Adrian’s hands went to Milo’s chest. Through the base layer’s thin fabric he could feel the heat of Milo’s skin and the ribs expanding with each breath and the heartbeat under his palm, steady and fast. His fingers found the hem and worked the fabric up over Milo’s ribs, over his chest, Milo lifting his arms to let it clear, the compression material pulling free with a faint static snap. The body underneath was the body Adrian knew, the lean winger’s build, the muscle that sat close to the bone, the definition along the obliques that caught the corridor’s light. The bruise on his left side from tonight’s game was already going green at the edges. Adrian’s thumb found it and pressed the border where color met unmarked skin and Milo’s breath deepened and his hand came to the back of Adrian’s neck and pulled him into a kiss that was harder than the hallway, hungrier, Milo’s mouth opening against his and the heat of his tongue and Adrian groaning into it.
Milo’s hands worked Adrian’s shirt up and off, the cold air hitting Adrian’s chest for one second before Milo’s body was against it and the cold was irrelevant. Skin to skin. Adrian pressed his face into the side of Milo’s neck and breathed him in. The rink was still there, cold air fading from his skin, clean sweat in the hollow below his ear, and the studio around them in the turpentine and linseed oil and the particular warmth of a room that had absorbed years of work into its walls. Both scents in the same breath. Both worlds in the same room.
Adrian’s mouth found Milo’s collarbone and his hands moved down Milo’s ribs, each one distinct under his fingers, over the narrowing at his waist, to the practice pants where the elastic sat low. His thumb traced the line the elastic madeagainst Milo’s hip and Milo’s breath caught and his hand tightened on the back of Adrian’s neck.
They made it to the bed. Adrian’s knee on the mattress first, the sheets cold for one second before their bodies made them warm. Milo pulled him down and Adrian went and they lay chest to chest with their legs tangled and Milo’s mouth hot against his throat and Adrian’s hands in Milo’s hair and their hips grinding together through the remaining layers of fabric.
Adrian got Milo’s pants off and then his own and the contact of skin against skin from ankle to chest made them both groan. Milo’s hand trailed down Adrian’s stomach, his fingers dragging through the hair below his navel, and Adrian’s hips rocked forward into the touch before his brain caught up with his body. Milo wrapped his hand around Adrian’s cock and stroked him, unhurried and thorough and watching Adrian’s face with the full unguarded attention of a man who was done looking away. Adrian’s head fell back against the pillow and his hips pushed into Milo’s fist and the sound he made was loud and he didn’t care.
“I want you,” Adrian said. His hand found Milo’s jaw and held it so Milo was looking at him. “I want you inside me.”
Milo’s hand tightened on him and his breath caught. “Yeah,” he said in the voice that meant he’d stopped filtering, the voice with no armor in it.
Adrian reached for the bedside drawer. He slicked Milo’s fingers and guided his hand between his legs and when Milo pressed one finger into him Adrian’s back arched off the mattress and his hand gripped the sheet and his mouth opened on a sound that started in his chest and traveled. Milo watched his face the entire time, his eyes tracking every shift in Adrian’s expression with the focus of someone learning something he intended to remember.
“More,” Adrian said, and Milo gave him more, two fingers working him open with the same patience he’d brought to the chair and the tea and the painting, the unhurried attention of a man who had arrived and was not leaving. Adrian rocked down onto his hand and said his name and Milo curled his fingers and Adrian’s vision went white at the edges and his hand found Milo’s wrist and held on.
“I’m ready,” Adrian said. “Now.”
Milo slicked himself and lined up and Adrian pulled him in by the hips. The first push was gradual and Adrian felt every inch of it, his body opening around Milo, his hands gripping Milo’s shoulders, and the sound he made was raw and wrecked and continuous and he didn’t try to manage it because there was nothing left to manage. Milo held there, buried, his arms trembling, his forehead pressed to Adrian’s collarbone, his breath coming in short pulls against Adrian’s skin.
“Adrian,” Milo said into his chest. Just the name. The whole name, said into Adrian’s skin the way he’d saidit’s meinto the intercom, as though there were only one person in the world it could be.
Adrian’s legs wrapped around Milo’s waist and his heels pressed into Milo’s lower back pulling him deeper. Milo started to move, easy at first, rolling his hips, and Adrian felt every inch of the drag and the push and his hands slid down Milo’s back and gripped his ass and pulled him harder. Milo’s rhythm broke and rebuilt, faster, deeper, the bed knocking against the wall, and Adrian’s hands were on Milo’s back with his nails dragging and his mouth open against Milo’s shoulder and Milo fucked into him with everything his body had, his face pressed against Adrian’s throat, his breathing ragged, his hands gripping the sheets on either side of Adrian’s head.
Adrian reached between them and wrapped his hand around his own cock, hard and leaking against his stomach, and Milo’seyes went to the space between their bodies and watched and the look on his face, the open wanting of it, the way his mouth fell open and his eyes went dark, was what broke Adrian. He came with Milo’s name in his mouth and his back arching off the mattress, cum hitting his stomach and Milo’s, and the clenching pulled Milo over too and Milo came with one sound against Adrian’s neck, open and bare and stripped of every piece of armor he’d ever built, and his hands loosened on the sheets and found Adrian’s body and held on.
They lay tangled in the unmade bed with cum on their stomachs and sweat cooling on their skin and their breathing falling toward each other’s rhythm without quite getting there. The radiator ticked. The cold came through the window frame and the curtain shifted at the bottom and neither of them pulled the blanket up.
* * *
They lay on their backs after, the Matisse above the dresser barely visible in the low light, the cobalt and orange known rather than seen. The studio smelled like itself and like the two of them.
Adrian held his right hand up and turned it. The blue-black and umber had dried in the creases of his knuckles. A smudge of blue-black on the pillowcase near Milo’s shoulder. A thumbprint of umber at the edge of Milo’s jaw where Adrian’s hand had been during the kiss in the hallway, during the chair, during the bed. The marks of the work on Milo’s skin and on the sheets and in the room.
Milo’s breathing had gone even beside him. His jaw was loose, the muscle at the hinge released, his face in the version of itself that Adrian had only ever seen in rooms where nobody waswatching. Except now everybody was going to be watching, and the face was the same.
Adrian’s hand found Milo’s chest. Palm flat over the sternum, paint-stained fingers settling over the heartbeat. Milo’s hand came to his, fingers covering Adrian’s, pressing them against his chest.
“Same thing?” Adrian whispered.
Milo turned his head. His mouth found Adrian’s palm where it curved at the edge of his chest.
“Same thing.”
They lay with that for a while. Adrian’s hand on Milo’s chest, Milo’s hand over his. The radiator ticking. The cold against the windows.
“I love you,” Milo said.
He said it the way he said everything that mattered. Once, and plain, and looking at the ceiling, and his voice didn’t shake. Adrian felt the words travel through Milo’s chest under his palm, the vibration of them through the ribs and the sternum and into Adrian’s hand.
Adrian turned his head. Milo’s profile in the low light, the jaw loose, the eyes on the ceiling.
“I love you,” Adrian said. “I’ve loved you since you sat on that stool and didn’t talk to me and left too much cash.”
Milo’s mouth did something it almost never did, which was curve. “That’s a low bar.”
“You’d be amazed what I’ll settle for.”
