You lie sprawled across your unmade bed, the sheets still warm and twisted, and watch him through the open bathroom door. The shower spray catches the light streaming in from the window and turns to mist, haloing his silhouette. Your apartment is cramped—galley kitchen, single window, bed that doubles as couch—but the lack of space serves you now with this direct line of sight.
He always leaves both the bathroom and shower doors open when he showers here. The first time he did it, you thought nothing of it. Now you understand it's an invitation to keep talking, to not let the distance of another room interrupt whatever rhythm you've built between you.
"You're staring," he calls out, not even bothering to look over and catch him in the act. His voice carries over the water's white noise, casual, amused.
"Can't help it." You prop yourself up on one elbow, not bothering to deny it. "Good view from here."
He laughs, a low sound that you feel in your chest more than hear, and tilts his head back into the spray. The water runs in rivulets from his hair—bleached blonde at the ends, darkening toward the roots where his natural color is growing back in. You've watched this transition over months, the slow retreat of chemical color revealing what he was born with. Soon he'll need to decide: another bad bleach job or reinvent himself again. You haven't asked which he'll choose. There are many things you don't ask.
Your eyes follow the water's path down the slope of his neck, across shoulders that carry more muscle than when you first met him. His back narrows to a waist you can almost span with your hands, and below that—
Below that is what you've spent the last hour claiming, what you still feel the phantom heat of wrapped around you. His ass, tight and round and now flushed pink from the hot water and from being gripped, spread, filled. You've lost count of how many times you've taken him there. Enough that he arches into it now without hesitation, that his body opens for you like it was designed for this single purpose.
You remember the first time with the clarity of a well visited memory. Six months ago, late summer heat pressing against your apartment window, the two of you stinking of sweat and grass after pickup soccer at the park. You'd invited him back out of habit—friends since freshman year, comfortable in each other's space—and realized too late that your couch was buried under laundry, your only chair held a disassembled bike. The bed was the only surface left.
So you lay side by side that afternoon, ceiling fan pushing hot air around, talking about nothing and everything in the cadence of long friendship. Someone made a joke. Someone shoved a shoulder. The roughhousing started as it always did—competitive, testing, the physical vocabulary you'd developed over years—and then something shifted. A hold held too long. A breath caught too close. You found your hand under his shirt, palm spread against ribs that lifted and fell with increasing speed, and waited for him to pull away.
He didn't pull away. His eyes, already the stormy color of winter sky, went darker somehow. His breath stopped entirely when your thumb traced upward, found the edge of something sensitive, brushed once and again until his head fell back against your pillow and a sound escaped him that you'd never heard before.
You learned him that afternoon. The catch in his throat when you touched him just so. The way his hips lifted, instinctive, seeking. The desperate clutch of his fingers in your sheets when you finally—finally—pushed inside him, slow and shaking with the effort of restraint, watching his face for any sign of pain and finding only a hunger that matched your own.
Now, watching him shower, you feel that same hunger coiling in your gut. Not satisfied, never satisfied, always building toward the next time. He turns slightly, water streaming down his chest, and catches you looking. His smile is knowing, proprietary, the expression of someone who understands exactly what he does to you.
"You’re thinking too loud," he says. "I can hear it from here."
“Yeah? What am I thinking then?” You ask, knowing he’ll guess correctly anyway.
"You’re thinking about fucking me again," he says, because the honesty has become easy between you, because there's no part of your desire you hide anymore.
"Yup. I’m thinking about how you feel around me. How you sound."
He turns fully now, leaning against the shower wall, the water hitting his shoulder and cascading down. His cock hangs heavy between his legs, stirred but not hard, still recovering from what you did to him. You watched him come untouched just from being ridden, watched him spill across your stomach while you emptied yourself deep inside him. The memory makes you shift, sheets rough against renewed interest.
"You're insatiable," he says, but he's smiling, pleased with himself, pleased with you. "We just finished."
"And I'll want you again in an hour," you say. "And again tonight. And tomorrow." The words come out rough, unplanned, more truth than you intended to speak. You watch his expression shift, something vulnerable flickering across his features before he masters it.
He turns back to the water, ducking his head under the spray, and you watch the line of his back, the tension in his shoulders that wasn't there a moment ago. You've learned to read him too, these past months. The way he deflects with movement, with humor, with sudden focus on something else when conversation edges too close to territory you both avoid.
The water turns off. He steps out, water dripping from his hair down his neck, across the planes of his chest, following the trail of fine hair that leads downward. He reaches for the towel hanging nearby but he only gives his body a few lazy swipes with it before hanging it around his neck. He stands in the bathroom doorway, backlit, looking at you with an expression you can't quite parse.
"What?" you ask, because the silence has weight.
He opens his mouth, closes it. Shakes his head, a small movement, and finally reaches for the towel. "Nothing," he says, rubbing it through his hair. "Just thinking."
"About?" That’s the thing about your…whatever this is. He seems to read your mind with perfect clarity, but he’s still a mystery to you. Why is he here? Why did he stick around after that first, world-shattering time together?
He pauses, towel draped around his neck, hands gripping either end. His eyes meet yours across the small space of your apartment, and something in his gaze makes your chest tighten, anticipation and dread tangled together.
"Forget it. I'm being stupid. Post-sex melancholy or whatever." he says, and the words land between you like stones dropped in still water. He watches your face, searching for something, then looks away.
You sit up, sheets pooling around your waist, and hold out your hand toward him. "Come here."
He hesitates, still framed in the bathroom doorway, water drying on his skin in the cool air of your apartment. Then he moves, crossing the small space between you, and takes your hand. You pull him down to sit on the edge of the bed beside you, and he comes easily, towel forgotten, naked and present in a way that makes your throat tight.
You want to say something. To address whatever worries are bouncing around inside his head, to find words that might bridge the gap between what you've been doing and what you've been feeling. But the silence stretches, comfortable and terrible, and you find yourself reaching up to touch his face instead. Your thumb traces his cheekbone, the edge of his jaw, the soft skin below his ear where his pulse beats visible and quick.
He leans into the touch, eyes closing, and you watch him surrender to it, to you, the same way he does when you're inside him. The same trust, the same abandon. It has never been casual for you, not from the first time. You've been falling for him in increments, in the way he laughs against your neck, in the way he brings you coffee without asking, in the way he looks at you sometimes like you're the only thing in the room worth seeing.
"I—" your voice breaks and you swallow and try again. “I have been avoiding asking what this is,” you say, the words rough, unpolished. You watch his eyes open, surprise and hope and fear all mixed together. "Whatever this is, I don't want to lose it. Lose you. So I just never said anything."
He stares at you, breath held, and you can see him processing, weighing, the familiar walls going up behind his eyes even as something softer struggles through. "You don't—" he starts, stops, shakes his head. "We said no feelings. That was the deal. Friends who fuck, no complications."
"I know what we said." You don't withdraw your hand, your thumb still resting against the pulse point in his throat. You feel it quicken, flutter, betraying whatever calm he's trying to project. "But I fucked up. I caught feelings. I have them. For you. And I can't pretend anymore that I don't."
The words hang in the air between you, irrevocable, the truth you've been carrying for weeks finally spoken. You watch his face, searching for any sign of how he'll respond, your own heart loud in your ears, your stomach tight with the vulnerability of what you've just done.
He doesn't speak. He moves instead, leaning forward, closing the distance between you, and kisses you. It's not like the other kisses you've shared—hungry, desperate, the kind that led to clothes coming off and bodies moving together. This is slower, deeper, his lips soft and certain against yours, his hand coming up to cup your face and hold you there, held, chosen.
When he pulls back, his forehead rests against yours, his breath warm on your lips. "I caught them too," he whispers, the admission raw, relieved, afraid. "Weeks ago. Maybe longer. I've been terrified you'd notice. Or that you wouldn't."
You laugh, the sound broken, disbelieving, and pull him closer, your arms wrapping around him, skin to skin, the water from his shower still damp on his back, mixing with the sweat on your own. You hold him and feel him hold you back, the two of you breathing together in the small space of your bedroom, the afternoon light slanting through the single window, everything changed and nothing changed, the future uncertain and suddenly, finally, something you might face together.
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