He hits it again. And again. Each thrust precise, aimed, devastating. Sidney is falling apart under him, his composure long gone, his body moving on instinct, pushing back to meet every stroke with increasing urgency. His cock is hanging heavybetween his thighs, untouched, dripping onto the sheets below him.
"Fuck," Sidney chokes, and his voice is wrecked, demolished, scraped raw. "Please, Erath, I wanna feel you come in me. I want—I need you to—"
The sound of Sidney begging almost undoes him. Erath's rhythm falters, his hips stuttering, and he has to close his eyes and breathe through the surge of heat that tears through him. He grips Sidney's hips tighter and forces himself to hold on.
"Not until you come," Erath tells him. His voice is rough, barely steady. "Touch your cock for me, Sidney. Come on, sweetheart."
Sidney makes a broken sound. His hand moves under his body, reaching for his cock. He wraps his hand around himself and strokes, fast and desperate, his movements graceless and urgent, and Erath fucks him through it, maintaining the pace that has Sidney falling apart, hitting that spot inside him with every thrust.
"That's it." Erath's thumb strokes against the jut of Sidney's hip. “I've got you. Let go."
Sidney's body goes rigid. Every muscle locks, his thighs trembling violently, his hand stuttering on his cock, and then he's coming, coming with his face pressed into the mattress and his ass in the air, clenching around Erath in waves that are so tight and so rhythmic that Erath can feel every pulse. Sidney's orgasm tears through him silently, his mouth open against the sheets, his body shaking with the force of it, his cock spilling onto the bed beneath him in long, heavy pulses.
Erath follows him. He can't hold off, not with Sidney contracting around him like that, not with the sounds he's making, not with the sight of him wrecked and spent and still pushing back against Erath for more. He drives in deep and comes with a groan that he doesn't try to muffle, filling Sidneythe way he asked, the way he wanted, and Sidney makes a soft, broken sound at the feel of it, his body going slack under Erath's hands.
They stay like that for a moment. Connected. Sidney on his knees with his face in the mattress, Erath behind him with his hands on his hips, both of them breathing in ragged, uneven pulls. The room smells of sex and sweat and the warmth of two bodies that have been pressed together.
Erath pulls out slowly, carefully, and Sidney hisses and drops fully onto the mattress, lying flat on his stomach with his face turned to the side. His eyes are closed. His lips are parted. His body is loose and heavy and trembling with aftershocks and he looks undone in the best possible way.
Erath lies down beside him. He puts his hand on Sidney's back, between his shoulder blades, and feels his heart hammering beneath his palm.
Sidney doesn't move for a long time. He lies there and breathes and comes back to himself piece by piece, the trembling subsiding, his heartbeat slowing under Erath's hand. Then he turns his head and opens his eyes and looks at Erath, and his expression is open and soft in a way Erath rarely gets to see it. The wall is down. Not just a door in it, not just a crack. Down. And behind it is Sidney, just Sidney, bare and spent and looking at Erath with nothing between them.
“Alright?” Erath asks, brushing his fingers against his cheek.
"Yeah," Sidney says, and his voice is hoarse and ruined and there's a smile in it.
Sidney shifts, rolling onto his side, and tucks himself against Erath's chest with a lack of self-consciousness that is new and significant. His head finds the hollow of Erath's shoulder. His hand rests on Erath's stomach, and his fingers trace patterns on Erath's skin. His breathing deepens and slows and his bodygoes heavy and loose, the weight of someone who has let go of everything they were holding.
Erath holds him and does not sleep and does not move and does not want to be anywhere else in any world, living or dead. The underworld hums its low, constant hum, and the dark is warm, and for once it doesn't feel like dark at all.
Chapter 21
Sidney wakes to the smell of something burning, which gives him both a sense of deja vu and also the concern he might be having a stroke.
He groans into the pillow, breathes in the warm cotton and the faint trace of Erath still clinging to the sheets, and considers, briefly, never getting up. The underworld is dark enough that he could stay here indefinitely. No one would know. No one would care. Except the five-year-old who will absolutely know and absolutely care and will come in here and physically drag him out of bed if he doesn't present himself within the next thirty seconds.
He hauls himself upright. His body aches in places that have nothing to do with the state of the world and everything to do with the state of last night, and there's a tenderness in his muscles that makes him feel simultaneously well-used and embarrassingly pleased about it. He pulls on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt from the bag he packed at his apartment, which is a vast improvement over wearing Erath's clothes, and pads barefoot into the hallway.
The kitchen is not in flames, so that's a win.
Erath is standing at the stove with a spatula in one hand and an expression on his face that suggests the eggs have personally wronged him. There is smoke. There is also a raw egg on the counter that appears to have been cracked with far too much force, its contents sliding in a slow, viscous trail toward the edge. The pan is producing a smell that is neither appetizing nor identifiable, and the eggs inside it are simultaneously burnt on the bottom and glistening wet on top in a way that defies every known law of thermodynamics.
Sidney doesn't understand how this is physically possible. He genuinely does not.
"Move," he says, nudging Erath aside with his hip. Erath goes without protest, stepping back with the air of a man who has been waiting to be relieved of duty. Sidney surveys the carnage. The eggs are unsalvageable. He dumps them, scrubs the pan, and starts over. He cracks three eggs cleanly, adds salt and a splash of the milk that has appeared in the fridge through what Sidney suspects is divine intervention or possibly Vivi, and scrambles them the way eggs are supposed to be scrambled: gently, over medium heat, without spite.
Erath watches from the counter. He has his arms crossed and his head tilted and he's studying Sidney with a quiet affection that has crossed the line into something Sidney is getting dangerously used to.
He hasn't thought about what he wants out of this arrangement. Not really. He's filed it away in the part of his brain marked "things to process when there's enough distance to breathe around them," which is a filing cabinet that's getting dangerously full.
He makes toast. He plates the eggs. Penny appears in the kitchen doorway dragging a stuffed animal behind her, its arm clutched in her fist while its body bumps along the floor, and sheclimbs into her chair the way someone scales a mountain. Her hair is tangled and she yawns so wide her face disappears.
"Morning, kiddo," Sidney says, setting her plate in front of her.
"Morning, Sid," she says, already reaching for her fork.
He brings his own plate to the table and sits. Erath follows and takes his usual seat, the one where he doesn't eat and pretends not to watch them, which is a pretense that fools no one. The three of them at this table has become a routine. Sidney doesn't know when it happened, the shift from temporary arrangement to something with a rhythm, but it's here now and it's settled into the shape of his mornings and he can feel it.
