Chapter 7: Aerial Devotion
The journey from the sofa to the bed was a blur of sensation and strength. Arjun’s arms, locked under Rohan’s knees and back, felt as unyielding as forged steel, yet the hold was gentle, cradling. Rohan’s own arms were looped around Arjun’s neck, his face buried in the warm skin where shoulder met throat, breathing in the clean, soap-and-salt scent of him. His feet never touched the scuffed wooden floor.
He was deposited onto the unmade bed, the sheets a cool tangle against his back. Before he could orient himself, Arjun was over him, knees bracketing his hips, that immense physical presence blocking out the dim light from the desk lamp. The playful confidence was gone, replaced by a focused, hungry intensity.
Arjun’s hands began a slow, deliberate inventory. They mapped the dip of Rohan’s waist, the subtle ridge of his ribs, the soft plane of his stomach. Each touch was firm, possessive, leaving a trail of heat in its wake. Rohan trembled, not from fear, but from the sheer overload of it—the methodical exploration felt like a silent, physical dialogue he didn’t yet know how to answer.
“Look at you,” Arjun murmured, his voice a low rasp. He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of Rohan’s ear. “All that brilliant focus, just for me.” His mouth traveled down Rohan’s neck, across his clavicle. “You think so hard. I can feel you thinking right now.” A nip, not hard, but startling. “Stop.”
“I can’t,” Rohan gasped, arching off the bed as Arjun’s mouth found a nipple, his tongue circling the tight bud. His hands fisted in the sheets. “It’s—ah—it’s what I do.”
Arjun lifted his head, a faint smile playing on his swollen lips. “Then think about this.” He shifted lower, his large hands spreading Rohan’s thighs apart with an ease that made Rohan’s breath hitch. The anticipation coiled, tight and molten, in his gut. Arjun’s gaze was unwavering, taking him in completely. “Perfect.”
The word, so softly uttered, unspooled something deep inside Rohan. A vulnerability he usually kept shielded behind lines of code and project timelines lay bare. A soft, broken whimper escaped him, his hips lifting off the mattress in a silent, desperate plea.
It was all the encouragement Arjun needed. He bent his head, and his mouth, that source of so many challenging questions and easy laughs, closed over him.
Rohan cried out, a sharp, choked sound. The world dissolved into pure sensation—wet, hot, relentlessly precise. Arjun’s hands pinned his hips to the bed, a firm anchor against the tidal wave building within him. His technique was not practiced artifice; it was eager, learning, responsive. He listened to every hitch of Rohan’s breath, every twitch of muscle, and adjusted, exploring what drew out the sharpest gasps, the most shattered moans.
“Arjun… God… I’m—” The warning was a frayed thread of sound.
Arjun merely hummed in response, the vibration shooting through Rohan like a live wire. His hands tightened, holding him steady as Rohan fractured. The release was a silent, blinding white-out, stripping him of thought, of identity, of everything but the feeling of Arjun’s unshakeable grip and the devastating, worshiping pressure of his mouth.
When the world swam back, granular and slow, Arjun was sliding up beside him, gathering his boneless form against the solid wall of his chest. He nuzzled into Rohan’s damp hair, his own breathing ragged. They lay like that for long minutes, the only sounds their slowing breaths and the persistent hum of the desktop computer across the room.
Rohan’s mind, stubbornly, began to reboot. The aftershocks still tingled through his nerves, but the old anxieties, like persistent background processes, started to reinitialize. The project. The office. Monday. What they had just done, here in this tangled bed, changed every interaction that would follow.
“You’ve gone quiet again,” Arjun said, his thumb stroking a lazy circle on Rohan’s shoulder. “Back to the breach simulation?”
“To everything,” Rohan admitted, his voice hoarse. “This… us. At work. It’s a terrible idea.” The words felt hollow even as he said them, his body still thrumming with the proof of a spectacularly good idea.
Arjun propped himself up on one elbow. In the half-light, he looked young, but his eyes were ancient and knowing. “Why? Because I’m your intern? That’s an HR spreadsheet talking, Rohan. Not you.” He leaned in, kissed him, slow and deep, letting Rohan taste the faint, metallic echo of himself. “I followed the rules today. I saved the project. And then,” he added, a sly grin returning, “I followed exactly what I wanted. For once, you did too.”
He had a point. A terrifying, illogical point. Rohan had spent four years color-coding his life, and this man had just splashed across every border in vibrant, undeniable color.
“What do you want, Arjun?” Rohan asked, the question more profound than he intended.
Arjun’s grin softened. He looked away for a second, toward the cluttered desk, the glowing monitor. “Right now? I want you to stop worrying that I’m going to ask for a promotion in exchange for a blowjob.” He laughed, a genuine, warm sound that eased the knot in Rohan’s chest. “Later? I want to show you the full code patch I wrote. And I want you to tell me it’s brilliant. And then,” he said, rolling onto his back and pulling Rohan against him, tucking Rohan’s head under his chin, “I want to order terrible Chinese food and fall asleep with you right here, while that simulation runs its cycles in a sandbox you’ll check first thing in the morning.”
It was so specific, so mundane, and so utterly disarming. It wasn’t a grand declaration. It was a plan. A messy, realistic, incredibly tempting plan.
Rohan listened to the steady thump of Arjun’s heart beneath his ear. The anxiety was still there, a low hum in the background, but it was no longer the only thing running. A new process had started, one he didn’t have a protocol for, one full of glitching, beautiful, unpredictable code.
“The code better be brilliant,” Rohan mumbled into his skin, a smile finally touching his own lips.
He felt Arjun’s chest shake with silent laughter. “It is. You taught me, remember?”
Outside, Bangalore hummed its endless, sleepless rhythm. Inside, wrapped in strength and the scent of shared skin, Rohan let his eyes close. For now, the sandbox held. For now, this was enough.