While Rian collapsed, inside and out.
He collapsed, his foundations crumbling out from under him to leave him helpless to the force of pleasure that crashed over him so violently it hurt, a rough ripping sensation seeming to drag his climax from him until he thrashed against Damon and it was only that heavy weight keeping him still, keeping him close, keeping him safe.
And holding him together, as Rian came down from something so dizzying and crushing he could hardly catch his breath, clinging to Damon as he tried to pull himself together.
Tried to pull himself together, and tried to figure out what had just wrenched inside him until suddenly the map of himself pointed in wholly new directions, and he no longer knew which way to turn to find journey’s end, only that the path was marked with breadcrumbs made out of the pieces of a heart that felt as if it could only be breaking. Especially when night was sinking, for him, as his eyelids fell, leaden in an instant as the last of his energy bled out.
“Rian...?”
He barely heard his name in a hoarse rasp, barely managed to whisper back something that felt far too honest, to kiss Damon when he couldn’t find better words, before he went under.
But Rian thought, even as he sank into the dark, even as he lost himself in the aftermath of a shattering that felt as if it had smashed him apart and remade him anew from the pieces...
He had made a mistake.
And in a moment of needy impulse, he had started something that could, in the end, only hurt them both.
* * *
Damon didn’t know why he was surprised Rian slept like the dead.
His heart had nearly stopped, when he’d gently pried their bodies apart and touched his fingers to Rian’s cheek...and realized he was crying. Tears streaking down his face in wet glimmers, and Damon had felt like a complete and utter shithead, panic rising inside him...only for Rian to smile at him, sweet and sad, and kiss him—lingering, warm, his palm cupping to Damon’s cheek.
It’s okay, he’d whispered against Damon’s lips. I’m okay. Thank you.
Before Rian had been gone almost in an instant, snuggled trustingly into Damon’s chest and caged between Damon’s body and the wall, when it was pretty much the only way they could both fit on the narrow twin bed without one of them falling off in their sleep. And as his breaths had evened out and calmed, Rian had turned still and quiet, loose and lax against Damon, his hair a leviathan ensnaring Damon’s limbs and keeping him close.
Not that Damon would have gotten up if he could; he was still caught, wrapped up in that moment when a slow, soft, hurting kiss had turned into something more. More than comfort; more than a distraction; more than...anything Damon had ever felt with every man he’d dated or casual fuck he’d thrown himself into to let off steam for a night.
That sense of isolation had always been there, even when he told himself he was trying to fall in love or even just trip over a little lust for a night or two. That sense of being separate, of not belonging, but it was always his walls they murmured about when they regretfully shook their heads and said this wasn’t going to work.
His walls, instead of the ones he felt like he saw everywhere, shutting him out.
But there had been no walls between him and Rian, tonight. Nothing but shared pain, shared need, shared hope, shared warmth.
That hadn’t felt like just sex.
It had felt like...
Too much.
Not enough.
Everything.
Something that left Damon breathless, as he watched Rian sleep and wondered when he’d stopped seeing a skinny, pale, snotty, meddling pain in Damon’s ass.
And started seeing this beautiful fey thing who was just as lost as he was, so unsure of his place in the world, but goddammit... Rian was trying.
Trying until he wore himself out, and slept as deeply as an exhausted child, tangled so closely with Damon and trusting Damon to keep him safe while he escaped from their mutual troubles in sleep.
I will, Damon thought, even if he wasn’t quite sure what he was promising. He gathered Rian closer, resting his head atop that messy crown of rippling hair, and told himself even if this was just for tonight, even if it broke in the morning...
I’ll hold you close. I’ll keep you safe.
If you’ll let me...
I will.
God, his head was going all fucked—and maybe Damon had been wrong from the start, when his chest was a hollow drum reverberating with the echoes of these frustrating feelings he couldn’t name.
He’d fucked up, all right.
Because it was looking like he’d let someone like Rian Falwell break his heart after all.
Chapter Twelve
Rian wasn’t in his own bed.
That was the first thing that struck him, as he straggled awake.
The second was that he was nearly drowning in a deep, plush mattress that wasn’t his own, sinking into it so far he felt like he was being swallowed.
The third was that he was sore inside in ways he hadn’t been in quite some time, when his last sexually intimate relationship had been a boyfriend with a gambling addiction who had pawned several of the expensive bits of jewelry Rian had brought from home, then blamed Rian for trying to take over his life and “fix” him when he didn’t need fixing. Douglas hadn’t been particularly good in bed, anyway, rather selfish—and he’d never left Rian so deliciously worn out he’d passed out seconds after finishing, only to wake up sore and stretching and feeling like a very satisfied cat.
While the fourth thing that struck him, as he shifted and settled deeper into that lush mattress and stre-e-eeetched his legs out until his ankles popped and his toes curled?
Was that he was trapped against the cool wooden wall of a room that wasn’t his own by the body that was the exact reason why he was waking up feeling so wonderfully, throbbingly used.
He opened his eyes drowsily, for a moment disoriented that the light coming through the windows on the opposite wall and behind the bed was so bright until he remembered it was Saturday; no bells to wake him just as dawn crested the horizon. No bells to tell him he had to leave this, now, when right now...
He felt at peace, as he watched Damon sleep.
This was the first time he’d felt safe really letting himself look at Damon fully, taking him in without needing to hide his interest or worry he’d get caught and have to explain himself in a mortified mess. He so often thought of Damon’s face as something just as hard-cut as his body...but Rian realized now it was the tension he carried with him so often, the thoughts always weighing on him, when sleep softened his features to smooth away years and add gentle, peaceful contours around his brows and cheeks, framed by the dark slashes of tangled, unbound hair falling everywhere. He must worry so much, Rian thought, about so many things—and some tiny aching part of him wanted to kiss the furrows in Damon’s brow each morning to ease them away before the day’s aggravation could crease them in deep again.