wretched creature

Mountain's sitting on the edge of their bed with his laces half-done, and Swiss is standing in front of the closet mirror with a small pair of scissors and the turtleneck still on its hanger. He watches him slip the scissor blade under the plastic loop and snip it free and let the tag fall.

Swiss bends to pick the tag up. Mountain looks at his hands.

"New?" Mountain says.

"Mm." Swiss tosses the tag in the bin. "Saw it last week. Thought it worked well with the theme."

He tugs it on, and Mountain watches the motion of it — fabric over the dark braids of his hair, head emerging, the small shake to settle it, hem tugged straight at the waist. The collar comes up high. Higher than Swiss's usual. It frames the line of his jaw and covers his collarbones completely, and the sleeves stop halfway down Swiss's bicep, leaving most of his arms entirely bare.

The long lean lines of them, the quint swirls surfacing faint at the inside of his wrists where his pulse lives, dark trails that bloom and fade with his temperature. Swiss's gold chain, the one he never takes off, has disappeared somewhere under the collar.

Mountain has been married to Swiss for eleven years.

He knows the shape of every shirt Swiss owns. The weight of them off the hanger. The way each one sits on him and what each one does.

He does not know this one.

Swiss tilts his chin up and fishes the chain out from under the collar with two fingers, a small, automatic motion, and settles it back down so it lies flat against the dark fabric. A thin gold line against black. He smooths it once with his thumb.

Mountain's hands go still on his laces.

The quint swirls surface above the collar the way they always do when Swiss is warm, ink-dark trails climbing from beneath the fabric to the line of his jaw, framed now by the high black edge.

"What," Swiss says.

He's looking at himself in the mirror, hasn't turned around. He doesn't need to because eleven years of marriage has given Swiss a sixth sense for Mountain going still.

"Nothing," Mountain says.

Swiss turns around.

His gaze goes to Mountain's hands. Back up. He adjusts the chain again — the same small motion, two fingers at his throat, settling something that doesn't need it.

The quint at his wrists answers the chain. Dark where the gold is bright against the black. Mountain has known the map of Swiss's quint for years, knows where it surfaces and when, and he knows that the swirls at the wrists mean Swiss is already warm.

They haven't even left the apartment.

"Mountain."

"We can't be late," Mountain says. "Emo night is going to be busy."

Swiss looks at him for one more moment. His mouth does the thing it does before a smile when he's decided not to deploy one.

"Then we should go," he says.

He takes his jacket from the hook and shrugs it on, and Mountain finishes his laces with hands that have been doing this for forty years and are currently behaving like they have not, and neither of them says anything else about it.

This is, Mountain reflects, the problem.

· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·

Emo night is, in fact, busy.

Mountain is good at busy.

He has worked the door and the floor at Tempt long enough that the shape of a Friday is familiar in his hands and he settles into it slowly, with his full weight.

The first hour is manageable.

Swiss is on the rails. Watching the crowd, doing the slow read of the room he does at the top of every shift before he inevitably gets pulled somewhere else. From Mountain's post at the door he can see Swiss in profile against the violet wash, the chain a fine bright line against the black collar.

The quint at Swiss's wrists has not changed since the apartment.

Mountain works the door. He knows the faces of the regulars and he greets the unfamiliar ones with a warm nod that is just curt enough that no one has ever seen it as permission. His attention drifts towards Swiss for a moment, because part of the job means knowing where Swiss is in the room at all times.

The second hour the room thickens. Fog. Bodies. The bass-line of whatever Cumulus has decided constitutes emo night, which is, charitably, broad.

This is fine.

The club lights for emo night run violet and cold and they do something to the quint swirls that apartment lighting does not. They catch in the dark, the inky trails at Swiss's throat picking up the purple wash and holding it. Mountain can see them from across the floor because he is massive with an unobstructed sightline to most of the room.

This is a coincidence.

Swiss moves through the crowd the way he always does — warm, efficient, a hand on a shoulder, a laugh at the right moment, the specific economy of a ghoul who has worked a room for a over a decade and knows exactly how much of himself to spend and where. Mountain has watched this for years.

He watches it now.

Mountain looks at the next ID.

He hands it back. Nods the person in.

Swiss has been pulled to the bar.

Mountain can see him from the door, Cumulus on one side, Swiss on the other, the two of them working together the way they have for years. Swiss leans to hand a drink to a regular and Mountain watches the turtleneck collar shift exactly half an inch and reveal a finger's width of quint at the side of his throat that hadn't been visible an hour ago.

Darker.

Swiss turns away and reaches for the top shelf.

The long line of his arm extends above his head, the quint at the inside of his elbow blooming where the skin stretches, the tendon at his wrist standing taut under the skin.

Swiss brings the bottle down. Pours. His forearm flexes once when he tips the bottle and once when he sets it back down, and Mountain watches the whole sequence because Mountain has, at this point, no choice in the matter.

Swiss laughs at something Cumulus says. The chain catches the light, a thin gold flash against the black. He reaches up again and the hem of the turtleneck rides up one inch above his waistband.

Mountain has to physically reset his attention by looking at his own hands.

The florals across his knuckles. He counts the petals on his index finger. There are seven. There have been seven for twenty years.

This helps a moderate amount.

Somewhere in the third hour Mountain clocks a problem at table seven.

Two ghouls. The way they're sitting has shifted in the last ten minutes from drinking-together to about-to-make-a-decision, and Mountain knows the look the way he knows the weather. He has roughly four minutes.

He intercepts Swiss as he's leaving the bar.

Mountain stands close enough to speak low, which means close enough to smell him, warm and specific, the particular blend Mountain knows by heart — smoke and cedar and the air before a storm.

The quint at the inside of Swiss's wrist is markedly darker than it was at the apartment.

"Seven," Mountain says.

Swiss glances over Mountain's shoulder. Reads the table in about a second.

"I've got it."

"I can—"

"You're at the door. I've got it."

Mountain goes back to the door. He turns. Watches.

Swiss crosses the floor with an unhurried gait. He's handled this in worse rooms than this one, in worse decades than this one, with worse company than two emo-night ghouls who picked the wrong Friday to have feelings at each other. Swiss reaches the table and Mountain watches him say something low and short, and watches both ghouls fail to take the offered exit.

One of them tells Swiss, without looking at him, to mind his own business. The other stands. The first stands faster. Swiss is already moving.

He reaches between them. Closes one hand at the back of each ghoul's neck and lifts.

Both feet off the floor. Briefly. Long enough to make the point.

Mountain's mouth goes dry.

In the violet wash he can see Swiss's shoulder blades move under the fabric. The deltoid, working. The line down his spine where the turtleneck pulls taut between his shoulders and the small of his back. The shirt fits him without forgiveness, which is information Mountain was not, frankly, prepared to receive.

Swiss sets the ghouls down at the door, says something to each of them that Mountain can't hear, releases them, and watches them go. The quint at his throat has bloomed visibly darker in the time it took to do the thing.

Mountain can see it before Swiss turns to him.

"Seven's clear," Swiss says easily.

"Mhm."

Swiss looks at him.

"You're staring."

"I'm working."

"You're staring while working."

"I could've handled it."

"Could've," Swiss agrees. "But I wanted to."

Swiss goes back to the stage rails. Mountain watches the back of him go, the line of the turtleneck, the way his black pants are pulled across his ass.

He thinks about this as little as possible.

Which is to say, constantly.

The fourth hour is Rain's closing set.

The lights drop to cold white. The room goes quiet the way it always does when Rain is working. Conversations dropping into the lower register, the attention of the room reorienting toward the stage. Mountain is at his post and his attention is on the room because that is the job, and his attention is also on Swiss, because that is also the job.

Mountain looks at his hands.

The cuffs of his shirt have ridden down somewhere in the last hour. He pushes the left one back up to the elbow. Then the right. Slow. Methodical. The florals climb past the cuff and keep going, the dense work that wraps the inside of his forearm, the airier composition at the elbow where the design opens. Mountain considers his hands when he's done, broad and tattooed and steady, and decides that they will do.

He flexes his right hand once. Closes it. Opens it.

Yes. It will do.

Rain's set ends. Swiss blinks once and goes back to the bar for last call. Mountain returns his attention to the door, watching as people slowly start to leave, some staying for what comes after.

The next hour passes the way the last hour of a Friday passes, which is to say it doesn't quite. Mountain is aware the entire time of how dark the quint at Swiss's wrists has become.

It's dark.

Darker than Mountain has seen it outside of their apartment in some time.

· · · — 𖥸 · 𓃹 · 𖥸 — · · ·

The last client leaves at two.

Swiss is already wiping his hands on a bar towel when Mountain crosses the floor. He's been counting too, Swiss runs the same clock Mountain does. The hand Mountain settles at the small of his back is not information. It's intent.

Swiss says goodnight to Cumulus without explaining anything, because Cumulus has been fluent in this language for several years and has the good grace not to comment.

Mountain's hand stays at the small of Swiss's back until they clear the floor. He can feel the heat of Swiss through the turtleneck. He could feel it through twice the turtleneck. He could feel it through a wall.

Swiss is running north of where he should be on a Friday at two a.m. after a busy shift, and Mountain, who has been keeping his hands to himself with the careful discipline of a ghoul who knows exactly what he is and exactly what his husband is doing to him, does not bother keeping them to himself for the length of the hallway.

His hand drops from the small of Swiss's back to the curve of his ass, palm flat, fingers spread, the grip Mountain has been thinking about for hours. The one that has been waiting at the front of his attention since hour three when Swiss walked away from him toward the rail. Mountain settles his hand there and squeezes once.

"Mountain—"

Mountain's other hand finds Swiss's bare arm. The bicep where the sleeve ends. The skin Mountain has been watching all night and not touching, warm under his fingers, the quint at the inside of Swiss's elbow surfacing dark against his thumb when Mountain wraps his hand around the muscle.

"Keep walking," Mountain says.

Swiss keeps walking.

He keeps walking with Mountain's hand on his ass and Mountain's other hand brushing his bare arm, the quint swirls on the back of his neck steadily growing darker above the collar.

The bathroom is six feet away, and Swiss has not, in eleven years of marriage, ever made it across a hallway with Mountain's hands on him without saying something insufferable about it.

He's quiet.

That, more than anything, tells Mountain how the next ten minutes are going to go.

The bathroom at the back of Tempt is not romantic. It has a lock, a backlit mirror, a lewd Ifrit mural and two feet of floor space between the door and the sink, and Mountain, who fills most of it.

Swiss steps in first.

Mountain follows. Reaches past him. Turns the lock.

The click is small. Final.

Swiss is already turning to face him, already tipping his chin up the half-inch that brings his throat into the light and Mountain takes one step forward and braces both hands on the wall on either side of Swiss's head. Swiss's back meets the tile with a sound that is less collision and more decision.

"You," Mountain says, "have been doing that all night."

"Took you hours," Swiss says.

His voice is low. Not quiet — Swiss is not quiet, has never been quiet, would not know how to be quiet if you paid him — but pitched for the two feet of floor space between them. His chin is tipped up against the tile and his throat is right there in the cold bathroom light and the quint at his collar has bloomed dark enough that Mountain can see it move when Swiss swallows.

"Hours," Mountain says.

"Mhm." Swiss adjusts the chain at his throat. Two fingers. The same automatic motion he has been doing since the apartment, except now Mountain is six inches away and watching his husband touch his own throat in front of him and Swiss knows it. "Slow night for you."

Mountain catches Swiss's wrist.

Not hard. Just lifts it away from the chain and holds it there, between them, his thumb settling against the inside of Swiss's wrist where the quint swirls are darker than Mountain has ever seen them outside their bed. Swiss's pulse is going. Mountain can feel it thrum under the pad of his thumb.

He slowly drags his thumb up the inside of Swiss's wrist. Follows the dark line of quint where it surfaces and disappears under the cuff of the short sleeve. Swiss exhales through his nose and his fingers twitch in Mountain's grip and the quint blooms visibly darker under Mountain's thumb in real time, responsive to contact in the way Swiss only is when he's already hot, which is, Mountain notices with some satisfaction, extremely.

"Mountain," Swiss says.

"Mm."

"You going to do something or are we doing wrist meditation?"

Mountain kisses him.

Not soft. Not a question. The kind of kiss Mountain deploys when he is done negotiating with himself, one hand still wrapped around Swiss's wrist and the other braced flat against the tile above his shoulder. Swiss makes a sound into it, open, immediate, unembarrassed, and tips his head back, letting Mountain take everything he wants.

Which is, currently, a lot.

Mountain bites. Not the mouth — the jaw, the underside of it, the place where the quint trails climb up from the collar and disappear into Swiss's hairline. Swiss's free hand comes up and fists in the front of Mountain's shirt and pulls, and Mountain doesn't move, because the futility of pulling at Mountain is part of the language.

"Turtleneck," Mountain says, against his throat.

"What about it."

"Off."

"Mm." Swiss tips his head further back to give Mountain better access, which is not, technically, agreement. "Make me."

Mountain steps back half an inch.

The wall is fine. The wall has been fine for eleven years of marriage and countless bathrooms and Mountain has nothing against it, but he has a better idea.

He gets one hand under Swiss's thigh.

"Up," he says.

Swiss has approximately one second to register what's happening before Mountain lifts him, both hands now, one under each thigh, the full weight of Swiss off the floor without ceremony.

Swiss makes a sound that he will not ever admit to as Mountain pivots them the two feet to the counter and sets him down on the edge of it, next to the sink, the cold of the porcelain registering through the fabric of Swiss's pants and pulling another sound out of him that he does not bother stifling.

Mountain steps into the space between Swiss's knees.

"Better?" Swiss says.

"Mhm."

Swiss laughs, which Mountain takes as permission to bite at the jaw he's been thinking about for far too many hours.

The new angle is everything Mountain wanted it to be.

Swiss's throat is right there. The chain. The collar. The dark bloom of quint where the fabric ends and the skin begins. Mountain doesn't have to bend, he can simply put his mouth on Swiss's throat, can hold him there with one broad hand at the back of his neck and the other at his hip.

Swiss makes a sound that is much closer to a moan than either of them is comfortable with given the door situation.

Mountain gets his hands at the hem of the turtleneck. Starts to push it up and stops, because Swiss has caught his wrists this time, both of them, and is holding them at his waist.

Mountain looks at him.

Swiss looks back. The chain is sitting crooked from where Mountain bit at his jaw. His mouth is wet. The quint at his throat is dark enough now that the trails read as ink against his skin, climbing and branching, and his eyes have gone into their amber glow.

"Keep it on," Swiss says.

Mountain's hands go still at Swiss's waist.

"Yeah?"

"You've been looking at it for hours." Swiss tugs the hem down himself. Settles it. "Look at it some more."

The sound Mountain makes is not a word.

He gets his hands under the hem from beneath instead — palms up the bare skin of Swiss's sides, ribs, sternum, the warm dark places where the quint pools and shifts under Mountain's fingers. Swiss arches into it and Mountain bends and bites at the spot just below Swiss's ear where the turtleneck collar meets skin.

"Fuck," Swiss breathes, against his throat. "Mountain."

"Yeah?" he says, into Swiss's throat.

"Yeah."

Mountain works Swiss's belt open one-handed with the ease of a ghoul who has done this in worse conditions and in less light, and then his hand is on Swiss's hip, stepping deeper into the cradle of his thighs.

The heat of him registers immediately.

Swiss is hot in the way Swiss is always hot, the fire ghoul in his quint mix, the warmest part of any room he is in — and Mountain, who is pure earth and runs cool by comparison, has been married long enough to know exactly what the gap between their temperatures does when there's nothing but a thin layer of fabric between them.

Swiss makes a sound that gets caught somewhere in his throat.

"There," Mountain murmurs, into the place behind his ear.

Swiss's hands find the front of Mountain's shirt.

The top button gives. Then the next. Swiss is working from the top down while Mountain gets his own belt open.

He does it without looking. Buckle, button, zip — easy muscle memory. He gets it open and lets it hang and brings his hand back to Swiss's hip just as Swiss reaches the last button of his shirt and pushes the fabric aside.

Swiss's palms land flat against Mountain's chest.

The sound Swiss makes is low, his hands sliding up and over Mountain's pecs and down across his ribs and around to the small of his back, mapping skin he has known for years.

"Fuck," Swiss says, against Mountain's collarbone.

"Mm."

"You—"

"Mhm."

Swiss laughs, breathless. His hands settle at Mountain's waist, thumbs hooking into the open waistband.

"Come here," Swiss says.

Mountain does.

He rolls his hips. Once, slow. Skin against skin now, the heat of Swiss against him without fabric in the way, and Swiss's whole body registers it — the gasp catching audibly behind the collar of the turtleneck, the way his hands tighten at Mountain's waist, the way his head goes back against the mirror with a soft thunk they will both feel tomorrow.

The Jacob's ladder makes itself known in the drag.

Each bead of Swiss's piercing pressed between them where they're flush, the additional texture of metal warm from Swiss's body.

Mountain gets his hand between them.

He takes his time. The angle from the counter is good. Swiss seated, Mountain standing, the work happening where his hand can do what it needs to do. Mountain wraps his palm around both of them with the slow deliberateness of a ghoul who has been thinking about this for at least four hours and is not going to rush the moment of contact.

The fit is…

Mountain's hands are broad. His fingers do not, technically, close all the way around both of them, but. Swiss's cock pressed against his own, both of them held in Mountain's palm, the ladder beads under his thumb on one side and the smooth length of Mountain's own cock on the other — it leaves him breathless.

"Mountain—"

"Mm."

Swiss is leaking.

Mountain can feel it. Slick at the head, sliding down where Mountain's thumb has settled. He drags his thumb up through it once, spreading it down the length of Swiss and his own, easing the friction the only way the bathroom is going to provide for them tonight. Swiss makes a sound that is significantly more sound than he intended to make.

The heat differential registers properly with skin involved.

Swiss is hot in Mountain's palm, hotter than Mountain has ever felt him, the fire-multi running flat-out, every pulse of his cock registering as a small spike of additional heat against the cool of Mountain's hand. Mountain, who has stopped managing his composure ten minutes ago, makes a low sound into the side of Swiss's neck that he doesn't recognize as his own.

Swiss looks down.

His hands are braced on the counter behind him. His head has come forward from the mirror to watch. Mountain's hand, the florals across the knuckles, the dense ink wrapping the inside of the wrist where it disappears under the rolled cuff.

"Fuck," Swiss says.

It's not a curse. It's closer to a prayer.

Mountain strokes once. Slow. Full length, base to tip, the slick from Swiss's leaking making it possible, the ladder beads dragging under his palm in deliberate sequence, and Swiss's eyes go to half and his head drops back to the mirror and Mountain feels Swiss's heat spike against his hand in real time.

"Yeah?" Mountain says.

Swiss moans with his whole chest.

Mountain takes it as a yes.

Mountain rolls his hips again. Slower. The full sequence. Swiss bites down on a sound and Mountain can feel the heat coming off him in waves now, his temperature climbing into the place where the quint blooms visibly darker in real time, his whole throat ink-dark above the collar.

"You're gonna ruin the turtleneck," Mountain says.

"I will end you," Swiss groans.

Mountain does it again. Counts to four in his head between rolls of his hips, strokes of his hand. Each one slow and deliberate and complete and Swiss is making sounds now that are not stifled enough, the heat of him going up another degree with every pass, his hand now tight on the back of Mountain's neck and his other hand braced against the counter.

Sweat drips down Swiss's jaw and disappears below the collar of the turtleneck.

Mountain wants to see.

He drags his hand up from the small of Swiss's back, bringing the hem of the turtleneck with it.

The fabric goes inch by inch, and what Mountain finds underneath is exactly the disaster he suspected — Swiss is soaked. The turtleneck has been trapping the heat against him and Swiss has been running flat-out for at least an hour. The skin Mountain reveals is glistening, slick where the sweat has gathered at his sternum and his ribs and the cut of his abs, the quint blooming dark down the centre of his chest in real time as the fabric clears it.

Mountain bunches the fabric in his fist, exposing him. Wet skin. Dark quint. The two gold barbells at his nipples catching the bathroom light, the contrast of bright metal against the flush of his chest, his stomach rising and falling fast with the breath he is not properly catching.

Mountain drops his head.

Drags his tongue up the centre of Swiss's sternum and detours.

His mouth finds the right nipple first. The gold barbell is cool against his tongue and the skin around it is not, flushed dark and tight. Mountain closes his mouth around it and tugs once with his teeth, careful, the metal warm and slick between them. Swiss makes a sound he doesn't have the discipline left to stifle.

Mountain catches the bar with his tongue. Drags it.

Swiss's hand fists hard in the back of Mountain's hair.

Mountain stays there. Counts. Slow and deliberate and complete — and then he moves. Up. Across. Finds the hollow at the base of Swiss's throat where the chain has been catching all night, where the sweat has pooled deepest, and presses his tongue into it.

Swiss's whole body jerks.

The sound he makes is raw and low and entirely unsuited to a bathroom with a door and a closing crew on the other side of it, and Mountain feels the spike of Swiss's heat against his hand and against his mouth simultaneously.

Mountain's hand does not stop.

He strokes once. Slow. Full length. The ladder beads dragging under his palm and the slick easing the friction and Swiss's cock pulsing hot against his own, all of it happening while Mountain's mouth is at the base of Swiss's throat tasting years of marriage and several hours of restraint at the same time.

Mountain lifts his head.

Looks at him.

Swiss looks back. His nipples are tight. His abs are flexing with every roll of Mountain's hips. The turtleneck is bunched at his collarbones in Mountain's fist and the hem is right there at his mouth and Swiss does not need to be told.

Swiss gets his teeth into it.

Pulls a mouthful of black fabric between them, biting down on it because his hands are occupied, one fisted in the back of Mountain's hair and one braced on the counter behind him.

Mountain makes a sound at the sight of it that is entirely undone.

"Look at you," Mountain breathes.

The turtleneck is in his teeth. His eyes are wet. The chain is crooked against the dark bloom of quint at his throat, his nipples gold-bright above the sweat-slick of his stomach, breathing through his nose in short controlled bursts and losing the controlled part with every roll of Mountain's hips.

"Hours," Mountain says again, into his throat.

"Mm-hmm."

"You wanted me to look."

Swiss bites down harder on the collar.

He nods.

It's the nod that does it. The small, undone, yes I did this to you on purpose nod with the turtleneck in his teeth and the quint at his throat moving with every breath he isn't taking properly. Mountain's hand tightens around them both and his hips do not stop and his mouth finds the underside of Swiss's jaw again.

Swiss's hand fists harder in Mountain's hair.

He's close. Mountain knows it the way he can always feel spring. The heat climbing another degree, the pulse against his palm going fast, sounds losing their shape entirely.

Mountain strokes slower. Drags it out. The ladder beads passing under his palm one by one, the slick from Swiss easing the way of it, Swiss's cock pulsing hot and wet against Mountain's own where they're held together in Mountain's fist.

"Let me hear it," Mountain says, into his throat.

Swiss makes a sound around the fabric that is not quite no and not quite yes.

"Swiss."

Swiss's eyes are wet. His hand is shaking against the counter. He looks down between them, at Mountain's hand wrapped around both of them, the tattoos, his own cock leaking visibly over Mountain's thumb where it feels like he's been worked for an hour but has, in all reality, only been the better part of six minutes.

Swiss comes with Mountain's name on his tongue, muffled behind black fabric. His whole body goes rigid in Mountain's hand, his hips jerking forward into Mountain's grip, the heat of him spiking so high that Mountain feels it through his palm and through his own cock pressed against Swiss's.

Swiss comes hard. Wet. The mess of it slicking down Mountain's hand and between them and across Swiss's own stomach, and Mountain does not stop stroking him through it, the slow drag of his palm working Swiss down from the spike of it while Swiss shakes against him.

Swiss lets the turtleneck fall from his teeth.

"Mountain—" he says, wrecked. "Mountain."

Mountain strokes twice more.

The first one is for sensation — Swiss's release slicking everything, Mountain still wrapped around them both, his own cock pulsing against the wet drag of Swiss's stomach and Swiss's softening cock and Swiss's hand and the ladder beads still pressed between them.

The second is for the please in it. Swiss wrecked. Swiss begging. Swiss saying his name like Mountain saying his name back would be enough to keep him alive in this bathroom, and Mountain doesn't have it in him to make Swiss wait.

He rolls his hips three more times.

Not slow now.

How could it be, with Swiss's hand on the back of his neck pulling him in and Swiss's mouth at his ear breathing yeah, c'mon, c'mon.

Mountain comes with his face pressed into the place where the collar meets Swiss's jaw, his hand still wrapped around them both, his hips pressed flush into Swiss's, the sound he makes low and shocked and entirely his own.

He lifts his head. His forehead settles against Swiss's.

He stays there.

His hand still cradling both of them. His hips not moving. Their breath catching in the space between them. Mountain's clean hand comes up and settles at the back of Swiss's neck where the skin is hot and damp and for a moment — they just breathe.

The bathroom is not romantic.

It is also not quiet, and it is also not clean.

The sink is dripping. The bass through the wall has dropped to the cleanup mix, which means Cumulus has started the close, which means they have approximately eight minutes before someone politely needs the bathroom.

Mountain's hand between them is sticky. The turtleneck is wet where Swiss's mouth was, stretched at the collar. The gold chain is sitting at a forty-five-degree angle. The quint at Swiss's throat is somehow darker than the fabric, still moving visibly with the heat coming off him.

Swiss tips his forehead against Mountain's collarbone and groans.

"Good shift?" Mountain asks.

Swiss laughs, which is mostly an exhale.

"Terrible shift," he says. "You were right there the whole time."

He can feel Mountain's chest move.

It might be a laugh. It's the closest Mountain gets.