#mossratwrites

The switch had been jarring, at first. You’d been so patient, so gentlemanly in those first days after he’d impulsively kissed you in the empty set of a hospital parking lot. Not the most romantic setting for your first kiss, sure, but you’d looked so damn handsome under the wan gleam of the moon, and he’d been buzzing with adrenaline from leaping out of a fifth story window an hour prior, so he just couldn’t help it.

Those following days had been mortifying for him—but he suspects merely amusing for you, as you waited for him not to panic whenever you tried bringing it up. He noticed the lingering touches, the hungry sweep of your eyes when you’d duck into his trailer to call him to set, the fleeting glances to his mouth while he spoke. Anyone could’ve read that as what it was. And Colt did, for the most part.

But despite his occupation consisting of being thrown off buildings and set on fire on a regular basis, Colt can be quite the coward. Especially when it comes to pretty, outrageously charming men.

It took him a week and some change to muster up the courage to properly ask you out, which only stepped into his reach upon realizing that if you hadn’t gone running for the hills yet, then you probably wouldn’t any time soon. And maybe after a particularly lewd dream involving you, too, though that he'll keep to himself.

“Colt,” he feels vibrate against the hollow of his throat. He hums absently, fumbling for the back of your shirt, only to shove it out of the way and slide his palms up your warm back. “Stop thinking.”

“Yep, right, sorry. No more thinking. All empty up here. Starting now.”

Your airy puff of laughter falls against his overheated skin, drawing up goosebumps in its wake. His fingers flex against the broad expanse of your back.

He’s half-hard already, though he’s certain it can’t have been more than a few minutes since you hauled him into this tiny bathroom, hidden away in the mansion rented out for the wrap party. Much to his embarrassment, you’re quick to take note of this, and reach down to drag your knuckles along the top of his belt, hooked underneath his shirt.

“Eager,” you hum, low as if to yourself. With a final kiss to his pulse point, you straighten back to eye level. You meet his gaze, steady and collected as ever, and Colt has the itching urge to shrivel under your quiet scrutiny, feeling heat bloom up his face, near feverish at the tips of his ears. He clutches you tighter, drawing you in closer in hopes of getting your mouth back on his, but you only smile—so tender it’s almost patronizing, and his cock gives a feeble throb in his jeans.

“You really want this, huh, angel?”

The pet name dunks him into a full-body warmth, pooling like slow-moving magma low in his belly. A frustrated sort of groan wobbles out of him, lunging forth in search of another kiss. Ever quick, you dodge him, sliding the hand in his hair down to his jaw, where it grips him steadily. You click your tongue a few times in soft reproach, but press a thigh to his aching crotch nonetheless.

“You look so pretty like this, you know that? I figured I’d appreciate the view for a minute, but it seems someone’s too needy.”

Your name falls from his lips in a ragged huff, unbalanced and more pathetic-sounding than he’d like to admit. His hips, driven by their own volition, roll in erratic grinds against the meat of your thigh, seeking far more than what the meager friction provides.

You smile at him once more before pressing a lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth, then to his chin, and finally to his lips. Allowing him to part your own with his tongue, your second hand dutifully works on his belt and fly. His heart kicks out wildly, a jackrabbit against his breastbone, when you manage to shove his jeans halfway down his thighs with one hand.

A few seconds of nothing at all precedes the sensation of your hand cupping the tented front of his boxer briefs, and it’s in spite of himself that a wet moan cracks through his chest. You swallow the sound happily, thumb sweetly scrubbing across his bearded jawline while your palm follows the length of him, up and down.

“Hmmn—Jesus,” he manages, molars gritted to dust as he tries not to buck too desperately into your warm hand. Only grinds and chases after it when you teasingly withdraw.

There isn’t a single light on in the bathroom, but the moonlight pours in through the tiny overhead window and somehow you stand out in stark relief against the dim blue background. Your eyes, faintly narrowed and a far darker shade than usual, track his every movement, attention evenly split between his face and the rolling of his hips. You’re looking at him as though studying some fascinating experiment, drinking in every minute reaction at the smallest exploratory motions of your hand. Colt burns with arousal.

“Could you come like this?” You ask after an amount of time that is completely lost on him, and the sudden breathy quality of your voice sounds something like awe. Like you’ve made some big, beautiful breakthrough.

Colt, on the other hand, is clawing at your back in a way that’s sure to leave marks and too focused on the blissful angle he’s found, dragging his cock right up against the hollow of your palm. It takes a moment for your words to reach him, and an even longer one for him to piece together their meaning.

“Mhm,” he hums, forehead meeting your shoulder, suddenly feeling it very heavy.

In return, you hum as well, learning the rhythm of his pelvis and matching it, slower yet firmer. Colt’s never been one for this sort of stimulation—more often than not the texture of his boxers makes it all more uncomfortable than pleasurable, but the sheer, fiery want swarming him head to toe could make him come with you just uttering the order.

He’s brought back, fleeting but very vividly in the way drunken abstraction often is, to the dream he had of you—no more than a few nights back.

In it, your skin had been so warm under his fingers, your voice so low and wrecked and your eyes lit with such desire he’d woken up hard and panting and mournfully empty.

The memory alone draws a little surge of pleasure forth, twisting into your neck, sucking in your familiar scent with mounting desperation. His skin crawls with hot anticipation, rutting quicker, harder against your deft hand.

Pleasure rolls over itself, snowballing deep in his navel, sparking down his sweat-sticky thighs; he sucks in a shuddering breath and—

You pull away.

He moans in frustrated dismay, ass coming off the wall entirely, chasing after your retreating palm, but within seconds the building crescendo of his orgasm has wilted away, back to a low baseline of thrumming arousal.

You shush him when he makes another pitiful sound into your clothed shoulder, absentmindedly carding your fingers through the hair at his crown. He will admit, the feeling does somewhat soothe the ache of a denied orgasm. A little.

“We’ve got all night, no need to rush.”

Colt huffs. “We’re in a bathroom at a Hollywood party, if there was ever the need for a quickie, it’d be right now.”

Your answering laugh is quiet and deep in the chest, and it rumbles through his own and settles there, warm.

“Not like anyone will come looking for us. Besides…” You pull back, gripping onto his hair just enough to meet his eye. “You’d stay here all night if I asked you to, wouldn’t you?”

Colt blinks. Considers, quite seriously, the risk he must be at of spontaneously combusting. His cock throbs and throbs, and the way you’re looking at him, keeping a lovingly firm hold on his hair, only makes matters worse.

He doesn’t give you the satisfaction of answering that question; you both already know the answer, anyway.

Next your hands find his waistband, hooking two fingers into either side and sliding it down just enough to free his cock.

It isn’t the first time you’ve seen it, but the satisfied sound you make shoots a pulse of heat straight down into it. You reach down, encircle the base with your clever fingers, and Colt sags against the wall. He pulls one hand out from your shirt to latch on to your tricep, shoving out a shuddering exhale.

“Look at you,” you croon, beginning to languidly pump your fist, all loose and steady. Colt’s thighs quiver.

You’re gonna be the death of him. He just knows it, down to his bones.

“Please,” he grits out, hoping to meet your gaze and inspire some kindness but you keep your own low, fascinated by the ruddy, leaking image of his dick twitching in your fist.

You make an acknowledging sound, but Colt has a feeling you aren’t really getting it. The stimulation is somehow too much and not enough, all at once. He gives a few tentative rolls into the circle of your fist, and when you utter no word of dissent, he begins fucking into it in earnest.

His moan falls muffled into your throat, a place where he comes to realize he could stay forever, breathing you in, getting off on your clever hands and dizzying words.

“What would they all think out there, huh? Seeing you like this. So desperate to come.”

He’s close again already; his pace grows arrhythmic, shallow, sucking at the base of your throat when he isn’t tucking low moans into the skin there.

Your free hand smoothes down the back of his head in an almost petting gesture, thumbing his tip once before pulling away entirely.

Colt’s moan warps, halfway through, into a strained sob, bucking into empty space as his cock weeps pre onto the tile below. He cries out your name, a dragged-out sound of raw need.

“I know, I know,” you sigh into his hair, still stroking it with sure fingers.

“You’re being mean,” Colt whines against you, the arm still crossed over your back dropping to your hip and palming it insistently.

“I just wanna make you feel good,” you reply, the fan of your breath sending shivers down his sweaty back. “At least until I can get you in my bed and fuck you properly.”

Shit—Colt damn near comes from that alone. He whines and his hips jerk wildly, taken on life of their own. For the first time since he’s gotten to know you, he tries very hard not to think about you fucking him within an inch of his life, lest he comes untouched, and as much as he wants to release all the circling, built-up pleasure in him he wants to do it when you let him.

So, he just screws his eyes shut, and mumbles a weak, “okay.”

“Attaboy,” you tease, squeezing the nape of his neck once before returning your free hand to his dick.

A steady breath rolls over into a fractured hum, stretching on with your sparse, gentle touches—a thumb across his slit, a drag of knuckles down the underside, then a graze to his balls. Sweat slides down his heaving chest, longing to bury himself back into you but held back by your hand on his nape.

Observing his slow unspooling, you make a low sound, vaguely resembling a growl.

“God, I wish I could fuck you right now,” you lament, squeezing the head of his cock lightly. Colt yelps, skull knocking against the wallpaper. He eyes you through the narrowed slits of his eyes, draws up something he hopes looks like a smirk.

“You could.”

You shake your head. “No. I really want to take my time with that.”

Colt groans—more agitated than pleasured this time, and digs his thumb into the flesh right above the curve of your hip bone. Your ministrations on him are far more relaxed now, lax and distracted, like some absentminded reflex, and it should be frustrating, but he finds himself reluctantly enjoying it. Your collectedness before his shaky, desperate frame.

Your palm begins making these tight, quick circling motions against his tip, thumbing underneath the head with a pointedness so determined he's certain you'll let him come this time. His body responds in kind, kicking into high-gear and frantically chasing release. A very faint, very fleeting thought crosses his mind that you never even had to spit into your palm—he's damn near soaked your palm and fingers with a seemingly endless supply of precome, and the glide is so utterly frictionless, product of your clever motions and his overwhelming want that it makes his head spin.

He's hardly aware of how loud he's being, bucking like an animal into your hand, baring his throat for your nipping teeth, unraveling in your firm hold. You murmur into his skin, things that are completely lost on him amidst the roaring of blood in his ears, the deluge of pleasure bursting through him—so acute it makes his eyes prickle and his vision warp.

It builds quicker than ever, almost too intensely, his steady quivers deepening into involuntary, full-body jerks. His jaw falls open right as he feels himself approaching the summit, tensing in preparation.

Then you're gone again, and he's ripped right back down. With a wet sob, his tears finally spill over, searing against his warm cheeks. He knows better than to seek you out with his hips again—but they don't seem to get the memo and continue twitching, grinding into nothing.

His mind is empty, scraped hollow and reduced to its most basic instincts; he doesn't register his own frenzied weeping or the near bruising grip he has on you, only tightening as his pleasure slips away like a receding tide. All that he processes is his arousal, so trapped and pressurized it almost hurts, and you, brushing the hair out of his eyes and cooing, as though comforting a small, startled animal.

"Please, please," Colt manages, voice thick with tears, wet-cheeked and aching. You tut softly, and lean in to kiss each streak of salt on his face. It's so tender it makes Colt choke on a sad bleat, sniffling.

"You think you can do one more?" you ask, and maybe if he weren't so muddleheaded he'd catch the fond, facetious lilt of your tone, but panic rises before he can quell it, and his grip on you tightens abruptly. Tears threaten to gather again.

"No, no—I can't, please, I can't do it, I'm sorry—"

"Hey, hey." His teeth clamp shut, blinking hard so your warm expression comes into focus through his tears. "I was joking, angel. You've been so good, so patient. I think you deserve to come, hm?"

Colt's tongue, suddenly, feels stuck to his palate, thick like honey. He nods, though, quite fervently, and flushes warm all over at your sweet answering smile. You lean in to kiss him, closing the gap between your chests and caging him in with your forearm pressed to the wall behind him.

When you finally take him again, it's with a firm, committed grip and quick motions. You're crowded in so close to him he can barely fuck into your fist, pelvis trapped against the wall. He's completely at your mercy, subject to whatever you may decide as his bliss swells, even quicker this time around.

He trusts you, and the way you're looking at him, swiping rogue tears away with your free hand on his cheek, entranced by how he cries—it all makes him shudder.

Pleasure becomes greater than him, so all-encompassing he can't keep his eyes open, rolling so fiercely through his limbs like a ceaseless electric current he briefly fears his legs giving out. It's sharp and blunt and sweltering all at once, crowding into every inch of him, throbbing in his cock, pouring out into your fist.

You watch him unblinkingly.

His own orgasm takes him by surprise. Strikes all at once, so intense he's silent through most of it, shaking and spurting over your hand, onto the floor below. He pulses with it, wave after wave of devastating pleasure, and you pump him through and whisper candied praise into the shell of his ear, coaxing every last drop of come and shudder of bliss out of him, until he sinks against you with a high moan, spent.

His cock continues to twitch through the aftershocks, softening in your still palm, which you're kind enough not to move anymore. His head feels stuffed full of cotton and air, though terribly heavy against your shoulder. Your arm comes off the wall, running a hand along his firm upper arm.

"I love watching you come," you chirp, all warm and lighthearted like you've just won the lottery. Colt grumbles incomprehensibly against your collarbone, letting his eyes slide shut as the world drifts back to him in chunks. You soon release his arm to make him decent, keeping your dirtied hand hovering off to the side.

"Okay," you say, wrapping an arm around his mid back. You pull him off the wall, and turn him over—he goes like a ragdoll in your grip. "There you go, good?" you ask once plopped him down on the toilet seat lid.

Colt manages an inelegant nod, humming his confirmation for good measure. He's better than good—better than great, in fact, but no such word is really coming to mind at the moment and he doesn't feel like speaking, anyway.

You nudge his legs apart in order to crouch down between them. With your elbows perched atop his knees, you peer up at him, eyeing him thoughtfully to make sure he's being honest.

He leans into your hand when you reach for his cheek like a purring cat, certain that were he able, he absolutely would be doing so. Your thumb stretches out, delicately tracing the slightly puffy skin under his right eye, and he watches, then, as your gaze falls to your other hand, still bearing some pale streaks of his come. You quietly regard it, look at him thoughtfully, and then bring your knuckles to your mouth.

His crotch throbs when you lick the come right off your skin, holding his eye with something like a challenge gleaming in your own. You move to your thumb next, sweeping your tongue across the webbing at the base of it. You peer up at him through the fan of your eyelashes and Colt thinks he could almost get hard again, just by watching you. He doesn't think he's ever watched something more erotic, and it's in a stranger's bathroom at a wrap party after the most intense orgasm he's ever had.

Once satisfied, you lower your hand, and reach out with both to zip his fly and do up his button. You lightly smack the outside of his thighs and rise to your feet.

"You with me?" you ask, reaching out, palms upward. He makes haste in taking them, letting you pull him to his feet. He can't help but kiss you again, holding on to either side of your face like you might duck away. You don't; you simply indulge him.

All things considered, Holland thinks he’s doing a pretty fine job so far. So fine, in fact, that this case is looking like it might be the quickest they’ve ever wrapped one up. It was only yesterday that he and Healy met up with the client—a feisty young lady who suspected her kid brother was caught up in some nasty drug business, with such vivid orange hair Holland couldn’t help but ask if it was natural before they parted. Healy had kicked him sharply under the table, and the woman had merely blinked at him, grabbed her purse, and said, “just find my goddamned brother.”

If the kid really is balls-deep in any sort of clandestine organization, drug-related or otherwise, then he’s doing a pretty poor job at it; they only had question two of his friends to find out he frequents—with a rather methodical consistency—an underground club in the Eastside every Saturday. Though they only acquired this pivotal piece of intel from the second one, the first had expressed his own concern for his buddy, and after some coaxing gave them the address of his "business partner”, whatever that means. The guy wasn’t sure what exactly they did, either, but claimed the guy was creepy and filthy rich.

So, if only to kill two birds with one stone, and because this case wasn’t looking like one that would require any backup, he and Healy split up: Holland looking for their guy, and March seeing what he could dig up at this elusive business partner’s place.

The club really takes its underground title seriously, Holland quickly learns. It takes him a good fifteen minutes to even find the alley, at the end of which an unassuming pair of steel doors led down a steep flight of stairs—and then he’s in it. Brilliant, colorful lights sweep across the crowded space in cyclical routes, cutting through the blue-tinted darkness. Music blasts through deliberately positioned speakers, low bass vibrating through Holland’s sternum while he shuffles through sweaty bodies and makes his way toward the bar. The dancing multitude is certainly to blame for the warmth hanging thick in the air, so Holland doesn’t think twice about half of the male attendees being shirtless or near it—clad in haphazardly chopped or lightweight materials that hardly pass as clothing, in his book.

He finds a gap between chatting groups at the bar, and flags down the harried bartender. He darts up to Holland, planting his hands on the lower side of the surface and leaning in to listen over the music.

“I’m looking for someone,” Holland starts, fingertips tapping restlessly over the sticky wood. “He comes here often, Jason Stewart? Might know him as Sonny? Yea high, red hair?”

The bartender’s face stiffens, then cements in a dismissive frown. He glances past Holland, waving down some waiting customers.

“Order something or go, you’re holding up the line,” he bites, defensive. Holland gapes, glancing over his shoulder at the line in question: a pair of young women conversing and lightly bouncing along to the music. One of them meets his eye, her hair cropped short against her skull, and upon sharing a look with the barkeep furrows her brows.

Right. So, this might be trickier than he thought. Might as well acclimate. He tries to refrain from drinking too much on the job after the shitshow that was the house party they infiltrated last year, but Holland reckons skulking around an underground disco asking for a regular by name, and without even having a drink isn’t helping his chances at success. Partygoers, from his experience, often aren’t too keen on selling each other out, and if not that, are often too drunk or high to offer any lucid answers; these, however, seem far more skeptical than usual. They must get up to some pretty sketchy stuff down here—but far be it from Holland to judge them.

So, he gets a beer. It won’t be enough to get him drunk, far from it, but it'll hopefully make him blend in more, even though his outfit alone makes him stick out rather sorely.

He weasels his finger into the knot of his striped tie and loosens it slightly, eyeing the brightly or barely-clad attendees. He makes room for the two women and nods in thanks to the narrow-eyed bartender, before shuffling down the length of the bar. He ignores the terse looks flung his way, growing strangely antsy under the curious stare of a lone, younger man sitting at a stool, his expression not so much hostile as it is alert, discerning. Taking a sip of the cheap beer, Holland finds a relatively sober-looking woman near the restrooms past the bar.

His attempts prove fruitless there, too. Either she truly has no idea who Sonny Stewart is, or she has a phenomenal poker face; as he’s about to ask if she knows any regulars who might be able to help him, another lady strolls out of the bathroom. The first greets her with a hand on the waist and a private smile, and…

Oh. 

Oh, yeah, well, that explains it.

They saunter back to the dance floor, leaving Holland gaping and feeling laughably dense. For once, he peers into the multitude, really looks into it, and it only takes a few seconds to notice the unconventional pairs dancing together under the strobe lights. 

What the hell kind of a PI is he?

Well, now everybody’s caginess makes a whole lot more sense.

He takes a hearty swig of beer and sighs, more frustrated with himself than anything else. If he’d known he would be gathering intel at a gay club, he would have gone about it differently from the start. Now, he just hopes word hasn’t gotten around that a possible cop is snooping among them.

“Hey, pal.”

Holland turns toward the source of the unfamiliar voice. His gaze locks on yours, and he’s quick to recall your face as the one that’s been watching him since he first approached the bar. You’re alone, still seated atop a rickety stool, nursing a cocktail and leaning back leisurely against the wood. The high hem of your tank top reveals a narrow strip of stomach, and the tight material across your chest leaves nothing to the imagination. Holland squeezes out a shallow breath, and floats over to you.

“You sure you at the right place?” you ask once he stops, eyeing him brazenly.

“Why's that?”

“Is that corduroy?” You push yourself off the edge of the bartop, reaching out to catch the lapel of his suit jacket and laughing when you confirm your suspicion. Warmth prickles at Holland’s cheeks. He swats your hand away, grinding his molars when your lips seek out the thin straw resting on the edge of your glass, cheeks hollowing faintly in a lazy sip. “There’s a sports bar one street over, in case you missed it.”

He ignores your teasing, steels himself. “I just need some information, and then I’m gone.”

Your brow furrows, expression hardening under the glow of a passing blue strobe.

“You a cop?”

“No,” he immediately replies. “I mean, I was, but that’s—that doesn’t matter. I’m a PI, okay? I don’t give a shit what you get up to down here, in fact I’m all for it, probably, so I’m not going to rat anybody out—”

“Except for Sonny,” you butt in, cocking an eyebrow while you chew on your straw. Holland’s mouth clamps shut, eyes dipping fleetingly to the soft shape of your lips, curled around the plastic.

Jesus—focus. And he’s not even buzzed.

“His sister hired us. She’s worried about him.”

“Us? There’s more of you?” Your gaze leaves his, turning instead to the open expanse of the club, sweeping across it with mounting alarm.

“No! Well, okay, yes, just one, but he’s not here. Honest.” He crosses his heart over with one fingertip.

You look back at Holland, brow set, and then reach behind you without breaking eye contact to set your empty glass on the bar. The motion makes your shirt ride up a little, and Holland makes a truly monumental effort not to steal a quick look at the sparse trail of hair leading down to your belt buckle.

“His sister hired you?”

“That’s right.”

He watches your face in the chromatic lighting, losing its wary edges and eventually settling into something more genuine. You wipe the condensation from your palm off against your dark jeans, sighing lightly.

“What’s your name?”

“Holland,” he breathes out, stiffening unconsciously when you lean in, elbows on your parted knees. “March.”

“Alright, Mr. March,” you say, and for whatever goddamned reason it makes his gut sink into a pool of bubbling warmth. As you rise from the stool, movements smooth and unhurried, almost catlike, you say, “let’s go somewhere quieter, hm?”

Then, your hand is on his tie, and you’re all but dragging him through the club, not looking back for a second at the way he staggers after you, apologizing mildly when he bumps into a drunken partygoer. 

The club is far bigger than it looks, and he wonders what the original use of the space might’ve been before it was refurbished into a secret underground disco. He reaches up for your wrist, though halts before closing the gap. The mild pressure circled around the nape of his neck, herding him across the dance floor holds him at an unbalanced, hunched posture, wholly undignifying—and yet, it makes his head spin.

Down a broad corridor, you stalk past a file of closed doors labeled VIP, and Holland isn’t certain whether he should be thrilled or terrified. You stop at the end of the hall, where a piece of paper is taped to the last door, reading ‘CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE’, and without a second thought, you haul him inside.

Immediately, his back is struck against the closed door, wincing at the force and reflexively raising his palms in a gesture of peace. 

“You know I still don’t trust you, right?” you say, voice stern again, though clearer now with the music and clamor sealed outside, muffled through the walls. He opens his mouth to reply, but your fist tightens in wordless warning around his tie, so he simply nods, meek. The heat in the pit of his stomach refuses to dissipate—though this is really not the time for his fucked-up libido to rear its ugly head. “The second I suspect you’ve lied to me, or are in any way up to something that would put a single person here at risk, I’ll see to it myself that you regret ever coming here. Am I clear?”

“Crystal,” he wheezes.

At that, you press on a flat, sardonic smile, and pat his cheek twice. You don’t release his tie just yet, but when you pull him off the door it’s a morsel less harsh than it was moments ago. You whirl him around the small room, and then spread your palm to push him back into the leather sectional sofa, which he collapses into with a yelp. Now freed from your iron fist and stifling proximity, he breathes out—a little shaky, strained—and lets himself look around the interior. It’s nothing too special, a dim room with elegant leather seating, a low table before him and a small, slightly elevated platform at the very front of the room. You switch a light on, which only partly succeeds in illuminating the space; there’s no overhead bulb, but many smaller fixtures throughout the room, the largest of which being a warm-toned, almost orange lamp by the door.

He notices, then, rather belatedly, that by some miracle he’s managed to keep his beer, clutched tightly in one hand. As you shuffle up to him and sit on the edge of the table before him, Holland downs the rest in a massive gulp. Liquid courage, and all that.

“Alright,” you say, “shoot.”

Right. Right, the case.

He clears his throat, scrambles to get his wayward thoughts together. First order of business: get the intel. Then he’ll focus on the warmth flooding his cheeks and, mortifyingly, his crotch.

As it turns out, Sonny isn’t secretly smuggling drugs in clandestine discos. He certainly attends them, but the way you put it, he hardly ever dips into anything stronger than an occasional bump or two. A few months ago he met an older guy in this very club and the pair have only been seen together since.

“My guess,” you say, prying the empty bottle he’s been absentmindedly playing with from his fingers and setting it on the table beside your hip, “is he hit the jackpot: found himself a hot older guy who’s happy to spoil him, and his sister notices him being vague, always busy, suddenly able to afford all these expensive things… First thought, 'he’s dealing drugs'.”

Holland sinks against the backrest, hands falling limp on his thighs with nothing to fidget with. An incredulous huff escapes him, looking off in the middle distance as he turns it over in his head. It makes perfect, logical sense.

“How do you know all this?”

You shrug. “Worked here for two years up until a few months ago. Marty gives me a discount for drinks and I still like to keep up with the long-time regulars. Word gets around quick down here.”

“I’m sure.” He looks back up at you, and a thought strikes him. “So, what are the odds I don’t get jumped outside for looking like a cop?”

You pull a deeply pensive face, head tipping with a long hum. “Not too good. Don’t worry, Sherlock, I can walk you to your car.”

When you go to stand, Holland’s chest seizes with something akin to panic. His hands shoot out, but hesitate to touch.

“Wait.”

You pause, already half-turned toward the door, and raise an eyebrow down at him. Holland scrambles to his feet, swallowing hard against the sudden dryness in his throat.

“Thank you,” he chuckles, aiming for cool self-assurance. “Pretty much did my job for me.”

Your mouth quirks—a flash of motion you quickly tame into a neutral politeness. You nod once.

“No problem, Mr. Holland.”

When his eyes slip again, down to the elegant curve of the smile you can’t quite tamp down, that’s it. He can’t look away, can hardly blink. His chest feels shrunken, thready little breaths whistling silently out of him. He tries, with every ounce of rapidly dwindling willpower in him to meet your eyes again, to stop gawking at your mouth like some sleazy asshole, but his body appears to have incited a mutiny against his brain, because his heart is hammering against his ribcage, his gaze fixed inexorably on your mouth.

“Jesus, sorry,” he manages, just barely succeeding in pressing his eyes shut, chuckling airily again. He rubs circles around his eyes, pinches crudely on the bridge of his nose. “I’m—I don’t know what…”

“It’s alright,” you hum, and despite your words you sound amused, almost mocking. Holland flushes even further. He senses you step closer, and keeps his eyes valiantly shut. When your hand curls smoothly around his wrist, however, they fly open on their own accord.

“I don’t even know your name,” he murmurs as you lower his arm from his face. “How old are you?”

Your eyebrows rise slightly, smile sharpening. 

“Don’t lie, I’ll know.”

“Alright, tough guy,” you laugh, a sound that thrums through him like a peal of thunder. “I’m twenty-five.”

“Oh, fuck.” His head sinks between his shoulders, hoping the subtle lighting masks the color that must be flooding his face. The magma-warm desire steadily rolling into his gut has begun to spill lower, tightening his flared slacks around the hips.

“What?” you hum, tone dipping teasingly. “That doing it for you?”

He chances a look up; your hooded eyes bore into him, open and undaunted—so bold with your want in the way one only is in their youth, and Holland is no senior citizen but he’s lived a dozen lifetimes since he was your age. He’s learned apprehension. Discretion. At least he thought he did.

You step closer, releasing his arm, only to regrip gently at his jaw.

“You ever been with a man, Mr. March?”

You’re getting cocky, he can tell. You don’t even know how old he is and yet, his reaction must have revealed it is not a trivial number. Emboldened only by his frustration, rather than answering you, he rushes forth, kissing the smug smile right off your face.

Your sharp inhale reveals your surprise, free hand flying up to his shoulder to steady yourself, but the other only tightens, pointedly angling his head and deepening the kiss. His own slide around the curve of your waist, settling at your lower and mid-back. From there, he pulls you in flush—and regrets it upon realizing you can probably feel him, already half-hard against you. He supposes the satisfied hum you push into his mouth is a response to that; he burns.

Releasing his jaw, you reach over to sink your fingers into his hair and catch them in a stern grip. Holland hisses at the lovely little pinpricks of pain it summons, and bucks automatically against your groin, where he feels you beginning to stiffen up, too. 

You regrip abruptly, from his shoulder to his hip, and hold him steady in order to repeat the motion, grinding shamelessly against him. A pitiful little hum emerges from his chest when your hands withdraw entirely—though it’s only for a second, before they splay across his waist, his stomach, smoothing up then to push his jacket off his shoulders. Spacey with want, Holland blinks at you, lets you strip it off, hardly registering the delighted sound you make when you feel the shape of his pack of smokes in the pocket and whip it out. You pluck one out and hold it between your lips while you search for a lighter. Once retrieved, you toss the jacket onto the table, and without looking up plant one palm to his chest and shove him down onto the sofa.

“On your back,” you mumble around the cigarette, instinctively cupping the flame to light it. Holland moves off the backrest, swinging his feet up to lie across the cool leather. You pause, then, driving one knee into the cushion by his hip, taking a long, thoughtful drag of the cig, and then gesture silently at his shirt. He doesn’t need to be told twice; immediately he reaches for his tie and damn near rips it off. From there, he moves to the uppermost button, undoing it swiftly and fumbling for the rest.

He’s fully hard by the time he shucks it off, left shirtless and flushed under your cool scrutiny. Something gleams in your eye, though, something hungry and satisfied, and then you’re moving, straddling his thighs. The bright end of the cigarette bounces slightly between your lips as you shuck your belt off, then his, and yank open his fly.

“God, you’re easy,” you comment offhandedly, dragging your knuckles down the shape of his length through his briefs, at the end of which a puny spot of precum has bled through the material. Holland’s whole body quivers, biting down on the wobbly groan that slips out of him. In a rare show of kindness, you offer the pressure of your palm, pressed firmly against him, but it soon hits him that, with your weight perched on his upper thighs, attempting to grind up into it is futile. He writhes, hips pivoting side to side in a desperate search for friction, the ineffectiveness of his struggle only making him harder. Needier.

You chuckle, airy and light, and pluck the cig from your lips. You turn it over and let your hand descend to his mouth, where his head flies off the leather to take a much-needed drag. As you observe, he notes the thinly-veiled lust that darkens your gaze, sucking in a hitching breath.

As you pull it away, your other hand slides higher, sinking two fingers into the elastic of his briefs. Ash plummets onto the floor beside you, but you only watch him as he steadily exhales, smoke clouding in the space between you. Your eyes sweep his bare, heaving chest, and after returning the cigarette to your mouth you reach down, drag a blunt nail over his nipple. Holland gives a strangled grunt, involuntarily arching into the contact, hyperaware of both it and your second hand, slowly easing his briefs down, just enough to free his cock.

“No fair,” he grits out, panting. You tilt your head in question. “You take something off now.”

Your grin turns wicked, circling the stiffened pebble of his nipple a few times before leaving it entirely.

“You’re cute,” you say dismissively. Holland can’t help but feel patronized. He squeezes the outer flesh of your thighs, letting his head fall back in defeat. At the sound of a zipper opening, however, he’s quick to perk back up. You offer him the cigarette again, only to use both of your hands to push your jeans a bit down your hips, readjusting so you’re lying on top of him, knees bracketing his on either side. Your underwear follows shortly thereafter, but Holland’s view is mournfully blocked when you duck your head to mouth at his chest. Your teeth graze his collarbone down its sharp length, pausing at the inner end to bite down, and then latch your lips over it, sucking leisurely.

“Oh, Jesus,” he breathes to the ceiling, choking on his inhale and, in a frustrated impulse, tosses the cig onto the floor. He grips your shoulders, your neck, the back of your head, hands flighty and restless, wanting to feel every inch of you as you pinch his skin between your teeth and roll it sharply. Holland muffles a humiliating whine into his fist, bucking up into your hip. He can feel the weight of your own cock against his stomach, hot and hard.

“Shit, shit—come on, c’mon, can you—” he cuts himself off, not entirely sure what he’s asking for, other than get me off or else I’ll blow my load like a horny teenager.

You shush him, planting a wet kiss to his sternum before drifting back up to eye-level. You frown.

“Where’s the cig?”

Holland looks down. Quietly mumbles, “dropped it.”

You peer over the edge of the sofa and click your tongue. Your eyes dart to him, then to his mouth. Before he knows it, three of your fingers are bullying past his lips, coaxing his jaw open.

He’s already sucking them down by the time you murmur the order. A ripple of motion catches your eyebrows, and then you smirk, pressing down on the back of his tongue, drool gathering around the digits.

“Second nature, huh?”

Holland flushes, ears burning. He shuts his eyes and sucks harder.

For a minute, he floats through the haze of his bliss, lost in the simple task of sucking your fingers down to the base, gag reflex be damned. Maybe all those years of vigorously trying to scrub the bitter taste of hangovers off his tongue proved more beneficial than he thought.

Your thumb, in the meantime, traces his chin encouragingly, scratching gently over the stubble in a way that makes his chest loosen, push out a long, low hum—almost a purr.

“And here I thought you’d be too green to take them,” you say after another brief lull, anchoring your thumb by the corner of his mouth to slowly pull your fingers free. Holland’s eyes crack open, brows knitting slightly with the loss. A string of spit connects your middle finger to his lower lip for a long moment, stretching and sagging as you bring your hand down between your bodies. When it snaps, Holland shudders as it lands, cold, against his chest and chin.

Both of you peer down at your cocks, hard, neglected, and his own sitting in a mortifying pool of precum, one that gets a groan out of you when you notice it.

“Jesus, you’re soaked.”

Tonight is quite the educational night, Holland is quickly learning, as the simmer of humiliation under his skin rolls into arousal, and coaxes yet another drop to surge out of his slit.

You wrap your fingers around your own dick, slick with his drool—the image makes him squirm—and drop a groan into his shoulder at the sensation. Again, his view is blocked, but the sounds of your low, muffled moans against his skin and the softer ones of you working yourself over paint a clear picture. Holland’s fingers curl into your back, writhing, fucking up into empty air. A choked whine weasels its way up his throat, not knowing whether he wants more to get off or watch you touch yourself. 

“Alright, alright,” you pant, and within seconds Holland feels your fingers wrap around him, and the weight of your cock press against his own. 

Immediately, he’s thrusting up into your right fist, chasing after the swift pace you quickly set. His toes curl in his shoes, all that static amassed under his skin rushing down into his cock, and from there bursting outward in bright flares of pleasure. He clings to you, seeking an anchor point in your warm, breathing, blanketing body, curled fiercely over him. He feels, suddenly, very small—like something so intuitive and uncomplicated it could be pulled apart and pieced back together without issue. And that’s what you’re doing: prying him open, extracting piece by delicate piece with attentive certainty, despite the severity of your teeth bearing down on his skin and the near cruel amusement in your tone.

You tighten your grip around the heads, thumb gliding firmly over his slit, gathering more precum, and the blinding flare that whizzes through him could put fireworks to shame. Whatever urges he might’ve previously had to shy away from your hot, weighted gaze are nowhere to be seen now, as you lift your head and watch his reactions; squeezing, twisting your wrist, grinding against him.

He’s getting loud, he knows—amdist the rumble of blood in his ears, the slick sounds of you both sliding against each other, he can catch his wanton moans, his shattered grunts and whiny bleats.

“Shhh, you want us to get caught, March?” you murmur, dropping your weight to an elbow in order to seal a palm over his open mouth. After a moment, the glint in your blown pupils turns knowing, almost chastising. “Unless you want that? For someone to find us? To see you like this?”

Holland makes a sound shamefully reminiscent of a sob, muted against your palm. His head twists, not trying to displace the muzzle of your hand but unable to resist the animalistic urge to writhe and thrash. Despite the sweat across your brow, the uneven jumping of your breathing, you look terribly composed compared to him.

“Well, we can’t have that. I want you all to myself tonight, okay?”

Holland moans in response, realizing his teeth had captured a bit of your skin in a gentle pinch, just to hold something. You pull your hand away, wiping spit off on his cheek, and lean over, torso straining off the sofa. He watches your free arm extend toward the table, pausing your motions over your cocks for a moment, and when you return, it’s bearing his tie.

“Open,” you instruct, balling the tie up, and Holland’s understanding groan is promptly muffled halfway when it’s shoved into his mouth. The material instantly soaks up most of the spit in his mouth, making his tongue feel uncomfortably dry. He runs it in tiny circles against the bunched fabric in an attempt to salivate and rid himself of the sensation.

Your fist continues pumping, then, and now he’s far quieter—strangely soothed by the feeling of something in his mouth again.

He’ll analyze that later.

For now, your forearm presses against his bare shoulder, fingers tracing sweet, mindless shapes, occasionally brushing against the chain around his neck, the ring hanging off of it. You don’t ask, and Holland eases. Not that he could answer any questions at all at the moment, dead-wife-related or otherwise.

You lean down, kiss the stretched corner of his mouth, and tighten your grip between your bodies. The pit in his lower gut grows and grows, a simmering heat threatening to swallow him whole as the precipice makes itself known in the near horizon. He emits a long, wavering hum, hips rolling wildly, cock twitching and weeping another trickle of precum.

You say nothing, but seem to sense his oncoming orgasm, picking up the pace, squeezing his shoulder once. Holland’s eyes burn with the sheer force of his mounting release, not having realized how close he was until he’s almost reached it, pulse throbbing against his breastbone, surely visible in his sweat-sticky chest. He breathes in, sharp and forceful through his nose, trying to keep his eyes open as they grow leaden.

It only takes one more squeeze of your deft fingers, one more press of your thumb to his tip before he’s coming, whining long and low through his tie—heat erupting from his groin and barreling through him in a tingling tidal wave of pleasure. It has his legs drawing up on a reflex, thighs knocking against your ass, neck straining back against the leather cushion as the sound dies out on the material and gives way to silent bliss.

The seemingly endless ropes of cum his pulsing cock offers makes the continued slide of your fist all the smoother. You work him through it, though the pace hastens, grows sloppy and erratic, and when he pries his eyes open, blinking through the mistiness, watches your face contort beautifully around your own release, uttering a fractured sound into the air.

Your hips roll steadily with each wave, and the feeling of your load landing across his stomach, over the mess of his own gets another pitiful mewl out of him, head lolling to the side. Your hand catches his jaw, abandoning his shoulder, and with a deep sigh you release both of your dicks.

First, you sit up, towering over him on your knees while you tuck yourself back into your jeans. Then, you repeat the gesture for him, and finally pry the tie out of his mouth. 

“Hope this wasn’t your favorite tie,” you say, finding a somewhat dry edge to wipe your hand and his stomach clean.

He grunts, smacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

You lightly pat his flank once, before getting to your feet. The tie falls with a wet smack to the floor, by the half-smoked cigarette.

“You planning on getting dressed, or I gotta do it for you?”

Holland grunts again, and scrapes up his voice. “Give me a minute, Jesus.”

You snort, finding your discarded belt and beginning to work it through the loops of your jeans. “One good orgasm’s got you incapacitated, old man?”

“Don’t,” he bites, but the rawness of his voice kills any attempt at sternness, “...call me that.” He watches your fingers smoothly buckle the belt, fingers that were moments ago effortlessly plucking away at all his seams, unfurling him.

“I need a drink,” you announce, settling your hands on your hips. “You?”

Holland pulls in a Herculean breath, and pushes himself up to his elbows. He shakes his head with great defeat—oh, the burden of having responsibilities. He checks his watch; he still has to meet up at home with Healy to debrief.

“No, I should… probably get going.”

“Oh, right. The case, and all.”

He grunts, again.

“Well, I had fun,” you say, turning back to the table and fumbling for his jacket. For a moment, he expects you to pull out another cigarette, but with a hum of triumph you whip out his wallet, and he stiffens. You pay him no mind as you begin rifling through it.

“...Please don’t rob me.”

It’s surely nearing midnight when the doorbell rings; a brief, jumping tune that cleaves impersonally through the silence of the dim house. It feels almost mocking in nature, when set against the quiet simmer of anxiety that’s become an unwelcome constant over the past several weeks. 

From your place in the bathroom, rinsing your toothbrush clean, you still. You make a move for your phone to check the time, but realize upon palming an empty pocket that you left it on the bedside table in your room. A long, unnerved stare into the darkness beyond the bathroom stretches endlessly, of such unblinking intensity you could almost swear you begin to see movement in the black. 

Only when the bell rings again, do you move. Your toothbrush slips into the cup by the sink alongside a dry, months-abandoned second. A thick swallow tightens your throat, switching off the bathroom light on your way out and letting your feet’s muscle memory guide you down the hall and through the living room. There, the darkness is notably weaker, abated by the wan threads of moonlight that spill across the floor, through the fine curtains.  

Your front door has no peephole, and although you've been meaning to get a doorbell camera installed you've not had the time nor energy these days to follow through. 

You fleetingly wish you’d grabbed your gun—then, just as swiftly, discard the thought. You're out of that life, of standing on complete guard whenever there’s an unexpected visitor at the door, of reaching for the nearest firearm at the first inkling of danger. It’s been years, coming up on four now since you left, but old habits die hard.

Your palm hovers steadily, for only a beat or two, above the handle. 

Fuck it, you think rather blandly, and tug the door open. 

The pause that follows is surely not as long in reality as it feels to you, but it is stark and charged nonetheless. 

Naturally, being closer to his eye level, your gaze latches on to Court, first. Scanning over his face, his bearing and his clothes, his bandaged palm, the nearly faded, yellowish bruise across his cheek. Battered, as per usual, but staggeringly intact. Relief swathes you whole; the months worth of built-up unease weighing your collarbones down unfurls all at once.

Next, your attention dips, settles instead on the shorter, scrawnier frame of a tired-looking Claire beside him. She’s fairing significantly better, but a pale pink burn on her cheek reveals a preview of what she must have been through in these weeks of radio silence. 

“Hi,” she says, voice turned inward but not necessarily out of shyness. You sense her exhaustion like a plume of thick smoke clinging to her lanky frame. 

She’s moving before you even fully get your own greeting out, sinking into your arms and clinging with a ferocity that stuns you, considering her state. You cup the back of her head, hair soft and clean, which hopefully means the worst has passed. Claire lingers in the embrace, clutching the back of your worn sleep shirt and burrowing her temple into your collarbone like she plans on staying there a while. 

In the meantime, you look back up to find Court staring right back. There’s that hardness to his jaw, faintly tighter than where it would naturally rest that suggests a degree of discomfort from him. Your heart clenches just at the sight of him, relief and concern equal parts to blame for your sudden breathlessness. You long to kiss him, to check out what’s got his hand cloaked in such thick dressing and ideally look over the rest of him, too—knowing when there’s one injury on the man there is always more. 

After a minute, Claire pulls away, and your hands follow her, soothing against her back. 

“You guys eat?”

Claire sniffles once and nods, dragging the heel of her palm against her eye. 

“We got Burger King on the way here,” Court offers, at which you give a faint smile. 

“Okay. Why don’t you head to the guest bedroom, kid? I’ll find you a toothbrush and some pajamas in a minute,” you tell her, pressing one hand fleetingly to her cheek before she nods and retreats. 

Now alone, the two of you turn back to each other. The breeze swings between you, beckoned in by the open door, and when you manage to tear your eyes away from Court’s steel blue pair, you finally speak. 

“You gonna stand guard there all night?”

He huffs; a flicker of amusement amidst the tension stretched through him like a taut wire. With shuffling feet he enters. Shuts the door behind him with a dull click. 

“Hey,” you murmur, planting both hands on either side of Court’s neck. Much to your satisfaction, some of his tension bleeds away at the touch, stepping even closer to circle you in his arms. 

“Hey.”

“You had me worried,” you chastise, but all of your frustrations ebb away at the feeling of him finally back in your arms. 

“I know,” Court sighs, ducking forward to plonk his forehead onto your shoulder, and you take the opportunity to press a long, warm kiss to his temple. “I’m sorry.” His back muscles ripple like weaseling little fish underneath the skin, against your circling palms; a testament to weeks worth of tension left to fester in his body.

“I’ll make you some tea, okay?”

Court expels a shallow puff of air against the neck he’s burrowed into, nodding once, sluggish, and then pulling back entirely. You gently usher him off into the kitchen, where you coax him into a stool by the island and then switch the kettle on. From there, you turn toward the hallway and stroll out of the kitchen, dragging a palm across the set of Court’s sunken shoulders when you walk past him. On the way to the guest bedroom, you stop by the storage closet and grab a thick quilt folded atop one of the metal racks drilled into the wall.

However, when a tentative knock on the cracked door gives way to a long beat of silence, you peek inside to find Claire curled up on the twin-sized bed, sneakers haphazardly kicked off by the rug. Your heart twinges with sympathy, carefully shouldering the door open and sidling inside, quiet so as not to disturb her well-earned rest. You shake the quilt out and then drape it over her small frame. She doesn’t so much as stir.

Making a mental note to lay out a new toothbrush and some clothes for her later, you back out of the room, and very heedfully shut the door.

Back in the kitchen, Court hasn’t moved an inch from his seat, forearms crossed over the laminate counter, head wilted. Neither of you speak upon your return, not for the few minutes in which you prepare two cups of tea, but Court does lift his head at one point, following your movements around with fond, tired eyes.

With a generous squeeze of honey into both mugs, the drinks are ready, and soon carried over toward the kitchen island. You slide one toward Court’s folded arms and settle into the stool beside his.

“Alright,” you sigh, turning to face Court with your whole body, “tell me.”

Court blinks down at the twirling teabag in his mug, fiddling with the paper end between three fingers, and after a long, smooth pull of breath, begins talking.

Last thing you'd heard from him, Court was to fly out to Bangkok for a regular job—before he went radio silent for just over two months. What you didn’t know was that Court’s target was apparently also Sierra, nor anything about Carmichael’s corruption—though that part didn’t surprise you as much.

He tells you about the encrypted drive, and Lloyd Hansen, and the chaos in Prague, and Cahill, all with a careful neutrality to his tone that sets you on edge. You stick a leg out, settling it against the footrest of Court’s stool and pressing your shin to his bouncing calf.

A long beat follows. Steam curls through the air between you, wisping against Court’s stubbled jaw like comforting hands. You set your mug down, nearly empty, and reach for one of Court’s forearms, thumbing over the faded tattoo there.

“Fitz?” you ask, treading very carefully. The line of Court’s mouth tightens—a fleeting twitch of motion—before he looks up, meets your eye. Shakes his head.

A long, thready sigh squeezes out of you. Your fingers tighten reassuringly, and Court then moves to cloak his own free hand over yours. He’s wearing this sad, lipped sort of smile now, a meager attempt at unimpassioned dismissal.

“It’s fine, it’s how—it was never gonna be old age, so…”

“Still. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah,” Court grates, nodding stiffly. “Me too.”

With another slow exhale, you push yourself to your feet, drawing your arms around him and into a firm embrace, head craned low to press your mouth into the top of Court’s ruffled hair. 

For a long moment, he remains stony and sober beneath you, something that had once bothered you, years ago when he was nothing more than a nameless agent you'd be told to patch up, and you were a dispensable cog in the machine that made him so. You understand now he can't help it—rather than a front he puts up it's his nature. One forced and beaten into place, but his nature nonetheless.

Eventually, though, when the embrace stretches on long enough, his arms slide up, large, rough palms encircling your bicep and shoulder.

"How's she holding up?" you ask next, because you know better than to focus on him too much; the trick with Court is to pry him open in tiny increments, coaxing that tightly concealed vulnerability out of him before he even knows it.

Court shifts against you—possibly in a shrug.

"As well as she can be, considering. She's a strong kid."

"Yeah, she is," you sigh, craning your neck back to peer down the hall where she sleeps. Your chest aches for her—so young, and already so wounded by the world. Court expels a wary breath, smoothing a palm down your bicep to latch under your elbow.

"I hope it's okay that I... came here. If I even suspect they know we're here, I'll be gone before—"

"Hey, none of that," you butt in, turning back to him, sternly holding his gaze. "You know I like having you here. Both of you. It's a big house, gets lonely sometimes."

Court's eyes flick all across your face, quietly analytical in that charming way of his—though now you almost feel the urge to shrivel underneath such close inspection. He's been through hell these past weeks, no point in making him feel guilty for how worried and alone you've been during them.

He seems to do so, anyway.

Before he can speak, you take his jaw in one hand and lean down to kiss him—finally giving in to the nagging urge that's been screaming at you since you first opened the front door.

At that—amusingly so—Court melts, his bandaged palm drifting outward to curl around your hip, mouth warm and pliant against yours. The kiss is soft, chaste, more of a greeting than anything else. You'd missed him so terribly it's almost humiliating, and now having him back has brought all that longing swinging back into your chest like an anvil. You aren't even togther—not officially, but you have a toothbrush for him in your bathroom and a vivid mental map of every corner of his body and the first place he thought to go to when everything went to shit was here.

That’s got to count for something.

You nip at his lower lip, just to tease, and crack a sly grin when he sucks in a small, sharp inhale in response. He chases after you when you pull away, brows slightly furrowed.

"Down, boy," you chuckle, weaseling your palm against his lips when his mouth wanders down your throat. "Let me check you over."

"I'm fine," he mumbles against your loosely sealed fingers, shifting in his stool to bracket you properly between his strong thighs. "Peachy."

"Court," you press, letting your hand sink, fingers sliding lazily down his chin. He reaches up to your own jaw, scraping one calloused thumb against your own stubble—somewhat longer than how you tend to keep it. You've been taking so many shifts at the hospital that your free time has been limited to showering and sleeping. Shaving has been moved to the backburner.

He meets your gaze yet again, with that privately discerning edge that suggests a deep consideration. His face softens impossibly; it was staggering, seeing it happen the first time, back when all you knew him as was just another dead-eyed mercenary capable of unspeakable violence. By the time you met him you'd long come to terms with the fact that no amount of good you could do as a doctor would ever couterbalance the suffering most of your patients inflicted on a regular basis, so you'd cared very little to connect with any of them beyond stitching them up scribbling away all sorts of painkiller perscriptions.

But Court had, even then, snagged your attention. While still stoic and stone-eyed, almost unnervingly so in the face of some of the injuries you've seen him bear, he'd crack the occassional joke with you—mostly lame puns or give it to me straight, doc quips while he was near delirious with blood loss. He had sensed your early apprehension around him and broadcasted every slow movement, apologized whenever the pain made him jerk sharply away from your touch, and once—minutes before passing out in the middle of the medical tent in a temporary base set up somewhere in Poland—denied attention from any other medic on location aside from you. You'd been halfway across the base, not on active duty but as always on call, when you were paged and informed an agent was causing a scene, asking for you by name.

"Don't touch me! Where is he? I need—he can..." was all that you'd caught before ducking into the tent, where a small flock of antsy doctors and nurses hedged Court in, your Head Physician approaching him with a cartoonishly-sized syringe in hand, brow set.

Court had spotted you approaching in an instant, and the rabid set of his broad shoulders had collapsed.

He managed a thready, "Oh, hey Doc," before buckling against you.

As it turned out, his manic state was not only attributable to the GSW in his abdomen, but to a truly inordinate amount of drugs forcefully pumped into his bloodstream by enemy agents. He'd spent the subsequent two nights sunken in a fever so indomitable you'd almost expected him not to bounce back.

"Okay," Court says, and you blink out of your daze, finding yourself back here—not Poland, not ducking your head to war criminals, not watching Courtland bleed out against your palms.

Your hand slides down the firm curve of his shoulder, and all the way into his palm, where you weave your fingers into his and pull him to his feet. From there, the two of you shuffle into the living room, and you push him into the couch with a soft press to the shoulder.

He sheds his shirt without you having to ask—he knows this routine inside out, and for all of his paranoid rituals, born from the type of life he's lived, this is your own. You know he's more than happy to oblige, if it helps you sleep.

"You know, there are easier ways of getting me half-naked on your couch."

"I don't know," you counter, eyes narrowing pointedly at him but your tone distinctly lacking of edge. "This was pretty easy."

Court makes an affronted face at that. "What are you implying?"

"What's this?" you begin in lieu of answering, taking his badaged palm into your lap, fingertips just barely dipping underneath the bottom edge.

"Switchblade," he pushes out on a sigh. In his eyes you find a glimmer of misplaced amusement; you shake your head fondly. "In and out. Pretty gnarly."

"I bet," you say, trailing your ghosting touch up his arm, following the old, ragged scar stretching up to the edge of his collarbone. You study his bare torso, momentarily setting aside the urge to admire the view in favor of indulging the nervous doctor in you; right above his sharp hip bone on his right side, a pucker of half-healed flesh, unbandaged but still bearing that ruddy tone of recovering skin.

"Those were scissors. Same guy. Only a few inches deep, not the worst of the bunch."

You squint through the dimness—the warm kitchen light offers its tepid glow, just enough so you can search for any abnormal irritation or discharge. You find none, and move to the next: another stab wound in the back of his shoulder; a nasty gash in the thigh; an impressive collection of greenish bruises and half-faded scabs. You change dressings where required, study wounds for any signs of infection or improper healing, feel along his ribs for any fractures—and you know, logically, he's spent the last few weeks in a hospital. You know the government-funded team of professionals who treated him wouldn't have missed something as elementary as broken ribs or developing infection.

But it helps. You have to see it for yourself, that he's joking around on your couch at one in the morning and in no imminent, life-threatening peril. God knows you've seen enough of him in it to last you several lifetimes.

By the end of it, Court is boneless against the cushions, head tipped back and angled toward you. His eyes are shut but you know he's awake; he'd fought the mounting weight of his eyelids as long as he could, just watching you, but he's only human. The lazy back-and-forth sweep of his thumb where he has his hand pressed to the small of your back underneath your shirt speaks to his wakefulness.

You readily embrace the warmth the small gesture brings to your ribcage, shifting and breathing like a neutron star fit to burst. Your hand finds his soft, golden brown hair, combing it through with your fingers, hairline to crown. A pleasant hum rumbles in his chest at that, faintly reminiscent of a cat's purr, and a stupid smile pulls at your lips.

"I missed you," you whisper, hesitant to disturb the intimate silence that has taken root. Your fingers dip lower on your ensuing comb, snaking between his head and the backrest cushion. "It was close, wasn't it?"

Court's eyes scrunch, still closed, but the silence preceeding his answer tells you enough. "A few times, yeah. Was touch-and-go for a minute, according to the doctors."

He cracks his eyes open, just a sliver, to catch your reaction. The fear has never relented—not for a minute since you left the CIA. It's as suffocating as it was then, but something you've had to learn how to live with, only because you had no other choice. Leaving that life hadn't been the hard part, it had been weighing on your conscience for the better part of a decade prior, but you knew once you left, Court could very well leave on a mission one day and never come back. You'd never even know. You couldn't treat him, you couldn't swipe his file if he was under the care of another medic, you couldn't say goodbye. You couldn't bury him.

Court knew this, and still he encouraged you to leave.

His palm glides up the warm skin of your back, thumb following the track of your spine.

"Come on, you know me," he says, urging you close with a steady pressure at the center of your back, "I'm not going out if it's not on your table, Doc."

You huff out a strained chuckle, finally yielding to his wordless ask and letting him kiss you. His body is hard and warm under your lazily meandering hands, sliding from his neck to his shoulders and down his chest. On their way down, you fleetingly tweak a nipple, and grin against his mouth when the kiss fractures. His fingers flex into your back, essentially hauling you into his lap—your head spins.

Licking into his mouth, you settle with your knees buried into the back of the couch, thighs braced on either side of his hips. When Court kisses, it's like he's starving. You've learned to ration your breaths during fleeting breaks, when either of you groans or gasps. He traps your head in place with a hand at the nape of your neck, the other still exploring underneath your shirt. After a while, it gets far too in the way and he pulls it off entirely.

The press of your bare chests makes the breath stumble in your throat, the ever-present warmth in your chest simmering and dribbling low into your groin. Beneath you, he's already half-hard, always enthusiastic when it comes to you. You jostle at a tiny buck of his hips.

Court makes a low sound—your name, possibly, trapped amidst a breathless grunt. He's breathing harder now, shifting restlessly beneath you. His hands can't quite seem to settle in one place.

"Court," you hum into him, planting two fingers to his pec and pressing him firmly against the backrest. The sudden severity of your tone gives him clear pause. "Relax."

His pupils have crowded into the lovely sea blue of his eyes, shrunken them down to twin rings, stark against the flush of his skin. You spread one palm against his chest, just barely catching the frantic kicking of his heart. The other reaches down to encircle his wrist where it'd landed on your hip.

"Relax. Okay? Hold still, I got you."

Court nods, dazed and unblinking as you slowly draw his hand to your mouth. There, you press many feathery kisses, trailing from the shifting tendons of his inner wrist, along the heel of his palm, up his thumb. His breath catches when you reach the tip, grazing the flat tops of your teeth against the pad.

Tentatively, Court sinks past your lips, hooking loosely behind your bottom teeth before searching out your tongue. You seal your lips around the knuckle, buzzing with lust-tinged amusement as his flush deepens.

His thumb flattens on the center of your tongue; in response, you faintly hollow your cheeks, and that does it.

A tremulous groan cracks out of him, head dipping back against the cushion. The erratic roll his hips make feels more automatic than deliberate, but he's quick to steel himself—always so good at following your orders it makes your whole body pulse with heat.

You can feel him, hard against your clothed ass—certain the motionless pressure must be driving him crazy, you decide to spoil him a little and give a few slow grinds of your own.

"Oh—fuck," he groans, low and unsteady. His thumb presses harder on your tongue for a moment, before he catches himself and releases it. You teasingly bite down, hoping he gets the message to be rougher, but he just swallows thickly and blinks up at the ceiling.

After a minute or so, you still, thrilled at the harsh exhale he gives, frustrated. You pull off of his thumb, noting the way he stares at the fine, sagging thread of spit that clings to your lip.

"Talk to me, baby," you hum, dabbing his cheeks and jaw with teasingly innocent pecks. "What do you need?"

Court reaches for your face, catching your jaw again—smearing your own spit against your cheek—to look you in the eye.

"You wanna fuck me?" You punctuate it with a slow roll of your hips. "Wanna be fucked?"

Court can't seem to string an answer together, can't even decide whether to gawk at your eyes or spit-slick mouth. Of course you don't expect him to be able to make such a decision, but asking anyway is part of the fun. It's fascinating just how easily you can get him like this, a bit of a power trip, really, and the glassy arousal in his eyes makes you strain against your sweats.

You feign deep thought, dragging blunt nails down the swell and valleys of his abdominal muscles. They catch on the elastic of his boxers, but wander no further.

"I know," you coo when another tiny noise resounds from low in his throat, "I know. You need me to take care of you, don't you?"

Your name on his tongue has always sounded lovely, but like this—thick with need and wet with spit, it's delicious. You kiss him warmly, just to soothe, and finally relent and paw at his straining cock through the thin material trapping it. You swallow his moan, pressing with a steady, circling motion and absorbing every shudder that rips through him.

He clings to your back, huffing and grinding up into your hand. When the kiss inevitably breaks, you migrate to his throat, where sharp bites are balmed by calculated swipes of your tongue.

"Fff—fuck, oh Jesus," Court moans, finding some sort of fleeting clarity and then reaching between your bodies to palm at your own neglected erection. You can't help but groan into his skin, allowing yourself a few lazy thrusts into his large hand before gently prying it away.

"It's okay, baby," you pant, thumbing at his swollen, leaking slit. "Let me focus on you first. You're so sweet, thinking of me."

Court offers a strained hum in response, squeezing your hip once.

"You look perfect like this, Court. You're perfect, all mine."

Much to his dismay, your hand abandons his cock in order to latch on to the back of his neck, which you guide off the cushion so he can properly face you. Then, you shift your weight, resettling how you’d been positioned earlier, with the cleft of your ass applying pressure to his cock.

For a moment, you stop to think. What he needs right now, what will make him feel the best and keep him happy and blissfully sapped for long afterwards. In the meantime, your thumbs pet the stubble across his cheeks in mirrored motions. His eyebrows are pinched, faintly warped upwards with arousal, pooling with nowhere to go. He doesn’t take his eyes off of you for a second.

He’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

You make sure to let him know this, and grin, catlike, when he squirms and flushes a pretty dark pink in the warm light. He twitches against your ass; you don’t need to look to know he’s absolutely weeping precome.

You lean in, kiss his cheekbone and brow bone, the side of his nose, the corner of his mouth. He murmurs your name again in a shattered voice, gripping your hip with one hand and back with the other so tightly you’re sure he’s trying desperately not to rut against you.

“That’s it. You’re doing so good, Court. You listen so well.”

“Don’t—” It comes out sharp, bladed through his gritted teeth but you can hear the early tones of a whine somewhere in it, and it only spurs you on more.

“What? You’re close already? Gonna come all over yourself, in your boxers?”

You don’t mean for it to come out so sardonic—it’s easy to get carried away when positioned like this, when the eyes on you are so fucked-out and desperate for you—but Court twitches again, full-body this time, and a wet moan cuts through the dense air between you.

One of your hands slip low, pivoting at the wrist to take ahold of the underside of his jaw, careful to steer clear of his exposed throat. You’d made that mistake once already.

“It’s alright,” you murmur, itching to kiss him or to continue mouthing at the sensitive spots at his neck, but the need to watch him crumble eclipses all of it. The spasmodic twitches in his thighs shake all the way up his body, and by proxy through yours. Still, the occasional half-grind against you slips through. You let them slide only because you missed him so much, and he’s been so good.

“You can come. Let me see you come, my good boy.”

Court’s head all but goes limp in your tender yet firm hold, eyes screwing shut, lips parting soundlessly.

His chest swells with a gasping breath, and his body tightens beneath you for a split second, before unraveling.

He comes with a teetering moan, sprouting from deep in the throat but still vaguely whiny in nature. You kiss him quickly so as not to wake Claire, and once his orgasm crests, he lets go and rides it out against your ass, soaking his boxers with his load.

Amidst his frantic humping the arms around your back draw you tightly in, snuffing out every inch of open space between you.

You choke out a moan yourself when your cock presses flush against his tensing stomach, fingers anchoring into Court’s hair.

He pulls away to burrow into your neck, emptying the last of his airy groans against your pulse point as his motions come to a slow, twitchy halt. At no point does he loosen his hold on you. You can feel the wetness beneath you, warm and thick.

Like earlier, you press the loose shape of your mouth into his hair, breathing in deeply, holding the smell of him close and deep in your chest. His breaths fan out across your collarbone, coaxing goosebumps to rise in their wake.

“Good?” you mumble, trying to pull back and get a look at him but rendered immobile by his unyielding arms. He nods against your throat.

You find yourself grinding, smooth and sluggish, against his stomach, eyes shut and feeling the press and drag of his hot mouth against your skin.

Finally (perhaps once he notices your motions), Court’s head straightens, and you get no warning before you’re being manhandled onto your back along the length of the couch.

“Thank you,” he whispers into a too-short kiss, one you can’t even chase after before he’s traveling down your torso in equally fleeting kisses.

“Don’t thank me,” you pant, hands finding his hair again, stretching lazily at his scalp. “That was hot.”

He shoots you a dopey grin, hands cupping your hips before he begins mouthing at the tent in your sweats. Heat flares through you, heels digging into the couch as you try to buck up into the contact to no avail.

Court wastes no time for teasing; he hooks his fingers into both waistbands and pulls your sweats and underwear down with one brusque tug, just enough to free your cock.

He presses damp, open mouthed kisses all along the shaft, glassy eyes pinned on your own. On occasion you’ll attempt to push up against the hold on your pelvis, and his fingers will squeeze once and the corner of his mouth will quirk up.

It’s embarrassing how close you are by the time he enfolds his lips around the head, but getting him off has always been a sort of extension of your own pleasure; it never takes much afterward for you to follow.

Your head spins as he takes you, inch by dizzying inch. He loves blowing you, and you love seeing him like this, hollow-cheeked and focused around you. Working his tongue in ways that make you see stars and taking you to the base, nose buried in the thatch of thick hair there.

“Court—Court, holy shit,” you pant, trying not to abuse his scalp too much but scrambling for purchase amidst the relentless flurry of pleasure swallowing your senses one by one. He’s so good with his mouth it’s unfair, and it’s only made worse by how smug he looks down there.

Your knee presses to his ribs, seeking out contact anywhere. At that, Court rubs a few clumsy circles into your hip bone, and pointedly sucks.

It’s over after that. It only takes a few swallows around your cock before your mounting pleasure reaches a crescendo, and you barely get a warning out before you’re coming into his mouth, down his happily obliging throat.

You muffle your own cry of bliss into the crook of your elbow, fucking into Court’s mouth until your orgasm begins to subside. Even then, you linger for a minute, one hand knotted in Court’s hair, his throat subtly working around your softening length, the soothing stroke of his thumbs on your hips a perfect comedown.

Finally, you squeeze out a heavy breath, tapping the back of his skull so he pulls off. You follow the sweep of his tongue across his lips with drowsy fascination. Wordlessly, he tucks you back into your sweats.

As he crawls back up your body, you steal a glance down at his crotch, and snort at the rather conspicuous stain at the front of his light gray underwear.

“You’re laughing at me?” Court grumbles, pecking up your jaw. “I just gave you life-changing head and you’re laughing at me.”

“Life-changing?” you chuckle, letting him kiss you—too flooded with post-coital endorphins to think it’s gross in the slightest. “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.”

He snorts, going abruptly boneless atop of you and knocking from your chest a low oof!

“You should shower,” you murmur, tracing the curve of his shoulder blade with a forefinger. He grunts vaguely.

“I need to sleep. For a year.”

“Sure. But a pre-hibernation shower wouldn’t hurt.”

He breathes out, steady and slow and warm against your jaw. Your fingers begin instead an absentminded drumming rhythm against his strong back. An idea strikes, and you grin wickedly at the ceiling.

“I could even join,” you slyly add.

"You're insatiable."

"Mhm."

"I'd suggest a chastity belt but you'd probably be into that."

Colt barks a surprised laugh against your collarbone, breath warm against the dampened skin there. He cranes his neck up, blue eyes crinkled with mirth, and digs his chin into your sternum. His beard stratches the thin skin there, but you pay it no mind.

"I'm not hearing a refusal," you add, feigning shock. Colt rolls his eyes but foregoes an answer. Instead he turns back to your chest, peppering kisses across the bare expanse.

Sighing, you drop your head onto the pillow and let him have his fun. You'd barely gotten through the front door after an agonizingly contactless drive back from the wrap party before Colt damn near jumped you, and within seconds you'd ended up sprawled laterally across the bed. He'd tried to kiss you once you'd both settled into the car, but the Uber driver had shot a look so stern through the rearview mirror neither of you had the nerve to even stray from your sides of the back row.

He pulls away from sucking a faint bruise into your pec only so he can shuck his shirt off, and when he resettles, the press of bare skin-to-skin makes you hum with satisfaction. Your fingers automatically seek out his head, sliding into his hair—not pulling just yet but twirling longer strands around your knuckles. A wordless reminder that despite your positions, you’re still the one calling the shots, and at any point you could easily guide him wherever you want him.

He hums a long, throaty sound at the sensation, nipping your skin once more with playful levity, and skirting his broad palm up your shifting ribcage. It comes to a stop a mere few inches from your armpit, where he swiftly flicks his thumb over your nipple.

Clambering back up to your eye-level, Colt draws up a slanted smirk, the tips of your noses brushing. He’s so close his face is faintly out of focus, but the rapidly-rooting desire gleams starkly in his eye, impossible to miss.

“Hi,” he hums, gaze trained low on your loose mouth.

“Hi, handsome.”

Much to your delight, Colt goes pink within a matter of seconds, mouth shifting and twisting with bashfulness. One of your hands slips down to his cheek, feeling the blooming warmth there.

“What do you need?”

Colt’s eyebrows furrow, ever so faintly, eyes darting low for a split second. “You know.”

At that, you mirror his expression, albeit with a far more dramatized edge. Your head tilts against the comforter in mock confusion.

“Hm, I don’t think I do. You’re gonna have to tell me. In great detail, preferably.”

Colt’s head wilts, lands roughly onto your shoulder with a defeated puff of breath. You scrape your blunt nails against his scalp just to feel the suppressed tremor that lances through his shoulders.

“You’re a sick man, you know that?” he bleats. “A sick, evil man.”

"And yet, here you are," you counter, folding a leg up to press your inner thigh to his hip. The pressure of his half-hard cock is impossible to miss with this angle. Self-satisfaction blooms in your chest—it's hard not to get a big head when it comes to Colt, such an eager little thing, wrapped right around your finger.

He plants a brief, wet kiss to the knob of your collarbone, blindly drawing one arm back to paw at your raised thigh, hips driving down to press clumsily against yours. It knocks a lovely, low groan straight out of him, reverberating through you as he finds a jerky pace.

"Come on, sweetheart, you've got no problem humping me like a dog but you're too embarassed to use your words?"

Colt, fully hard now, freezes against you, fingers fixed like claws into the meat of your thigh and his free arm holding some of his body weight off of you, forearm trapped under your upper back.

"Unless you want to get off like this," you taunt, tone loose with indifference. Colt's head shoots up straight, almost knocking into your chin in his haste. His pelvis rolls again, though a movement so shallow and brisk you figure it was more of an automatic impulse. His hand beneath you wriggles up your back, curling around the curve of your shoulder to prod at the nape of your neck.

"Fuck me? Please?" he breathes into your mouth, brows pinched and hair askew—the image of need.

"There you go," you murmur with delight, soft despite the thrill of heady arousal his face and quiet plead have roused under your skin. "Was that so difficult?"

You don't give him any time to reply, hastily tipping him over onto his back. This strong thighs catch your hips instinctively, grinning up at you like the cat that got the cream. Little does he know you were always bound to end up like this—despite your far superior capacity for concealing your own arousal, you've been near dizzy with the urge to fuck him senseless since you hauled him into that tiny bathroom well over an hour ago.

You both shed your pants and briefs, and while Colt battles with his pair caught on an ankle, you retrieve the lube from your bedside drawer. With this, you waste no time, pumping a generous amount onto the pads of three fingers and smearing it around with the same hand's thumb, while you toss the bottle aside and settle on your haunches in between his thighs. His legs are bent and draped over yours, feet planted on the mattress behind you.

Hard and leaking already against his toned stomach, bathed in the yellowish light of your bedside lamp, flushed all sorts of pink and red, Colt is gorgeous. You say as much, rendered a little breathless as you skim your dry palm up his flank and watch it quiver with a sharp intake of breath. You draw it back down, settle your thumb in the crease where his thigh connects to his body.

Your first finger goes in with little resistance and a contented sigh from below. At first you simply press in and pull out to the last knuckle in steady, cyclical motions, gently working lube and looseness into him. Colt's got his head perched on one folded arm, the other lax on the mattress, loosely extended to draw mindless patterns into your kneecap.

It's when you work a second finger into him that you start having some fun. You crook your fingers sharply upward, testing. Colt sucks in a shuddering breath, jolting as though suddenly shocked.

"Ooooh, boy," he says, a little strained. His gaze abandons the ceiling to peer at you down the sharp line of his nose, mouth slanting with dazed amusement. He must read something in your eyes, because suddenly, his own narrow pointedly. "Don't be mean."

"I didn't do anything!"

"I can see you—" he waggles a finger at you. "Scheming."

"Alright, settle down," you dismiss, swatting his hand away as you scissor your fingers, and then snicker when he grits out a low moan, head straining back against the bed. Your free hand drifts to the bend of his knee, drawing it up, closer to his chest. "Hold here."

Breathing out hard through his nose, Colt hooks his palm under his thigh, dutifully securing it in place.

During the press of your third finger into him, you clasp your hand over the back of his, watching his face tighten around a half-swallowed sound. You keep pressing in deeper until you can't, fingers angled unward and drawing firm circles with them that make Colt's hips jump, his arm soar up to cover his eyes.

Alternating your motions, scretching and pressing and circling and retreating, you watch him crumble at your fingers. Something like awe captures you, gawking at the massive swelling of his broad chest and the surges of precome leaking out of his slit, pooling in the dips and valleys of his straining abdominal muscles.

"Jesus," you breathe out, releasing his hand to grip the base of your own cock—hard just by watching him. It hits you then that you haven't come at all tonight; no wonder you're so pent up. Keeping a firm ring around yourself, you pick up the pace of your fingertips, itching to reach for his dick as well but mostly wanting to see how far you can push him, just like this.

Colt's low moans are cut short by a blurt of your name, snipped with pleasure. You watch his nails fade into a ghostly white, curling fiercely into his thigh.

"Hm?" you ask absentmindedly, refocusing again on the way your fingers disappear into him, blood thrumming through your head, joined only by his fractured groans and the wet sounds of your ministrations.

"Wait, wait—ssshhit, 'm really close."

"Hold on, hold on baby."

"No, no wait, I'm ready, 'm gonna come, I can't—"

You curl your fingers up again, and reach over with your thumb to press it flat against his perineum.

Just as his hips drive up, grinding sloppily onto your fingers in a raw instinct to chase his orgasm, you slide your fingers free entirely, watching as his cock dribbles onto his skin and he sags, moaning feebly into the crook of his elbow.

You soothe the tremors caught in his extended thigh, using both the remaining lube on your fingers and scooping up some of his pre in order to slick yourself up.

“I said don't be mean,” Colt grouses, peering mournfully up at you. You slide your palm over your tip a few times, grasp tightening over the muscle of his thigh, and an airy chuckle slips out of you as you line yourself up.

“You said stop, I stopped,” you reply with innocent lightness, lowering your torso to peck his ruddy cheekbone. His exasperated sigh rolls into a deep hum when you finally press into him, inch after steady inch.

Pleasure fizzes and thrums under your skin, dizzy with the tight heat around you, clenching spasmodically. You muffle a long sound of your own into his chest, rolling your hips deeper even once you’ve bottomed out.

“Oh, fucking—Jesus,” you grit, stuck to his chest with your mingling sweat. Colt is mostly silent beneath you, save for the hitching irregularities of his breath, catching and stuttering with every lazy grind of your pelvis. He’s released his leg at some point, and now both hands are clinging to you, one planted on the small of your back and the other strewn across your shoulder blades.

“You feel so good, Colt,” you murmur once the initial flare of bliss has ebbed into a steadier constant. You nose at the hollow of his throat, pulling out a few inches and feeling his cock twitch against your stomach. “So tight, perfect for me.”

“No need for flattery, baby, you’ve already got me in your bed,” Colt ribs, but his voice is a little wheezy, a little dazed, so it falls somewhat flat. You push back into him—not quite a proper thrust but something approaching it. You lift your head just in time to see his face crumble, pushing out a stilted huff. Unable to tease any further, you settle into a deep, steady pace, though not yet rough.

“I know, but you love it.”

His brows furrow and swiftly release, gazing up at you with his half-lidded eyes a little bashful. “I wouldn’t say love…”

“Oh, come on. There’s no shame in this bedroom. You love being good for me. My good boy.” To punctuate, you give a particularly firm thrust, letting your whole body roll with it, angling yourself deeper into Colt. He responds as expected: jolts and utters a wavering moan into the ever-narrowing space between your faces, fluttering around you.

You're struck, suddenly, with a fondness so potent it nearly makes the climbing rhythm of your hips falter. Colt clings to you and shakes and moans so beautifully, fitted to your body as though tailored to it. He digs one heel into your ass and involuntarily scrapes his nails down the soft arch of your spine—marks which he'll later kiss and mumble apologies for. He's so perfectly tight on your dick, taking you with such ease and enthusiasm you can only bask in the gales of simmering pleasure that rip through you with every deep thrust and clench of his spongy insides.

"You're staring," he manages after an indecipherable stretch of time, head pressed back against the comforter, a vaguely Y-shaped vein bulging in his throat. You tamp down the urge to bite into it, in favor of leveling his gaze.

"Can you blame me?" you huff, shifting your weight onto one forearm in order to bring your other palm to his jaw, propping your thumb up under his chin to keep his head held back and lovely throat exposed. He rolls his eyes but otherwise ignores your comment, and instead you watch in steady increments as his orgasm approaches.

His brows warp and pinch closer, blinking unevenly until his eyes eventually stay screwed shut; his breath hitches, his throat bobs.

"Close already?"

"Shut up," he groans, though any attempt at frustration is cheapened by the high-pitched quality of his voice. "You shouldn't've—teased so much... earlier—shit..."

"Mhm," you hum, reluctantly releasing his jaw in order to reach blindly behind you, finding his knee and hitching it up to your ribs. The new angle has Colt yelping, squeezing around you like a vice, hips lurching up to meet yours.

He's so loud when you fuck him, it's addictive. Even more so as he's approaching his release, when whatever scrap of dignity he has left flies out the window and he gets particularly whiny. You lean down, drink them all in, hips not relenting for an instant despite the quiver of strain in your thighs and arms.

"It's okay," you murmur into his cheek, dazed, warm and buzzing all over, "it's okay, baby, come on."

He sounds almost suffocated when he comes, shuddering harshly beneath you, clamping down on your cock and spurting across your stomachs. You can feel the tremors in his arms on your back, in his inner thighs where they're pressed against your bare skin. You fuck him through it, only slightly decelerating. He continues to tighten and spasm, even as he begins to come down, and your head spins.

He finally sags beneath you with a cross between a groan and a deep sigh, nails relenting on your poor back, swiftly replaced by sweat-sticky, circling fingertips.

At some point during his orgasm, your face sunk into the crook of his neck, breathing in his musk and just barely keeping yourself from picking up a harsh pace, in search of your own release. Still, the steady, even rolling of your hips soon makes Colt whine.

"Gimmie a—s'too much, give me a minute," he gasps, though his pelvis gives weak, tentative twitches against your own. You don't answer to that, sunken deep into your long-neglected pleasure, now that you've taken care of him. You release his knee in favor of palming at the rising and falling width of his ribcage; it's mostly unintentional, the way you begin pounding into him harder, movements rushed and somewhat snipped with urgency.

Colt grunts, fingers tensing on your skin again, into the indents his nails have surely left. He appears split on whether to grind down onto you or attempt to writhe away from the stimulation, bordering now on painful. The breathless cries of your name, uttered just above your ear only amplify the heat surging through you, condensing in the pit of your gut.

"Too much—s'too much," he repeats, thrashing beneath you, breaths coming in so quick they stumble over each other.

Despite it, he's still hard between your bodies.

"Want me to stop?" you manage through your own trance, between lazy licks and bites to his pulse point. From this close you can hear the tiny huffs each harsh thrust knocks out of him, and when he gives a rather telling wet sniffle your cock twitches.

Colt hums and moans and whimpers, makes all these addictive little noises that draw you further to the edge, but he says nothing. You take it as what it is, and let animal instinct take the wheel. Your thrusts grow sloppier, arhythmic, jackrabitting into him and fueled only by your approaching orgasm and Colt's cries of pleasure-pain.

You come with a low moan that feels ripped straight from your chest, wavering at the tail end as you dump your load into his twitching insides, near overwhelmed by pulse after pulse of warm pleasure. It lasts ages—at least it feels that way to you, and by the time you surpass the peak and roll through the aftershocks, Colt tenses and follows right after you. You crane your neck down just to see the pitiful two, three surges of come his dick offers up, and pull out when he starts to hiss with true discomfort.

You sit back on your knees, palms holding his own apart in order to watch your come trickle out of his hole. You certainly can't get hard again, not this fast, but you feel your dick give a weak jolt at the mind-numbingly erotic sight.

With a curse muttered under your breath, you reach over the side of the bed and pull up the first thing your fingers graze—which turns out to be your discarded boxers. You clean up his stomach first, then some smears on your own, and finally his ass.

Despite the weight of exhaustion enfolding you and the general achiness in your legs, you shuffle off the bed to grab some water from the kitchen, an opened bag of chips held shut by a plastic clip, and once back in the bedroom, two pairs of underwear.

Colt chugs most of the water, but stops himself before finishing it, smiling bashfully up at you when he offers the few sips left. You thank him anyway and down the rest before crawling back in beside him.

He hisses when he tucks himself into your boxers, legs drawing up slightly.

"Dude, I think my shvantz might fall off," he solemnly says, rolling into your side and propping his upper body onto one forearm. You snort, eyes shut but hands easily seeking him out.

"Your what?"

"Totally worth it, though," he says in lieu of an answer. You feel him pepper soft kisses along the side of your face, leading ultimately to your mouth. "Didn't even know I could do that."

He settles agaisnt your shoulder with one palm pressed flat against your stomach, thumb sweeping lazily.

"The more you know," you hum, sinking your fingers into his sweaty hair. You probably should've showered. Oh well, you can do laundry tomorrow.

"We are doing that again, though, right?"

that man would be Starstruck i'll tell you that much !!

he meets you at the very beginning of production for a neo-western film he's working on, relatively low budget all things considered, so the producers are cutting corners where they can and hire a local texan company that rents out residential ranches as well as trained stunt horses.

it's your ranch that's ultimately chosen as the filming location, and your mare (though two identical others are brought in) to star in the film.

the first time colt sees you it's approximately three minutes before he's to be bucked off of said horse and into a shallow pool of mud.

he almost thinks you're an extra at first, with your wide-brimmed hat angled low over your brow, your weathered leather boots and the toothpick dangling loosely from the side of your mouth. but you approach him amidst the controlled chaos of the set and stroke the dappled silver horse with familiar assurance, so he's quick to discard the notion.

you cordially introduce yourself, revealing a faint southern drawl to your smooth voice that briefly makes colt stumble on his own greeting.

"i see you've been introduced to Harper already," you say, scratching absentmindedly at the mare's neck.

"harper?"

you cock an eyebrow, flash him an amused half-smile and nod at her.

"oh! yeah, yeah she's great. super friendly."

"yeah, that's my girl," you hum, turning to the tranquil mare, smiling softly. colt takes your moment of distraction to allow himself a greedy eyeful. he didn't even know cowboys still existed—at least not ones with the whole getup. he'd think maybe you were just dressed for the shoot, that maybe you were an extra or had some minor role, but the dried dirt plastered across your boots alone reveals their regular use.

you comb through harper's mane with steady, calloused fingers, and colt could really kick himself, were he flexible enough. he feels like a school girl. he gawks at the ripple of your forearms, revealed beneath your rolled-up sleeves—washed denim on warm-toned skin.

"you like to ride?" you ask, and colt chokes on his tongue somehow. his eyes mournfully pry away from your arms, but of course your eyes prove no lesser sight. it's unfair; his pulse jackhammers in his throat.

"uh—come again?"

your eyes glint with that fondness again, patting harper's shoulder twice before crossing your arms. "do you enjoy horseback riding?" you rephrase, and colt barks out a sort of suffocated chuckle, dragging the heel of his palm across his nape.

he's making an idiot of himself. well, he is an idiot, but he could be doing a better job at hiding it from possibly the most handsome man he's ever seen. and that's saying something—he works in hollywood!!

"not really," he says, dropping his arm in defeat. "i mean, i just don't do it very often. my area of expertise lies more in being set on fire and dropped from very high places."

that gets a laugh out of you, small and loose but genuine. colt bites down on his cheek in an attempt to squash his dumb grin; it only partially works. you aim your smile at the dirt underfoot for a second or two before refocusing on him. your fingers flex briefly against your arms; colt does not stare.

"well i can promise horses are much safer. maybe i could give you some lessons, sometime?"

colt blinks. he thinks he must be having some sort of vivid, enamored daydream, because you suddenly look a little nervous. you don't shrink or break eye contact, but the restless shape of your mouth reveals a soft bashfulness—or maybe colt's seeing what he wants to see.

somewhere in the near distance, the first ADs voice rings out, calling for everyone's places. seconds later, she shouts for colt to get ready.

ignoring it, unable to break away from your unyielding gaze, colt nods eagerly, blindly moving to mount harper. "that'd be cool. yeah, man. or uh... partner."

immediately he cringes, now settled firmly on the saddle, and stops himself just before he can groan and hide into his palms. you give a similar sort of wince, but your smile lingers in the squint of your shaded eyes. you cant your head up at him, one warm palm falling to the top of his knee.

"yeah, we don't say that."

"noted."

you chuckle, and colt tries very valiantly not to stare down at the simmering contact of your strong, rough hand on his knee.

right before the AD calls to roll sound, you squeeze lightly, pat his leg once, and then withdraw.

"good luck," you say, already turned around, strolling off toward the cluster of busy crew behind the cameras.

"thanks."

you shoot a sly glance at him over your shoulder. "i was talking to harper."

colt huffs, thumbing unconsciously at the warm place where your palm sat seconds prior.

˗-ˏˋ ✸ ˎˊ-˗

a week after meeting you, colt somewhat manages to convince himself you forgot all about your interaction, and the promise you made—though promise feels charged when he thinks about it, like something far more significant than the offhanded comment you probably only made to be polite.

you cross paths on set a few times, locking gazes across a field or stable crawling with crew members—it's always the same: you'll tip your head, offer a crooked, faint smile in the shade the brim of your hat stretches down your face. and colt... will short-circuit. every time, without fail. on a good day he'll at least manage a smile back, but if he's particularly caught off guard by your suave charm, he'll go hot in the face and make some ambiguous gesture between a wave, a thumbs up, and a peace sign.

so. things are not going smoothly. he's not entirely certain what "things" refers to, either. it's fine.

he manages. at any given point in time while on set he is dreadfully hyperaware of your presence, like a blaring neon sign that just can't escape his peripheral. he fumbles a few stunts, earns himself a stern talking-to by dan, who for all his sharp judgement still hasn't discovered the source of colt's sudden and recurring abstraction.

you approach him again by week two of production. it's just past eleven PM after a particularly punishing shoot; most of the exhausted cast and crew has scattered by now, eager to return to their beds to start it all again tomorrow morning.

colt is not one of them, despite how his body aches—literally and figuratively—for a comfortable bed. his reasoning, of course, being you, lingering across the ample barn, harper's reins roped around your fist as you chat with one of the equine veterinarians they keep on set for any stunts involving the horses.

he's been working at his jumpsuit for the better part of five minutes, pretending to fumble at the buttons and zipper because once it's off, he won't have a reason to stick around. he just can't get enough of you, from the shape of your strong legs, to your stubbled jaw, hell—even to the glinting spurs on your aged boots. is he into that? somehow? jesus.

when he drags his eyes back up to your face, he finds it staring right back, eyes a little squinted and unreadable in the dim lighting. he jumps, and very un-subtly feigns a sudden fascination with the stained wooden ceiling, hands finally zipping his jumpsuit open. heartbeat stuttering in his ribcage, colt clumsily steps out of it, balls it up and tucks it under his arm.

his flighty bee-line toward the barn entrance is cut short by your voice, calling out. he gazes mournfully out at the dark, open field just outside before stiffly turning around.

you approach with harper in tow, looking tired but amused. behind you, the vet gathers her things and makes her exit. you nod and politely bid her farewell as she passes. when you turn back to colt, the temperature in his face has only dropped a few degrees. he's suddenly very grateful for the dimness.

"hey, partner," you tease, and he swears you deliberately deepen your accent to punctuate the joke, but the low, friendly drawl of your tone makes him forget, briefly, what you're even referencing.

"hey. hi—uh, partner." he makes a sort of hat-tipping gesture, which he manages not to grimace at when you laugh.

"i've been meaning to talk some more," you say after a short pause. "but things have been so hectic and all..."

"right. yeah, no, of course. me, too. i wouldn't want to approach you while you're working, or distract you, or anything."

you level a meaningful look at him. he's too battered and scramble-brained to read into it before you're speaking again: "you can distract me whenever you like."

jesus christ.

colt chuckles, strained and airy, and glances down at his shoes.

"okay, yeah, cool. good to know."

"are you...?" you cut yourself off, lower lip twisting faintly as though chewing on the inside of it. you cram your thumbs behind the buckle of your belt, hands hanging casually. colt has to scrape his gaze off of the general area to meet your eye again. "you still interested in those lessons?"

colt's reply is lightning-quick. "of course i am. how else am i ever gonna ride off into a beautiful sunset?"

you grin, tipping your head to the side. "you planning on doing that soon?"

"it's on the bucket list."

you laugh again, earnest but soft with tiredness. harper blinks boredly at the two of you, ear twitching.

“great. how’s sunday?”

and so you settle on sunday around noon. it’s the cast and crew’s day off, and colt is grateful for the agreed time to meet outside the horse stables—only so he can sleep in and shed some of the amassed exhaustion he’s been building since production started. he has to be sharp, lest he embarrasses himself in front of you.

(who is he kidding? he’s probably going to do that anyway, sleep-deprived or otherwise)

he hypes himself up the entire drive from his hotel, blasting his playlist so as not to let his mind wander, and subsequently panic. it’s just horseback riding. with a disarmingly handsome, real-life cowboy. no biggie.

you’re already inside when he arrives, combing through harper’s long mane and whistling to yourself.

colt's hope to quietly oberve you from the door for a moment backfires when you immediately turn over as he steps inside, catching his eye. you smile and wave him over. colt doesn't think he could deny you if he tried—he doesn't, of course, and walks up to you.

"well, don't you clean up nice?" you say, eyeing him up and down, still half-smiling.

colt, suddenly, is flooded with warmth, looking down at his outfit: a black fitted tee under one of his nicer flannels, jeans, and a pair of suede boots. he'd tried for a casual, just-threw-this-on look, but then again, he had definitely not just thrown it on, and spent the better part of twenty minutes rummaging through his bags before leaving.

"thanks," he breathes out. "you, too. i mean, you always look nice."

your own smile warps, something a cross between flattered and humored. you nod in thanks, and move to set harper's brush aside. she's already saddled up, nudging colt's palm when he extends it toward her.

"alright. get on her, c'mon," you say, looping the reins a few times around your fist, clapping him once on the shoulder.

colt sticks his foot in one stirrup and hoists himself into the saddle, missing the warmth of your hand the instant it leaves his shoulder. god, he really is screwed.

harper snorts as you lead her out of the stables, and colt is glad you're minding the path because he can't look away from you.

harper comes to a steady halt in the flat plot of land behind the stables. you hand him the reins.

"right," you say, absentmindedly picking something out of harper's mane. "it's easy once you get a hold of it. to move forward, gently squeeze her sides with your legs. to stop, you lean back and pull slightly on the reins. straighten your—here."

you step forward, reaching up, and colt has merely a split second to brace himself before your hand settles on his mid-back, gently coaxing him to straighten it. your chest brushes against his knee. he keeps his gaze pointedly ahead.

"there, that's it," you hum, withdrawing. "easy, right?"

he nods jerkily, squeezing the life out of the leather in his fists. "yep. easy."

you give him a few more pointers before he moves, most of which he fortunately registers. a few are lost on him, but he gets the general idea. you step back and he coaxes harper into a calm stroll, steering her around for a bit before picking up a bit of speed.

during it all, you linger where he started, arms crossed as you watch him. ocassionally, you'll shout out a tip or correction, but for the most part, colt holds his own pretty well. it is fun, he realizes, but he still regularly circles back to you, just to chat for a minute. that's even more fun.

he rides for about an hour before harper grows antsy, and you call her back. when colt moves to hop off, you extend a hand to him and catch his in a firm grip. for half a second after his feet hit the dirt, the hold lingers, fleetingly, and then you release it.

the two of you stroll up to the stables, where you park harper before a water trough at the rear end of the structure. she happily ducks her head to drink.

"you're a natural," you tell him, grinning under the spring sun, one elbow perched loosely atop the white fence circling the plot.

colt huffs, shaking his head modestly. "beginner's luck," he deflects, warm in the ears. "harper’s really great." he reaches up, strokes harper's firm shoulder muscle.

"she's a saint," you say warmly. "had her since i was seventeen. trained her myself."

colt hums curiously. he's deciding which of the cluster of questions on his tongue he wants to ask first when harper's head comes back up, snorting and sighing sharply a few times. colt looks at her, concerned for a brief moment until he hears you chuckle, stepping up to grab her reins.

"alright, girl, settle down, don't be throwing a fit now," you grumble, patting her neck as you guide her away from the trough. you turn back to him. "she's angry i got her working on her day off. mind if we continue another time?"

colt shakes his head, gesturing openly toward the stables which harper is longingly gazing at, still puffing.

so the three of you head over back to harper's pen, where you pull her saddle and halter off and hang them up right outside the dutch door.

"hey, thanks for this. i had a good time," colt says once you've stepped back out and come to a stop in front of him. he's leaning his shoulder against the aged wooden wall, picking absentmindedly at his cuticles over his stomach.

you nod graciously. "the pleasure was all mine. maybe i could sneak one of harper's doubles for next time, we could ride together."

colt isn't entirely sure why that thought makes his stomach flip with a tiny thrill. he shrugs, feigning composure. "as long as it's into a beautiful sunset, i'm down."

you laugh down at the dirt and straw-covered ground, then bring a hand up to scratch at your jaw, tendons flexing subtly under your skin. colt swallows thickly.

"sounds nice," you say, looking back up. you level him with a new look, now—still bearing that friendly warmth of yours, but denser, now. heavier. your mouth holds it's faint slant, the smallest of lingering smiles, and colt can't deny, even with his impressive talent in doing so, the way your eyes trail over his face. darting from his eyes, to the messy sweep of his hair, down his jaw and over his mouth.

he indulges, and allows his own to lock onto your lips as well, faintly chapped but looking unbearably kissable. he drifts, almost involuntarily, and smiles dopily when you mirror the motion.

when there's nothing but a few inches of charged air hanging between your noses, colt feels a strong hand settle on his hip, thumb mindfully slipping underneath the hem of his t-shirt, slow enough to give him time to stop you. the rough texture of your calloused pad scrapes gently over his hip bone, and his chest shrinks.

"this alright?" you murmur, forcing your attention from his mouth just long enough to meet his eye.

colt foregoes an answer, and instead locks a palm around the nape of your neck and pulls you in for a kiss.

it's tentative and warm at first, just a motionless press of impatient mouths, but then he feels you smile lightly into it and squeeze his hip.

of course, he thinks, damn near annoyed by it; you kiss just as skillfully as everything else you do.

his fingers flex against your neck, skin thrumming with a staticky buzz as you tip your head, deepen the kiss. your second hand comes up to smooth the small of his back.

with clumsy, knocking feet, he’s maneuvered to the side, rotating until his back is pressed against the wall and your chest is pressed flush to his. he clings to you like a lifeline, experimentally sweeping his tongue over your lip.

a blunt, unquestionably irritated snort snaps you both out of your daze, and you break the kiss with a forlorn sigh. colt remains frozen under your hands, unable to so much as glance away from your face, your kiss-slick mouth, as you turn over to face harper, whose head is sticking out from her stable, peering at the two of you with one critical eye.

"yeah, yeah, we're going," you tell her through a low sigh, and then face colt again. your thumb is still circling the sharp cut of his hip, and you seem just as reluctant to look away from his lips as he is from yours. he watches them pull into a fond smirk.

Henry stirs very slowly. Awareness reaches him in faint threads, knitting itself together as the memory of his dream already begins to fade and he becomes aware of his body again. It's a far kinder awakening than the harsh blaring of his many alarms wrenching him from sleep most days of the week, even with the faint achiness present in his limbs.

Warmth crowds in from all sides—the flattened pillow against his cheek, the rumpled blankets and sheets he's buried in, his own body heat, soaked into the mattress beneath him—and still he's cold. He's quick to notice its terrible absence in his foot, where it sticks out from under the covers, and just as swiftly he pulls it back in, curling into himself.

In the same motion, eyes still pressed loosely shut, he swings his leg back, searching out the man-sized furnace he shares a bed with in hopes of leeching some warmth.

When instead he finds a vague spot of ebbing warmth in the empty space behind him, Henry huffs mournfully into his pillow, prying his eyes only halfway open. He blinks a few times, eyelids sluggish and achy with an already-rooting headache, and attempts to focus on the clock on his nightstand. Drowsy as he is, he might as well be staring at it through a glass pane. A very foggy, very thick glass pane.

He turns to the window next, figures he'll have a better shot at gauging the time there—it's light out already, but the sun seems muted, pale, and isn't pooling inside the way it does around noon, so Henry estimates he can sleep in for another hour or two.

He stretches his limbs out, quivering all the way to his teeth, and then goes boneless back into his pocket of warmth right as the bedroom door creaks softly.

Henry's eyes squint back open where they'd fallen shut during a jaw-aching yawn, and more warmth finds his chest at the sight of you heedfully slipping back inside. His gaze slips when you turn to shut the door, down the expanse of your bare back and the low-sitting waistband of your shorts. How you aren't freezing your ass off is beyond him. Then again, you haven't been saddled with a particularly stubborn fever for the last several days.

"Oh," you say upon spotting his drooping, sleepy blues gazing up at you. "You're up early."

"What time'sit?" he mumbles, rolling over to face your half of the bed and patting your vacant spot with his palm.

"Just past eight," you reply as you crawl up the mattress and settle in beside him. "How are you feeling?"

"Where'd you go?" He demands in lieu of an answer, distantly aware of how disgruntled the question comes out, but sue him, he doesn't enjoy waking up to an empty bed anymore, especially after he had to banish you back to your own place for a few nights so he wouldn't get you sick before finishing with your finals. So, he just tucks his nose against the junction of your shoulder and neck and sighs.

"Had to take a leak, I need your permission to get out of bed now?"

Henry hums noncommitally into your shoulder, holding his tongue but swinging a thigh over your hips. Instead of a true response, he jerks both ice-cold feet out and presses them cruelly against your legs, snickering when you hiss. With great might you power through, and slip a hand up out of the covers to press flat against his cheek, then forehead.

"We might have to go to Urgent Care if your fever doesn't break," you hum, a thread of worry tightening your voice. Henry is quick to shake his head with dismissive looseness. Neither of you own a car, so he'd rather avoid paying for a ludicrously overpriced Uber—and the thought alone of stepping into a subway station in his state, with all its sounds and smells and lights, makes his head pound. Still, it hurts less than it did yesterday, and far less than the day before.

"I'll just sleep it off," Henry mumbles into your skin, weaseling a flat hand between the back of your ribcage and the bed, effectively trapping you. Already, that same sinking weight of tiredness makes itself known again in his limbs. "'M already feeling better."

Your fond puff of breath falls into his hair, followed closely by your fingers, which begin sifting through dark, sleep-mussed tufts and scratching gently over the base of his scalp. The sensation sparks feathery little chills racing down his spine, in response to which he noses further against your neck.

He has a feeling he won't be able to fall back asleep, but he keeps his body loose and his eyes shut, just to bask in the moment for as long as he can. You, on the other hand, seem to have no problem dozing off again—seeing as you had your last final exam yesterday after a particularly punishing exam season, so Henry understands, and when he eventually angles his neck up to watch your sleep-soft face, does so quietly, gingerly, so as not to disturb you.

He props his head up on his open palm, heel pressing into his temple. Your stomach rises and dips in even waves beneath his leg, eyebrows loose on your face, lips parted a mere hair's breadth.

Henry's chest feels funny just watching you. He itches to scour for his sketchbook—wherever the hell he left it—and capture you on its blank pages. But he's too tangled with you, and preserving your peace at the moment takes firm priority.

He can hardly believe it, even still, that he gets to have this. Gets to have you. For months you'd existed to him as some unattainable wonder, one he'd only permit himself to appreciate from measured distances: across a lecture hall or a few benches down from you at the subway station. Then, somehow, you'd spoken to him, your eye caught by one of his paintings at a portfolio exhibition, and the two of you hit it off so smoothly, you'd gone out to a 24-hour diner after the event and talked all night. He'd been buzzing by the time you two parted ways in the early hours of the morning, both from all the coffee he'd downed as well as the elation of having finally, properly met you.

He's endlessly fascinated by you, in a way he never is with other people. With art, certainly—maybe even a particularly good song or poem, but never people. People are fickle and frustrating, often cruel, prone to disappointing him. But since that evening you first spoke to him there was a sort of good-natured disposition to you, in the way you spoke but also in how you listened. He was so certain he'd scare you off once he'd started speaking, quoting Tristan Reveur and detailing the admittedly bleak inspiration behind his painting—but you were fascinated, seemingly as rapt with his words as he was with you.

He's pulled out of his reverie when you crack an eye open.

"Do I have toothpaste on my face or something?"

A tiny smile curls at the corner of his mouth, shaking his head as he skims his palm from your ribs along your warm, bare chest and up your neck. His palm lifts, only to leave his fingers tracing your jaw, all the way up to the hinge below your ear. Meanwhile, your own drifts lazily up and down his back over his loose sleep shirt.

"I love you," he murmurs, very matter-of-factly, swinging his thumb around to the other side of your jaw, catching it in an infirm grip. "Know that?"

"I had my suspicions," you reply playfully. "I love you, too." He feels the faint shifting of muscles under his fingertips as you draw up a soft smile. Your eyes don't stray from his mouth for an instant, but Henry keeps your head fixed on the pillow. Despite your efforts, you are endearingly easy to read.

Your hand strokes higher, the heel of your palm ultimately falling into the shallow dip between his shoulder blades and applying a degree of pressure that's more a question than anything else. Henry purses his lips, angling his head slightly away.

"You'll get sick," he says when your brows gather in a frown.

"I got my flu shot this year."

"Go back to sleep, you look exhausted."

"I should be telling you that," you grumble, still trying to urge him down into a kiss with the hand on his spine. Henry shakes his head in fond exasperation, curling his fingers to scratch down your jaw—and you seize the opportunity in order to dart your head up.

Fortunately for your immune system, regardess of the defeated groan you soon make, Henry just about manages to intercept the kiss with his palm, sealed over your mouth.

"Stubborn," he muses, pressing the pad of his thumb underneath your chin to feel it shift as you swallow, peering up at him with a cross of betrayal and amusement. Your tongue darts out, poking wetly at his hand, but Henry holds his ground. It'll take much more than that to gross him out.

If only to appease the pitiful edge to your expression, Henry ducks his head, presses a few fleeting pecks to your temple and the top of your cheek over his fingers. Your fingers drum insistently over his back, but your eyebrows loosen faintly once he leans his upper body over yours. The warmth of your breathing chest seeps into his, his skin oversensitive and tingly the way it gets when it's feverish but soothed by your body alone.

When your free hand drifts up to his narrow wrist and pulls it down, Henry doesn't resist, just straightens and blinks down at you. You kiss him, finally, and he allows it because he can very rarely deny you anything—and whatever, he's sick, he thinks he deserves a kiss from his (very mulish) boyfriend.

It's warm and chaste, but far from a quick peck. You finally return to his hair, cupping the back of his head to keep him in place while your lips slide with familiar ease against his. He thumbs blindly at your collarbone, slipping his eyes shut. Like a switch suddenly flipped, Henry forgets why he was even so adamant on not allowing you to kiss him. Well, he doesn't forget, exactly, just decides very promptly that if you do get sick, he'll gladly nurse you back to health, just as you've been doing with him.

The kiss fractures every now and again, though continually reconnects after half a beat, both of you reluctant to pull away.

Henry curls further around you when a shiver zips through him, one he isn't entirely sure is attributable to his sickness. His chest is so tight, heart stuttering under the immensity of his adoration he doesn't know what to do with it. He has to get it out somehow, put it down on paper with charcoal and paint. Feels he has to make something out of it, or else it might slip away and he won't have anything to show for it.

"Love you," he repeats against your lips, reaching up to the side of your neck, feeling under his pressing index finger the steady thump of your pulse. "Marry me."

Your smile ends up being what fully breaks the kiss. You scratch distractedly at his scalp, going a little cross-eyed as you try to meet his gaze, noses knocking.

"What a proposal. Very romantic," you tease, but Henry doesn't laugh—though not for lack of fondness. Strangely enough, he's completely untroubled, not embarassed nor anxious over what you may think or say, whether you'll be put off by the idea or move to pull away.

You won't. He knows you won't.

"I'll buy you a ring, I'll get you flowers, whatever you want," he continues, darting between both of your eyes. "You're it for me."

"Alright, loverboy." Your hand on his head comes around to cup his cheek, tracing the bag under his left eye with your thumb. "Let's think about this for a minute—"

"I'm not just saying it. I mean it."

"I know you do," you say, ever patient when it comes to him. "I'm just thinking logistics here. We're college students working minimum wage, baby."

"It doesn't matter," Henry says, smiling minutely, shaking his head despite knowing you're right. "I'll ask my parents for some money."

You laugh, and his forehead drops to your shoulder, huffing in faux defeat. It's so damn cold in this room; he presses himself flush to you, thighs and hips and chest melting into you under the covers, wishing he could crawl into you and curl up there, soaking up the heat that runs like a current under your skin. He presses his mouth to your neck for a few seconds, if only to warm his lips, and then you twist your head down, meeting his eye. He clears his scratchy throat.

"So, not a no?"

Your lips twitch, eyes tired but open and earnest. "Not a no."

He kisses you again, disregarding his prior concerns—he just can't help himself. Soon, you're both smiling too much to sustain it. Without looking away, Henry searches under the covers for your hand. Once he finds it, he lances his slender fingers between your own, imagining the feel of a smooth golden band around one of them. Imagines, for the first time in a long time, growing old, and doing it beside you.

"Get some sleep," he quietly says, then, somewhat cheekily, "Mr. Letham."

You snort, but comply and let your eyes drift shut.