"I really, really don't." Seth's thumb traced Zain's lower lip. His voice dropped. Tender beneath the wreckage. "Get back down there."
Zain took him again. Deeper this time. Relaxed his throat and swallowed, and Seth made a sound that probably carried through the armory door and down the hallway and into whatever room Jack was pretending not to listen from.
He set a rhythm. Fast. Demanding. His hands gripping Seth's hips hard enough to bruise, holding him against the rack while his mouth worked him with an intensity that left no room for bratting, no room for defiance, no room for anything except thesensation and the connection and the trust that made all of it possible.
Seth's breathing went ragged. His fingers twisted in Zain's hair. His thighs trembled against Zain's shoulders.
"I'm close… Zain, I'm going to -"
Zain didn't pull off. Took him deeper. Swallowed around him.
"FuckI'm…Zain…"
Seth came with Zain's name on his lips and his hands in Zain's hair and his whole body shuddering against the weapons rack, which rattled and clanked in a way that was neither tactical nor subtle. Zain swallowed. All of it. Worked him through the aftershocks with slow, gentling strokes of his tongue until Seth's grip loosened and his breathing went from shattered to merely destroyed.
Zain sat back on his heels. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Looked up.
Seth was sliding down the weapons rack. His legs had given up the structural pretense. He landed on the concrete beside Zain, boneless, eyes glazed, a man who had been taken apart by his own demands and had no complaints about the result.
"Your turn," Seth said. His voice was wrecked.
"You don't have to."
"Shut up." Seth's hand was already on him, finding him hard and aching through his jeans, and the pressure of that palm made Zain's vision blur. "You just did that on your knees on a concrete floor. The least I can do is -"
He unzipped Zain. Got his hand inside. Wrapped around him.
Zain's forehead dropped against Seth's shoulder.
"Look at me," Seth said. Zain looked. Seth's eyes were bright, focused, sharp again, the post-nut haze burned away by intent. "I want to watch you."
Seth stroked him. Not teasing now. Direct, firm, the grip of a man who paid attention, who cataloged every response, whoknew that Zain liked it tight at the base and faster near the end and that the thing that undid him fastest was eye contact during, the vulnerability of being watched while you fell apart.
"That's it," Seth murmured. "There you go. Let go for me."
"Seth -"
"I've got you. For once in your life, let someone else hold you up."
The words hit somewhere deeper than the hand on his cock. The place where the walls lived. The place wheresabrhad calcified into armor. Seth's free hand came up to Zain's jaw, held his face steady, made him keep looking.
"You're allowed to need this," Seth said. "You're allowed to needme."
Zain came. Hard, sudden, shaking, his face pressed into Seth's palm, his whole body clenching around a release that was more than physical. Seth worked him through it, steady, certain, watching him with an expression that was tender and fierce and completely without mercy.
After, they sat on the concrete floor of the armory, shoulder to shoulder, breathing hard, the room smelling like gun oil and sex and the particular aftermath of two people who had fought their way into something neither of them could name yet.
"Well," Seth said. "That was an argument."
"That was not an argument."
"It started as an argument."
"It started as me trying to protect you."
"And it ended with you on your knees. Funny how that works."
Zain huffed. The sound that served as his laugh. Seth leaned into him, and Zain's arm came around his shoulders, and they sat in the quiet of the armory and let the last of the adrenaline drain.
