"Yes."
"Because you want me. Not because you're hurting. Not because you're grateful."
"Because I want you."
He holds my face with his eyes. I do not look away.
This is the first thing that breaks.
Not clothes. Not distance. The looking.
I let him see me wanting him.
It costs more than the hip.
He moves slowly. Gives me time to stop him at every inch. His hand turns under mine and laces our fingers together. The contact is so gentle it nearly ruins me. I expected heat. I know what to do with heat. I know what to do with want when it is urgent enough to hide behind.
Tenderness is a worse opponent.
He kisses me like the hallway never happened, like the kitchen never happened, like I am not a man who left his apartment before morning because staying would require a self I had not built yet. He kisses me like the file is open and he has no interest in closing it.
I kiss him back.
The pace is different. Slower because the hip requires it. Slower because Caleb makes it slow. His hands are careful at first, then less careful when I pull him closer. He opens me with patience I would resent from anyone else, his fingers slick and steady, his mouth on my ribs, my hip held at an angle that does not turn the pain sharp. I am still braced against pain. He works around it without making the pain the center. Pillow under my knee. His thigh angled away from the joint. His weight distributed through one arm so he is never heavy where I cannot bear it.
He does not make me feel breakable.
He makes me feel considered.
That is almost worse.
I keep looking at him.
Not constantly. I am not a new man because of one hotel room and a bag of ice. I look away when it gets too much. I turn my face into his shoulder once and breathe there until my ribs stop trying to open. But I come back. His eyes are there each time, steady and dark and not flinching.
When his mouth moves over my chest, I watch his hair fall forward. When his hand slides over my stomach, I watch his face. When he pushes in, slow enough that I can feel every inch of the decision, I watch him fight to stay careful. When I touch him, I watch what it does to him. That is the part that changes everything. Not being touched. Seeing my touch arrive.
Caleb's composure is not gone, exactly. It is being dismantled carefully from the inside.
I want to be the person who gets to see that.
The thought hits and I almost close my eyes.
I do not.
He says my name once. I let him.
I do not say his again. Not yet. But I keep looking, and the looking is its own language, crude and new and terrifyingly fluent.
When pleasure finally takes the room, it is quieter than the first time and deeper. My hip aches through it. My hands shake. Caleb holds the look. He does not flinch from the pain or the want or the mess of both moving through me at once. I come with my eyes open and his name almost there, trapped behind my teeth, not ready but closer than it has ever been.
I finish with my forehead against his and my eyes open.
The room is silent except for our breathing and the hotel air conditioner turning on with a rattle that would be funny in another life.
Caleb's hand is on my side. Warm. Still.
"Okay?" he asks.
