Work Text:
“You’re shaking,” John observes, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that cuts through the ringing silence of the dressing room.
They are drenched. The air in the Sydney Entertainment Centre is a soup of sweat and the fading roar of twenty thousand people who just witnessed the final chord of the *Brothers in Arms* tour. Mark is vibrating—not from cold, but from the violent adrenaline crash of two hundred and forty-eight shows. His fingers are raw, the tips of his calloused fingertips throbbing with a phantom rhythm, the skin tight and humming.
John steps into his space, the scent of stale cigarettes and expensive cologne clinging to his damp shirt. He doesn't wait for an answer. He reaches out, his palm sliding against the small of Mark’s back with a heavy, possessive heat.
“Waltz with me,” John murmurs.
Mark lets out a jagged laugh, his chest heaving, lungs still burning from the stage lights. He looks at John—really looks at him—and sees the hunger there. He slides his hand into John’s, their fingers interlocking with a wet, sliding friction. There is no music, only the distant thud of roadies breaking down the stage, but they find the beat in the pulsing of their own veins. They sway, a slow, clumsy rotation of heavy limbs and locked gazes, the gravity of four years of marriage and a global tour collapsing into a single, visceral point of contact.