“I’ve got you, baby,” Asher assured him as he grabbed Levi’s arm and slung it over one shoulder.
Levi let him.
The bathroom was small, even for one person. Toilet, sink, and a bathtub shower stall combination with a concerning black growth along the grout that Levi had long since stopped trying to get fixed. With Asher in there with him, the room was full. Asher’s hand went to the waistband of Levi’s pajama pants and started to pull down.
“I can do it.” Levi’s hand caught Asher’s wrist.
Asher furrowed his brow, confused, looking at Levi’s hand on his wrist. “But I want to help?”
“I want some privacy when I pee. Please.”
Asher slowly pulled his hand back, his face still scrunched up like he was trying to figure out what he did wrong, and then his eyes widened. “Oh.”
He turned around and faced the door. He did not leave.
Good enough, Levi thought as he sat, because standing felt like too much for basic bathroom functions.I don’t want to find out what his help looks like if I piss myself.
“You know what’s funny?” Asher began, facing the door.
Levi closed his eyes.I don’t want to know.
“We never had to do this in there,” he continued. “It was one of those things we discussed. Should bathroom breaks be required? I decided against it…do you think we should have left it in? To make things more immersive?”
MORE immersive?
“I know what it feels like to die, Asher. I’ve been strangled, shot, stabbed, drowned, crushed, literally eviscerated, and shotagain,” Levi scoffed as he flushed. “It was immersive enough, trust me.”
After last night, Levi tried really hard not to flinch, but he was sitting on a couch with a man he convinced himself didn’t exist. He honestly wasn’t even sure if this was real. What if he was hallucinating? What if he was in the game? What if he had stopped moving on that landing yesterday, had a heart attack, and this was just some sort of dying fantasy in his head?
So when Asher suddenly reached for him again, he jerked back, his hands coming up between them. Asher’s expression hardened.
Shit.
Asher’s hand closed over his throat, shoving him back into the couch and climbing on top of him. “I told you not to do that again,” Asher whispered, pressing a kiss to the tip of Levi’s nose. “Why did you do that again?”
He wanted to explain. He wanted to tell Asher he was scared, that the person who came back to the apartment wasn’t the person he had been in the game with, but Asher swallowed his answer with a kiss.
The grip on his throat loosened as Asher’s tongue met his, deep and unhurried, and the tension Levi had been carrying melted out of his spine in a single shudder. He made a soft sound somewhere in the back of his throat as Asher’s other hand slid up beneath his shirt, his palm hot against the bare skin of his stomach. His fingers trailed upward until his thumb settled just below one of Levi’s nipples and ghosted over the pebbling flesh.
Levi gasped.
“I knew you’d still like this,” Asher murmured against his mouth, and then his lips were moving — slow and open along Levi’s jaw, down the line of his throat, the wet heat of his mouth leaving cool patches behind on Levi’s skin — and Levi could feel Asher’s grin against the hollow under his ear.
I want him.
I want him so bad.
Asher’s teeth grazed the spot the bite mark used to live, and Levi tilted his head, his fingers threading through Asher’s hair to keep him there.No, you fucking idiot. He’s a real life murderer.Wanting this was an idea — a fantasy. An intrusive thought he’d entertained in the depths of his loneliness—not this, not his actual mouth on your actual neck, not his fingers actually under your shirt —
A moan ripped out of him as Asher pinched his nipple and sucked hard at the skin of his neck, his hips jerking forward of their own accord, looking for friction and finding Asher’s thigh wedged between his.
“You’re shaking,” Asher rumbled against his throat. “You always shake at first. And then you stop shaking and you let me make you feel good.” He abandoned Levi’s nipple, moving down until he pressed the heel of his palm against the hard length of Levi through his pants in one long, unbroken stroke that made Levi’s breath catch on something close to a sob. “This is better. This is real. This is the version where I get to keep you.”
His hips shifted. Levi felt the deliberate press of Asher— hard against his hip — and he knew exactly where this was going.
There are no resets. There are no resets. There are no —
“I’m hungry,” Levi blurted out in the least convincing declaration of hunger in the history of human speech.Hungry. Be hungry. Be a problem he can solve.
