“Ah,” Nathan said. “Well, his loss is our gain. We’re happy to have you here.”
“Hey, Ang, you should tell them about how you kicked that one asshole in the balls,” Zachary said, nudging her.
Malachi, standing beside the air hockey table, perked up with interest. “Ooh, yes, please do.”
Ashmedai tuned them out as Angela launched into the tale near the snack bar. He settled an arm around Nicolas’s shoulders, drawing him closer and pressing his mouth to his unruly curls. He hadn’t been taking the time to style his hair lately. Ashmedai understood it was another way grief had seeped into his life, but he liked the wildness of it, the concentrated scent of him undiluted by product.
“I’m tired,” Nicolas murmured.
“You haven’t been sleeping much,” Ashmedai replied, fingers curling under his jaw and guiding his face up. Dark smudges beneath his eyes made them look hollow.
Nicolas shifted closer, curling up against his side. “I see him. Every time I close my eyes.”
“I suspected as much.”
“Losing my parents didn’t hurt this much. I keep trying to tell myself, ‘just wait until X amount of time has passed. You were okay by then with Mom and Dad.’ But it’s not the same. I still had Danny when I lost them.”
Ashmedai sighed. “I hate that there is nothing I can do to ease your pain.” He’d asked many times. ‘What can I do?’ ‘How can I help?’ ‘What do you need?’ Each time had left them both feeling unsatisfied, because the answer was always the same. Ashmedai could do a great many things, but he couldn’t help this. He couldn’t make it stop hurting. He couldn’t speed up time. He couldn’t bring Daniel back. Nicolas would have to slog through the pain of missing him every single day until the edges of the wound healed on its own. And even then, the scar would always remain.
“Being here with you is all I want,” Nicolas said. “I don’t need you to do any more than you already are. You’re here for me, and I love you for it.”
“Always,” Ashmedai swore. “Always here for you. Always love you. Want you. Need you.”
Nicolas smiled. “I also really like when you start losing words.”
“Talking hard,” Ashmedai teased, and Nicolas chuckled. For just a moment, his soul flared like the sun, and Ashmedai’s breath was stolen from his lungs. It was a shred of evidence that Nicolas’s soulwouldbrighten again one day.
If getting him to laugh could brighten his soul like that, Ashmedai would spend the rest of eternity trying.
Helpless to resist, he leaned in and captured Nicolas’s smiling mouth with his own. Nicolas sighed into it, openinghis plush lips to let Ashmedai’s tongue inside to taste him properly. A soft, barely-there moan got caught in Nicolas’s throat, and his hand slipped under Ashmedai’s hood to cup his face.
They had spent almost every moment together since Daniel’s death, but in the days that followed, sex was the last thing on their minds. Even though Nicolas—and therefore Ashmedai—rarely left the bed in those first few days, neither of them moved to initiate it. Ashmedai held Nicolas through countless tears, fed him in between bouts of rest. It was there, in the darkness of the bedroom, plastered together under the blankets, that Ashmedai understood true intimacy. It wasn’t sex. It was being there for someone in their most vulnerable moments, being the one they relied upon to keep them from falling into oblivion.
Now, Nicolas shifted restlessly against him, his mouth hot and hungry, chasing Ashmedai when he tried to pull away.
“Home,” he rasped.
Nicolas nodded, panting for breath.
Ashmedai slipped his arms under Nicolas and picked him up as he stood, grinning under the dark shroud of his hood when Nicolas yelped dramatically at the treatment. It drew the attention of the others, who glanced over with various looks of amusement and, in Julian’s case, relief.
Ashmedai wasn’t the only one who’d been worried about Nicolas’s downward spiral.
“Leaving,” Ashmedai called to them.
“Okay, have fun you two,” Julian said.
“Oh my God,” Nicolas groaned.
“Will you guys finally tell us what all we’ve missed?” Angela asked. “How did thosetwo meet?”
Ashmedai heard no more as he carried Nicolas into the dark med room and disappeared.
In their new bedroom—which had once been Daniel’s and, before that, Julian’s—Ashmedai laid Nicolas on the bed with care and crawled on top of him.
“How do you want me?” Ashmedai asked.
“I want…” Nicolas was pliant underneath him, his legs parting for Ashmedai’s hips to slot between them. “I want you to…” His cheeks colored. “I want you to claim me. Take me over. Make me feel nothing but you and us, together. Exhaust me so I can sleep, and make it so good that when I sleep I dream about you.”
