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He and Jack have been sleeping together.
Well — no, the euphemism implies a certain remove from the emotional realities of what it is they’ve been doing for the last six months. But the other polite linguistic detours — spending the night, making love, even having sex — seem too soft. Too devoid of the abrasive, bruising thing that keeps it addicting. The harsh edges that make all of Robby’s senses go bright with attention.
They’ve been fucking.
And it’s fucking good.
It’s always been good with Jack. But they’ve always collided in isolation, after long periods of wanting and refusing. The consistency of the last six months has been new — and intoxicating. Robby swims through it, holding his breath like that will prevent the sickness when this inevitably ends with a harsh snap of oxygen and the total cessation of their connection. He’s going to get the emotional equivalent of the bends, tells himself that every morning he wakes up in Jack’s bed.
But he keeps ending the nights there anyway.
Jack is harsher than Robby remembers, harder to reach and harder to unravel. He’s only a year and a half out from burying Anna, so it’s hard to blame him for that. And even if he could, Robby’s not sure he would. The blunt force of Jack’s urgency — a low growl in Robby’s ear, demanding More, Michael. You can do better than that. — hits Robby like a detonation every time. He chokes on his own moan, picks up the pace.
Harder, faster. Jack’s hand around his throat, bruises where Robby’s hips hit Jack’s. The two of them shaking and begging and revealing more and more. Jack asking for Robby’s hand across his face. Robby wishing out loud for Jack’s fingers over his mouth.
Finding that their desires were compatible in even this way had been like getting shot, bleeding out in Jack’s bed. Jack had hovered over him, staring down at Robby with a strange crease around his eyes.
What?
I… Can I ask you for something? Jack had asked, voice low and steady. Robby had nodded, heart starting to pound. Jack hesitated for only a moment, then said, I want you to fuck me.
Robby laughed. Yeah, Jack, being naked in bed kind of tipped me off.
No. Jack’s eyes sharpened. I didn’t say I want to have sex. I want you to fuck me.
And by that, you mean…?
I mean, fucking… put me through the mattress, Robby. Hit me, bite me — whatever. Just…
Heat, unbearable, had flushed up Robby’s chest and his breath had shallowed. Use you.
Fuck. Jack had exhaled sharply. Would you?
Robby has been fucking him ever since, with occasional exceptions for Jack fucking him. The two of them traded places, fought for dominance, wept for relief. Every desire, every secret want, every stray thought — all have become fair play. It is intimate, even without softness. Romantic, even without seduction.
It is, with no contest, the best sex that Robby has ever had.
As he’s peeling off his shirt at the foot of Jack’s bed, he looks down and sees the smile that Jack, already splayed open and flushed, tries to bite down before it gets noticed. Robby grabs him by the ankle and yanks him down the bed.
“What are you grinning at?” he asks, not quite harsh. It belies his genuine curiosity.
Jack lifts a brow. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“I would.” Robby comes down on top of him, mouthing at the tendons of his shoulder until Jack moans under him, writhing. “And you’re going to tell me.”
“Good luck,” Jack says, too breathy to be convincing.
“Hm. Usually an orgasm makes you more agreeable.” Robby bites down hard enough to bruise.
“I guess you’re going to have to work for it tonight.”
Robby smirks, pushing up and positioning himself. “Don’t I always?”
It’s fast; he lines up and pushes in all at once. Jack’s mouth falls open, eyes squeezing shut as he groans. Heat flares up Robby’s spine and he shudders, trying to hold his composure long enough to wring another orgasm out of the man below him.
Jack nods without opening his eyes. I’m good. Move.
Robby withdraws, then drives forward so hard that they both cry out. Jack is so tight, so hot; it’s nearly too much. How can it still feel like this? Unreal, as if Robby is both outside of and unbearably inside his own body. New, as if Robby has never been inside Jack, as if he doesn’t know exactly what will make him scream—
“Fuck, Robby!”
“That’s right,” he pants into Jack’s ear, snapping his hips forward at a punishing pace. “I know all your tells, Jack Abbot.”
Jack shudders, reaches a hand up to yank at Robby’s hair. Pain commingles with the pleasure, keeps him on a knife’s edge. He reciprocates by drawing Jack’s leg up to his shoulder and slapping the underside of his thigh with a strong hand.
Sudden, intense tightness squeezes around him and Robby can’t stifle the groan that rips out of him.
“Jesus, Jack—”
“Come on, come on—”
Robby had always known that their connection was electric, but there had been no way to know that their desires were compatible in this way. That they both wanted the haze of sex to blur the line between pleasure and pain. That they both wanted to shriek, to beg for mercy and never mean it.
It had been, in Robby’s mind, more intimate to ask for it than to receive it. The harsh bite of a hit or the slithering, heady swim of a hand around the throat — these were physical, understood best as animal instinct and synapses firing. The pleasure-seeking brain fulfilling its purpose. But the asking. The asking was a human thing, painful in its need and its exposure. To be seen wanting, to be seen at all.
This is what Jack had asked of him, had offered him. A profound kindness, a desperate opening. Robby drives into the inviting space between them.
“Robby, I’m so close. Please—”
Robby slows, fighting off his own screaming impulse. “Not until you tell me what you were smiling at.”
Jack glares at him. “Oh my God. You’re not serious.”
Robby thrusts.
“Fuck!”
“Tell me.”
“Robby—”
Another thrust. Harder. “Tell me.”
“Shit, shit—”
Harder. “Tell me.”
Jack gasps, scratches into Robby’s back. “Oh my God. Robby—”
The fight for control is more animalistic now. Robby fucks him, as requested, into the mattress and lets the refrain of Tell me guide the rhythm. Jack is weakening below him, whimpering and gasping and hard again. Robby reaches between them, ghosts his fingertips over Jack’s length.
This is the edge. If he wraps his hand around Jack, it won’t take more than a breath or two until he’s unraveling. But he won’t do it, not until he gets what he wants.
“I’m asking you, Jack,” he says softly, still moving harshly into him. “Why were you smiling?”
“Because— because—”
Jack arches his back and the angle shift is so good that Robby has to white-knuckle the sheets. He’s right there with him, the two of them always together, even in this. His breath is ragged, his body aching for release.
He forgets, nearly, to ask again. As the pace between them picks up again, they move as one. Rushing for the edge, wrapped in one another, starting to scream one another’s name. Jack’s nails rake burning lines down Robby’s back and the memory of Robby’s hand is a red echo on Jack’s cheek.
Robby is mindless in it by the end, fucking selfishly. He feels Jack tighten desperately around him and knows that it’s over for both of them.
So, one last time: “Why were you smiling, Jack?”
“Because— because this is—”
He slaps the back of Jack’s thigh again, hard as he can manage. Jack comes undone, shaking and gasping out, “Perfect!” as he spills across his own stomach.
“What is?” Robby grunts, chasing his own orgasm now with abandon. He wraps one hand around the back of Jack’s neck and pants, eyes closing. “What’s perfect?”
“This,” Jack groans, as Robby’s reaching between them to push him into overstimulation. “Us.”
Robby collapses onto him as he comes, too potent to even make a sound. The orgasm rips through him, but it’s not the physical sensation that it usually is. His mind unravels, too: us, us, us.
Jack’s breath heaves out of him in a single, soft huff against Robby’s shoulder.
It takes a moment for Robby to pull back into his body, to roll off Jack and splay out on the other side of the mattress. Jack looks over at him, bright-eyed.
“Sorry.”
Robby, out of breath, furrows his brow. “Sorry?”
“That was— that was too much. Right?”
“I…” Robby shrugs. “I don’t know.”
They stare at the ceiling, quiet and close. Jack’s breath evens before Robby’s does, something to keep time by. Robby closes his eyes and listens to it, lets his chest rise and fall in rhythm. The two of them, like this, is perfect. That’s the thing.
But to say it, to ask for it — that’s something else entirely. The physical fact, set against the unwinding of concept. He sighs, looks at Jack again.
“I can go, if you want.”
Jack hesitates. “Would you stay?”
It’s not a request. It’s a question, an uncertainty. Would you? If I asked?
Robby is quiet, letting it sit between them unanswered. The simplicity of an answer eludes him; they fall asleep before he can find it.