"That's what I thought." His thumb circles, slow. "Convenient, isn't it?"
"Show-off."
"You like it."
He does. He really does. He's about to say something else cutting and then Erath presses the pad of his finger against him and the words evaporate.
Erath's eyes lock onto his and don't leave. He circles first, just pressure, just letting Sidney feel him there, before the first finger eases in to the second knuckle and stops.
Sidney exhales, and nods, and Erath sinks deeper. He works him open one knuckle at a time, careful, patient, his other hand stroking idle and gentle over Sidney's thigh, his eyes never leaving Sidney's face. When he adds a second finger Sidney's breath hitches sharp, and Erath stops instantly and waits. Doesn't pull out, doesn't push further, just holds, and watches, and when Sidney nods again he resumes, slower this time, scissoring gently, finding the angle that makes Sidney's mouth fall open and his hips press back down onto Erath's hand of their own accord. Nothing has ever felt like this — being stretched open by a man who keeps checking his face, who stops theinstant Sidney's breath changes, who waits for the nod before going deeper, who treats the inside of him like something sacred and not something to be conquered.
"You're so tight, Sidney," Erath says through his teeth. His voice is gravel.
"Keep going." It comes out broken. "Don't stop yet."
A third finger, slicker than the last — Erath murmurs the word again, low, and Sidney feels the rush of warmth against his rim — and his head drops forward against Erath's shoulder. He breathes him in, clean skin and that mineral sweetness, and Erath's free hand comes up to cradle the back of his neck, just resting there, just being a steady warm weight while his other hand works Sidney open with infinite patience. Sidney can feel Erath's cock still hard against his belly, untouched now, leaking onto his own stomach. He keeps opening him, slow and slow and slow, until Sidney is panting into the curve of his neck and rocking back onto his fingers, whimpering, and finally lifts his head and says, "Fuck, you have to get inside me—"
Sidney lifts up and reaches back and lines Erath's cock up beneath him. Erath's hands return to his waist and they shake.
Just slightly. A fine tremor through the broad palms, the long fingers — the first tremor Sidney has ever felt in him, the only crack in all that control. And Sidney sinks down onto him slow, taking him by inches, breathing through the stretch of being filled. Erath is thick and hot inside him and the slide is impossibly smooth from whatever he's conjured, and Sidney watches the god of death's careful composure splinter completely. Erath's eyes go wide and then squeeze shut. His mouth falls open on a sound that has no shape. The cords stand out in his neck. His hands at Sidney's waist tighten as Sidney's body takes him in inch by inch and his every instinct screams to thrust up and bury himself.
He doesn't. He waits. He lets Sidney take him at Sidney's pace, all the way down, until Sidney is fully seated and they are both shaking, and only then does Erath open his eyes and look at him, and the look on his face is so naked Sidney almost can't bear it.
Sidney rolls his hips, experimental, and the drag of Erath's cock inside him pulls a startled sound out of his throat. He does it again. Erath's hands settle at his hips — firm, broad, holding — but they don't move him. They are there, present and grounding, a steady span of warmth on either side of his waist, but the motion is still Sidney's. Sidney rises and falls, finding the angle, finding the pace, his thighs working, his palms braced on Erath's chest, and Erath lets him. His head tipped back against the cushions, his throat working, his hands flexed at Sidney's hips like he is anchoring himself there.
Sidney finds the angle that makes him gasp. He leans forward, changes the tilt of himself, and the next slide down lights up something white-hot at the base of his spine and he whimpers, and Erath's grip tightens on his hips but still doesn't pull him down and Sidney needs him to cross that line.
"I'm not going to break," Sidney breathes, desperate. "Will you —fuck— will you just—"
"Tell me." Erath's voice is shredded. His thumbs sweep over Sidney's hipbones. "Tell me what you want."
"Hold me. Hold me andfuckme."
Erath's hands close on him properly for the first time. Not crushing but solid, deliberate, the broad span of his palms wrapping around Sidney's hips with a strong grip. And then he plants his feet and rolls his hips up, hard, and his cock drives into Sidney exactly where Sidney needs it, and Sidney's whole body lights up.
"Yes — like that, like that, don't stop—"
He doesn't stop. Erath fucks up into him in a steady deep rhythm, his hands holding Sidney's hips in place to take it, everythrust striking that bright spot inside him, and Sidney braces against his chest and lets it happen — lets himself be fucked, lets Erath give him exactly what he asked for, no more and no less. Erath's eyes never leave his face. Every time Sidney's breath catches Erath reads it instantly — eases up when Sidney's eyes flutter shut too long, drives harder when Sidney gasps yes, slows the angle when Sidney's thighs start to tremble too much from the position and tips Sidney forward so he can hold him better, fuck up into him deeper. He is reading Sidney with every thrust, adjusting with every breath, and the care of it does not slow the pace down at all.
And Sidney keeps expecting it to change.
He keeps expecting Erath to forget himself. To grip too hard, to chase too fast, to lose the thread of attention and become only a body taking pleasure in his body. The moment doesn't come. Every thrust is still an answer. Every shift of Erath's hands is still a question. He is paying attention. He has not stopped paying attention for one single second.
At some point Sidney stops waiting.
The vigilance that has been running beneath every intimate encounter he's ever had goes quiet. It goes quiet because there is nothing to scan for. Erath is beneath him, holding him, fucking him exactly as he asked to be fucked, his eyes on Sidney's face, the expression in them reverent and undone. And Sidney's body is present. His body is here. His body is taking pleasure in being given pleasure, and the absence of the fear is not a vacuum this time. It's a clearing. An open space where something good can exist without the threat of something bad arriving to crush it.
He moves with Erath, meets every thrust, rides him harder.
Erath's hand leaves his hip and finds his drooling cock and wraps around it, slick again with whatever he's working with, and strokes him in time with the snap of his hips. The dual sensation builds something enormous and bright at the base ofSidney's spine. Full and stroked at once, fucked deep and fisted slow, each downstroke meeting Erath's drive up meeting Erath's careful hand, and Sidney can feel himself climbing toward something he isn't sure he'll survive.
Erath is watching him the whole way. Lips parted, eyes black and wide, drinking him in like a man memorizing something he's afraid he'll lose. He doesn't say it but it's written all over him, in the shaking hand and the worshipful eyes and the way his thumb sweeps over Sidney's hipbone every few thrusts like he can't quite believe he's allowed to touch.
Sidney doesn't say it either. He just leans down and kisses him, hard, and rides him through it, and lets his actions carry the weight of every word neither of them will speak. Erath kisses back like he is being saved. Like Sidney's mouth is the only fixed point in a world that has come loose at the seams.
When Sidney comes apart it is with Erath's name in his mouth and Erath's hand around his cock and Erath's other hand spread wide and warm at his hip and the pull in his chest blazing white. He shudders through it, every muscle in his thighs trembling, spilling hot over Erath's knuckles and his own stomach in pulses that seem to go on and on. Erath strokes him through every aftershock, gentle, gentle, until Sidney's hips stutter and still.
Erath follows him a breath later — Sidney clenching down around him helpless and overstimulated, and Erath's whole body going taut beneath him, a low broken sound breaking against Sidney's lips. His hands tighten at last. But only to hold him close. Only to gather him in. Never to pin. Sidney feels him pulse deep inside, feels the warm spill of him, feels Erath's forehead drop against his shoulder and his arms come up around his back in a full embrace, careful even now, even in the wreck of his own release.
