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With a quiet ‘click’ and just the barest hint of a sigh, Tim closes down Jay’s laptop and lays it on the floor with as much grace a man of his build could muster. His head hurts, and the space behind his eyes throbs with the burnt-in retinal image of codes and numbers and conspiracy theories. He has only been browsing through the various forums dedicated to Jay’s little online excursion for about an hour or so, but he felt the weariness set in after just ten minutes. Honestly, Tim has no idea how Jay can stand it.
Maybe that’s why he’s so skinny, Tim muses, as he tugs off his jeans and slides them on to the floor. He burns up all of the calories in his brain, doing all of the decoding and answering his fans.
The motel room is bathed in darkness, deeply so without the penetrating glow of the laptop. Only the slatted light through the motel blinds, provided by a single streetlight, allows for the deep shadows to be cast across the sleeping form of Jay in the bed to Tim’s right. It is with extreme caution that Tim unbuttons his shirt and lets it drop next to his jeans, as he is acutely aware of his friend’s own exhaustion. Jay slept infrequently, and spent far too many nights in the same way Tim did once he was finished: staring at the unyielding whiteness of his laptop screen until the letters and numbers began to merge together and form shapes no one has ever seen before.
Tim climbs under the covers slowly; cringing a little at each creak the cheap motel bed makes, and only lets out a small sound of relief once he is fully settled back into the cool sheets and familiar flat-from-being-slept-on-too-many-times pillow. He closes his eyes. Perhaps tonight, they will both be able to sleep through until morning without a nightmare.
He doesn’t know how much time has passed, because he cannot tell whether or not he has been asleep, but Tim is suddenly immediately awake, his fingernails are gripping the sheets, and his throat is tight. A foreign sound. A potential threat.
Tim stills everything, even his breath, and listens hard. The sound is…soft, and quick, a light gasping sort of sound. It comes quietly, and then a little more loudly, then it dips again, as if the thing making the noise were trying to suppress itself. The sound is oddly familiar, too.
Squinting through the darkness, Tim tries to search for any potential predators without moving his head, but there is nothing to see: just the plain, fuzzy silhouettes of basic motel furniture. Everything seems normal, and yet the sound continues.
Slowly, as absolutely slowly as he can manage, Tim moves his head to look over at the slumbering form of Jay. He is momentarily confused to see that Jay is shaking.
No, not shaking.
Heat floods Tim’s face as he finally clocks on to what is going on. He can see, in the thin yellow light, the straining arch of Jay’s form through the thin quilt cover, the gentle pumping of his left arm, with the elbow moving like an oar dipping through unseen oceans of pleasure. The noise is Jay, letting out the tiniest of exhalations and moving as little as possible in his effort to achieve gratification. Jay is masturbating.
This is not a situation that Tim knows how to handle, and internally his mind is yelling friendship protocol at him, screaming exactly why it is terribly inappropriate to watch your friend while he gets his rocks off, but he is transfixed. With each little thrust and grind that Jay makes into his own hand Tim can see the writhe of his spine, as the quilt dips just below the concave portion of his back.
As he continues to watch, Tim notices Jay’s right hand is fisted deep into his hair, and that before a particularly loud sound – a gasp heavy with the intention of becoming a moan – Jay will tug on his locks. Some of the noises sound like they are seething, being hissed through teeth bore tight in bliss.
Tim can feel himself getting hard. Admittedly, it was not the first time he had gotten hard to the thought of Jay - Tim has very little going for him in the way of potential partners, and Jay’s slim form, baleful eyes and curious enthusiasm had slipped inside of his heart metaphorically, and into some other places in Tim’s imagination. But this was something new; actually seeing the man in such a vulnerable position, letting himself succumb to such an instinctual, animalistic need. This was hot, and terribly, terribly wrong…but the wrongness may have been a contributing factor to the hotness.
He considers touching himself, discreetly, but Tim immediately shuts down the thought. No, that is intense creeper-level territory, far beyond the realm of the natural curiosity at seeing how your friend/occasional fuck fantasy gets himself off. He should stop this. He should just turn over and go to sleep and let Jay get on with it, or rather, get himself off with it, and pretend nothing had ever happened.
Tim manages to convince himself to follow through with this idea, and, feeling a little surge of pride at doing the right thing, begins to shift to turn over onto his front. He is silent and slow, and he may have made it all of the way to rest quietly on his front, if the next event hadn’t shocked him so much.
“Tim,” Jay moans.
His name catches him so off guard that Tim misjudges where he is going to place his arm and his elbow gives out, sending him crashing down onto the bed. In the grand scheme of things the sound wasn’t that loud, but in the oppressively silent atmosphere of a typical motel room the noise of creaking bed springs and collapsing bodies seems as loud as a gun shot.
Tim holds his breath and wills himself to be still, silently cursing himself. The entire room has become oppressively hushed, all little pleasant gasps and gently creaking bedsprings having been shattered into nothing but distant memories. Shit, shit, shit – Tim can see Jay’s lovely back still, but all of that lithe muscle has tautened, frozen into place. Jay knows he was watching – what the fuck is he supposed to do?
“Er, hey Jay,” says Tim. His voice comes out steadier than he expected.
A few terse seconds pass, before Tim just makes out the tiniest breath of the word, ‘hey’, directed back at him.
Tim bites his lip, wishing to god he had never woken up in the first place. He just wants to shrink down into his bedcovers, or to roll over into a deep sleep and to never wake up again. He’s screwed up this time, screwed up badly. He needs to fix this.
“You, um…need a hand?”
The moment the words leave his lips Tim wants to reach up and smash his palm into his face. On what god-forsaken planet is he living on if he thought that could lighten the situation? Tim watches Jay’s back for a moment as the muscles contort, like he is trying to make himself small enough for Tim not to see. It was supposed to be funny, but is anything funny about this situation? How could he back out of this now?
Jay moves like a dart. Within seconds Jay has rolled over, blanket wrapped snugly over midriff, his legs are swung over the edge of the bed. His face is in his hands.
“Tim, I’m so sorry,” Jay mumbles into his palms. His shoulders are trembling. “I never ever meant for you to find out, I was just…please don’t leave…”
“Jay, calm down.” Tim moves too, sitting up on the side of his own bed. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Tim reaches over and places a tentative hand upon Jay’s shoulder, maybe hoping to still the shaking. Jay immediately tenses at the contact, curling up further, and burying his face deeper into his hands. He’s making a soft noise, a sort of pitiful groaning. It makes Tim’s stomach feel hollow.
It’s with an all-consuming slowness that Tim’s arms slip around Jay’s shaking form and bring him into a loose, but reassuringly firm, hug. Tim rests the pads of his fingers upon Jay’s shoulder blades, and he marvels at how, in the sparse yellow light, he can almost see them through his papery white skin. At first Jay shies away from the contact as much as possible, but he gradually relents, letting his head rest lightly against Tim’s chest.
The minutes crawl by, and gradually, Jay’s noises slow, as does his breathing. Tim wonders if Jay can hear his heart hammering in his chest, still running out of control.
“Sorry,” Jay whispers. He takes his face out of his hands, but does not move from Tim’s chest.
“What for?” Tim asks. His throat is desert-dry.
That is when Jay moves, pushing himself off of Tim and looking him directly in the eyes. Backed by the eerie outside light, Jay’s face is gaunt and ethereal, and his eyes gleam: droplets of blue in a milk-white pond.
“Well, for freaking out back there…I really, really don’t want you to leave.” Jay’s eyes flicker nervously to the window.
“Jay, you’re going to have to try pretty hard to get me to leave now,” says Tim wearily. They have been on the run for longer than it was healthy to think about. So long separated from their families and their old friends…in fact, as far as the outside world went, Jay was the most contact with people Tim had experienced in years. It made for uncomfortable thinking.
“But…didn’t you hear me?” says Jay. There it is, that sharp intellect coupled with those intensely curious eyes, boring straight into Tim and hollowing him out in an instant. Jay isn’t an idiot. He lacks common sense sometimes, but God, he can make you feel like you’re stripped of every single wall you’ve ever built. Tim finds himself trying to look anywhere that isn’t at Jay.
“I…did,” Tim forces himself to say. “Heard you say my name. I was kinda shocked.” He stares resolutely at Jay’s pillow, trying to force back the sickly feeling in his gut. Jay would want to never see him again, would want to punch him for creeping on him like that, would want to get as far as way as possible to preserve his pride…
The room grows quiet.
Then, Jay begins to laugh. Not a loud laugh, just a soft chuckle, enough to have his bare shoulders shaking gently. Tim is immediately struck dumb by the sound: he has never heard Jay laugh so openly before. The sound is beautiful.
“Well, Tim, you can’t really blame me, can you?” says Jay, his voice small but with an edge to it. Tim looks up to see a tiny smile upon Jay’s small mouth.
“What do you mean?”
Jay looks Tim up and down for a moment before gesturing loosely in his direction. “Look at you. How long have we been on the run for now? You must’ve kind of guessed I had a thing for you? I mean…you’re a hot guy, and we’ve gone through a lot together…”
A ‘hot guy’? Jay’s got to be pulling his leg. Tim finds himself folding his arms over his chest, suddenly very conscious of his stomach, his abundance of hair and some of his more obvious scars. He is in the dark side of the room, but that doesn’t mean Jay, with his bird-of-prey eyes, cannot see him. Nevertheless, the blood is already pumping itself back into his cheeks, heat beginning to pulse in his neck, wrists and cheeks.
Jay tucks his legs up onto the bed, still semi-swathed in the confines of his sheets. “Sorry, Tim,” he says softly. “We can just…go to bed, pretend this never happened.” He laughs again. “Might not remember this in the morning, right?”
“You actually think I’m…attractive?” The word is false and silly in Tim’s mouth, a high-school drama throwback. Never before had he been told anything of the sort. Sure, there had been a few people back in the day who thought his smoking made him kind of cool, maybe even rugged, but none of them had ever approached Tim with romantic propositions. He didn’t exactly give off the lover vibe.
Those invasive blue eyes widen. “Of course I do,” says Jay. “You’re gorgeous, Tim. Look at your eyes, your jaw, your mouth; your whole body. And…well, I don’t mean just the stuff on the outside. You risked your life for me, and you stuck by me even when all I did was cause trouble for you. You’re still here, even after all of the bad stuff. That’s got to be a sign of something…beautiful. Right?” Jay is smiling at him. Tim’s heart is aching, heavy and dripping with something unfamiliar and all-encompassing.
Tim doesn’t wait to let his brain catch up with this nagging, desperate feeling in his chest. He reaches forward and cups Jay’s face with both of his hands, and brings Jay’s forehead to rest against his. Jay’s hair tickles him, and Jay’s shallow breath on his face feels like the most wonderful warm breeze in the world. Tim closes his eyes as he feels himself breaking out into a wide grin, a grin that bares all of his teeth and threatens to break into laughter.
“Thank you,” Tim whispers. He opens his eyes to see Jay, still smiling at him, just a delicate little curve, barely there but enough to make Tim’s heart swell. Enough to make Tim stare into eyes that had captivated him for so long.
Enough for Tim to lean in and to place his lips on Jay’s.
The kiss is gentle, nothing more than a soft placing of mouth upon mouth, a small, pleasant pressure, and then release. But when Tim pulls back, Jay’s mouth is open, and his eyes are wide.
Fear shoots through Tim, an adrenaline kick of a social sort he has not felt in a while, and suddenly he’s babbling: “Fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that, was that too much? We don’t have to ever do that again, I didn’t mean-”
He doesn’t get to finish his sentence because Jay grabs hold of his arms and pulls him, laughing, onto his bed, Tim falling on top of Jay. Jay is pulling Tim down, encouraging him to lie flat against him, and skinny arms and legs are wrapping around Tim’s waist, clinging to him hard. Jay rolls over on to his side, still attached to Tim, and ends up with his back to the window, casting his unearthly pale face into deep shadow that only his eyes manage to escape.
“Shut up, Tim,” says Jay, a teasing smile tugging his lips upward. “You’re still hot, even if you talk too much.”
Tim can’t help but give a small chuckle at that, but he isn’t about to let Jay get the best of him. He pushes Jay onto his back and straddles him, hands on either side of his face, and kisses him, this time as deeply as Jay’s delightful mouth will allow. Tim arches his back to press himself down onto Jay, and he feels this sudden hunger alight in his heart, a hunger to be as close to Jay as humanly possible. Jay makes a lovely sound of approval from beneath him and Tim lets one of his hands stray to Jay’s cheek again as they pull apart. Tim buries his face in the crook of Jay’s neck breathes in his scent, the scent he had slowly grown accustomed to over their years together: something clean and simple, like pure soap, overlaid with earthier scents of leaves and ash. It’s intoxicating; how could he have gone so long without this? It could have happened at any time, this feeling of closeness and warmth and wholesomeness…the feeling of being wanted.
Abruptly, Tim feels Jay’s hands grapple around his neck, and he is forcefully rolled over onto his back instead, with Jay pinning him by just his skinny legs. A playful light dances in his eyes.
“Tim,” says Jay, his hands straying about to stroke over Tim’s chest, “I’d like to do something. Something fun. Think you’re up for it?”
Tim’s breath catches in his throat. “Like…what sort of fun?”
Jay’s hands wander lower, to rest lightly at the waistband of Tim’s boxers. It’s with a flush of embarrassment that Tim realizes he is still hard. He shuts his eyes tightly when he feels Jay’s hand slip under his boxers and grab hold of his cock.
Tim lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding when Jay pulls down his boxers fully. The cold air hits him, and suddenly his whole body is pure electricity, a fuzzy ball of energy focused only on the point where Jay holds him. He opens his eyes to see Jay stroking the length of his cock appreciatively as he drinks in the sight with his eyes. Tim’s cock jolts in Jay’s hand when he sees this, and he can’t hold back a tiny moan of gratitude.
“So sensitive,” says Jay with a grin. “I haven’t done anything yet.”
“Shut up,” Tim murmurs, hands covering his face. He tries to manoeuvre himself to get more pressure from Jay, tilting his hips upwards into the other’s warm and inviting palm.
“I promise you don’t need to be embarrassed, Tim,” Jay laughs. “I can barely fit my hand around you.”
“Jay,” Tim whines, pushing himself up further into Jay’s hand.
Jay hums softly, as if mulling something over. Then, he says, “I wonder if you fit in other places.”
All of a sudden Tim is engulfed by the most glorious slick, wet heat, an enveloping sensation of rapture. He peeks between his fingers to see Jay kneeling between his legs, a good half of his cock in Jay’s mouth. Jay lifts his head up a little and looks at Tim from underneath his eyelids, his face a pure mask of want.
Without taking his eyes off Tim, Jay pushes his mouth further onto Tim’s cock, his tongue flat against the underside of the shaft. Tim shudders, and finds himself fisting the sheets, unable to take his eyes off of Jay. Both of Jay’s hands are placed strategically on Tim’s thighs, and they are gripping lightly at the flesh there, holding the two of them steady as Jay’s mouth moves in tandem with Tim’s cock.
“Damn, Jay,” Tim gasps. “You feel…really good.”
Jay hums an agreement around Tim and Tim moans, loose and throaty and uncontrollably loud. He clamps a hand across his mouth as he feels Jay chuckle, the movements threatening to tear another sound out of him at any second. His face is hot, and the look Jay is giving him makes him want to curl up and hide. But at the same time, that little twinge of embarrassment, of being vulnerable and exposed to someone who he honestly had never thought of as being the type to take control…it was doing incredible things to him.
Tim makes a needy noise when his cock is pulled from Jay’s mouth, but this rapidly folds into a low groan as Jay holds back Tim’s foreskin and lets his tongue drag along the very tip of his cock. Tim gives up on looking over at Jay and lets himself fall back onto the pillows. He tries very hard not to squirm as Jay plants the softest of all kisses upon the head of his cock, but he shifts anyway, and is rewarded with Jay’s free hand being placed upon his hip. Jay laps his tongue over the sensitive head, and Tim sets his feet firmly into the bed to ride his hips upwards, making keening sounds as he does so.
“Better hope there’s no-one next door, Tim,” Jay whispers.
“I don’t care,” Tim forces out. “Jay, God – don’t stop.”
And then Jay is back on Tim’s cock, lips wrapped around the head while his tongue performs a series of wet swirls across the tip. Immediately Tim is grasping at the sheets again, toes curling in pleasure as his cock twitches in Jay’s mouth. Jay is far too talented at this, performing delightful tongue arcs dipping just around the edges of Tim’s foreskin to run back along up the slit, and Tim can feel himself coming undone just from this. Every now and again, Jay will pause to plant gentle kisses down from the base of his shaft right the way up to the top, and Tim shivers each time.
All too soon, Tim can feel that heavy feeling in his groin, that tingle of anticipation and impending release. Jay has barely been pumping his fist on Tim and Tim already feels like he’s going to cum harder than ever before. Inwardly, he panics, and he sits up abruptly, causing Jay to slide his mouth off of Tim’s dick with a delightful wet ‘pop’. One hand remains on Tim’s cock though, and Jay jacks it idly, adding in a little flick of the wrist every now and again even as he eyes Tim with concern.
“Jay, I’m not going to last much longer,” Tim says, still melting into Jay’s seemingly experienced touch. He’s embarrassed with himself; he knows he can last a hell of a lot longer than this. Jay is something different, though. Something special.
Jay blinks, and then smiles widely. He lets go of Tim’s cock and pulls Tim into a hug. “It’s okay,” he breathes into Tim’s ear. “I have an idea, if you want to try it.”
“Sure.”
He can’t help but lean in to Jay when he places a gentle kiss on Tim’s cheek. However, this sweet act does not prepare him for the next moment, when Jay pulls his briefs down to his knees, revealing a handsome erection. Jay is much bigger than Tim, both in length and thickness, and this makes Tim swallow thickly, his mind suddenly inventing a thousand new fantasies at once. In his fantasies, he had always been the one fucking Jay, not the other way around – but how much of that was a need to feel like the one in control? Having Jay push him down, hold him and kiss him was the best thing in the world, and right now, all he wanted was to have that cock in his mouth, no matter what.
“God damn, Jay,” says Tim hoarsely.
Jay widens his kneeling stance on the bed, showing off his cock a little more all while looking for all the world like he were embarrassed.
“Thanks,” he says softly, not able to keep the smile off of his face. “I was thinking maybe we could try it…both ways?”
There is a familiar timidity in Jay’s voice that usually only showed up when they were on camera together. Jay’s naked form in the thin strips of light looks beyond magical; a figure from a different plane, a supple-skinned statue chipped away from a cliff of marble. Jay seems nervous, twisting his saliva-slicked hands together and biting his bottom lip. Tim can still feel cock throbbing, wanting to be touched, and the sight of Jay’s dick in a similar state of need sends all of Tim’s blood rushing southwards.
“Jay, thanks, seriously,” says Tim, “but I’m not going to last if you keep doing all of that…amazing stuff with your tongue. Let me pay you back, okay?”
Jay’s eyes, those impossibly blue eyes, grow large. But something in them shifts. His jaw set, Jay nods – a final act of trust, placing all of it in Tim. And Tim doesn’t waste a second in proving his trust is well placed.
Tim switches positions with Jay and lets him get comfortable upon the pillows. He then dives straight in and takes Jay’s cock with a wide mouth, right hand tight around the base and his left thumb clenched in his left fist, suppressing his gag reflex. Jay fills him up quickly and Tim finds himself moaning around Jay, arousal pumping through him like a lifeblood just from having something so big in his mouth. It takes an effort to get his tongue to wrap around the shaft and wet it with saliva, but after a few moments of adjustment to the size Tim is bobbing his head up and down along Jay.
The noises that come out of Jay’s mouth shock Tim, as he was expecting some higher-keyed mewls and soft whimpers like the ones from earlier, not too dissimilar from his own. Jay is positively animalistic with his groans, his normally soft voice dropping into a husky octave as he grinds his cock up into Tim’s mouth. If Jay was worried about any potential neighbours hearing before, he should be having a full-scale meltdown by now. Tim takes each thrust eagerly, and delights even in the saliva dripping down his chin. He wants to tell Jay that he treats him so well, and that he’ll take his cock every day as long as he gets to be with him at the end of it. He feels safe and protected here, in the weirdest way; they’re away from all of the horror of life now, in this dusky little motel room, with Jay’s moans and Tim’s cock-muffled pants filling up the small space within which they resided.
Soon Jay’s grinding becomes more frenzied, and Tim finds it more difficult to keep his composure with Jay’s cock almost hitting the back of his throat. He’s harder than ever, with his cock now leaking pre-cum, and he allows himself to touch his cock while he forces his mouth further down onto Jay’s.
“Tim,” Jay rasps, voice breaking on the name.
Tim doesn’t stop, only looks up to meet Jay’s piercing gaze. He lets one hand rest on one of Jay’s, which is holding on tightly to the sheets the same way he did.
“I love you.”
Tim’s heart stops. He lets Jay’s cock fall from his mouth. He kneels there, hunched over, mouth dripping, and his own cock weeping. They’re both panting, and the heat in the room is so close and thick you could wade through it. Tim stares at Jay, everything having come down to this exact second, time freezing like his blood.
“I…I-“
Jay sits up, and quickly rearranges the pillows behind him. He then pulls Tim to sit on his lap. He’s much stronger than Tim ever gave him credit for, and it’s when one of those unknowingly strong hands takes their cocks together as one and begins to pump them up in down in tandem that Tim moans helplessly into Jay’s neck.
“Shh, it’s okay,” says Jay quietly, his other arm reaching around to hold Tim against him. “It’s a lot to take in right now. You need this, don’t you?”
Tim nods against Jay, his mind and body awash with emotions he cannot even begin to place. He feels so secure, so small, and so loved here…he doesn’t ever want to leave.
Jay jacks the two of them as one, a slow, steady rhythm that rocks the two of them into a trance. Embarrassingly high and gentle sounds pour out of Tim’s mouth as Jay grinds into him and peppers his throat with kisses. Tim does the same, his mouth desperately searching for purchase anywhere on Jay’s skin: his cheeks, his neck, his shoulders. Jay is so perfect, and he wants to worship every inch of his body, to hold him tightly, tell him a million times over how grateful he is for this. But he can’t form words; only sounds of pleasure, his softer cries mingling with Jay’s guttural groans.
Eventually the two of them are rutting against each other, skin and sweat and heat combining into one. Jay’s eyes bore into Tim’s, and Tim knows Jay is as close as he is. Pre-cum is leaking all over Jay’s hand, onto their naked thighs and onto the bed, and their combined noises mix to create an orchestra of fervour and desire.
“Tim,” says Jay, his eyes screwing up tight as they both near their climax. “You’re safe here now. You’re safe and you’re loved. I promise, nothing bad is ever going to happen to you again. I love you, Tim. I love you so much.”
Tim is gasping, all of his nerves contracting tighter and tighter. He’s wound up so tight he feels he might explode, but Jay just keeps on going, pushing them ever closer to the brink. His body is on fire. All Tim can see, hear, smell, feel and taste is Jay, and he never, ever wants to go back.
“I-I love you too, Jay!” Tim cries, grasping desperately at the back of Jay’s neck.
Jay takes hold of Tim’s cheek and kisses him hard, lips crushing together and forming soundless shapes as they both fell into convulsive, magnificent orgasm. Tim comes first, his release large and unwieldy, most of it splattering wide and coating his own torso and stomach. Jay only takes a couple more seconds, cumming mostly into his own hand and some onto his thigh. The two remain connected at the lips for a time that seems to stretch out forever, until they pull apart gently, brought back to the real world only through the haze of the afterglow.
Still holding on to each other, they sink back into the pillows, with Tim still keeping his face in Jay’s neck and Jay’s arms wrapped tight around Tim’s shoulders. He can hear Jay’s pulse racing like his own, only starting to drop off in gentle increments along with the steadying of their combined breathing.
Tim doesn’t dare to look up until he feels a cool, damp sensation along his thighs. Jay is daubing at him with a wet wipe.
“Sorry,” he says sheepishly. “Figured you wouldn’t want to fall asleep all sticky.”
Tim laughs a little. “Ah, no, thanks.” He reaches over to grab one of the wipes from Jay’s bag on the floor, and makes to clean himself up a bit. His entire body is thrumming with exhilaration, and all of the blood that had only recently been directed to his cock is slowly making its way back up into his cheeks. Had he really made all of those noises? Had they really done everything that just happened? Did Jay really…?
“I meant it, y’know.”
Tim turns to Jay as he tosses his wipe into the trashcan in the corner. The other is fixing him with the most intense of stares, and it makes Tim feel more vulnerable than ever.
“You meant…?”
“I meant it when I said I love you.” Jay looks down at the bed, and twists some of the sheet between his slender fingers. “I…I’m sorry if I pressured you into saying anything in the heat of the moment. I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, and never really imagined this sort of stuff happening so quickly. Whatever you feel, I’m okay with it, just-“
The kiss is quick and chaste, but long enough to leave a lasting impression on both pairs of lips. Jay’s eyes are wider than ever.
Tim grins and says, “Shut up, Jay. You’re still hot, even if you talk too much.” He places his hand on Jay’s and entwines their fingers, resting palm on palm. “I love you too.”
Jay laughs, an absolutely gorgeous, musical laugh, and falls back onto the bed, bringing Tim with him. He yanks the covers up over the both of them, snuggles down onto his side and buries his face into Tim’s hair, letting Tim settle against his chest. Their pulses have calmed down considerably, but all the same, Jay’s quick-flitting heartbeat is the most comforting sound Tim has ever heard.
“Goodnight, Tim.”
“Night, Jay.”
No one had any nightmares that night.