Work Text:
A steady stream of rain tapped at the surface of the window, a rhythmic pattern of drrrip, drrip, drrrip humming throughout the room. Droplets entered through the sliver of the open window, cracked open to clear the smoke unfurling in the study. The pipe rested in Wesley’s firm grip, his hand curling around the stem until his knuckles turned white.
Wesley stood at his desk with his shoulder half-turned to the window, lamp light pooling over him in a dull amber wash. Paper crowded every surface of the desk. Case files open, photographs with the corners curled spilling from the folders. Ink-dark names bled into the grain of wood, the only proof left of a coffee spill neglected for a few seconds too long.
The air felt stale, despite the chill slipping into the room. As if the atmosphere was layered with too many hours of unfiltered tobacco smoke and the medicinal bite of sleeping gas.
Suffocating.
Exhausting.
Yet, hidden beneath the miasma lay a saving grace, faint but stubborn as a heartbeat.
Wet Earth. The petrichor of soil after being dragged through the rain.
Broken stems. The verdant aroma of freshly cut grass.
Something unmistakably Ameyro.
He stood to attention across the room, motionless as he watched Wesley with a furrow his brow. It was almost eerie, how not a single finger twitched nor did an eye blink. The only show of life came from the slow rise of his chest.
Ameyro’s posture looked relaxed at first glance. His weight rested evenly between his feet, shoulders hanging low, hands loose at his sides as if the tension of the room had drained him too.
His head tipped slightly, not quite toward Wesley, but past him. As though he were listening to something deeper than the cadence of Wesley’s voice. Like there was some faint current humming beneath the words, audible only to him.
Wesley didn’t notice him watching at first.
Not until he turned away from the window, breath shaky as the smoke released in choppy waves. The quick draw of his breath caught Ameyro’s attention. The man’s eyes snapped to trace the curve of Wesley’s lips.
The moment stretched wrong.
Stress.
Grief.
Debilitating compassion.
The lamp caught it before anything else did, the shine at the edge of Wesley’s eye. The damp stain on his cheekbones, glistening as Wesley tried to subtly lift a thumb to his face.
A moment too brief, too honest.
Ameyro saw it immediately, a hesitant call of Wesley’s name escaping as a shaky, “Wes?”
Wesley felt Ameyro’s concern as something almost physical, a pressure that settled against his skin like the weight of humid air before a storm. A muted curse slipped through his teeth as he dragged a trembling hand down his face. His knuckle caught the wetness at the corner of his eye, smearing it along his temple in a clumsy attempt to disguise what was already unmistakable. The tears were warm as they tracked over his cheeks, cooling in the open air. It was a useless gesture. He knew Ameyro had seen them the moment they fell.
Stress cinched tighter around his throat, as if invisible fingers had closed there. Each swallow scraped. His mouth had gone dry, his tongue heavy and uncooperative, sticking to the roof of his mouth as he struggled to shape the words.
Leave, he wanted to say. But the syllables lodged behind the ache in his throat, refusing to come free.
A beat passed too long. Silence filling the room, another added weight to the atmosphere.
Wesley turned his head just enough to spare himself the full weight of Ameyro’s eyes, a thin breath slipping from him in the process. Too sharp to be a sigh, yet too brittle to become a laugh.
“Please, forgive me,” he said, too quickly.
The words landed with a dullness that seemed to vanish almost as soon as they left his mouth, swallowed by the still air of the room. Wesley felt the tight, dry drag of his throat as he forced himself to swallow.
His hand dropped to the desk. The pipe slipped with it, striking the wood with an awkward clang that rang louder than it should have.
His fingers tightened against the desk’s edge until the knuckles blanched, then eased again, only to grip once more. The polished wood pressed hard into his palm. It was a restless, unconscious motion, as though he might smooth himself back into composure by touch alone, if only he concentrated hard enough.
Ameyro didn’t answer his plea.
He stayed exactly where he was, glare pressed into Wesley with quiet precision, refusing to pretend it hadn’t happened.
Wesley felt the muscles in his jaw draw taut. His teeth pressed together hard enough to ache.
“I don’t usually—” he started, then stopped. The sentence fell apart halfway out of his mouth. He tried again, quieter. “I have…more control.”
His gaze dropped to the scattered papers instead of the man across from him. The rain hit the glass harder for a moment, then eased again, like it had leaned in to listen.
That was when Ameyro moved.
Wesley felt it before he saw it.
First came the warmth at the bend of his neck, a steady heat that gathered just above his collar and spread beneath his skin. The fine hairs at his nape stirred in response, every nerve there sharpening with sudden awareness.
Then the scent reached him.
Damp earth after rain. Dark soil turned by hand. The green, bruised smell of crushed stems and broken leaves, sharp and living, as if a garden had been disturbed only moments before. It filled the narrow space between breaths, rich enough that Wesley could almost taste it on his tongue.
Only then did he realize how close Ameyro had come.
Not touching yet.
But, Ameyro stood so close that Wesley had to shift his gaze lower to keep eye contact, the motion slight and instinctive. The adjustment brought their faces into a new alignment. Mouth to mouth, noses barely grazing. Wesley could taste the coffee lingering on Ameyro. There was scarcely room for another breath between them. Only that final, fragile distance remained, the barest tilt away from a kiss.
Lamp light caught Ameyro’s face in soft fragments. Gold gathered along the bridge of his nose and the curve of his cheekbone, while shadows pooled beneath his eyes, dark and soft as bruises. His mouth was perfectly still, neither tense nor relaxed, holding its silence with the same deliberate calm as the rest of him.
His head tilted up slightly, gaze lifted just enough to hold Wesley’s completely. But his eyes trailed lower, tracing Wesley’s cheek. They drifted lower, following the damp track along his cheek with unhurried precision. Wesley could feel that attention as keenly as a touch. The tear was still moving, warm against his cooling skin, sliding toward the corner of his mouth. In the lamplight it shone like a fine thread of glass, trembling with each shallow breath.
Wesley felt heat rise under his skin at the shameless ogling.
“Ameyro,” Wesley whispered, quiet, as if he was scared that speaking too loud would make the tears fall more.
Ameyro still said nothing.
Instead, he lifted his hand between them, the movement slow enough that Wesley could follow every inch of it. His fingers stopped just shy of Wesley’s face, hovering in the narrow space before contact. The gap was scarcely there at all, yet Wesley felt it as distinctly as a held breath. The air between their skin seemed to tighten, charged with warmth and anticipation until it became almost tangible.
Wesley did not move.
He remained exactly where he was, pulse fluttering hard in his throat, the tear cooling on his cheek as he waited.
Then Ameyro’s thumb touched him.
The contact was feather-light, no more than the soft press of warm skin against damp skin, but Wesley felt it everywhere. Ameyro’s thumb caught the tear where it had nearly reached the corner of his mouth, sweeping it away in a single, deliberate stroke. The pad of his thumb was calloused, faintly rough, and warmer than Wesley had expected. That slight texture against his chilled cheek sent a shiver through him so sharp it stole the air from his lungs.
The room sounded different in its silence.
Rain whispered against the windowpanes in uneven taps, soft and persistent. The lamp on Wesley’s desk gave off its low electrical hum, steady as a held note. Smoke from his pipe drifted in thin, pale ribbons, carrying the dry, woody taste of tobacco as it unraveled into the air. Wesley could hear his own breathing beneath it all, shallow, unsteady, and catching slightly in his throat.
When Ameyro spoke, his voice came almost underneath it all.
Low. Close.
“Beautiful,” he mumbled, more to himself than to Wesley.
Wesley’s eyes flicked up.
Ameyro didn’t look away.
Wesley went still at the word, as though it had struck something deeper than it was meant to reach.
Beautiful.
It didn’t fit the atmosphere .
It didn’t fit him.
With the lamp too bright on his desk and the taste of smoke turned sour at the back of his throat, with tears still cooling on his skin. Wesley’s first instinct was to dismiss it, to fold it away into something mistaken, something spoken too quickly in a moment neither of them would name afterward.
His mouth opened, then closed again. A quiet exhale followed, unsteady at the edges.
“I am not…” he started, and the rest of the sentence faltered before it could find a shape. His voice came rougher than he intended, worn thin by the effort of holding himself together.
He lifted a hand to his face on instinct, as if he could erase the evidence there, but stopped halfway, fingers hovering uselessly near his cheek. The dampness was still there.
Undeniable.
Real.
When he spoke again, it was quieter.
“Don’t say things like that,” he said, but there was no real edge to it.
Only fatigue. The careful restraint of someone who did not trust what tenderness might undo in him if he let it stay too long.
A pause.
Then, almost to himself, softer still, “…not when I can’t hold myself together.”
Ameyro didn’t step back.
He only tilted slightly forward. Except, there was no distance left to name.
Wesley didn’t protest when Ameyro’s mouth met his.
The contact was soft at first, almost questioning, the pressure of it careful as if testing whether Wesley would vanish under it. Warmth spread through the point where they touched, steady and undeniable. Wesley’s breath caught against Ameyro’s, breaking the quiet between them in a small, helpless sound as the last of the space gave way.
Wesley lost himself in the soft touch of feathers and the taste of grass. His breath returned slowly, unevenly, as though his body was relearning its own rhythm. His fingers curled into the curls curtaining the nape of Ameyro’s neck. There was still the faint pressure at his lips, a tug at his bottom lip that demanded more attention.
Wesley’s hand shifted, then stopped halfway, hovering near Ameyro’s face without purpose. The gesture dissolved before it could become anything certain. Instead, his fingers lowered again to the edge of the desk, grounding himself in wood, in grain, in something solid enough to insist on the present tense.
At that moment, it felt as though the world had gone still.
And yet, beyond that suspended quiet, the rain kept falling, steady and unchanged against the glass.
It traced the window in uneven lines, turning the glass into something half-reflective, half-vanished. Inside, the lamp still burned low on Wesley’s desk, its light softened now. Smoke lingered in thin, fading threads. The smell of it had begun to lose its edge, settling into the fabric of the air alongside something newer.
As if air in the room, once heavy with smoke and exhaustion, slowly began to breathe once again.