Like he was deciding something.
His chest didn’t move. Those blue eyes searched my face like he was reading something written there, something I hadn’t meant to hand over so nakedly. For one heartbeat, two, the chaos quieted and it was just that: me saying his name like it meant everything, and him hearing it.
Then he wasn’t still anymore.
Nathan’s mouth found mine in a kiss that was deep and unhurried, tongue sliding against mine while his hand started moving again—slower now, tighter, thumb pressing just right on every upstroke.
He crowded me back against the cool tile, water pounding over his shoulders as he lined us up perfectly, cocks sliding together in the tight channel of his fist and mine. I groaned into his mouth, chasing the friction, but he kept the pace deliberate, drawing it out until I was trembling, until every nerve felt lit up and raw.
He broke the kiss only to rest his forehead against mine, breathing hard, black hair dripping onto my face.
“Look at me,” he said, voice low and rough, no ice left in it at all.
I did. Brown eyes meeting blue, no jokes, no flash, just the two of us stripped bare in every way that counted.
His strokes sped up then, matching the urgency I’d started with but still carrying that thoroughness that undid me. We rutted into each other’s hands, slick and hot and messy, cocks rubbing together with every thrust.
My free hand clutched at his hip, nails digging in, and I felt him shudder when I twisted my grip just right. The sounds we made echoed off the tiles—my desperate gasps, his low groans, the wet slap of skin and water.
I came first, sudden and sharp, spilling over his fist and across both our stomachs with a broken “Nathan—” that tore out of me again.
He followed seconds later, burying his face in my neck as he pulsed hot between us, his whole body tensing then going loose against mine.
We stayed like that, breathing hard under the spray, water washing everything clean. My legs felt shaky; his arm had slipped around my waist at some point, holding me steadywithout making a big deal of it. The shower kept running, ridiculous and loud and perfect for the moment—happy, present, not careful, not slow like vacation would be. Just us.
Nathan pressed a lazy kiss to my temple, thumb stroking a slow circle over my hip.
Eventually the water started going cold.
Nathan reached past me and turned it off. The silence was sudden and complete. He handed me a towel, from where, I didn't ask. He was the kind of person who thought of towels in advance. We dried off in the quiet of the empty facility. The emergency lighting came back into focus, the real world reassembling itself around us.
I didn't rush it.
Neither did he.
We moved back into the changing area without discussing it. I pulled on my clothes. Nathan was already mostly dressed, doing the shirt buttons with the same unhurried precision he brought to everything, and I leaned against the tile wall and watched him do it openly, which was something I was doing now apparently, watching Nathan Cross button his shirt in a changing room like it was a thing I was allowed to do, and he looked up and caught me and didn't say anything.
Which was its own kind of thing.
"These showers," he said, looking around at the institutional tile and the industrial fixtures and the general aggressive functionality of the space, "are inadequate."
I laughed.
Not a small laugh. The real one, and it bounced off the tile and came back at us from four directions.
"You're going to put that in a report somewhere, aren't you?" I asked. "Line item. Shower upgrade. Bullet point three."
"The water pressure alone—"
"Nathan."
He stopped and looked at me.
"You're critiquing the showers," I said.
A pause. "The temperature regulation is also inconsistent."
"Oh my god."
