Chapter 4: Anchoring
The streetlight through her thin curtains painted his face in stripes of orange and shadow. He looked like a sketch of himself, an unfinished drawing. Sarah’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird where the old bruise had been. This was it. The point of no return, clothed in quiet desperation.
She reached for the hem of her shirt, her fingers clumsy, trembling. It was a practical motion, a thing to be done. Get it off, get it over with, plant the anchor. Her breath hitched as she pulled the fabric over her head, the air cool on her skin.
She was fumbling for the clasp of her bra when his hand came up, not to help, but to still her. His palm was cool against her cheek, his fingers sliding into her hair. He cupped her face, his touch halting her frantic movements.
“Wait,” he breathed, the word barely a sound.
He leaned in then, and kissed her. It wasn’t what she expected. Robert’s kisses were dry, perfunctory, a seal on a transaction. Devin’s lips were slightly wet, and soft. They moved against hers with a tentative reverence that made her stomach tighten. He pulled back just an inch, his forehead resting against hers. His eyes were closed.
“Can we go slow?” he murmured, his voice a ragged whisper in the dark space between them. “I know we may not have a lot of time but…” He opened his eyes, and the look in them was so unbearably young, so full of a terrible, tender hope. “If there was any woman I’d like to make love to… instead of just having sex with… it’d be you, Sarah.”
The sound of her name on his lips, in that context, unmoored her. It was a declaration that shattered the last pretense of clinical purpose. This wasn’t a procedure. It was him, and her, in a dark room, choosing each other against the collapsing weight of time.
Tears, hot and sudden, blurred her vision. She nodded, unable to speak. Her hands, which had been frantic, came up to rest on his wrists, holding his touch to her face.
He kissed her again, slower this time. His other hand came up, mirroring the first, so he was cradling her face as if it were something fragile, something sacred he’d pulled from the wreckage. The kiss deepened, a slow exploration. She tasted salt—her tears or his, she didn’t know. She let herself fall into it, into the shocking simplicity of being kissed like she mattered, like every second was a universe.
His hands left her face, trailed down her neck, over her shoulders. He found the clasp of her bra and opened it with a deftness that surprised her. The fabric loosened. He didn’t pull it away, just slid his hands beneath the straps, his palms warm against her shoulder blades, pulling her closer against his chest. She could feel the beat of his heart, too fast, a hummingbird trapped behind bone.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered against her skin, his lips brushing her collarbone. “I always thought so. Even when I was a kid and you were just my sad mom. I’d see old pictures and think, ‘Who was that?’”
She let out a choked sound, half-laugh, half-sob. “Don’t,” she managed.
“I have to,” he said, leaning back to look at her. He gently tugged the bra away, letting it fall beside them on the bed. His gaze was frank, awed, devoid of leer. He was studying a landscape he remembered from photographs. “I have to say it. Because it’s true here, now. And I might not get another chance.”
He bent his head, his mouth finding the swell of her breast, his tongue tracing a slow, deliberate circle. A bolt of pure, undiluted sensation shot through her, so sharp it made her gasp. Her fingers tangled in his hair, not pushing him away, but holding him there. This was different. This was for her. Robert’s touches were demands; this was an offering.
She pushed at his shirt, needing to feel his skin. He helped, pulling it over his head with a slight wince. In the dim light, she could see the definition of his ribs, the pale transparency of his skin. He looked like a Victorian poet dying of consumption. Her anchor. Her impossible son. She ran her hands over his chest, feeling the reality of him, the heat and the faint tremor beneath her palms.
They sank back onto the narrow bed, a tangle of limbs and whispered reassurances. The springs groaned a protest. They both froze, listening. From down the hall, the deep, rattling sigh of Robert’s sleep continued, undisturbed.
They undressed the rest of the way without haste, each piece of clothing a silent agreement. The air was cool on her bare skin, but where their bodies met, it was furnace-hot. He explored her with his hands and his mouth, mapping the curve of her hip, the dip of her waist, the old yellowing bruise on her ribcage. He paused there, his lips brushing the discolored skin.
“He did this?” His voice was low, a vibration against her flesh.
“A while ago,” she whispered. “It’s almost gone.”
“It shouldn’t have ever been there.” He kissed the spot again, a soft apology to a ghost of pain.
She turned the tables then, her own hands learning him. The lean muscle of his arms, the soft skin at the small of his back, the sharp angle of his hip bones. He was real. So heartbreakingly real. And fading. The thought made her clutch him tighter.
When he finally moved over her, bracing himself on his elbows, he paused. His face was sheened with a faint sweat, his eyes searching hers in the near-dark.
“This is crazy,” he said, a faint, wild smile touching his lips.
“The craziest,” she agreed, her voice thick.
He entered her slowly, so slowly it was an agony of tenderness. She gasped, her body arching to meet his. It had been years since it felt like anything more than a tolerated pressure. This was a reclamation. This was a breaking open. He stilled, fully sheathed, his forehead dropping to her shoulder. She could feel him shaking.
“Okay?” he breathed.
She could only nod, her throat too tight for words. She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him deeper, an answer in flesh.
Then he began to move. There was no frantic pace, no race to a finish. It was a deep, rolling rhythm, a conversation without words. Each thrust was a promise, each withdrawal a question. She met him, stroke for stroke, losing herself in the dizzying paradox of it. The young man above her was a stranger she knew intimately. The body accepting him was hers, but it felt new, alive with a forgotten voltage.
She didn’t think about tomorrow, or Robert in the next room, or the physics of paradoxes. She thought about the heat of his skin, the salt taste of his neck when she pressed her mouth there, the whispered nonsense falling from his lips—“you feel… God, Sarah… so good… please…”—and the coil of tension tightening low in her own belly, unfamiliar and urgent.
It built slowly, a wave gathering far out at sea. She clung to him, her fingers pressing into the muscles of his back as if she could physically stop him from dissolving. His breathing grew ragged, his movements losing their precise slowness, giving way to a deeper, more urgent need.
“Look at me,” he pleaded, his voice strangled.
She opened her eyes. His gaze was locked on hers, desperate, shining. In that moment, he wasn’t her son. He was Devin. Just Devin. The man who had crossed time to find her.
The wave broke. It crashed over her with a silent, shocking intensity, pulling a muffled cry from her throat that she buried against his shoulder. Her body convulsed around him, a series of pulses that felt like both an ending and a violent beginning. The sensation triggered his own release; he shuddered, his own cry a sharp, choked gasp against her ear. He collapsed onto her, his full weight a sweet, crushing comfort.
He collapsed onto her, his full weight a sweet, crushing comfort.
As she lay beneath him, she felt relief—sweet, profound relief. He felt different. Plump, solid, like he wasn't starving anymore. She couldn’t feel the sharp architecture of his bones just by grazing her hands along his back.
His sweat dripped onto her neck, mixing with hers. His body was warm, thrumming with a new vitality. His hands slid along her body, groping each part they could reach with a possessive, wondering hunger.
He lifted his head, kissing her again, his lips smiling against hers. “I can’t fucking believe that worked,” he mumbled into her mouth, his voice thick with awe.
There was a sigh and a shared chuckle between them both, a release of unbearable tension. They lay intertwined, listening to each other's breathing even out. From down the hall, Robert’s snore was a distant, irrelevant engine.
“You feel…” Sarah began, her hands still moving over the new solidness of his shoulders. “You feel here.”
“I feel… fed,” he said, the wonder still there. He rolled off her but immediately pulled her into his side, her head on his chest. The beat of his heart against her ear was strong, steady, a metronome for a new timeline. “It’s not just alive. It’s alive alive.”
They lay in silence for a long moment, the reality of what they’d done settling over them like a second skin. It wasn’t guilt. It was a strange, quiet triumph. The hum of the refrigerator cycled off, leaving the house in profound quiet.
“So,” she whispered. “Biology 101, huh?”
A laugh rumbled in his chest. “Advanced placement. With a time-travel thesis.” He kissed the top of her head. “God, I’m starving. Like, actually for food. I haven’t wanted a burger in two weeks.”
The mundane craving was the most shocking thing yet. It was normal. It was human. Sarah propped herself up on an elbow, looking down at him. In the murky light, his color was better, the shadows under his eyes less like open wounds.
“I have leftover meatloaf,” she said.
“Robert’s meatloaf?” Devin made a face. “The dry, spiceless brick? I’d rather eat the couch.”
She swatted his arm, a real laugh escaping her. It felt foreign and good in her throat. “My meatloaf. I made it Wednesday.”
“Oh. Okay, that’s different.” He grinned up at her. “Your meatloaf is decent. For a mourning dish.”
The accuracy of the comment, the intimate knowledge of her cooking habits, stole her breath for a second. He knew her. Not the her she was now, but the her she’d become. The one who cooked when she was sad.
The floorboard in the hall creaked.
They froze, a sudden statue tableau of tangled limbs. The snoring had stopped. A toilet flushed. Heavy footsteps moved back toward the master bedroom. The door clicked shut.
The door clicked shut.
They remained frozen for a full minute, listening to the heavy silence. Sarah’s heart thumped a wild rhythm against Devin’s side. Finally, he let out a long, slow breath.
“He’s down for the count,” Devin whispered, his voice a rough scrape of sound in the dark. A low chuckle vibrated through his chest. “I forgot. Dad has the same routine in the future. If he wakes to go to the bathroom late at night, the man doesn’t get up till noon the next day. It’s like a system reboot.”
The casual, intimate knowledge of Robert’s habits, delivered with such mundane familiarity, broke the last of Sarah’s tension. She slumped against him, a giddy, breathless laugh escaping her lips. It felt dangerously loud. He turned his head and found her mouth in the dark, kissing her deeply. As they kissed, she felt the insistent, renewed hardness of him pressing against her thigh.
The sheer, biological fact of it, after everything, struck her as profoundly funny and terribly sad. He was here. He was alive. And he was relentless.
“Since I’m here and not dying,” he mumbled against her lips, his hands already moving, turning her onto her stomach with a gentle urgency, “it means it stuck.” He settled over her, his weight a familiar comfort now. He sank into her from behind, a slow, complete possession that made her gasp into the pillow. “We gotta make sure, right?” he breathed into her ear, his voice thick with a new kind of hunger. “And not because your pussy… I’m pretty sure is the second to heaven with how good it feels.”
She couldn’t answer. The sensation was too much, a decadent fullness that erased thought. He moved, and this time there was no tender slowness. It was a raw, driving rhythm, a celebration of a body he’d almost lost. She pushed back against him, meeting each thrust, a silent, fervent agreement. Yes, make sure. Anchor yourself. Stay.
They moved together in the dark, the only sounds their ragged breathing and the soft, steady creak of the bed. It was a wordless conversation of gratitude and desperation. After, he pulled her up to her knees, her back against his chest, his arms wrapped around her, hands roaming her body as he moved within her. He showed her angles and depths she’d never considered, his knowledge of her responses seeming both clinical and worshipped.
“Forgot how vanilla sex is in this time period,” he grunted, his lips on her shoulder, and there was no judgment in it, just a statement of fact. He laid her back down and kissed his way down her body, his mouth finding her with a purpose that was both selfless and utterly possessive. The intensity of it, the direct, focused pleasure, was something Robert had never offered, had never even conceived of. She came again, her fingers fisted in his hair, her cry stifled by her own arm.
He was inexhaustible. He lifted her against the wall in the narrow space between the dresser and the door, her legs hooked over his hips. The cool plaster against her back was a shock, the danger of discovery a sharp thrill. He took her on the floor, the rough weave of the carpet burning her knees until he shifted, cushioning her with his own body. He whispered questions against her skin—“Is this okay?” “Do you want this?”—and every time she nodded, a frantic, yes, yes, yes.
He guided her onto him, let her set the pace while he watched, his hands gripping her hips, his eyes black and endless in the dark. He turned her over again, his touch gentling as he entered her a different way, a tight, shocking fullness that made her arch and then melt. It was an act of total trust, a surrendering of a final frontier. He murmured praise into the sweat-damp skin of her back, words that were crude and beautiful in their honesty.
They were two explorers mapping a new country that was only theirs. Every sigh, every shift, every gasp was a coordinate. The blue light before dawn found them against the window, her palms flat on the cool glass, his body a solid warmth behind her, moving with a slow, deep finality as the street outside began to define itself in shades of gray.
The sun, a thin line of fire, edged over the rooftops. He shuddered, his release a quiet, drawn-out sigh against her neck. She felt her own body answer with a final, deep pulse. They sank to the floor together, a panting, tired mess of limbs, leaning against the wall beneath the window. The rising sun painted stripes of gold and pink across their skin, over the bruises and sweat and evidence of their night.
Sarah’s body felt utterly new, a used and reclaimed territory. Devin’s breathing, deep and even, was the sound of a man not just surviving, but thriving. He slid a hand over her stomach, his touch possessive and wondering.
“Sun’s up,” he said, his voice hoarse.
She looked at their reflection, blurred in the glass. Two figures, tangled on the floor, in a room that was no longer just hers. It was theirs. A base camp for a future they had stolen back from the jaws of a terrible paradox.
“He’ll be asleep for hours,” she said, the words tasting of a strange, powerful freedom.
Devin just nodded, his eyes already closing, a profound peace settling on his features that hadn’t been there before. He was solid. He was real. And he was staying.