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His mouth reached Hakeem's stomach. He kissed the skin just above his waistband, and Hakeem's hips jerked upward involuntarily. Antonio's hands pressed them back down—not hard, but firm, steadying, the way you'd hold something precious that was trying to shake itself apart.

Antonio drew down the waistband of Hakeem’s borrowed sleep pants. He moved with a deliberateness that was both care and the best kind of cruelty. Hakeem genuinely could not tell the difference. He pulled the pants down Hakeem's hips. Hakeem kicked them all the way off and felt the cool air of the room against his bare legs for one second before Antonio's hands were on him again—his thighs, the outside of his hips, tracing the line of his boxer briefs with his thumbs.

Hakeem looked down at him. Antonio was kneeling between his legs with his hands on Hakeem's body and his face inches from his cock, which was straining against the fabric with an urgency that left nothing to the imagination. Antonio looked up and met his eyes.

"Can I?" he asked.

The fact that he asked even now, in the dark, with Hakeem already undone beneath him, made Hakeem's chest ache with a sudden, sharp tenderness.

"Yes," Hakeem practically begged. "God, yes. Please."

Antonio pulled his briefs down, and Hakeem's cock bounced against his stomach, flushed and desperate for the contact his body had been demanding for weeks. Antonio looked at him for a moment with an expression that Hakeem could only describe as reverent, which was a word he had never in his life applied to sex and was now the only word that fit.

Antonio lowered his mouth.

The first touch was just lips. A kiss pressed to his shaft, light and deliberate, almost ceremonial. Hakeem's entire body tightened. Then there was Antonio's tongue—flat, warm, tracing a slow line from the base to the tip—and Hakeem made a sound that would have embarrassed him if he'd had any remaining access to shame.

Antonio took him in his mouth, slowly and completely.

Antonio’s controlled precision turned out to be a quality that translated devastatingly well to this particular act. His mouth was hot and wet, and his tongue moved against the underside of Hakeem's cock with a rhythm that felt intuitive. He took him deeper, then pulled back, then deeper again, his hand wrapping around the base to meet his mouth, establishing a pace that was unhurried and relentless. Hakeem's fingers twisted into the sheets.

Hakeem's head fell back against the pillow. The ceiling was dark. The projector was off. Antonio was between Hakeem's legs, taking him apart with his mouth like he’d been thinking about this with the same focus he brought to building sentences. It was devotional. Antonio was not performing this. He was giving it, and the difference between those two things was the difference between craft and prayer.

"Fuck—Antonio—I—" Hakeem reached for Antonio's thick hair. His hands were shaking and desperate for contact, while Antonio's mouth worked him with a patience that bordered on worship. He could feel the tension building—the slow, gathering heat at the base of his spine, the tightening in his thighs, the particular urgency of a body approaching a point it wasn't ready to cross.

"Wait," Hakeem said. "I want—can you⁠—"

Antonio looked up. His mouth was wet. His eyes were dark and focused, completely stripped of any semblance of shyness. Antonio looked at Hakeem like he was exactly where he wanted to be and had stopped pretending otherwise.

"What do you need?" Antonio asked. His voice made Hakeem's cock twitch between them.

Hakeem sat up. He pulled Antonio toward him gently by the chain at his throat and kissed him. He tasted himself on Antonio's mouth, which was filthy and perfect. He kissed him until they were both breathing hard and then pulled back just enough to look at him.

"I want you inside me," Hakeem said.

The sentence did something visible to Antonio's face. His eyes closed for half a second. His jaw flexed. A breath left him that sounded like it had been held for weeks.

"Are you sure?" Antonio asked.

"I have never been more sure of anything in my life, and I once drove ten hours across the desert to pursue an acting career. My certainty is well-documented."

Antonio laughed, and Hakeem felt it against his mouth. Antonio kissed him again, and the laugh dissolved into something hungrier.

Antonio reached toward the nightstand drawer and produced a condom and a bottle of lube with an efficiency that Hakeem found both practical and slightly hilarious.

"You were prepared," Hakeem said.

"I'm thorough."

"You keep saying that and I keep believing you."

Antonio kissed his neck. "Lie back."

Hakeem lay back. Antonio settled between his legs and slicked his fingers with lube, warming it in his hand first, and the consideration and care made Hakeem's chest tighten with more feeling than pure lust. It was with something sweeter that lived beneath it.

Antonio's finger traced a slow circle against Hakeem's entrance, and Hakeem exhaled hard. The touch was gentle, exploratory, and patient. Antonio pressed inside him slowly—one finger, careful, watching Hakeem's face the way he watched everything, with complete attention.

"Okay?" Antonio asked.