Erath is quiet for a very long time. Then he says, carefully, the way he says everything that matters, “Because healing you requires touching you. I didn't think before I did it at the stove. I'm thinking now.”
The words land in Sidney’s chest and sit there. They sit there with every other careful, deliberate thing Erath has done and not done since the first night he walked Sidney home. He has the power to heal every injury on Sidney’s body and he’s been waiting, patiently, for days, for Sidney to decide whether he wants to be touched. The god of death has been watching Sidney wince and favor his left side and breathe through the pain, has been looking at the bruise on Sidney’s face every time they’re inthe same room with an expression that says he wants to erase it, and he’s been choosing, every time, to let Sidney come to him.
Sidney looks at his own hands. He thinks about the kitchen. Not this kitchen. The other one, in his apartment, where Erath’s mouth had been on his and Sidney’s body had shut down and the shame had been so total it had swallowed everything else. He thinks about every man who came before, the ones who didn’t wait, the ones who didn’t ask, the ones who touched first and gauged consent afterward, and the , devastating novelty of a man who has all the power in the world and chooses to hold none of it over the person beside him.
“Okay, well,” he says. His voice is quiet. “I want you to.”
Erath shifts on the couch. Not closer, not suddenly. He turns his body toward Sidney and his hands come to his lap, open, palms up, and he waits. He’s offering his hands the way you offer something you’re not sure will be accepted, and Sidney looks at them, at the broad palms and the long fingers and the stillness of them, and reaches out and takes them.
Erath’s fingers close around his. The grip is warm and light and familiar. Sidney doesn’t let go.
Erath lifts one hand. Slowly. He brings it to Sidney’s face, and the approach is visible, unhurried, giving Sidney time to see it coming and time to decide whether it’s welcome. His palm curves against Sidney’s jaw, against the bruise, and the touch is so light that Sidney can barely feel the pressure beneath the warmth. Erath’s other hand comes up. Both palms now, holding Sidney’s face, cradling it, and his thumbs rest against Sidney’s cheekbones and his fingers curl behind Sidney’s ears where the hair is tucked and the skin is warm, and Sidney’s heart is beating so hard he’s certain Erath can feel it through his jaw.
“Alright?” Erath asks.
Sidney nods, which is a movement that presses his face further into Erath’s palms, and he doesn’t pull back from it.
Erath leans forward. He tilts Sidney’s face, just slightly, and presses his lips to the bruise on Sidney’s cheekbone.
Sidney’s eyes close. He doesn’t decide to close them. They close on their own, the way eyes close when something is too much to look at and too good to pull away from. The press of Erath’s mouth against the bruise sends warmth through the damaged skin, through the tissue, through the bone beneath, and the ache that has been sitting on Sidney’s face for a week dissolves. It doesn’t fade. It goes, all at once, the pain lifting and the bruise receding under Erath’s lips, and Sidney can feel it happening, can feel the skin knitting and the swelling draining and the color returning to what it was before a giant’s hand rearranged it.
Erath’s mouth moves. Down. Along the line of the bruise, from Sidney’s cheekbone to the edge of his jaw, pressing, healing, a trail of contact that is not quite a kiss and not quite not a kiss, and Sidney’s breath is coming in short, shallow pulls and his hands have found Erath’s wrists and are holding on. Not pulling him closer. Not pushing him away. Just holding on, the way he holds on to everything, with the grip that doesn’t know how to let go.
Erath’s lips reach the corner of Sidney’s mouth. The swelling at the edge of his lip, the split that has been tender for days, is right there, and Erath’s mouth pauses against it and the heat concentrates and the split heals and Sidney feels the skin close and smooth and the tenderness vanish and Erath’s mouth is at the corner of his, not kissing him, not quite, just pressed there, healing the last of it, and the proximity is so total that Sidney can feel Erath’s breath against his lips and taste the warmth of him in the air between them.
Erath pulls back. His hands are still on Sidney’s face, thumbs against his cheekbones, and he looks at Sidney’s skin where the bruise was, watching it finish healing, watching the last of thediscoloration fade into nothing. His expression is focused and intent and barely controlled, and Sidney opens his eyes and looks at him and for a moment they are very close and very still and the pull in Sidney’s chest is loud enough to drown out everything else in the room.
Sidney takes a breath. Then he guides Erath’s hands from his face to the hem of his shirt, Erath’s shirt, and the permission is implicit in the gesture. Erath’s eyes search his face. Sidney meets them and nods, once, and Erath’s hands slide under the fabric and find the linen wrapping his ribs.
Sidney pulls the shirt off himself. It’s the second time he’s sat in front of Erath without a shirt, but the charge of it is different now. This time Sidney is sitting on the couch in the low firelight with Erath’s hands on the linen at his sides and the ghost of Erath’s mouth still tingling against his jaw and the look on Erath’s face is not clinical. It’s focused and intense, the same expression he’d worn in the kitchen right before everything went wrong, except this time his hands are where Sidney can see them and his arms are not braced on anything and there’s nothing behind Sidney but cushions.
“Alright?” Erath asks.
“Yes.”
Erath unwinds the linen. His fingers work slowly, unwrapping the bandage layer by layer, and the air of the room touches Sidney’s bare skin where the linen lifts away and he shivers, but not from cold. The bruise on his ribcage is visible now, dark and mottled, purple fading to green at the edges, and Erath’s gaze drops to it and his jaw tightens in a way that Sidney recognizes. It’s the same expression he’d worn when he’d first seen the bruise during the bandaging, a controlled anger that isn’t directed at Sidney but at the thing that put it there.
Erath leans forward. He presses his lips against the bruise on Sidney’s ribs.
Sidney’s breath catches. The press of mouth against damaged skin sends a wave of warmth through the injury, through the bone, through the tissue, and the pain that has been a constant companion for a week dissolves. It doesn’t fade gradually. It just goes. One moment his ribs are cracked and aching and the next they are whole, the bone knitted, the bruise vanishing under Erath’s mouth, and the sensation of being healed is so total and so sudden that Sidney’s eyes sting and he has to press his lips together to keep from making a sound.
Erath’s mouth moves. Lower. To the bruise on Sidney’s side, the one that wraps around from his ribs to his hip, and he presses his lips there and the bruise goes and the skin beneath is new and unmarked. To his stomach, where a scrape from the alley has been slowly healing on its own, and Erath’s mouth closes over it and the scrape vanishes and Sidney’s hands are in Erath’s hair. He doesn’t remember putting them there. They went of their own accord, his fingers threading through the dark strands, and Erath’s mouth is on his stomach, warm and open, and the sensation is no longer healing. It’s just contact. Mouth on skin. Breath against his navel. Erath’s hands at his hips, not holding, just resting, and Sidney can feel the restraint in them, the deliberate stillness of a man who is touching exactly what he’s been invited to touch and nothing more.
Sidney’s body is not shutting down. That’s the thing he notices, distantly, through the heat and the contact and the feeling of Erath’s mouth moving across his skin. His body is not pulling the brake. The alarm is not firing. He is lying on a couch with a man’s mouth on his stomach and his hands in that man’s hair and his body is responding the way bodies are supposed to respond, with want, with warmth, with the slow unfurling of desire in his abdomen, and the panic that usually arrives at this point in the proceedings is conspicuously absent.
It’s absent because Erath’s hands are on his hips and they’re not moving. They’re not controlling. They’re not sliding to his waistband or pressing his hips down or doing any of the things his body has learned to fear.
But it doesn't last. Erath’s mouth reaches the skin just above his waistband, and his thumb presses against the denim, and Sidney realizes all at once that it’s too much. Not the panic. Not the shutdown. Just the intensity of it, the volume of his own wanting, the fact that his body is responding so completely that the absence of fear has left a vacuum and desire has rushed in to fill it and he is overwhelmed. He uses his grip on Erath’s hair to push him back.
He expects to struggle. Erath is the god of death and even if he weren’t he’s bigger, he’s stronger, and every other man Sidney has ever been with has required escalation to stop. But Erath moves immediately. He’s off of Sidney and sitting upright on the couch before the push finishes landing, hands at his own sides, expression dark but patient. Not upset. Not frustrated. Patient, the way he’s patient about everything, and Sidney lies on his back looking up at the ceiling of the god of death’s living room and breathes through his mouth and tries to organize the chaos in his body into something he can work with.
“I don’t like being held down,” he says.
The words come out calm. Flat. The practiced delivery of a sentence he’s needed to say before and been ignored and learned the hard way what happens when he doesn’t say it at all. He says it now because Erath needs to know, and because the last time he hadn’t said it soon enough the evening had ended with him shaking against a door and Erath walking down a hallway with his coffee unfinished.
Erath looks at him. There’s a long, held silence, and Sidney watches the processing happen behind Erath’s eyes, watches theinformation land and settle and reshape everything. Then Erath does something Sidney isn’t expecting.
He takes off his shirt.
