Chapter 13: The Taste of Dawn
The first bird's song became a chorus, and the grey light grew insistent. It found the gap in the curtain, a thin blade that cut across the floor and onto the couch, illuminating the dust motes dancing above their still-linked hands. Michael felt the shift in Nathan’s breathing, the subtle intake that meant the spell of the night was breaking. Their vigil was over, but the silence between them had changed. It was charged, thick with something that hadn't been there before the song, before the holding.
He didn't want to move. Moving would mean re-entering a world where that grey sedan existed. Here, against Nathan’s side, he was just a weight, a warmth. He was real in a way the icon never was.
Slowly, he turned his hand within Nathan’s, palm sliding against palm until their fingers re-aligned, pressing together. He felt the calluses on Nathan’s fingertips, the slight tremor in his own. His other hand, resting on his own thigh, shifted. An inch. Then another. His fingertips brushed the soft, worn cotton of Nathan’s sweatpants, just above the knee.
Nathan went very still. Not tense, but hyper-aware. The breath he’d been about to exhale stayed held.
Michael’s hand slid fully onto Nathan’s thigh, settling over the firm, dense muscle he’d seen tense a thousand times in frustration or focus. He squeezed, gently at first, then with more surety. The muscle was warm, alive under his touch.
Nathan’s head turned. Their faces were close, so close Michael could see the faint scars from teenage acne on his temple, the striations of blue and grey in his irises. His gaze was searching, wary, but not rejecting.
“What are you doing?” Nathan’s voice was wrecked from the singing, from the silence.
Michael’s own throat was tight. He searched for the words, the true ones, not the pretty ones. “Claiming something,” he whispered. “For me. Just for me.”
He leaned in. It wasn’t a graceful move; he bumped Nathan’s nose with his own, a clumsy, human accident. And then their mouths met.
It wasn’t gentle. It was a collision. Months of parsed-out looks, of carefully measured touches, of unspoken understandings erupted into the hot, desperate press of lips. Nathan made a choked sound in his throat—half surprise, half surrender—and his hand flew up to cup the back of Michael’s neck, fingers tangling in the dark curls, holding him there. The guitar slid from Nathan’s lap with a dull thud, ignored.
Michael opened for him, and Nathan’s tongue surged inward, tasting of whiskey and sleep and him. It was messy, hungry. Michael moaned into it, his body arching off the couch, pressing closer. He could feel Nathan’s erection, hard and insistent through the sweatpants, and it sent a jolt of pure, possessive heat straight to his gut. He ground his own growing hardness against Nathan’s hip, a crude, seeking friction.
He broke the kiss, gasping for air, their foreheads pressed together. “Nathan.”
“Yeah.”
“I want you to fuck me.” The words were blunt, obscene in the quiet room. He’d never said anything like that to anyone. It felt like tearing off a mask.
Nathan’s eyes darkened, his pupils swallowing the grey. He didn’t speak. He stood, pulling Michael up with him, his grip on Michael’s hand iron-tight. He led them not to the guest room, but to his own bedroom down the hall. It was Spartan—a large bed with plain grey sheets, a dresser, a notebook open on a desk scribbled with angry, looping lyrics. The door closed with a soft click, sealing them in.
Nathan turned him, his back to Nathan’s chest, and pushed the silk pajama top from his shoulders. It whispered to the floor. Nathan’s lips found the juncture of his neck and shoulder, sucking a mark into the pale skin there. His hands ran down Michael’s sides, over the delicate ribs, tracing the dip of his spine. Every touch was deliberate, mapping him.
“So fucking beautiful,” Nathan mumbled against his skin, the words ragged. “It’s not fair.”
He turned Michael around and kissed him again, swallowing his weak sob. Nathan’s hands went to the waistband of Michael’s pajama bottoms, pushing them down along with his underwear in one firm motion. Michael stepped out of them, naked and shivering, not from cold but from exposure. Nathan’s gaze was a physical weight, traveling over him—the slender frame, the soft thatch of dark hair, his cock, full and curved against his stomach.
Nathan stripped off his own hoodie and t-shirt, then his sweatpants. His body was lean, etched with the tight muscle of a fighter, not a dancer. A few old, faded scars marred his skin. He was painfully hard, his cock thick and ruddy. Michael reached for him, but Nathan caught his wrist.
“Lie down.”
Michael sank back onto the cool, grey sheets. Nathan followed him down, covering him, the full, hot weight of him a revelation. Skin to skin. The friction was exquisite. Nathan kissed him deeply, his hips rolling in a slow, grinding rhythm that made Michael whine and clutch at his back.
Nathan reached over to the nightstand, fumbled in the drawer, and came back with a small bottle. The click of the cap was loud.
“Tell me,” Nathan said, his voice a guttural command. “Tell me the second it’s too much. Not a second after.”
“I will.”
Nathan slicked his fingers, the sound wet and intimate. He moved down, settling between Michael’s thighs, spreading him. The first touch of a cool, slippery finger against his entrance made Michael jerk.
“Breathe,” Nathan said, watching his face.
Michael forced a breath out. Nathan’s finger pressed inward, slowly, inexorably. The stretch burned, a strange, full feeling. Michael gasped, his head pushing back into the pillow.
“Okay?” Nathan’s finger was still, buried to the knuckle.
“Yes. More. Please.”
Nathan began to move it, a slow in-and-out that gradually dissolved the burn into something else—a deep, building pressure. He curled his finger, and Michael shouted, a fractured cry.
“There?” Nathan asked, a faint, smug smile touching his lips.
“God, yes.”
A second finger joined the first, stretching him wider. Nathan scissored them carefully, his other hand wrapped around Michael’s thigh, holding him open. The sensation was overwhelming, a relentless invasion that teetered on the edge of pain and pleasure. Michael was breathing in ragged pants, his cock leaking profusely onto his stomach.
“I need… Nathan, now. I need you.”
Nathan withdrew his fingers, wiping them on the sheet. He poured more lube into his palm, stroking it over his own shaft, his fist moving with rough, urgent strokes. He positioned himself, the broad, slick head of his cock nudging against Michael’s stretched hole.
“Look at me,” Nathan said.
Michael dragged his eyes open. Nathan’s face was a mask of fierce concentration, of restraint trembling at the edge.
He pushed.
The burn returned, sharper, deeper. Michael cried out, his nails digging into Nathan’s biceps. Nathan paused, his own breath a ragged sawing in his chest.
“Keep going,” Michael whimpered.
Nathan sheathed himself an inch deeper, then another, a relentless, slow conquest. Michael felt every ridge, every vein. He was being split open, filled beyond what seemed possible. Tears streaked from the corners of his eyes.
“Fuck,” Nathan choked out, his forehead dropping to Michael’s shoulder. He was fully inside, balls-deep, their bodies locked together. They stayed like that, immobile, feeling the sheer, impossible fact of it.
Nathan moved. A tentative withdrawal, then a thrust back in. And again. And again. The rhythm found itself, hardening from exploration to purpose. Nathan’s hips snapped forward, driving into him with a force that shook the bed frame. Each impact punched a groan from Michael’s lungs.
“Yes… like that… fuck me, just like that,” Michael babbled, his legs hooking around Nathan’s waist, heels digging into the small of his back.
Nathan’s control shattered. He fucked him in earnest, a brutal, pounding pace that had Michael sliding up the sheets. The slapping of skin, the wet, obscene sounds of their joining, Nathan’s guttural grunts—it was a symphony of filth. Michael loved it. He wanted to be ruined by it.
Nathan’s hand slid between them, wrapping around Michael’s slick cock, stroking in time with his thrusts. The dual assault was too much. Pleasure coiled, tight and white-hot, in Michael’s gut.
“I’m gonna… Nathan, I’m gonna come!”
“Come,” Nathan snarled into his ear. “Come all over yourself. Show me.”
The command unraveled him. Michael’s orgasm tore through him with a violence that felt like annihilation. Jets of hot seed striped his chest and stomach, his body convulsing, his ass clenching rhythmically around Nathan’s invading cock.
The sensation tipped Nathan over the edge. With a raw, broken shout, he buried himself as deep as he could and came, pulsing inside Michael, his body bucking, his teeth sinking into Michael’s shoulder to muffle the sound.
The collapse was gradual. Nathan’s weight settled onto him, heavy and spent. Michael could feel the thump of Nathan’s heart against his own, a frantic, shared tattoo. The smell of sex and sweat and lavender filled the air.
After a long time, Nathan softened and slipped out. He didn’t roll away. He shifted just enough to lie beside him, pulling Michael against him, chest to back. His arm draped over Michael’s waist, his fingers splayed possessively over his stomach, sticky with drying come.
Neither spoke. The sun was fully up now, the room bright. The world outside—the grey sedans, the lenses, the questions—had not disappeared. It had, however, been fundamentally altered. They had stolen something back, something raw and messy and entirely their own. Michael closed his eyes. For the first time in a memory that stretched too far back, he felt not just safe, but claimed. And in the silence, with Nathan’s breath warming the back of his neck, he wondered, with a spike of terror, what they had just broken, and what they had just begun.