“Okay. Okay, I’ve got you,” Asher said. “I’ll always have you. I love you, Levi. I love you.”
15
+2 to Stamina
Hisfacewasstillagainst Asher’s chest and each inhale took effort, his lungs pulling just enough air to keep him conscious and no more. He listened to the steady thumping of Asher’s heartbeat, his own thin and far away, but Asher’s was right there, present and insistent, and Levi pressed his ear harder against it because nothing else in the room had a rhythm now that the numbness had set it.
The numbness was worse than the grief.
The grief had been enormous and terrible, but at least while it was happening, he’d been alive. Every nerve lit up, every gasp painful, with the pain so large it filled every part of him and left no room for anything else.
Now? Nothing was all there was. His ribs ached from the sobs, but the ache arrived distant, muted, like something happening behind glass. His fingers were stiff from gripping too long, and when he uncurled them one at a time, his knuckles cracked, louder than they should have in the quiet room. Asher’s handwas moving on his back, a slow stroke from his shoulder blade to the base of his spine and back up. It didn’t feel sexual…just one long stroke, steady and repeated. Asher had been doing this for a while, Levi realized. The rhythm was established, the warmth built up on his skin and never cooling. He liked the warmth. He could feel that.
That didn’t feel as empty as the rest of him did.
Underneath the thing the grief had left behind was his body…the one that knew what Asher’s hands felt like, what they could do, what was already translating the pressure and heat of the stroke into something that had nothing to do with comfort.
I know what this is.
He’d known since the forest, since the sanitarium, and fought that knowledge on the ship because he needed, on some level, to believe the version of him that entered this nightmare still existed. He wasn’t someone whose life revolved around wanting and desire. He was the lonely, anxious kid who streamed games and tried not to cry on camera. But in this body that wasn’t a body…he wanted now. He wanted so bad…
Levi lifted his chin against Asher’s chest and his lips pressed to the hollow of his throat where the collar dipped. The skin there was warm, and when Levi breathed against it, the hand on his back paused mid-stroke, then resumed — slower than before.
I feel dead.
Asher’s pulse accelerated under his lips. Levi opened his mouth, his breath warm against Asher’s throat, and could taste him: Salt. Heat. The taste of someone alive.
Something stirred under the numbness. Not the grief — that was done, emptied, sitting in his ribs like sediment. This was his body’s insistence that it was still here and it wanted proof.
He kissed Asher’s throat, pressing his mouth to the tendon, and felt it tighten under his lips. Asher went still. Levi kissed higher to his jaw and then the corner of his mouth. Each kisswas harder than the last, more deliberate, and he could feel his fingertips tingling where they pressed against Asher’s chest as warmth spread up through his hands and into his wrists.
“Levi…” The way Asher said his name was careful, almost frightened. “You just —”
“I need to feel you.” Levi shifted, pushing his hands up under Asher’s dress shirt. “Asher, please…”
Asher’s stomach was hot under his hands and Levi’s fingers were freezing and the contrast was sharp enough to feel real, so he pressed harder, spreading his palms wide, because the temperature difference was the most concrete thing he’d felt in twenty minutes. More heat. More skin. More proof that he was still alive.
“You don’t have —” Asher started.
Levi’s teeth caught Asher’s lower lip hard enough to bruise. Asher groaned against his mouth. The sound of it hit the base of Levi’s spine and he was moving, climbing into Asher’s lap, straddling his thighs. Asher kissed him back, slowly and carefully, his hands on Levi’s face with an impossible gentleness.
I don’t want that right now.
Levi grabbed his wrists and pulled Asher’s hands away from his face, and pushed them down to his ass as he rolled his hips forward. He let out a sharp gasp, his cock already hard in his business casual jeans, and did it again. His face burned at the sound ripped out of him, but he didn’t care. The numbness was worse than the shame, worse than the knowing what he did, worse than whatever this made him.
“Not gentle,” he gasped into Asher’s mouth. “I don’t want gentle.”
“Okay,” Asher said, squeezing his ass too hard, his voice dropping to a register that meant he’d stopped being the person who held Levi while he cried and become the person who wasgoing to take him apart. “You asked for this.” Asher planted his hands on Levi’s shoulders. “Remember that.”
I may have made a mistake.
The thought arrived as Asher shoved him backward and down onto the carpet, falling over him and pinning him flat with his weight. Levi’s skull bounced off the floor and the sting of it was still registering when Asher’s mouth crashed into his with too much teeth and tongue and force to be called a kiss. Asher’s tongue pushed past his lips, his teeth catching Levi’s lower lip and pulling. Levi’s hands tangled in Asher’s hair, dragging him down harder, because the kiss wasn’t deep enough, wasn’t close enough, even as their teeth clicked together and Levi tasted copper from someone’s lip.
Asher’s hands shoved Levi’s sweater up his chest, his palms burning against Levi’s ribs, but his mouth wouldn’t lift long enough to get the fabric over his head. He yanked it to Levi’s armpits and gave up, his mouth dropping to Levi’s throat, then his chest, biting down on his nipple through the bunched fabric.
“Get this fucking thing off,” Asher growled against his chest, his hands trying to pull the sweater up while his mouth refused to leave Levi’s skin. He moved back to Levi’s ear, his teeth closing on the lobe and sucking hard enough that Levi’s hips jerked up against him, as the sweater tangled around Levi’s forearms and Asher grumbled against the side of his neck — “off, get itoff“ — his tongue tracing the tendon while his hands finally wrenched the sweater over Levi’s head and threw it somewhere behind them.
The cool air hit Levi’s bare chest in the same instant that Asher’s mouth came back down on his nipple — no fabric between the wet heat of his tongue and the edge of his teeth. Asher yanked at his own shirt, popping the buttons off in his fervor.