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“Leo.”

“You said I could do what I want.”

“You can.”

The rest of their clothes went. Nate’s belt required a little bit of work, but soon, there was no fabric between them at all. Again, Leo found himself staring.

“Damn,” Nate muttered, looking down at his own hard cock. “I wasn’t sure if biology would… well, work, in this state.”

“I think it does if you want it to,” Leo said, still staring. “Like our clothes. They vanished when we took them off. They were never real, but we wanted to be clothed.”

“That was silly of us.”

“It was,” Leo agreed, and then he reached for Nate.

Nate drew in a sharp breath as Leo touched him—and so did Leo, even though he hadn’t needed breath in years and years. The sensation was overwhelming. Hot and hard skin against his fingertips. And the sound Nate made. And the way his hips moved into Leo’s grip.

He wants this.

He wants me.

It was almost too much to contemplate.

And then Nate’s hand found him too, and all thoughts fled Leo’s mind.

It had been so long and he’d forgotten — well, not the mechanics of it, but the enormity of it, someone else’s hand, someone else’s want aimed at him. He dropped his forehead to Nate’s shoulder and shuddered and pushed into him. They found a rhythm between them, unhurried and then less unhurried, wrapped around each other, trading low sounds in the lamplight.

“Look at me,” Nate said, rough.

Leo looked. That was nearly the end of him right there — Nate flushed and undone beneath him, watching him with that unbearable open face, hiding nothing, in a lit room, unashamed.

“I want to see you,” Nate said. “When you come.”

“Keep talking like that and it’ll be immediately.”

Nate grinned. “Fine by me.”

Leo kissed him hard and moved with him, and the heat gathered and gathered until he forgot where his body ended and the emptiness began, because there was no emptiness around him now, only Nate, everywhere, solid and warm and his, hands and mouth and murmured filth and tenderness in the same breath. And when Leo came apart it was with his eyes open, holding Nate’s gaze, watching Nate watch him, watch him and then following with Leo’s name on his lips.

For a while, neither of them moved.

They hung there in the middle of the room, tangled, drifting very slightly, clinging to each other.

Leo lay with his ear against Nate’s chest, where the heartbeat wasn’t, and listened to him breathe out of habit.

He should say something. He had things to say. None of them would quite make it out of his mouth. He was too busy focusing on the feel of Nate’s hand in his hair, moving slow. It sent warmth all through his body.

Was this what it was like to be happy?

“Your hair’s a disaster,” Nate said.

“Whose fault is that?”

“Mine.” The medium sounded deeply satisfied about it. His fingers kept working through the strands, not fixing anything.

Leo closed his eyes. He could have stayed like this forever. He was, in fact, uniquely qualified to stay like this forever.

It was Nate who would have to leave.