Chapter 9: Jasper drops the coffee mug with a clatter, catching Elias just as his knees buckle, whispering 'Holy shit' against his temple while rubbing slow circles on his convulsing stomach—neither dares to hope until Jasper's fingers find the small swell beneath Elias's shirt.
The diner waffles sat like a sweet, leaden memory in Elias’s stomach for two days. He’d chalked the lingering fullness up to the sheer volume of syrup, the uncharacteristic indulgence. But on the third morning, standing in the sunlit chaos of their kitchen, the truth arrived not as a thought, but as a physical revolt.
Jasper was at the counter, humming off-key, grinding fresh beans. The rich, acidic scent of the coffee bloomed in the air, a familiar morning ritual. It hit Elias’s nostrils and his throat clenched.
A wave of nausea, swift and violent, rolled up from his gut. Saliva flooded his mouth. He gripped the edge of the countertop, his knuckles bleaching white, as his entire body went hot then cold.
“You want a cup?” Jasper asked, his back still turned as he tipped the grounds into the filter.
Elias couldn’t speak. He swallowed hard, the bitter taste of bile at the back of his tongue. The fragrant steam now smelled like pungent, chemical decay. His stomach lurched again, a sickening heave that brought a fine sweat to his temples.
He must have made a sound—a choked gasp, a ragged inhale.
Jasper turned, the casual smile still on his lips. It died when he saw Elias: pale as the porcelain of their sink, trembling, one hand pressed flat against his abdomen as if holding himself together.
“Eli?” Jasper’s voice was soft, tentative. He took a step forward, his eyes scanning—the clammy skin, the greenish tint, the way Elias was staring at the coffee machine with something like terror. Jasper’s own mind, usually a stream of playful associations and design layouts, went very quiet, then clicked with a series of hard, seismic facts.
The raw, desperate sex of a few mornings prior. The weeks of tension before that. The calendar on Elias’s phone, now abandoned. The look on Elias’s face right now, which wasn’t the face of a man with indigestion.
“Elias,” Jasper said again, the name a solid thing in the quiet kitchen. He moved slowly, as if approaching a spooked animal, and clicked the coffee maker off. The gurgling stopped. The smell remained, hanging in the air.
“It’s the coffee,” Elias managed to croak, closing his eyes. “It smells… rancid. Did you buy a different kind?”
“It’s the same beans we always get,” Jasper said, his voice carefully neutral. He came closer, until he was right in front of Elias. He didn’t touch him. He just looked, his warm brown eyes searching Elias’s face, tracing the new vulnerability there. A wild, fragile hope, so potent it was terrifying, began to uncurl in Jasper’s chest. He forced it down, clamped a lid on it. He couldn’t name it. Not yet. To name it would be to make it a target.
“I’m just tired,” Elias whispered, his eyes still shut. “Stressed. My system’s messed up.”
“Yeah,” Jasper murmured. He reached out then, finally, and brushed a stray lock of hair from Elias’s damp forehead. His thumb stroked the skin there. “Maybe. Come sit down.”
He guided Elias to the kitchen table, pulling out a chair. Elias sank into it, boneless, folding his arms on the table and resting his forehead on them. Jasper filled a glass with cool water and set it silently beside him. He stood there for a long moment, watching the tight line of Elias’s shoulders. The urge to say something, to give voice to the hope screaming in his head, was immense. He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper.
Instead, he picked up his phone from the counter. He opened a private browser tab, his fingers moving swiftly. He read for a few minutes, his heart hammering against his ribs. Then he put the phone down, screen-first.
The day passed in a strange, suspended bubble. Elias moved from the chair to the couch, a blanket around his shoulders despite the warm sun. He sipped water, ate a handful of plain crackers Jasper brought him. He was quiet, turned inward, a man afraid to examine his own body for clues. Jasper worked from the armchair, his laptop open, but his gaze kept drifting to the curve of Elias’s body on the sofa, to the protective hand still splayed over his own belly.
By late afternoon, the nausea had receded, leaving a hollow, buzzing anxiety in its wake. Elias finally spoke, his voice rough from disuse. “We can’t do this again.”
Jasper looked up from his screen. “Do what?”
“This.” Elias gestured vaguely at himself, at the room. “The waiting. The symptom-spotting. It’s insanity. It’s making me sick.”
“Maybe you are sick,” Jasper said softly, closing his laptop.
“I don’t mean a virus.”
“I know.”
Silence stretched, thick and heavy. The unspoken thing was in the room now, a third presence, breathing with them.
Elias stood up suddenly, the blanket falling. “I can’t just sit here. I can’t… think.”
He walked down the hall to their bedroom. Jasper followed, a few paces behind. Elias began pulling at his clothes, yanking his soft t-shirt over his head, shoving his sweatpants down his hips with a kind of furious energy. He stood naked in the middle of the room, his lean body rigid, his breathing sharp.
Jasper understood. This wasn’t about desire. It was about erasure. About using a known, physical language to drown out the screaming, silent questions. It was about feeling something—anything—other than this desperate, hopeful fear.
Jasper kicked the door shut. He didn’t undress slowly. He shoved his jeans and briefs down in one motion, his cock already half-hard, a blunt, urgent fact. He crossed the room and grabbed Elias by the back of the neck, pulling him into a kiss that was all teeth and shared breath. It wasn’t tender. It was a collision.
Elias groaned into his mouth, his hands coming up to claw at Jasper’s shoulders. He turned them, pushing Jasper back until his knees hit the edge of the bed. Jasper sat, and Elias straddled him, their cocks sliding together, a hot, rough friction.
“No foreplay,” Elias panted, his green eyes blazing. “Just fuck me. Hard. Make me feel it tomorrow.”
Jasper’s answer was to spit into his hand, twice, slicking himself. He guided his cock to Elias’s entrance, the head nudging against the tight ring of muscle. Elias, braced on his knees, didn’t wait. He sank down, taking Jasper inside with a ragged, torn-open cry.
The stretch was brutal, exquisite. He was too dry, too tight, and the burn was a bright, clarifying fire. He sheathed Jasper completely in one punishing drop, their bodies slamming together. They both froze, shuddering, overwhelmed by the sheer, raw intrusion.
“Jesus fuck,” Jasper gasped, his hands flying to Elias’s hips, fingers digging into the flesh.
Elias began to move. He rode Jasper with a frantic, punishing rhythm, bouncing on his cock, using the grip on Jasper’s shoulders for leverage. Each impalement was a sharp, stolen breath. The slap of skin on skin filled the room, a violent, rhythmic beat.
“Is this what you want?” Jasper grunted, thrusting up to meet him, driving deeper. “You want to be full?”
“Yes,” Elias hissed, his head thrown back, tendons standing out in his neck. “Fuck, yes. Just like this. Ruin me for it.”
Jasper shifted, hooking his arms under Elias’s knees, spreading him wider, changing the angle. On the next downward stroke, Elias screamed. Jasper had hit it—that deep, lightning-strike spot that unraveled him. Pleasure, sharp and almost intolerable, lanced through the pain.
“There,” Jasper growled, holding him still, grinding up into that exact, devastating place. “That’s it. Come on. Let go.”
He didn’t need to ask twice. The coil, wound for days with anxiety and hope, snapped. Elias’s orgasm ripped through him untouched, his cock jerking between them, striping Jasper’s chest and his own with hot, white pulses. His body clamped down on Jasper’s, milking him, pulling his own release from him seconds later. Jasper came with a broken shout, hips stuttering, pumping his come deep inside Elias’s clenching heat in long, wet waves.
They slumped together, a mess of sweat and spend, Elias collapsed against Jasper’s chest, both of them breathing in ragged, shuddering gasps. The room smelled of sex and salt and desperation.
Slowly, the world seeped back in. Jasper’s hand came up, stroking Elias’s damp hair. Elias’s face was buried in the crook of Jasper’s neck.
“We should test,” Jasper whispered into the quiet, his voice hoarse. “Tomorrow morning.”
Elias went still. Then, a minute nod against Jasper’s skin.
“Okay,” he breathed, the word so small it was almost lost.
He didn’t move to get up. He stayed there, planted on Jasper’s lap, feeling the slow, softening slip of Jasper inside him, feeling the warm, wet trickle of their mixed release on his thigh. He was sore. He was marked. He was, for this single, quiet moment, too thoroughly occupied to be afraid.
Jasper held him, his own heart a frantic drum against Elias’s ear. He stared at the wall, at a small crack in the paint they’d been meaning to fix. He held onto the weight of the man in his arms, the smell of him, the impossible, fragile reality of him. The hope was no longer a quiet thing. It was a living, breathing entity, nestled right there between them.
Tomorrow, there would be a plastic stick, a timer, a result. But tonight, there was only this: the holding, and the terrifying, glorious possibility of what they might be holding onto.