safe and sound (8,099) by spacelabrathor
Rating: Explicit
Relationship: Tyler Rake / Reader
Additional Tags: Gratuitous hurt/comfort, very mild dubcon, stupid emotions
Summary:
A soft knock raps on the door and startles a gasp from you, even though you knew to expect it. You fumble with the deadbolt and when you wrench the door open, he’s on the other side. Leaning against the door jamb, looking half-dead in the dim hallway light.
He is covered in blood and offers you a weak smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Is this a bad time?”
Your doorbell buzzes, harsh and echoing and too loud for the hour, and you find yourself blearily stumbling to the front door of your apartment. Barefoot and clad in soft sleep shorts and a worn tank top, blinking against the faint light that’s on over the oven and squinting to see the time flashing there.
It’s half past two in the morning.
Your doorbell sounds again, blaring from a tinny speaker next to your door, and you nearly clap your hands over your ears. You jam your finger on the speaker button, cutting the buzzing off, and can’t help the edge to your voice.
“What,” you hiss into the speaker, squeezing your eyes shut behind the press of your hand. The last two times this happened it was a drunk pressing all of the door buzzers for the whole building at bar close, asking with a loose tongue for spare change.
You wait for the inevitable slurred request but none comes. The line crackles in silence for a moment, and you know, somehow, that there is someone on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” you ask, your voice dropping soft. Leaning closer to the speaker, straining to listen. There’s breath there, on the other end, faint but labored.
You hear an inhale then, static crackling through the old wires in the speaker, and then, “It’s Tyler.” The voice is quiet, but clear. Familiar, but strained.
Your heart lurches in your chest as if doused in a bucket of ice water. “Tyler,” you say, suddenly breathless, your mind whirling on a rush of dizzying lightheadedness. “Are you - what’s wrong - “
You’re buzzing him up before he can even answer, slamming your thumb against the button that unlocks the door to the apartment building, hearing an echo down the hall when the door opens and then slams shut.
You push your hair back from your face, your heartbeat roaring in your ears as you look around your apartment. Stalling for a moment, sleep tangling up your thoughts, before going to your bedside and pulling out your med bag from where you keep it tucked beside your nightstand. Going back out into your living room and turning right into the kitchen. Flipping on the overhead light and zipping your bag open on the table there. Eyeing the level of your supplies inside, hoping you’d remembered to restock since you’d last used it.
A soft knock raps on the door and startles a gasp from you, even though you knew to expect it. You fumble with the deadbolt and when you wrench the door open, he’s on the other side. Leaning against the door jamb, looking half-dead in the dim hallway light.
He is covered in blood and offers you a weak smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Is this a bad time?”
“Tyler,” you groan softly, pushing him under the bright florescent light in your kitchen until he’s leaning against the sink. That he’s letting you push him around is cause for concern, and you feel around behind you for your pen light, tipping up on your toes and taking his cheek in your hand to guide his face towards you. Shining the light into his eyes to check his pupils.
He blinks down at you, breathing slowly, and you realize his pupils are two different sizes. It’s no wonder, given the dried blood flaked around a nasty gash along his hairline and the dark bruise blooming underneath it.
You know better than to ask, so you press a palm against his chest to keep him where he’s at while you turn to grab more supplies from your bag.
“What’s the worst?” you ask, returning to him an antiseptic wipe that you rip from it’s paper casing with your teeth. Leaning up to press it to the wound on his temple and frowning when it stains red under the press of your hand.
“Shoulder,” he says, sounding a little winded, and when you pull back, sure enough, his right shoulder is cranked out of place.
“Alright,” you say, touching at his chin to keep his face steady as you work at the cut on his head. “Let’s get that right, then.”
He offers you the arm slowly, like he has to think a lot about it, and you curl your hand gently around his wrist, placing your other hand on the inside of his elbow.
“Breathe,” you instruct, and he nods, and you look up at him once in warning before you throw your weight against it, twisting his forearm away from his body on a rough shove.
He groans through gritted teeth, and then you hear a heavy pop, and he sags back against the counter. Breathing out and gripping at the counter to keep upright.
You give him a moment to breathe through it, taking the time to look him over. He’s filthy with sweat and grime, and there’s more blood on him that you care to see.
“How long ago did this happen?” you ask, touching at his eyebrow and sweeping your thumb over his forehead.
He hums softly, his eyelashes brushing against your wrist. Thinking. “Two hours.”
You frown. “I need to keep you up then.”
He nods, like he expected that. He looks down, then away, and you give him a moment. Knowing that he means to speak but needs time to gather the words.
His eyes come back to yours, and all you can see are his mismatched pupils. You definitely need to keep him awake.
“I’m sorry. To bring this here, to you - again - “
But you shake your head, cutting him off. “No,” you say, but he shakes his head right back.
“It’s not - if i’m found here - “
You take his head in your hands, needing his head to be still. God, you think, his head must be pounding. “If someone broke through my front door, you would make quick work of them,” you tell him. Meaning it. “Half-dead or not.”
“ ‘m not half-dead,” he grouses quietly, but you shush him. “I just need the night. I’ll be gone before dawn.”
You nod, pressing another antiseptic wipe along the wound on his head. The filth that covers him makes it hard to see where he’s hurt. You have no doubt he is covered in cuts and pain, but it’s hard to make out beneath the dust and sweat and blood.
“I need you clean to tend to you,” you say. “Can you shower?”
He huffs, like it’s a stupid question, but his head nods down to his chest and you have to touch at his chin to rouse him. “Tyler.”
“I can shower,” he says on what sounds like a sigh but what you suspect is exhaustion combined with a thorough concussion. You wonder when he last slept.
He pushes himself up from the counter, slowly, slower than he would ever move of his own volition, and you shove the sour twist of worry down deep in your belly. It won’t help anyone now.
You move ahead of him, slipping into your tiny bathroom, covered in powder pink tile and lit by a yellow bulb over the sink. You turn the knobs of the shower, getting the water going and hot, and making sure you have soap and a washcloth hanging from the bar on the back wall.
When your upper half emerges from the shower, he’s there behind you. Taking up all the space as he pulls his shirt over his head. Grimacing silently when it catches around his neck and tweaks the arm you’d just reset in it’s socket. You move past him, touching at his chest and gnawing on your lower lip. Only barely resisting the urge to stay with him and help him undress, knowing that he wouldn’t want you to.
“Don’t pass out,” you warn as you pull the door shut behind you.
His answer is muffled through the door, but sounds like a grumbled, “I’m not going to pass out.”
You wait for the sound of him stepping under the water before you go back to the kitchen. Wetting a washcloth and wiping down the counter where he’s smeared dirt and blood against it, and then washing your hands in the sink with foaming soap. Watching it turn pink with his blood as it circles down the drain.
You pause for a moment, looking to the closed bathroom door and then back, before grabbing at the bottle of dark liquor on the shelf beside the refrigerator and fishing a low ball glass from the sink. Pouring yourself a little and allowing yourself a sip, blinking your eyes closed at the burn of it in your throat.
He’s right and you know it - that this could go very badly for you, and you find yourself walking into your dark living room and peering behind the curtains out into the street. You see nothing but stay there. Perched on the arm of your sofa and nursing your drink, checking through the window every minute or two. Not even sure what you should be looking for - a cartoonish surveillance van? Men gathering on the street? The red dot of a sniper sight on your forehead?
You hear the shower turn off eventually and down the last of your drink, leaving the glass there on the couch when you stand. You have a few pieces of clothing in your apartment that may fit him, and you go to the bottom right drawer of your dresser in your room. Rifling through the tee shirts and boxer shorts left by ex boyfriends, until you find a pair of sweatpants that may be big enough.
You knock on the bathroom door once and hear a responding grunt, so you crack the door and toss the sweatpants in without looking. Going to the kitchen then and gathering your med bag back together, rooting around in the back of your freezer for an icepack.
He joins you after a moment, dressed in the sweatpants you gave him which are indeed too short, but will work. His chest is bare and you let out a stilted sigh at the sight of painful wounds there. Slices and cuts and deep, dark bruises.
He’s more alert when you meet his eyes, and when you turn him to look into the light overhead, you find his pupils to match. Improving then, if slowly. The wound on his head has stopped bleeding as well, from the looks of it. You can let him sleep for a few hours, once you’ve patched him up.
“Come on,” you say, walking into the bedroom and flipping the kitchen light off as you go.
He disappears for a moment, and you turn to see him at the front door. Checking the deadbolt and then walking to the far wall and peeking out the window there, before letting out a controlled breath as he walks silently to the bedroom.
His eyebrows lift in his forehead when he sees you adjusting the quilt and laying a clean sheet over top of it. Smoothing it out under your palms.
“You’re going to let me sleep, huh?” he says, the corner of his mouth turning up.
You give him a look and pat the mattress beside where you’re sat. “After I clean all of those nasty cuts,” you say, reaching into your med bag for more supplies. “And you’ll sleep on the couch. But this will be easier for this.” You pat the mattress again, and he gives you a look that tells you he’s more in his head now than before. That he’s more himself. That stubborn look you know so well, that makes you very nearly roll your eyes at him.
He relents after a moment, touching idly at the waistband of the sweatpants and coming to stand next to you. Pretending to be a little annoyed because it’s a dynamic that fits you both like a well-worn glove, comforting and easy.
“On your stomach, come on,” you say, scooting back to give him room.
He takes a moment to settle in, making a quiet sound when he means to lift both his arms to pillow under his face but thinks better of it, his injured shoulder undoubtedly twinging in pain. He takes the other arm alone then and rests his forehead into the crook of his elbow.
You touch him with a gentle hand between his shoulder blades, knowing this position to be a vulnerable one for him, and run your hand down the notches of his spine as you assess him.
You’ve seen him worse, honestly. The bruising is the worst of it, dark and purpling in the low light of your bedroom, and you wonder as you pass your hand over them if he’s broken any ribs. There are cuts and scrapes littered across the plane of his back but they’re mostly shallow abrasions that will mend with minimal care.
“Alright?” you ask, rising up on your knees beside him on the bed so you can reach across and press an ice pack wrapped in a dish towel gently against his swollen shoulder, and he grunts quietly in response. “No sleeping yet,” you say, and get another grunt in response.
You work your way down his back slowly and methodically. Taking antiseptic wipes to every cut you find, gently working grit from the wounds with the press of your hand. Starting at the nape of his neck and working down. Your hands trace along his bones as you go, pressing lightly to provide some comfort of massage as you check along his spine and ribs for obvious breaks, but luckily, finding none.
His breathing deepens as he lays, growing steady and sure as you let your hands map the contours of his back. The dips and the valleys of his aching muscles and the bruises that lay atop them. Your thumb drags lightly over the thick mess of a scar that sits alongside his spine, dangerous and far too close and a memory of the first time you’d met him, years ago, and you feel something shudder quietly in your chest. Remembering.
You let your hand drift up his neck and rest gently against his pulse, where it’s beating healthy and strong beneath your fingertips, to assure yourself. That he’s here and he’s alright. He’s going to be okay, and you feel him stir under the touch.
“Okay,” you tell him, touching at his shoulder. “On your back now. Careful.”
He ends up on his back with a gritted exhale, and you put the ice pack back on his shoulder, checking the swelling before pressing it down gently.
When you lean back to grab more wipes from your bag, he’s watching you. Eyelids heavy in the low light, but alert and present with you.
You lean back over him to check on his head wound, touching at it gently with a wipe and sloughing off the dried blood around the edges. “Close your eyes, you weirdo,” you tell him, your voice gone soft, feeling a strange heat deep in your belly at his eyes on you, but he doesn’t.
You make your way down his front in much the same way as before. Running your palms down either side of his throat and cataloguing the bruising at the base of it. Taking wipes to every cut and scratch you find, pressing a little harder along the lines of muscle that are rigid beneath your touch and you know must be aching sore.
The worst is a slice below his pectoral on his right side, still oozing a little when you gently prod it, but you think it doesn’t quite need stitches. You fish out some butterfly bandages from your bag and apply them with care to close the wound, continuing to listen for sounds of discomfort from him but hearing none.
The rest of him cleans with relative ease, and you find yourself going into your own mind a little as you work. Feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathes under your hands, letting your fingertips nudge along the ridges of his ribs and sternum.
You’re working on an area of rash near his hip, looking a little like a roadburn, red and hot, when suddenly he’s moving. His eyes blinking quickly, trying to sit up - and you place a flat hand on the center of his chest and push him back down, your brow dipping on a frown.
“Stop. What’s wrong?” you ask, frowning and worried, and when he meets your eye, his expression reads a little distressed.
He stares at you for a lingering moment, his jaw working silently, and then he murmurs, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to - “ and you realize he’s gone a little hard in his sweatpants.
Your impulse is to laugh, stupidly, but you tamp it down hard with a grit of your teeth. Something in your chest clenching up at the naked vulnerability in his face. You push him back flat on his back, putting your weight behind your hand on his chest, and he goes, reluctantly. Like he’s waiting for you to storm off in an angry huff, which is ridiculous.
“It’s alright,” you tell him, dropping your eyes so he doesn’t have to hold your gaze, and your hands resume their work. “I’m a nurse, Tyler, I’ve seen stranger things.”
He watches you for a while, the line of his shoulders set rigid and stressed, and he doesn’t lay back fully until you bring your hands to his face and soothe him with a quiet sound. Spreading your thumbs carefully over his forehead in a repeating motion, until it draws a quiet exhale from him, and he lets his head rest back.
His eyes close then and you continue, dragging your thumbs over the bridge of his nose and then across the swell of both cheekbones, humming softly to yourself. Wanting - needing him to just give in to this. To relax and let you care for him.
You wonder when the last time was he was touched gently and it makes your lungs constrict at the thought.
Your hands retread familiar paths down his chest in an attempt to soothe him. Pretending like you’re checking the bruises that darken his skin but really pressing down gently to move the stiff muscles underneath them. Watching his face and seeing the tension remain there, even as his breath deepens under the touch of your hand.
You go back to the irritated skin near his hip and feel the skin of his lower belly twitch beneath the touch of your hand. You hear him let out a strained sigh, between his teeth, his eyes very deliberately closed as the muscles in his belly twitch beyond his control.
He’s hard now. Straining against the soft material of the sweatpants, and you can’t stop yourself from looking out of the corner of your eye. Something tightens in your gut, warm and tingling, and you force yourself to look away, back to his face, where the tension is plain in the lines around his eyes.
You sigh. Letting the backs of your knuckles drag softly against the skin below his belly button, watching the skin there twitch beneath in their wake. All of him is tense. Always, so tense. Holding back. Holding on. Keeping one foot ahead of the other until one day when he no longer can.
“Tyler,” you murmur, softly. Sadly.
You get a soft mm in response, his eyes still forced closed. Pretending he’s not hard at the touch of your hand. Pretending that he doesn’t need anything. Keeping it so tightly together.
You let your fingertips graze the faint dusting of hair below his belly button, and then let your hand go further. Cupping gently over the hard line of his cock through the sweatpants.
He seizes, muscles locking up tight as his eyes fly open on a rush of an exhale. He looks to you, his hands fisting in the bedding, his mouth a tight line.
You squeeze him gently with your palm, and it knocks a quiet groan out of him. His eyes lock on yours. Heated and serious.
You shake your head softly. “It’s alright,” you say, squeezing him once more. “It’s okay.”
You haven’t touched him like this in a very long time, but the fill of him in your hand is familiar all the same.
You wait to see if he shoves you away. If he protests. But he just stares at you with hot, hard eyes that are full of conflict. You know him well enough to know that look. His cock throbs in your hand and you feel a corresponding heat pool like honey in your belly.
A decision comes to you then. One that’s sure. You shift closer to him and keep a palm against his chest. You couldn’t hold him down if you wanted to, but you need to tell him that it’s alright. That he can allow himself this, after everything.
You keep your eyes on his face, wanting to see, when you reach below the waistband of his sweatpants and take him in hand. He grunts softly, his eyes going gratifyingly dark, and you feel the line of his hips tense against the bed. Every muscle in his abdomen tightening like a bow string at the soft grip of your palm around his cock.
It fills the bulk of your hand, your fingers barely touching around it, and something hollow aches in your center as you give it a gripping slide along your palm. Hearing his breath catch as you feel his foreskin glide forward with your hand. You give him another squeeze, gentle, just on this side of enough pressure, and something that sounds like a whisper of a whine lodges in his throat.
He needs this, you realize, looking back up at his face and seeing the lines around his eyes. The weight he carries there.
You release him for a moment and tap at the waistband of his sweatpants. “Pull these down,” you tell him. You lean across to your bedside table and wet your palm with a pump of lotion that you keep in the drawer there, coming back then to sit comfortably next to his hip.
He hasn’t moved, the sweatpants still up over his hip bones. He’s watching you with an expression you can’t quite read. Like he thinks this is a test somehow, and he’ll fail it if he gives into this.
You give him a look, unbothered, and tuck your hand beneath the waistband once more. Curling your hand around his hard cock, feeling him suck in a quiet breath at the cool of the lotion in your palm. You catch his gaze and keep it when you grip him tight and give him two firm pumps in your hand.
His eyes flash, dark and hot, and then you feel the sweet, soft nudge of his hips working into your hand. His jaw tensing and flexing in the low light of your bedroom. You grip him again, letting every curve of your hand catch along the length of him as glide down, and he lets out a controlled breath through his teeth. Blinking at you once, and then nodding. Nodding twice, quickly, and lifting his hips and letting you tug the sweatpants down on his hips.
You spread your free hand across his lower belly, scratching your nails at the trail of hair there, and you hear him make a sound, soft, and desperate, and you know you have him.
You watch his face when you begin to work him in your hand. Wanting to see him as you start a tight, quick rhythm, not here to draw this out or to make a show of it. Just needing to bring him a release that he so obviously needs and has been denying himself for who knows how long.
He watches you right back, his expression guarded even as signs of his pleasure begin to bleed into the edges of it - a tense of his jaw when you rub the undersides of your fingers across the hot head of his cock, a soft, ragged exhale from his nose when you twist your wrist at the base. You nod to him, the only sound in the room the sound of your hand sliding on his cock, to tell him that you understand. That it’s alright. That he can cum like this, here with you. That you don’t need anything more from him than that.
His cock is a brand in your hand, hot and silken and leaking, and the expanse of it reminds you of the feel of it inside of you. Makes you ache a little, remembering, before you bring yourself back to this. Remembering why you’re here, and you begin to use both hands then. Forming a twisting and gripping motion up and down his cock, pulling his foreskin gently there and back, your eyes helplessly trained to the sight of the head of it appearing and disappearing into the cavern of your fist.
You can feel him fighting it, even as the muscles in his lower belly began to clench and grit against his growing release. You can see the rigid line of every muscle in his body and wish, not for the first time, that you could get into his mind. To know what has him as tight as a drum as he looks on you with what looks almost to be a faint echo of fear. Like his control is slipping through his fingers and the sensation brings a wave of dread along with it. Guilt is there in his expression, too Muted, only visibly because you know him as you do, but you see it.
You wonder if he fears he is disgusting, using you in this way, and you take one of his hands where it’s fisted in your bedding and bring it close.
His brows draw, confusing dawning across his face, but then you take his hand and lift it carefully through the leg opening of your shorts. Pressing it up and in until his fingertips brush against the soaking mess of your sex. Where you’ve gone heated and wet at the simple sensation of his cock in your hands. So that he knows.
Breath rushes from him like you punched him in the gut, all at once as his expression draws nearly pained and a curse drops from his lips. You drop his hand to return yours to his cock, working it between both hands again, but his fingers remain. Pressing up into the plush heat of your cunt, a groan catching in his throat as he draws his fingers through your slick folds and feels at you there, where you’re hollow and aching for him.
His hips start to lift against your hand, his eyes going a little distant as he touches at you, feeling the evidence of your want with his own hand, and you nod to him. Murmuring soft words to him as you work him in your hands, watching as the muscles in his neck go tight.
A sound rips from somewhere deep in his chest when he cums, muted and gutted-sounding as his cock leaps in your hands. Pulsing out thick ropes of spend onto his belly and over your wrists as his hips rock helplessly into the grip of them. His chest heaving as he stifles his response as best he can, gritting his teeth as his eyes narrow but don’t close, his gaze locked to yours.
You hold him gently when he comes down, releasing him with care when his breath hitches at the touch of your palm against the sensitive skin there.
Before he can make the situation weird, you push yourself to your feet and head to the bathroom. Wetting a washcloth in the sink there, taking a breath as you look at your reflection in the mirror, and returning to the bedroom.
He looks up at you when you reappear in the doorway, looking utterly exhausted, and you can’t help the smile that spreads across your face. Feeling stupid fondness bloom in your chest at the fact that his release appears to have cut all of his strings. So much so that he doesn’t even protest when you sit beside him again and wipe at his chest with the damp rag, though he looks up at you and blinks with eyelids that look heavy.
“I’ll let you sleep now,” you tell him, teasing a little, as he very obviously forces his eyes to stay open.
He frowns then, lines appearing between his eyes on his forehead, and he reaches for you. Touching softly at your inner thighs, and you take his hand in yours and place it back on his chest.
“It’s alright,” you tell him, and he looks conflicted for a moment before he reclines back against the bed. Looking too tired to fight you on the issue.
He watches you, and you can feel the weight of the world on his shoulders just from looking at him. “I thought you were going to make me sleep on the couch,” he mutters, and a soft snort lodges itself in your throat.
“If you keep giving me grief, I might,” you tell him, your eyebrows raised. You push yourself to a stand once more to return the cloth to the bathroom, rinsing it under the tap before hanging it over the faucet.
When you return to the bedroom, he’s asleep. Out like a light, just like that, his chest rising and falling on slow, deep breaths. You find yourself smiling again and scrub a hand over your face to wipe it away. Not allowing yourself to indulge in those thoughts as you flick off the light and crawl into bed beside him, turning on your side to face away from him after tugging your quilt up and over the both of you.
You look to the clock on your bedside table and find it just past three, in blinking red numbers. A distant thought crosses your mind, that you should check the deadbolt on the front door and peek out the living room window once more before sleep takes you, but you can’t bring yourself to leave the bed. You feel as though you weigh more than a mountain just then.
You listen to the steady in and out of his breathing, deep and needed, and let your eyes close. Chewing on your lip and working hard to convince yourself that you don’t care that he’ll be gone when you wake.
Something stirs you awake and you look to the clock on your bedside table reflexively, before your eyes are even fully open.
It’s almost six o’clock in the morning.
Your bedroom is lit with the faint light of morning before sunrise and you realize that Tyler’s hand is resting along the soft curve of your belly, his fingers curled gently to where you can see the callus on his trigger finger.
You look at it there, rising and falling with your breath, and allow yourself to be pleased at waking before he left. Having fully expected to wake to an empty bed and a hastily scribbled thank you written on a receipt he found on the kitchen table.
You shift, sighing softly, to turn to see his face. Wanting to see if his head wound stayed closed through the night or if he instead bled all over your new bedding set.
When you look up, you find him looking at you. Awake and still, his fingertips brushing against your skin where your shirt has ridden up in sleep.
You wonder how long he’s been awake. How long he’s put off leaving to lay there and look at you.
He’s slept for just three hours, maybe less, but he looks noticeably healthier in the soft morning light. The lines around his eyes faded a little, the bags beneath them all but gone. The wound in his hairline is closed, crusting over with scab, and you allow yourself a little smile at that. He’ll go, you know, soon, but you’ve helped him. You’ve done what you could to make his time on this earth just a touch more bearable.
His hand lifts from your belly and touches at your cheek, brushing softly at the curve of it, and you look down. Away from his face where his face is doing something you cannot allow yourself to see. He’s feeling, here in your bed in the early morning, and you cannot allow yourself to look.
It’s easier when he doesn’t do this. When he disappears into the night without a word, leaving only the imprint of his body next to yours in the sheets. Your heart thuds in your chest, aching, and his hand curves around your jaw. Lifting your face to look at his, as you pull back a little. Not wanting to see, even as he turns you back to face him, his hand gentle but firm on your cheek.
You shake your head softly, almost imperceptibly, into his palm, and then you let your eyes go to his. Seeing there what you know you’ll find - his eyes naked with emotion as he regards you in the soft light. Saying nothing, but screaming everything in the silence.
You see his nostrils flare softly as his jaw tenses and then releases, and his eyes fall to your mouth, and you just….you can’t…
He leans to you and you meet him. His hands cradling your head as he presses his lips to yours. You push yourself up off the bed, sitting up beside where he’s laying back. Letting him keep your face to his as he breathes against your mouth and kisses you again, shivering at the scrape of his beard against your chin. Your hand comes to rest on his chest, against the hearty, strong beat there, and you make a soft sound as your lips part and he takes your lower lip between his teeth. Softly, a whispered groan catching in his throat.
You trade kisses back and forth, drawing back to look at each other, because for once, you’re both allowing yourselves to, before going back to each other. Tasting into each other’s mouths with slips of hot tongue, sharing each other’s air in the quiet space between you. Retreading this familiar ground that feels old and and worn and new all at once.
His palm curves around the back of your head, threading through your hair. His fingers tightening into the strands there on a gentle tug at the roots, and it drops your mouth open on a soft moan, your eyes falling closed as the space between your legs throbs, hot and twisting.
You end up on his lap, pushing at his shoulders to keep him laid on his back. Not wanting to aggravate the shoulder you spent the night setting. His nose trails along the curve of your cheekbone, his breath hot across your face as his hands lift and grip around the thick set of your waist. Curling around your ass and gripping tight on a pulse before releasing, making you pant softly against his cheek.
His hand moves, slipping lower and between. Sneaking through the open pant leg of your sleep shorts and touching gently at your sex. A groan rumbling in his chest when he finds you wet. Heated and slick against the press of his fingertips, pressing your hips back against his hand. Your mind already getting light and delirious from the sweet stroke of his finger through the soaking folds of your cunt.
He’s hard. You can feel him beneath you, pressed up against the inside of your thigh, and you draw back for a moment to look into his eyes. Needing to see what he is thinking, knowing he will never say it aloud.
His eyes meet yours, heated and sure, and you nod to him. Breathing out in a rush as he goes suddenly, pulling your shorts down your hips and thighs. Letting you lift each leg until they come free, tossing them beside the bed as he wiggles his hips to tug his pants down too.
The first press of the silky head of his cock against your sex has you both jerking against each other. Overly sensitive and worked up as you let your hips roll against his. Feeling the thick, hard length of him where you’re feeling hollow and empty.
His hand curves around your jaw, tucking your hair behind your ear as you look down over him, his expression a mess of feeling, and you shake your head again. Softly, barely resisting pressing a kiss to his palm, and then you reach back behind yourself and take him in hand. Lifting your hips and guiding him to you.
The silky spear of him into you makes you both groan, loud in the quiet of the morning, and you feel a tremble rip up your spine at the impossible stretch of him, seated deep in your cunt as your hips inch down and down and down, until they rest against his.
It hurts. Not badly, but in a strangely stupefying way as you hold yourself still to adjust to the fill of him. You’d forgotten, in your time away from him. Forgotten how he feels like he’s splitting you in two when he takes you like this.
You don’t realize your brow has drawn, your eyes squeezed closed as you breathe through the discomfort, until he pulls you down with a gentle hand on your jaw. Nudging his nose against yours and kissing you. Murmuring soft words of praise against your lips as his other hand strokes against your quivering thigh. Giving you time, then, pressing kisses to your cheeks until you let out a deep breath and feel your body start to give to the pressure of him.
When you push yourself up from his chest with a flat palm against his heart, he looks up at you with an expression you have to look away from. Feeling something growing painfully in your chest at the sight of it, biting at your lower lip and focusing instead on the pulse and throb of his cock within you. You brace yourself with two hands on his chest, each palm covering two dark bruises, and let your hips roll, gently, against his.
The slide of him inside of you is intoxicating. Slow and tight and sinful as his cock plunges deep into the velvet clutch of your sex. His hands come to your hips, gripping there tightly, and you give yourself over to him.
You move in unison, rocking your hips against his and feeling the thick fill of his cock with every rut while he pulls you back down against him with hands hard enough to bruise. Moving in a rhythm of heated skin and racing heartbeat and thoughts that clog up thick in your chest as you look down at his chest and see the bruises and cuts littering his skin there.
Your mind fights itself as you ride him. Dueling thoughts tangling messily together and making your vision swim. Wondering who he’s done this with last. How long ago it was. If you’re an indulgence he allows himself or one of the many beds that he warms. Wondering if this is the last time you’ll feel him like this, taking you apart and putting you back together again, heated and alive and safe. You wonder if you’ll see him again after this. You wonder if anyone will tell you when he dies.
You feel it in every inch of his body when he begins to cum. Feeling his abdominal muscles lurch beneath your hands and the stutter in his hips as he grits his teeth at the rising tide of it, until you feel his cock pulsing inside of you. Filling you with lash after lash of seed, hot and thick, his balls drawing up tight as they ache and throb and empty.
The heat of it, the sudden dizzying heat of it sparks something in you. In the back of your mind and deep in your belly, something deeper than conscious thought, and you can’t help yourself. Pitching forward on his cock and propping yourself up against his chest as you tilt your hips forward and down, and rut. Grinding the cradle of your hips against his in a desperate, frantic rhythm, feeling the promise of release spark distantly in the corners of your senses. Lost in the chase of that feeling, crushing the crest of your sex against the hard plane of his lower belly hard, again and again, as his head tips back against the pillow and his cock jumps and spits inside of you. Using him as you feel the tingle of it lighting along your nerve endings. Swelling like the tide, rising and swirling.
You choke on your breath when the pressure within crests, your eyes clamping closed as your cunt pulses and grips on his cock as pleasure rips down your spine. Working your hips as wave after wave washes over you, making every muscle in your lower body lurch in devastating time with the crash of it through your body.
You’re both winded when you come down from it, your chests heaving together where you’ve collapsed forward and pressed against him. Breathing together as your hearts race, strong and alive and feeling.
He cups your face again, a palm curving around your jaw, and you close your eyes. Letting your face press against the gentle touch of his hand but not allowing yourself to look down at his face. To see what you can feel radiating from his every pore in that moment. Knowing that you can’t stand to see it.
To know, when you know that when you blink, he will be gone.
The clock reads nearly seven in the morning when he gets up to shower. His skin warm as it slides against yours when he shifts and then stands, an impossible expanse of scarred and bruised skin that he carries like an albatross as he disappears through your bedroom doorway.
You hear the shower kick on a moment later and you let yourself roll to your back. Staring up at the ceiling and listening to the distant rattle of the shower curtain rings on the rod and the sound of the water washing over him. Counting your breaths in and out as you feel between your legs to where you’re puffy and bruised from him. Still slick against your fingertips as you touch gently at the ache there, to keep yourself grounded.
The shower turns off not a minute or two later, and you groan softly as you push yourself to your feet. Grabbing your shorts from the floor and stepping into them, your step hitching at the soft pinch of discomfort lingering in your core as you walk out of your bedroom.
You start a pot of coffee, blinking against the rising sun that’s peeking through the window over the sink as you pat the side of your old drip machine until it rattles and sputters to life. Pulling down two coffee mugs from your cupboard and leaving them on the counter next to it.
The bathroom door is unlocked, and you let yourself in, steam billowing past you as you step through the doorway.
He’s there, tugging his shirt over his head with one careful arm. It’s grimy, as filthy as it was the night before, and you find yourself distantly chiding yourself for not at least running it under the faucet and letting it dry overnight.
He doesn’t appear to notice or care, but then when does he ever.
The steam clears from the room, rushing out into the hallway and dispersing into the air, and he lets you position him to lean against the pink porcelain of the vanity. You check him over, then. Brushing your fingers through his dripping hair and pushing it up and back from his face. Touching a gentle thumb to the scabbing slice along his hairline and feeling at the seat of his shoulder in it’s socket. Finding it solidly in place. Sturdy, under the practiced pressure of your hand.
He is patient with you, allowing you to look him over until you’re satisfied when you know that his internal clock is likely blaring alarm sounds in his mind by now. Knowing that he could have been a state over by now if he’d simply left when he’d first awakened.
When you look up at his face and give him an all clear nod, he looks back at you with a familiar distance. The corner of his mouth turning up but not reaching his eyes, and you allow yourself to find some relief in that. That whatever happened on your bed had stayed there. It will make what comes next easier.
You tell him a fresh pot of coffee is on and he goes, his hand touching gently at the soft curve of your waist as he disappears through the door and goes to the kitchen. You don’t allow yourself to watch him leave, and you tug the door resolutely closed behind him.
Your shower is a mindless going through the motions, the water scalding as you scrub shampoo against your scalp and run a sudsy wash cloth under your arms. Rinsing your face for longer than you need to, clinging to the roaring sound of rushing water to avoid listening helplessly for sounds of movement out in the apartment.
Your skin is pink when you step out of the shower, toweling off and tugging a brush through your hair. Staring at the portions of your reflection not clouded over with steam in the mirror. Seeing a faint red patch of skin along your jaw where the stubble of his beard rubbed against it and then looking away. You brush your teeth and breathe, in and out, and then spit and rinse.
You dress slowly, getting back into your sleep clothes even though you know you won’t be able to fall back asleep, and you find yourself pausing with your hand on the door knob, before you grit your teeth and tell yourself to grow up.
You rip the bathroom door open. Steam rushes into the empty hall, and you force yourself through the doorway, then left down the hall to your bedroom. Rifling through your dresser drawers there mindlessly before deciding to stay in the clothes you have on.
You don’t need to check the apartment to know that he’s gone, and something sour sits like a rock in the base of your gut at the knowledge of it.
Out in the kitchen, bathed in a golden light, you find a mug in the sink with suds still sitting around the rim, the water in it dark with remnant drops of coffee. You look at it for a moment, imagining him running a soapy washcloth over it after pounding back a full cup, a lame attempt at washing it and not even bothering to rinse it all the way, and you force yourself to look away.
You take the mug remaining beside the coffee maker and pour yourself a heaping cup. Blowing gently across the rim of it as you walk slowly to your couch where it’s pressed against the far wall of your living room. Sitting slowly, feeling the ache between your legs at the motion of it.
You pull the curtains over the window back with your free hand and let out a slow breath as you stare out at the street below. Empty, save for the first few cars of morning traffic creeping down it, the world as slow to rise as you are.
You sip at your coffee and watch the sun rise, feeling the coffee burn your tongue and not able to bring yourself to care. Your force your mind to stay blank, mentally cataloging the sights you see through your window and the flavor of your coffee to keep your thoughts from returning to a place that will bring you no comfort.
People begin to appear, slowly, one by one as the city wakes for the day, and you feel yourself go distant within yourself.
The sun rises, and you watch it fill the morning sky with shades of brilliant yellows and golds, and you wonder how long it will take to forget him again.