Vale obliges. He hooks August's legs over his elbows, folding him, opening him wider. The new angle lets him go even deeper, and August's eyes roll back, a string of broken curses falling from his lips. The bathroom fills with the wet slap of skin on skin, August's desperate moans, Vale's ragged breathing. August's hands claw at Vale's back, nails raking down, leaving marks he'll feel tomorrow.
"I'm gonna—"
"Come," Vale says, voice wrecked. "Come on my cock. Let me feel it."
August shatters.
His whole body locks up, back arching off the counter as he comes with a choked, broken cry. His cock pulses untouched, spilling hot and thick across his stomach and chest in long streaks. His hole clenches rhythmically around Vale, milking him, and that's all it takes.
Vale buries himself deep one last time and comes with a low, guttural groan, hips jerking as he fills August up. Pulse afterpulse, hot and overwhelming, until August is trembling beneath him, overstimulated and wrecked and still clinging.
They stay locked together for long moments. Vale still inside him, softening slowly, August's legs shaking around his waist, both of them breathing hard.
Eventually Vale presses a slow, tender kiss to August's slack mouth.
"Still not rested?" he murmurs, lips curving against August's.
August laughs. Hoarse, exhausted, utterly content.
"Not even close," he whispers, and tightens his arms around Vale's neck.
***
Later.
Much later.
The bedroom is dark and quiet. The city outside has settled into its smallest hours. The Old City never truly sleeps, but it dims, the sounds contracting to distant footsteps and the occasional murmur of someone making their way home. Through the window, the sky is overcast, the clouds lit from beneath by the city's ambient glow, and the light that filters through is soft and diffuse and kind.
August is lying against Vale's chest, his head on Vale's shoulder, one hand resting over Vale's heart. He can feel it beating. Steady, strong, the rhythm that has become the metronome of his life over the past week. Vale's arm is around him, hand resting on the curve of his waist, and the warmth flowing between them is the low, sustained kind that doesn't require intention. It just exists. The ambient condition of their proximity.
August's wrist barely aches. Vale had been thorough.
The silence between them is the deep, comfortable kind that exists between two people who have exhausted their bodies and are letting their minds catch up. August traces idle patterns on Vale's chest. The topography of scars he's learning, the ridges and smooth planes of a body that has survived three centuries of violence and emerged, somehow, still capable of tenderness.
"What happens after?" August asks.
The question has been sitting in him for days. Forming, reforming, pushed aside by more immediate concerns. But they're running out of days. Tomorrow they go to the Violet Corridor. Tomorrow or the day after, they face Voss. And then, if they survive, if they stop him, if the vault holds, then what?
Vale's hand tightens on his waist. Not much. Just enough to notice. "After Voss."
"After Voss. After the rifts. After all of this." August's finger traces the line of a scar that runs along Vale's ribs. "When the crisis is over and the Order doesn't need a consulting necromancer anymore. When Cael's stay of execution runs out and someone has to decide what to do with me."
Vale is quiet for a moment. His hand moves on August's waist. A slow, soothing motion, up and down, that August suspects is as much for his own comfort as for August's.
"I don't have all the answers," Vale says. "I want to tell you I do, but I don't." He pauses. "What I do know is that Cael saw what you can do. He called it divine intervention. He's not going to throw that away once the crisis passes. He's too pragmatic for that."
"Pragmatism has limits. The Order's doctrine—"
"The Order's doctrine is a set of rules written by men who are long dead, and Cael has been quietly ignoring the parts that don't work for five centuries." Vale's voice is steady, thoughtful. "What I think happens is that you keep working with us. Not as a prisoner or a project. As a partner. A specialist. The Orderhas never had a psychopomp on staff because it's never had the chance. You've proven what you can do in a week. Imagine what you could do with resources. With support. With people who have your back instead of a kill order with your description on it."
August tries to picture it. Himself, walking into the Cathedral not as a fugitive or a consulting mage on a temporary leash, but as someone who belongs there. Working alongside Templars. Using his abilities openly, without hiding, without the constant gnawing fear of discovery. Having a purpose that isn't just survival.
It's a beautiful picture. It's also the most terrifying thing he's ever imagined, because it requires believing in a future, and August has spent fourteen years training himself not to do that.
He's quiet for a long time. Long enough that Vale's hand stills on his waist, long enough that the silence shifts from comfortable to weighted, and August knows that Vale can feel the shape of what's coming before he says it.
"I can't stay with you forever, Vale."
