Surprise, sneak peek Stable Delusion chapter drop! A big thank you to @imminentinertia and @vegaseatsass for their comments, guidance, and corrections. Prologue here. Mild sexy scene under the cut.
The cloudy sky hovered like an incomplete task over Pete’s free-floating body. Wavelets rippled over him, comfortably cool where he was submerged, goosebump-raising where parts of him poked above the water. A certain stale weight in the air promised storms ahead.
Pete closed his eyes against the eye-straining white clouds and let soft red light filter through his eyelids. The lake rocked him, buoyed into soothing insignificance.
Pete was on the verge of dozing off when a half-blurred voice interrupted, calling his name as if from a long way off. Other, less distinguishable words followed.
The thought of rising made Pete’s mind feel sodden, heavy. He twitched, flicking the sound away. Surely it could wait.
The voice came again, insistent. Pete sighed and lifted his head. “What was that?”
Lake water drained from his ears. Spots crowded his vision as he readjusted to the light--he blinked hard, but a few insistent floaters refused to dissipate.
“Took you long enough. Thought the lake water might have finally soaked through to your brain.”
At the end of the dock stood a familiar shape with features too dim to make out and a hand resting on his hip. Pete smiled at him. “I’m listening now. What is it?”
“I’m heading in to heat up dinner. It’s getting late.”
Dinner already? Pete squinted at the sky. The cloud-cloaked sun offered no hint at the passage of time. Out of stasis, however, he could feel the hollow weight of his stomach. It must be approaching late afternoon.
“Hold up, I’m coming,” he said. He treaded water, gliding towards the outline of Vegas’s figure.
Vegas shifted on his feet. “It’s not dark yet. You can stay out a little longer, if you really want.”
The lake was too quiet without Vegas’s presence, however little they talked while Pete was swimming. In isolation, Pete’s mind was amplified and muffled all at once, thoughts too muddied to hear but too loud to ignore. Sometimes he could feel his own heartbeat, blood sweeping through his veins like an invasion.
Pete shook his head. “I’ve been drifting long enough.”
He covered the remaining distance in a few strokes and braced his palms against the rough-hewn wood of the dock to heave himself up. From the corner of his eye, he could see Vegas watching him. He played along, flexing his arms so the veins in his hands stood out. Cool water sluiced down his back as he drew his knees up and broke away from the water.
The ripples of his passage faded almost at once, leaving only the lake’s placid empty-mirror surface. Pete kept his eyes on Vegas, who was following the path of water down his chest with focus rapidly warming into intent. He licked his lips. Pete shivered and strained for his towel. “Not until I’ve rinsed off,” he said. “Lake water’s dirty, you’ll get typhoid or something.”
Vegas scooped up the towel and bent to settle it around Pete’s shoulders himself. His hand lingered after Pete took hold of the corners, strolling down to his collarbone. He pressed at its peak. Sensitivity made Pete sway--there must be a bruise there. “Shame. After dinner and a shower, hm? Hose yourself down and come keep me company in the kitchen.”
Pete patted his hand in thanks and stood. He trailed after Vegas back towards the house.
***
The shower water beat hot against Pete’s skin that evening after dinner, rapidly steaming up a bathroom not ventilated for the warm showers the tankless water heater afforded them. The unit gleamed beside the water-stained showerhead--Pete assumed Vegas was responsible for its installation. His mind played out an increasingly familiar game: had it happened before they moved in, or should Pete remember the plumber’s visit?
Better the latter--he would have liked to tease Vegas for it. He’d have earned his lecture on accepting nice things, met Vegas’s thin-skinned glare with a smile, and only then let himself be coaxed into the tub to be shown what an excellent idea the hot water was.
It would have made a nice memory.
“Spoiled rich boy, too good for the cold showers the rest of us grew up with,” he mumbled to himself. The shower steam sat heavy in his lungs, sluggish with the appeal of inertia. He scrubbed absently at his chest, skin purpled by stains no water could wash away.
There had been a quieter edge to Vegas, of late--a softening in his volatility, an underlying sadness. Pete didn’t know whether to attribute it to the atmosphere around the lakehouse or a deeper, more secretive grief. It left him uneasy, and the unease fed from his full stomach to that crossed wire in his head that sometimes contorted discomfort into vague, aimless arousal. Messy, that. Pete’s hand dipped into the wiry hair above his groin and gave it a tug; with his other hand, he prodded his neck to find the unseen marks there.
Vegas took such pleasure in leaving the signs of his touch. Bites and fingerprints across Pete’s throat and hips and the insides of his wrists; welts down the backs of his legs, sometimes, clean pink lines he could only catch glimpses of if he craned his neck. Wax burns along the arc of his spine. Traces Pete could follow with his own hands later, just for an echo of the original ache and Vegas’s amused delight.
When the marks were refreshed so regularly, the old ones’ refusal to heal was easier to overlook. Pete could pretend it was natural, that he underwent Vegas’s heavy touch too regularly for his bruises to fade green or yellow.
Pete was good at ignoring what he did not wish to perceive, but surely Vegas in his obsessive attentions had noticed. The fact that he hadn’t brought it up yet meant he didn’t want to.
…Which meant Pete probably should.
Vegas would be in bed waiting for him. Vegas would have his answers. He’d know where to direct the apprehension tugging like desire in Pete’s gut--could spin desire into need, need into pleasure, pleasure into satisfaction. And satisfaction would in turn provide passing refuge from whatever heaviness hounded Vegas. Pete heaved a steam-dense breath and shut off the shower faucet. They’d figure it out. He scrubbed the towel through his hair and secured it around his waist.
Vegas startled when Pete emerged from the bathroom, book jostling in his lap. He flipped reflexively to the next page--narrowed his eyes like his own hands had offended him and returned to the previous.
Pete found boxers and one of Vegas’s silky night shirts in the dresser. He left the shirt unbuttoned; Vegas would strip it off for him soon enough anyway. He skimmed a hand down his chest and glanced over his shoulder.
Vegas’s unblinking gaze had settled back on his book; Pete frowned. “You know,” he said, idling towards the bed, “I’m going to run out of unmarked skin at this rate.” He traced the lurid bruises that streaked his thighs. “I look like I’ve been attacked by a wild dog.”
Vegas’s hand stilled at the corner of his page. The lamplight shadowed his face, rendering his expression briefly unreadable.
Then he snapped his book shut and set it on the nightstand, reaching for Pete with a hum. “Really? C’mere, let me have a look.”
Pete let Vegas tug him onto the bed. His shower-warmed thigh muscles settled into an easy stretch over Vegas’s lap. The momentary impenetrability left no trace on Vegas’s features; his eyes flashed with dark amusement, and a familiar crooked smirk twisted his lips.
Pete swayed towards that smirk, all his strings cut loose. His hands landed on Vegas’s shoulders. Vegas squeezed his hips as if to stabilize him, but his thumbs revealed his true intent--they found his sore spots through his boxers and dug in hard. Pete sighed into the redoubled ache.
Vegas pushed Pete’s shirt over his shoulders and sat back to examine him with the self-assurance and tender calculation of a butcher preparing his knife for the first cut. His eyes and hands traced Pete’s sides and chest--then slowed, lingering over each mark in his flesh. Pete tried to maintain focus in the flood of heat under his skin.
“You’re right,” Vegas said at last, fingering the mass of livid mouth-shaped bruises at the base of Pete’s ribcage. It resembled a mauling, like Vegas had tried to tear open his skin to devour what lay beneath.
This was not so far from the truth.
Vegas tutted. “Look at how messy you are, Pete.”
“Like it’s not your fault,” Pete muttered. Vegas blew warm, damp air against his bruises. Shuddery sensation made Pete squirm, and Vegas’s snicker was a vibration in the hollow under his ribs. Pete arched closer as Vegas’s tongue joined his hands.
“It’s been a while since you gave me those,” Pete said, meaning they probably shouldn’t still be that shade of purple.
Vegas grinned up, sharklike and so lovely that it very nearly hurt. “You hold onto my marks so nicely,” he crooned, and then his thumb pressed in hard and it did hurt. Pete whined. “Oh, you like that?”
Evidence of how much he liked it twitched in his boxers. Pete ground down and received an admonishing rap on the hip.
“Already? I’ve barely started.”
Pete swallowed hard. He should ask about the bruises, before Vegas stole his ability to put words into sentences. He should ask, so that Vegas could choose to respond or not--and that would be that. Out of Pete’s hands.
“Vegas,” he said--tried to say, but Vegas already had his hands and was crossing them behind his back. The name stuck in his throat and died on his lips. Vegas didn’t seem to hear; hungry teeth raked Pete’s freshly exposed chest on a path that ended with the dark bruise just under his nipple and a bite that yanked the air from his lungs in a glorious rush. Pete sank into the arousal pooling in his groin.
The world outside Vegas’s touch lay across muddy, clouded waters. Perhaps it had always been so, and Pete had simply never known any different. But within the vague blur of associations and worries, the truths Pete was meant to care about--in that dim, he could see Vegas with razor clarity.
Maybe Vegas’s hands were, as he sometimes claimed, designed only to deal hurt.
Still, they hurt him so wonderfully well.
The sudden absence of touch arrived as a sluggish afterthought. Pete blinked hard--Vegas sat back on his hands, mouth a smug twist. “Yes?”
Pete flushed. “Asshole.”
“And here I thought you had something to say to me.” Vegas fisted a hand in his hair. Pete resisted just enough to feel the tug on his scalp as Vegas guided his head back and to the side. He fought to keep his eyes on Vegas’s face--surrendered at once when Vegas leaned close, grazing the side of his neck. “Do you, Pete?”
Pete tensed in anticipation of a bite. He choked on air when Vegas instead licked a broad stripe from his collarbone up behind the corner of his jaw. Vegas’s mouth brushed the shell of his ear. “Just gagging for it, aren’t you,” he whispered. Then his lips seized Pete’s, and Pete was lost.
Time failed him. He was the sharp of Vegas’s weight, pressing him into the bed--the hunger of Vegas’s mouth, kissing the air from his lungs--the raw friction of Vegas’s flannels against his cock as he was bared, skin bitten and touched in all the tender places Vegas had marked a hundred times before. Vegas fed him on muscle-deep pressure and too-much-not-enough pain, left him shaking and incoherent.
At some point, he was bound spread-eagle across the bed while Vegas pressed methodically at every bruise he could find. At some point, Vegas mouthed at the darkest mark on Pete’s thigh and whispered, “Fuck, you’re so pretty. These are so pretty,” and Pete’s eyes went damp with a coarse-edged fragility he didn’t know how to release until Vegas kissed him again.
The sex was slow, sweet as drowning, and mingled with some far-off lowing noise--eerily sob-like, yet muffled as if by water. Maybe it was Pete himself, broken by pleasure--maybe Vegas, whose face was buried in Pete’s neck where it could not be read. Perhaps it was simply the wind outside the window. It had begun to rain.
Pete was a receptacle, made of and for need; Vegas spilled into him just so. A few strokes had Pete coming into Vegas’s hand and the soft fabric of his shirt.
Then it was Vegas bent over him, breathing hard through his nose--Vegas finding his mouth to kiss him into spinning beams of light--Vegas smiling at him, the only steady in endless deeps. “So sweet for me,” he murmured, stroking Pete’s face. Pete grinned dazedly up at him.
He watched Vegas unhitch the ropes from the headboard and used the new slack to cradle his arms to his chest. He was semi-liquid, now. The knots biting into his wrists kept him from melting away.
Sex with Vegas was a delirious thing. It drove Pete from his body. It made him real.
“Be right back,” Vegas whispered, slipping from the bed and into the unshaped void beyond it. Pete made a wordless sound of protest--but he blinked and there again was Vegas, bent over him with a towel to wipe him clean.
He’d removed his come-stained shirt and pajama bottoms. Pete stared at his chest, the lonely taper of his ribs softened by relaxation and lamplight.
I’m in love with you, he thought. Rain pattered against the roof.
A hand lifted Pete’s head for a sip of water that trickled down his throat and tickled the corners of his clumsy lips. “There you go,” Vegas told him. He thumbed away the escaped water droplets and set the half-empty glass on the nightstand. “More of that after.”
Pete blinked at him. The words hovered over his head, just out of reach.
Vegas popped open a tube and tipped some kind of oil onto his hands. Its unfamiliar, vaguely medicinal scent coiled in tendrils around them. It left a gentle menthol tingle where Vegas spread it over his bruises. Pete sighed and arched closer.
“Feels good?”
“Mhm.”
Vegas’s chuckle was a wonder, the most comforting sound. Pete wanted a kiss. He pursed his lips, and Vegas obliged.
“You like being bruised up for me, don’t you? Like being claimed?”
Pete didn’t pause to think before he nodded, mostly because Vegas was smiling at him--and it was the right answer, earned him another kiss, earned him that look of contented adoration and absolute focus.
“Love you like this,” Vegas murmured. “Think you’re so sexy.”
Pete felt his brow furrow. Vegas stroked the tension away with his thumb. “Shh. You don’t have to worry about that, you just feel good. I’m going to roll you over now.”
Pete nodded and made to roll over himself. His weightless limbs pushed too hard, sent him sprawling nearly off the bed. He giggled--heard Vegas snicker as he took his hips and repositioned him.
A thumb traced the rim of his hole almost in passing, casually proprietary--then more oil drizzled across his back and down his thighs. Vegas rubbed the oil into his sorest spots first. He returned for a deeper massage after, working his hands into aching muscles. His touch pulled noises from Pete’s throat, a buzz of low-level arousal. Too far gone to get hard, Pete simply basked in the warmth.
At last Vegas nosed at the back of his shoulder, weight settling atop his back. His chest rose and fell. “Fuck,” he said unsteadily. “Fuck, I love you.”
The wobble of his voice sank into Pete’s skin like a cold current, tugging him down. He nudged back. Vegas gave him room to roll towards him.
Hands weighted by rope, Pete reached for his face. He turned it from side to side, checking his expression--but Vegas’s face revealed only warmth. “Vegas?” he asked. Vegas kissed his hand, and sparks of joy set the world spinning dizzily around them once more. Pete beamed reflexively.
“All good,” Vegas said. “You’re mine, aren’t you?”
He was. Pete nodded, concern dropping away. “Yeah.” His lips curled up. “I get to be yours.”
Vegas’s throat bobbed on a hard swallow, and his mouth returned hot and too demanding. Pete surged into it, delighted; his eagerness nearly tipped him into Vegas’s chest.
Vegas laughed and pushed him back onto the bed--joined him before he could protest, affection brimming over. A peculiar levity rose between them. The rain quickened, lashing the shuttered windows, and in their room they were brief and effervescent as foam upon a cresting wave.
At last Pete’s breath ran short from kisses. Vegas withdrew, and there in his hand was the half-finished glass of water. “A little more before we sleep.”
The water slid down easy, with Vegas’s eyes drinking him in. With Vegas’s hand petting his neck.
“That’s it,” Vegas murmured, and, “All mine.”
“Yours,” Pete repeated, floating in it. His cheeks hurt from smiling.
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