"Harder," August breathes. "Please, Vale—"
Vale's control snaps.
He tightens his grip on August's hip, hitches August's top leg up just enough to change the angle, and thrusts, harder, deeper, faster. The sound of skin on skin fills the quiet room, wet and obscene in the grey morning light. August's moans turn ragged, turn desperate. His hand leaves Vale's hip to fist in the sheets; the other reaches back to grab at Vale's thigh, nails biting in hard enough to leave marks.
Vale's mouth stays on August's neck, kissing, sucking, teeth grazing without breaking skin. His free hand slides down,wraps around August's cock, already leaking, already hard, and strokes in time with his thrusts. August arches, head tipping back against Vale's shoulder, throat exposed, and Vale kisses there too, open-mouthed and reverent, tasting the pulse that hammers beneath the skin.
They move together as though they've done this a thousand times instead of once. As though their bodies learned a language overnight that their minds are still catching up to.
August comes first, sudden, violent, a choked cry tearing out of him as he spills over Vale's fist, clenching tight around Vale's cock. The pulse of it, the rhythmic squeeze of August's body around him, drags Vale right to the edge. He buries himself deep, hips stuttering, and comes with a low, broken groan against August's shoulder, hot pulses that fill August again, that make him shudder and clench even tighter and gasp something that might be Vale's name or might just be a sound beyond language.
They stay that way for long minutes, Vale still inside him, softening slowly, both of them breathing hard. Vale's arm is locked around August's waist; August's hand is still tangled in Vale's hair. Neither of them moves to pull away.
Eventually Vale presses a kiss to the nape of August's neck, soft, lingering.
"Morning," he murmurs, voice hoarse.
August lets out a shaky laugh. "Morning."
Afterward, they lie tangled together in the sheets while the grey light brightens toward true morning. August is tucked against Vale's side, his head on Vale's shoulder, one hand resting on Vale's chest where it rises and falls with his breathing. The position is artlessly comfortable, the kind of arrangement two bodies find when they fit together naturally, without negotiation.
Vale's hand traces idle patterns on August's back, following the lines of his tattoos. The skin is warm beneath his fingertips. The corruption is barely perceptible, the faintest grey tracing. Whatever happened between them last night, and again this morning, has pushed it back further than Vale thought possible. Not gone. Maybe never fully gone. But diminished to something that looks more manageable than terminal, and Vale will take that. He'll take anything that keeps this man breathing.
He doesn't know how long it will hold. Doesn't know if it requires sustained contact to maintain, or if the deeper fusion of their magic has accomplished something lasting. Doesn't know, in truth, anything about what's happening between them beyond the empirical observation that it works and the private, selfish hope that it continues.
"We should get up," August says, without moving.
"We should," Vale agrees, without moving.
"There's a rogue Templar trying to crack open a vault full of doomsday relics."
"There is."
"He's probably not taking a morning off."
"Probably not."
August's hand curls slightly against Vale's chest, fingers gathering a loose fold of the sheet. "Five more minutes."
"Five more minutes," Vale concedes, and feels August's mouth curve into a smile against his shoulder.
They take fifteen.
***
August showers first while Vale makes tea.
He's learned the kitchen by now, knows where August keeps the loose-leaf (top shelf, left of the stove), which cups heprefers (the heavy ceramic ones with the chipped rims), how he takes it (strong, slightly bitter, no sugar). There's a domesticity to the routine that should feel strange and doesn't. Vale has lived in barracks and Order housing and a series of impersonal apartments for a long time. He has never made tea in someone else's kitchen and felt as though he belonged there.
He belongs here.
The thought arrives without permission and settles in with no intention of leaving.
August emerges from the bathroom in clean clothes: dark jeans, a charcoal henley pushed to his elbows, his hair damp and falling across his forehead. The corruption on his forearms is visible in the daylight as faint grey tracing, and the warding tattoos stand out in sharp, clean lines that have been obscured for months. He looks, and this is not a clinical observation, this is not Vale assessing a tactical asset, he looks beautiful. Rested. Alive in a way that transforms his sharp features from striking to devastating.
He also has bruises on his neck. Three of them, along the column of his throat and below his jaw, unmistakable in origin and placement.
Vale probably should have thought about that. He did not think about that. He was, at the time, thinking about other things.
