm ejaculate coating your insides. He’s here, some part of his body is in your body, just like part of his soul is forever in your soul. You were a fool to believe it could ever be anything less than this.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against your collarbone, and you can do nothing but hold him close. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that stuff about keeping you here, I— it’s brave, what you’re doing. So brave. You’re incredible. I just... I don’t understand, sometimes, why the would would give me you, just to take it all away again.”

“I’m sorry, too.” For all the time you’ll never have. For letting him close enough to hurt you both in the first place. For all the things you want to say but can’t, even now, because no matter how many people will remember you for your bravery, deep down you are a coward, afraid of the wingspan of your own feelings and the way they might take flight if you speak of them out loud.

You don’t ask him what he chooses. Whatever answer he gives, it would break your heart, and you can’t fall apart right now, not when you need to be strong more than ever before — for the world, for Ryland. For Ryland. For Ryland.

And you realize, with a horrible, sinking feeling, that you are not as okay with dying anymore. The thought of it was a lot easier when it meant sacrificing yourself for a definition of the greater good that included him. It didn’t matter that you didn’t get enough time with him, because you had to die so that Ryland might live. There used to be a tragic, twisted logic to that; now it's all muddled.

You don’t know yet that this is the last time you will see Ryland Grace on this Earth. When he kisses you, it tastes the same as it always does: a little bit like a kiss goodbye.