He didn't know what he needed.
He moved before he could think about it. Turned into Landen's chest, curled against him, pressed his face into the warmth of his shoulder.
Landen's arm came around him immediately. Pulled him closer. Held him tight. His hand found Adriel's hair, stroked through it gently, fingers combing through the sweaty strands.
"Shh," he murmured. "I've got you."
Adriel shook against him. Tears pricked at his eyes, hot and sudden and confusing. He wasn't sad. He didn't think he was sad. But something was happening in his chest, something cracking open, something he couldn't name.
Landen's lips pressed to his forehead. His thumb kept stroking through Adriel's hair.
"I…" Adriel started before his voice broke.
Landen shushed him again. Pressed another kiss to his forehead. Then to his cheek, soft and tender. Then to the corner of his lips, just barely there, a whisper of contact. Then to his other cheek. His temple. The bridge of his nose. Each kiss tiny, featherlight. A benediction.
Adriel's eyes closed. The tears escaped anyway. Just a few, absorbed by Landen's skin where they pressed together. He hoped Landen didn't notice. Hoped the darkness hid them. Hoped…
Landen's lips found them. Kissed each path where the tears had fallen.
Eventually, the tremors faded to occasional shivers, then to nothing. His breathing evened out, slowed, matched the rhythm of Landen's chest rising and falling beneath his cheek. His hand, still pressed between them, uncurled from the fist it had made and lay flat against Landen's heart. He could feel it beating. Steady and strong.
Landen's hand never stopped moving in his hair. Slow strokes, gentle and constant, like he'd do it all night if Adriel let him.
The room was quiet. The streetlamp outside cast its pale gold stripes through the blinds, painting them both in bars of light and shadow. Somewhere in the building, a door opened and closed. Footsteps in the hallway, fading.
Through it all, Adriel lay in Landen's arms, pressed against his chest, and tried to understand what had just happened. Tried to make sense of the last hour. Tried to find the lie, the trick, the moment where it would all be revealed as something other than what it seemed.
He couldn't find it.
"You should sleep," Landen murmured against his hair.
Adriel didn’t want to, but soon, his eyes grew heavy. His body was so tired, so spent, so wrung out from the hours of panic and the intensity of what had come after. Landen's heartbeat was a lullaby beneath his ear, his hand in his hair a comfort he hadn't known he needed.
He fought it for a while.
Fought the pull of sleep, afraid of what he might find when he woke. Afraid this might disappear. Afraid Landen might be gone.
But his body betrayed him. His breathing slowed. His muscles relaxed. His mind, finally quiet for the first time in what felt like forever, began to drift.
The last thing he felt was Landen's lips pressing one more kiss to his forehead.
The last thing he heard was a whisper, so soft he might have imagined it:
"I'm not going anywhere."
Then sleep pulled him under, warm and deep and safe in a way he'd never known before.
Chapter 15
Adriel
Adriel woke slowly, disoriented by warmth.
Reality seeped in in fragments.
A solid presence behind him. An arm draped across his waist, heavy and real, anchoring him to the bed. Breath against the back of his neck, warm and even. The shape of a body pressed along his spine, fitted against him snugly.
For a split second, panic flared.
