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Ryland’s lips hover at the bridge of your nose, his breath crashing hot over your face. He tends to have a higher temp in the evenings. His hands, from fingertips to wrists, are warm like sunburn on your skin, one palm pressed flat against your sternum and the other curved around your neck. His sweatpants are slung low on his hips, and his cotton shirt rides up on his stomach, and the little sliver of skin exposed between waistband and hem radiates heat onto your hipbones. His weight pushes you into the bed, into the pillows, and his lips hover, and his breath spills like lava, and the tips of his fingers sear invisible marks into your collarbone and the side of your neck.
He drags his mouth slow and gentle across your brow. Your eyes flutter shut. He sighs, and it trickles into your hair. His lips press so softly to your eyelid, and his beard rasps against your cheek, and you’re melting into the pillows. You raise your heavy arms and slide them around his neck, and you feel him smile when he kisses your other eyelid. His finger crawls from your jaw to the corner of your eye and taps twice there. The fingers of his opposite hand fiddle with your shirt collar. He kisses the space under your eye, rubs the tip of his nose over your temple. Whispers your name.
You open your eyes to see him, so handsome above you. There’s an eyelash, one of yours, on his lower lip. You pull one of your arms back and swipe the lash away, but his lips chase the pad of your thumb, trace a path down to your wrist, and he caresses your pulse point with his tongue.
He sucks such a sweet kiss there, over your veins, that you have to turn your face into the pillow to relieve some of the heat trapped in your cheeks. But you feel his eyes on you, and his thumb rubs circles into your wrist, and you know he won’t stop unless you look at him.
You make eye contact. His breath hitches, his thumb freezes. His ears burn red and his glasses slip down his nose, his eyes glassy over the rims. You know he’s exhausted, but he knows you came home stressed, and he can’t sleep if you can’t sleep.
He pulls his glasses from his face and tosses them onto the nightstand, then scratches behind his ear, blinking lazily at you. You prefer him with the glasses, but his eyes are beyond blue without them, and so dreamy. You feel less self-conscious when he isn’t wearing them because you can imagine that he can’t see you in as much detail—but at this fractional distance, you’re sure he’s silently admiring the rows of your eyelashes and the curves of your lips. And even if you were blurry, he has your face memorized.
His knuckles graze the line of your throat as the little knot in his throat plunges and resurfaces. Then his thumb presses underneath your chin to tip your head back, and his eyes—still so blue—close as he comes down to kiss you, first your bottom lip, then the top, in two separate kisses.
“I love teaching,” he says softly out of the blue—blue like his eyes blinking open to stare at your lips. “I love what I teach”—he kisses the bow of your upper lip—“and I love who I teach.”
“Mmh—whom,” you correct him as he licks your lower lip and then draws the pad of his thumb over it to smear a line of saliva across your cheek.
“I love,” Ryland says, the pitch of his voice falling, “whom I teach—you know, whom sounds really awkward there.”
You giggle and squirm beneath him when his tongue dips into the corner of your lips. “It’s right,” you insist, feeling the tips of your ears burn because you sound so breathless, and so smitten.
“I don’t even know why we need two words for the same thing,” he grumbles. “I’m not talking about synonyms, it’s just, like, there’s no reason to have both who”—he kisses your cheek—“and whom.”
Your fingers thread through his hair and draw circles over his scalp. “If that’s what you think, you could just as easily argue that our language doesn’t need both I and me.”
“Don’t say that,” he whines. Through the gaps in his messy bangs, you see his forehead crease. “My brain is too tired for this.”
“What were you saying before?” you ask, poking his cheek. He nips at your fingertip and comes back down to kiss you, longer this time. The heel of your hand presses into his nape, and he hums a little heavy and a lot loud. His hips shift on top of yours, your chests flush. He’s suddenly breathing too hard. You wonder how he manages to think at all when he’s so fatigued and melting into your touch.
“Just that I love you,” he breathes in a rush as a slick thread of saliva breaks between his mouth and yours. He locks eyes with you. “Well, not just. I love you very much. I was babbling about how much I love teaching so that I could follow it up with a line about how I love holding you in my arms so much more, but since you derailed that I seem to be babbling for nothing, and that’s not very smooth of me.”
You glide your palms over his face and down his neck, then slip them under his shirt to feel the solid planes of his chest. “You feel pretty smooth here,” you tease, and wrap your arms around him, still beneath his shirt. “And here,” you sigh as your fingers tread along his back.
He pushes his face into your neck and shudders. You can’t help but feel the outline of him through his sweatpants, and you gingerly spread your legs to let his hips nestle between your thighs. He’s mostly soft, but he twitches when you roll up into him. He cups your face with both hands and treats you to a second lingering kiss. You slip your tongue into his mouth and he whimpers. His beard prickles your chin, and he smushes the point of his nose against your cheek, and he gasps straight down your throat when you lock your legs around his waist.
You almost push your hand into his sweatpants, but not quite. Your nails flick at his waistband while his hands clamp down on your shoulders and squeeze, and his kisses become sloppy. “Your hands,” he breathes against your lips. He takes one of your wrists and pulls your hand between your mouth and his to kiss your fingers. “The way you touch me, sweetheart, I-I can’t—” He inhales sharply through his teeth and bites your lip, pulls on it with his canines, kisses you all over again.
He can’t put it into words, but he needs your hands on him, needs you to hold him and pet him until the ache in his bones fades, till the searing itch under his skin cools and leaves him sated. He’s too tired for sex, and you’re too sore from all the fun you had last night to take that kind of love tonight, too, but he needs you to keep touching him just like this, just doesn’t know how to ask without crying out for it.
You sweep your thumb under his eye and catch a tear he didn’t know he shed, and he pulls away, eyes watery and cheeks pink and lips swollen, his stomach heaving against your knuckles where your dominant hand is still idle at his waistband.
“You’re so handsome,” you coo, and his weight sort of stutters into you, like he’s trying not to faint. You trace the curve of his ear with the tip of your thumb and whisper, “So pretty.”
That really does him in. He blushes hot against your thumb and averts his eyes. “P-pretty?” he croaks, and he ducks his head into your chest, giving you an awesome view of his nest of honey blond hair. You can’t resist kissing the top of his head, and he lets out a strangled sound that he tries to muffle in your shirt, but it’s no use—you’re always listening for his voice.
“Don’t you know how pretty you are?” you drawl, combing his silky soft hair back from his forehead as he lifts his face to peer meekly through his lashes at you, his chin propped on your chest. You trace a heart onto his forehead with your fingertip and smile compulsively when he mewls. “My sweet boy,” you praise him, laying it on thick. He groans and drops his face into your shirt again and fists a hand in the fabric too.
“Gonna kill me,” he whines.
“Look at me,” you command softly. Ryland plants his forearms at either side of you and lifts himself with effort, loopy from all the praise. You tame your smile into something less obsessive and gently ask him, “Do you want to sleep, sweetie?”
“Hmph.” He nods sheepishly, his hair flopping back over his forehead. He rolls onto his side next to you and paws at your shoulder to push you into the same position so that you’re facing away from him. He can’t handle your eyes at the moment; his heart feels raw and squishy.
You stretch toward the nightstand to dim the lamp, and when you sink back into the sheets you also sink into the cradle of his chest, one of his big, strong arms hooking around your waist, his forearm so warm across your stomach. His fingers tap in an unsteady rhythm while he adjusts to the contact, his knees bumping into the backs of yours and his blushing face full of your hair. You’re safe. He’s breathing deeply behind you and tapping your belly, and soon he shuffles tighter against you to drop a kiss onto your clothed shoulder. It feels so good. It feels like something he should feel, too.
You twist, anchor a hand on his huge bicep to help you turn fully onto your opposite side in his tight embrace, and knock your knees into his thighs. “You,” you whisper, pointing at him, “little spoon.”
“Huh?” he utters in the middle of a yawn.
“Little spoon,” you repeat firmly. “I want to hold you. I want to protect you.” You rub your nose back and forth across his and coo, “You’re my sweet, handsome boy, Ryland. Come on.”
He scrapes a hand down his face and huffs a sigh before he concedes, stubborn despite how much he wants this. He settles onto his opposite side, trembling a bit as you creep toward him to mirror how he held you: you loop an arm around his waist and nuzzle the back of his neck and delight in the little whimper that tumbles from his lips. He hisses your name, frustrated yet so relieved, his muscles tense until you slide one of your legs between his and breathe a tender, “I’ve got you,” into his nape—all at once he’s putty in your arms.
You slide your arm—the one wedged against the mattress—under his neck and crook your elbow to reach for his hair. The quiet shh-hiss of your fingers gliding through the locks lulls him into almost-sleep, but he holds on. The fingers of your other hand pluck the hem of his shirt up a few inches, and you flatten your palm against his tummy. His hand quivers on top of yours, fingertips tapping at a slurred tempo, fidgety and fatigued. Then he slides his fingers from the back of your hand to your elbow as your fingers tunnel under his shirt to rest over his heart. Your arm tightens around him, his pounding pulse slows bit by bit, and his twitchy fingers settle. Your hand halts in his hair. Is he sleeping?
He stirs, and the next thing you know, he’s facing you, his shirt all knotted from the tossing and turning and your hand still burrowed beneath the cotton. “Forgot—silly me,” he babbles. He scoops you into a hug and connects his soft pink lips to yours. A long time—the kiss lasts a long time. “You,” he says, dotting a peck on your nose, “are pretty. Oh-so so so pretty.” He laughs, kind and vulnerable.
“Ryland,” you rasp.
“I bet I sound like an idiot right now,” he says all breathy, “but you have to know that I love you. This much.” He squeezes you in his arms at the same time as his lips capture yours and he all but cries your name like you’re too good to be true. He only draws back enough to breathe afterward, siphoning your air, the tip of his nose pressed to yours.
It’s so quiet in this bed, you can hear his lashes flutter as those blue eyes close.
“Hm,” he sighs onto your face, your lips. “My girl.”
☆
He’s upright in bed when you wake, but hunched over, his elbows on his knees, toes touching the carpet. You rub the sleepies from your eyes and grasp at the sheets to help you rise, your hands and feet too hot, too tingly. It’s like you soak up Ryland’s nighttime body heat and store it for the morning, your skin almost sticky with warmth.
You sway into the curve of his back and coil your arms around his waist where they fit best, where they belong. “You’re an idiot,” you tease him, fond of last night’s sappy sweet talk. You lick your lips and then press them to the shell of his ear. “Sleep well?”
He sniffles. His face is hidden from you, masked behind his long fingers. He makes a pathetic sound and shudders in your arms.
“Ry?” you say. “What is it?”
His hands grope yours desperately. “You feel like,” he starts, and then stops to blink his tears back. “It feels like healing, like you’re healing me with these hands.”
You twist your wrists and slot your fingers between his longer ones. “I am, baby,” you promise. He’s wearing his glasses already. You kiss the frames to see what it does to him, and it does a number. He leans into you, squeezes your hands twice like a pulse, a heartbeat, ba-dump.
“Can this last forever?” he yawns, his back falling into your chest. You nod over his shoulder, turn your head and smile into his hair.
“As long as you want,” you say. “Forever.”
He nods back, turns his head and drags his lips across your face, your jaw. His head lolls and you feel his nose nudge an old hickey as he cries into your neck, happy happy happy.