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“Colt.” Ryland combs his fingers through Colt’s hair, petting him like a puppy.
He doesn’t even stir, breathing deep and even. He’s awake, though. “Mm?”
“What are you doing?” Ryland lightly inquires.
Colt makes another mm sound. It’s a little ticklish, the vibration of his voice. “I’m listening to your life.”
Ryland’s hand stops. Out of every response he expected, none of them were that. His hand resumes when Colt makes a displeased noise. “You’re what?”
“Shhh.” Colt buries his face further into Ryland’s bare chest. There’s not much to bury into. “I’m listening.”
Ryland frowns. That clarified nothing. “To what?”
“This,” Colt says, and takes his hand out from under Ryland’s back to lay flat atop his pec. He pats a couple times for extra emphasis. It still doesn’t really help to clarify anything.
Ryland tilts his head to get a better look at Colt’s face. There’s an expression of utter peace and contentment settled on it. Eyes closed, mouth soft. Ryland brushes his bangs from his forehead. Relaxed brows, too.
“That feels nice,” Colt tells him in a purr, for what is probably the sixth time in the last two hours. He exhales a deep, audible sigh. Like he’s in paradise. Or falling asleep. “Sounds nice, too.”
Colt then proceeds to rub his scratchy beard against Ryland’s skin while he shifts his head to press his ear more firmly to Ryland’s left pec. Ryland considers pulling his hair for that, but he’s too softened by affection right now to really follow through.
Colt sighs again, satisfied. Ryland’s heart thumps like a response, and in the stillness of the moment he can almost feel it as it pulses. Inside his ribcage, under his skin, against Colt’s cheek.
…Oh.
Ryland sucks in a breath. “Are you listening to my heartbeat?” That’s… weirdly sweet.
Colt goes mmhm. “And your lungs.”
He slides his hand up to Ryland’s sternum and starts lazily tracing his collarbone. An idle, soothing motion. Easy affection. It’s also ticklish. And for some reason, feels extremely intimate. Ryland’s heart helpfully speeds up following that thought.
He pretends Colt can’t both hear it and feel it as it happens and asks, “Why… on Earth would you be doing that?”
Colt smiles into Ryland’s skin. “For that just now,” he says smugly, followed by a ridiculously sweet kiss right above Ryland’s heart.
It completely neutralizes any annoyance he was about to feel. Dang it.
Colt continues, snuggling back in, “But also… just to, you know.” He half-shrugs a shoulder. “Listen.”
Ryland wets his lips, no real response planned. He just breathes for a bit in the soft silence, now hyperaware of the way Colt’s head rises and falls right along with it. The barely audible shared inhales and exhales. Huh…
Ryland drags his nails lightly down Colt’s scalp, blood warming at the resulting low, happy hum. Colt murmurs something incomprehensible, slurred from how he’s squishing his cheek into Ryland’s chest like he wants to burrow beneath to where the pulse beats loudest.
It’s a, uh… thought. For sure. Ryland’s still working out whether it’s an appealing one or not. “What was that?”
Colt wraps his arm back around Ryland’s waist and settles in. “I like it,” he repeats, louder but still slurred. Intelligible, at least.
Ryland’s always thought Colt’s got a kind of Captain Obvious act about him when it comes to affection. ‘That feels nice’, ‘I like it’; it’s terribly endearing. Also very cute.
Ryland combs through his brother’s hair, the floppy, soft strands of blond lighter than his own. When he settles his palm on the back of Colt’s head, it feels like he’s cupping Colt to his chest, to his heart. Holding him where all the love is stored. Where the adoration bleeds out.
As close as they can get, skin to skin and tangled up beneath the covers. Colt’s exhales brush warm and soft over Ryland’s chest. His weight is heavy but familiar, comforting like a weighted blanket and radiating heat.
It’s just them, alive together in this moment of bliss they’ve carved out for themselves, breathing in a synced rhythm. If Colt just… scooted up, he could press their heartbeats together, and then they’d be as connected as they were before they were born.
Two halves of one whole made complete. How they’re always meant to be.
…Yeah, okay. The thought is a pleasant one.
Ryland wants Colt beneath his skin and cradled behind his ribs. Next to his heart, where he belongs. Right alongside what keeps him alive.
Ryland blinks down at his brother. The rise and fall of his strong shoulders, the occasional scar or mole here and there, the crooked bridge of his nose. Every facet and feature that makes up this incredible man he loves more than anything. From the fan of his eyelashes to the blood circulating through his veins.
Even further still to his heart, its strong rhythm and fierce love. Something Ryland still marvels over having, even after all this time.
Ryland slides his palm to Colt’s nape. His other hand finds the arm Colt’s got slung over his waist and presses into the muscle beneath the skin. Gently, an exploratory touch.
Except now Ryland’s cataloguing every sensation beneath his fingertips; the fuzz of hair, the slight twitch as Colt reacts to the touch, the texture of his skin as Ryland feels up to his bicep and the curve of his shoulder.
Colt’s steady rhythm of breathing stutters for just a second, one inhale quicker than the rest as he shivers faintly under Ryland’s hands. Solid and there and real.
Warm with life, containing everything Ryland knows about him. Everything he loves. Here. In this one beautiful body.
“I think I get it,” Ryland breathes softly. There’s a certain note to his voice he doesn’t think he’s ever heard from himself before.
“Mmm.” Colt hums yet again, this one distinctly pleased. He smiles sleepily and kisses Ryland smack dab in the middle of his chest, long and reverent. Ryland’s fingers curl helplessly. “Knew you would.”
The rumble of his voice, adoring and approving and genuine in that way Colt often is, melts all of Ryland’s insides. He tips his head back into the pillow and closes his eyes, hearing his heartbeat pulse a faint rhythm in the background. Ryland takes a deep breath, fit to bursting with honeyed warmth when Colt squeezes him tighter in response.
“I love you,” Ryland whispers, fighting to relax his hands against the emotion sweeping over him. He forcibly flattens them, sliding his palms to the jut of Colt’s shoulder blades. He wants to feel his heartbeat, too.
His skin is so warm. Ryland brushes by a particularly large scar on the way, slicing through the left— rhomboid, his brain helpfully supplies— of his back in an uneven line. He traces it with his pinky, smiling at Colt’s cut off noise.
“F’llin’ ‘sleep,” Colt mumbles, just barely coherent. Ryland feels a bit hypnotized by the way his muscles ripple beneath his skin with even the tiniest movement of his shoulders.
Colt yawns, doing his best to speak clearly despite being a breath away from sleep, and continues, “Love you too. S’much.”
Ryland’s not sure he’s ever been warmer than in this moment.
It takes a while for him to fall asleep. Not because he’s tense, or restless, or uncomfortable. In fact, he’s the most comfortable he’s probably ever been.
He just… wants to keep breathing with Colt like this, for a little while longer.
Forever, preferably.