Ethan’s hand found his again, this time holding tighter.
Cole swallowed, feeling the old, familiar ache of wanting more than he was allowed. He wanted to tell Ethan how much he needed him, how the idea of dying didn’t bother him nearly as much as the idea of dying without saying the thing that had been burning in his chest since the first night on the ridge.
They stayed like that, side by side, until time went soft at the edges. Occasionally the cave would shudder with a distant rumble, and Cole would brace for the ceiling to come down, but it held.
He tried to hold on to the memory of sunlight, of the last time he'd watched Ethan's face light up in laughter from some joke on the trail that Cole couldn't even remember now. It was starting to seem impossible that they would ever escape this frozen darkness, their bodies trembling and the air thinning minute by minute.
Cole shut his eyes and forced himself backward through time as he tried to remember what it had felt like, back on the ledge above the meadows, to be alive with want and not just fear. He remembered the way Ethan’s mouth had fit around him, the warmth and the filth and the sweetness all wrapped together. He remembered the look of pure need and want on Ethan’s face as he swallowed down Cole’s cum like it was the most precious thing on earth.
But more than that, he remembered the look after. Ethan’s eyes, round and bright and unguarded, like he’d just won the world’s last golden ticket and didn’t know what to do with it. And instead of meeting him there, in that exposed place, Cole had done what he always did—run. He’d zipped up, climbed back into himself, and left Ethan standing alone on the edge of forever, desperate and wanting.
It had been easier to pretend, then. To rewrite the story in his own head and convince himself that nothing real had happened. But the aftermath always came for him, every goddamn time. In the mornings, the guilt would start at his chest and spread outward, tingling in his limbs, squeezing behind his eyes. A slow rot. He punished Ethan for wanting him, punished himself for wanting Ethan, and then punished the world for making the whole thing so complicated when it could have been so simple if only he’d been braver.
None of that mattered now. Not with the taste of iron in his mouth and the slow, certain realization that if help didn’t come, they’d be dead before sunrise. Every second in the darkness felt like another chance to make it right or ruin it forever.
The panic hit him as a bolt of lightning up his spine, a cold, clammy sweat that turned his palms slick. He tried to slow his breathing, but every inhale felt thinner, every exhale sharper, until he was panting and gasping, heart stuttering with the effort of clawing for air that wasn’t there.
“Cole,” Ethan said, voice quiet but unbreakable, the way a mountain was quiet. “You’re okay. Breathe with me.” Ethan pressed his forehead to Cole’s, their noses brushing, the rhythm of Ethan’s breath steady and deep, a deliberate pattern that demanded Cole do the same.
He wanted to resist—he always did—but Ethan’s gentleness whittled away his defenses, and Cole found himself matching thebreath, falling into the hypnotic cycle of inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.
In the suffocating dark, Ethan’s face hovered in Cole’s imagination, a pale, impossible ghost, lips so close he could feel the heat of every syllable. “Talk to me,” Ethan said, and there was a challenge in it, the old dare that Cole had never once accepted.
A hundred lies flashed through his mind, reflexive and empty. He almost picked one—about his childhood, or horses, or the time he’d broken his arm trying to impress his father—but none of them fit now, not with the walls closing in. What was the point of dying with all your secrets still locked inside you?
He started with a whisper, so soft he could barely hear it himself. “When I was eighteen,” he said, “my old man walked in on me jerking off to a copy of Playgirl.” He let the words hang, fragile and mortifying. “I don’t even know where I got it. But I remember every goddamn page. Especially this one guy—a rancher or something, big arms and hairy chest and body, and a perfect cock.” He felt Ethan’s laugh before he heard it, a silent shake that traveled through their bodies. “My dad made me burn the magazine in the fireplace. Said if I ever brought that kind of filth into the house again, he’d burn everything I owned and then disown me. He didn’t talk to me for a month after that.”
He expected Ethan to say something, to joke or sympathize, but Ethan just stayed there, quiet and solid, his hand squeezing Cole’s tight. It made the words easier to say, so he kept going.
“It got easier to pretend, after a while. I dated girls. Fucked a few. Never felt real and it never went well.” Cole swallowed, the story tumbling out faster. “I did what I was told. Built up the ranch, made everyone proud. Even made myself believe I was happy, but I never really let myself want anything.” He grimaced. “I guess I learned my lesson real well—want what you’re supposed to want, hate what you’re supposed to hate.Build the ranch, make the family proud, put everybody else first.” Cole paused, running his tongue over his cracked lips. “It fucked me up. Still does, most days.”
There was a long silence, broken only by the slow, even sound of Ethan’s breathing.
Then Ethan’s hand moved, fingers tracing the line of Cole’s jaw, thumb stroking the stubble. “I knew the second I met you,” Cole said, voice wobbling, “that you were gonna fuck me up. And I wanted it anyway. I wanted it more than anything. I wanted you. ”
Ethan pulled him in, chest to chest, heart to heart. “I want you too. I knew it from the first moment I saw you. I want all of you.”
“I’m sorry,” Cole said, not because it was what Ethan wanted to hear, but because it was all he had left to give. “I’m sorry for making everything so goddamn hard. I don’t want to die in here. Not without telling you—” The words caught, raw and jagged, but he forced them out. “You’re the first person who ever made me feel like I could be more than what they told me to be.”
The words ripped Cole apart. He sobbed once—an ugly, wet noise that echoed off the walls—and then he was holding on for dear life, arms tight around Ethan’s back, face pressed to Ethan’s neck. He tasted the salt of tears and the sharp, raw smell of sweat and rain.
“I don’t want to die in here,” Cole whispered. “Not without ever having really lived.”
Ethan’s mouth found Cole’s cheek, then the line of his ear. “Then don’t,” he said, breath hot and close. “If this is it, then let’s go out being who we really are. Together. No more hiding.”
Cole let the need take over. He turned his face, searching for Ethan’s lips in the dark, and when they met, it was tender, desperate, and more honest than anything Cole had ever known.
The kiss was slow at first, then urgent, then slow again, like they were both afraid it would be both the first and the last oneand determined to make it count. Cole’s fingers found Ethan’s hair, tangled and wet, and pulled him closer. Ethan’s hands slid under Cole’s shirt, palms hot against the bare skin of his back. Cole shuddered, goosebumps flaring everywhere Ethan touched.
“You’re shaking,” Ethan whispered.
“I’m scared,” Cole admitted, and the words felt like a relief.
“Me too.” Ethan kissed Cole again, softer this time, like a promise.
The fear didn’t disappear, but it changed shape. It was no longer a thing that threatened to eat Cole alive; it was a wild, urgent energy, a need to claim as much living as they could before the darkness ran out.
They pressed together, foreheads touching, lips brushing, hands finding purchase wherever they could. Cole could feel every inch of Ethan, the racing pulse under his skin, the tremble in his fingers, the warmth that radiated from him even now, even here.
