Work Text:
Time says "Let there be"
every moment and instantly
there is space and the radiance
of each bright galaxy.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Hymn to Time
NIALL
Niall Connelly adjusts his scarf. The soft merino wool—red and black plaid with a thin ribbon of pale blue—is knotted at his throat, and too warm. He tugs at it. Unwinding the wool until it's hanging loosely from his fingers. Twists the fabric between bent knuckles a few times before looping the scarf back around his neck with a sigh.
He glances at his phone. 10:57.
The alley café in his Brixton neighborhood is practically empty, only a few occupied tables. Winter sunlight streams into the narrow cobblestoned space. The sound of frothing milk greets the whir of an espresso grinder. The cheerful patter of ceramic.
Niall slouches against the alley wall, cold brick seeping through his sweater and overcoat. He curls the edge of a nail into skin, scrapes the valley between his thumb and finger as his heart rabbits inside his chest. Blood pumps electric through his veins, his pulse faster, louder, than it's been at any of his recent pop-up shows. Any interview he's given these past five months.
He swallows, and his throat protests with a dry click.
“Idiot,” he mumbles to himself. “You saw him last night.”
He sang with him. On a catwalk in front of thousands of people. Niall sang a song he hadn't performed in years, in a new arrangement, harmonizing in real time, and he still hadn't felt as nervous as he does right now.
He rolls his shoulder blades against the rough brick. Checks the time again. 10:59.
Niall looks up, and freezes.
Dev stands beneath the arched entrance to the alley, as still as a painting, his shining dark eyes locked with his. He's wearing his creamy knit sweater. The one that makes him look like a sexy archivist, its front hem tucked into off-white trousers cuffed above checkered Vans. His hands are tucked into the pockets of his wool overcoat, also off-white, because Dev can never resist a curated monochrome, his dark hair unstyled, curly waves going every direction in liberated disobedience.
He is every dream and desire Niall has had since he was old enough to know what it meant to want somebody.
Dev moves, reaching Niall before he can remember how to walk, and says, "Hi."
"Hi." He sounds breathless. Maybe Dev can tell because he grins crookedly at him.
"Have you ordered yet?"
"No."
"What d'you want?"
Niall's brain short-circuits at the frankly overwhelming number of responses to that simple question, none of them related to coffee. So many wants, one after another, in rapid succession. He goes briefly lightheaded. "Um."
"Your usual?" Dev's voice is warm and smoky, like aged bourbon, the way it is after performing several shows. Niall wants to wrap himself up in it.
"Yeah, my usual is fine."
"Great." Dev flashes that grin again, and something bright flares inside Niall. He tempers his next breath as Dev floats over to the café window to place their order, wondering why the hell he's responding as though this is their first date and not their ... he doesn't even know what number to reach. They've been a part of one another's lives for eight years. Dated each other more than four. Liked each other for longer still.
And here Niall is, acting like he's 20 years old again when the hottest guy he'd ever seen waltzed into band rehearsal. All charm and swagger and glittering eyes, knocking Niall's world completely out of orbit.
Niall decides to choose a table for them, and selects one tucked into the deepest corner of the brick alley, glowing with fairy lights, with a small bundle of dried flowers propped in a vase the color of sea glass. He drags his hand through his hair. Removes his scarf for a second time, and leans back in his chair.
Within a couple minutes, Dev arrives and lowers into the seat across from him. He sends another smile, but this one is hesitant. The edges stumble halfway up and go still. Niall has the sudden urge to pull Dev to his chest, like he did in that hotel room in Stockholm.
Never let go.
"How are you feeling," Niall asks, all his other questions too enormous, "now that tour is over?"
Dev runs his fingertips along the edge of his jaw before dropping his hand to the table. Niall stares at his navy blue nail polish and the black tufts of hair on the backs of his fingers.
His hands ache with the need to touch him.
How strange it is to navigate in-between spaces. The liminal bridge between what was and what is, or what could be, that could shimmering with promise, just there, on the other side, and with each step taken toward it there’s a corresponding growing fear, however irrational, that the shimmer is somehow a mirage.
"I’m relieved," Dev says.
Niall's eyes snap to Dev's face. Violet shadows stain the fragile skin beneath his eyes. His lips are chapped, from dehydration and thousands of miles of travel.
“I'm glad you're home,” Niall says quietly.
“Me too.”
“What now?” Niall had meant post-tour, but as soon as the words leave his mouth, they take on new meaning and shape.
A barista appears at their table, setting their drinks down and swiftly returning to the café window. Niall's heart shoots off again at the interruption, a quickening that makes his blood feel hot. He curls his long fingers around his ceramic mug, and deeply inhales the fragrant aroma of cinnamon and cloves ferried by frothy cream.
Dev watches him through the steam of his own drink. His gaze trails along Niall's face before snagging on Niall's mouth and then dropping to the dried flowers between them.
“I don't know,” he says.
Niall doesn't either. Or, rather, he doesn’t know how.
They’re here, after everything, wanting the same thing—or, at least, Niall thinks they do—but the air hangs thick between them, charged with mutual longing, yes, but also the weight of everything unsaid from their time apart.
“I'm sorry,” Niall says.
Dev looks startled. “Why—?”
“I ... ran away.”
“You chose yourself,” Dev says slowly, as if emphasizing the importance of each syllable. “You were—are—astoundingly brave.”
“It wasn't brave to ghost you.”
“I—” Dev hesitates, then lifts his drink to his mouth. “S'pose not.”
“It was actually a very shitty thing to do.”
He sips. Swallows. “It was honest.” The dark espresso of his eyes deepen. “I should be the one apologizing.”
“You already have.”
“Not enough.”
“Dev.”
“And texts don't count.” Dev suddenly leans across the table and wraps his fingers around Niall's forearm, radiating heat through layers of wool and cotton. “I should've listened to you. Really listened. To everything they were doing to you.”
Niall goes quiet. He pulls in a breath. “What would you have done?”
“I don't know. Something more.”
His heart bends in half at the anguish on Dev's face. God, he had been unconscious to Dev's devotion, even when things were at their worst. Dev didn't fight back against Lamb and Crucible in the way he had promised, but what had Niall honestly expected? They had been 26 years old, caught in the jaws of global fame, and at the mercy of a titanic powerful industry.
Tears prick at his eyes. “You did do so much.”
A disbelieving noise erupts from the back of Dev's throat.
“No, I'm serious, Dev. You ... were the one who would do my t shot when I felt too queasy or exhausted to do it myself. You spent hours helping me retrain my voice after it changed for a second time.”
Dev murmurs, “You were convinced you'd never sing again.”
“And you helped prove otherwise.” Niall tentatively reaches toward Dev's hand, still grasped around his arm. He lightly traces over the ridges of Dev's knuckles. “You showed me, over and over, how much you loved me. I was just too burned out to see it anymore. I was ... so angry.”
“You were right to be.”
“Yeah. But maybe not at you.”
Something heartbreaking is happening on Dev's face. He blinks several times and bites the inside of his cheek. “Please, don't say that. I have to believe the past eighteen months were necessary. For you. Please.” He attempts a smile, but it cracks halfway through. “I wish I were strong enough to say it doesn't matter. But I—I can't think about the maybes or what ifs. You were hurt, you got mad, you left. You ... found stillness and your new sound. You made music—fucking brilliant music—on your own terms because you wanted to make something real and true. Something to connect people.”
Niall stares at him. "You read that Rolling Stone article."
"I read or watch every interview you're in. I'm—" Dev tips his head to the side. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm slightly obsessed with you."
Niall's lips twitch. "Slightly?"
"More than a little."
"I set up a google alert for your name," Niall confesses. "Which was stupid. Do you know how many times you're mentioned any given week?"
A delighted, sharp smile splits Dev's face. "Tell me."
"And feed your ego? No." Niall's fingers have finished skimming over Dev's hand and wrist and are now playing with the cuff of his sweater. "It's how I found out you attended the Met with Emma McIntosh as your date, before I saw the two of you inside."
The smile slips from his face. "Yeah. That was a Crucible order."
"I figured. Still felt like my chest was carved open."
"You had a date, too," Dev says quietly. Every trace of levity from earlier gone. "That West End actor."
Niall swallows. His grip on Dev's sleeve tightens. "Yeah."
"When I saw the two of you together ... god, I thought I was gonna be sick. There you were, looking radiant and beautiful, with this guy. Your first time doing a red carpet event visibly and openly bisexual. And it wasn't with me."
"Dev ..."
"I hated him, you have no idea. But I mostly hated myself, for still hiding. Not being strong enough to—" His voice catches roughly. "To hold onto you."
Tears splash onto Niall's cheeks. He hadn't noticed them gather. "Part of me wanted you to feel hurt," he whispers. He swipes his tears away in a jerky motion. "Christ. I'm such an asshole."
"Mm, yeah." Dev captures Niall's hand in his own and leans forward. "Wanting to hurt your ex who also hurt you. Fairly common, Ni." Then he presses a kiss to the center of Niall's palm, right over the wet remnants of his tears.
"Stop being so nice," Niall says hoarsely.
"No."
"You're supposed to be a demon."
"I can be a nice demon." Dev gently lowers Niall's hand back on the table, rubbing his thumb over the tattoos across his knuckles. "I liked singing with you last night."
“I can't believe you did that.”
Dev lifts a single, thick eyebrow. “You were right there in the front row looking sexy as fuck, watching me perform.” He leans forward, his voice a scratchy rasp. “You were very distracting.”
He grins. “I'm sorry.”
“No, you're not.”
“No. I'm not.” A shivered breath expands between them. “I liked singing with you, too.”
“That's always been our song.”
Niall is instantly swept back in time, into their personal history, to the precise moment when Dev sent him the look, as he lay stretched on his back against the floor of Baz and Niall's tiny apartment. Baz had gone to bed hours before. The clock edging past two am. Guitars and notebooks in a demi halo around the two of them, the floor littered with mugs and emptied packets of crisps, the smell of coffee dregs loitering in the air.
In those days, late-night songwriting was one of Niall’s favorite things. Not because of the dark pressed up against the windows or the unique texture of stillness that hit the air after midnight. No, these sessions allowed him to spend uninterrupted time with Dev. Watch the charismatic Dev Pitch unwind, unfurl, into his most relaxed state. His secretly brilliant mind whirring, like wings of a hummingbird, breaking language apart, spitting out lyrics a word or line at a time, most of them terrible, as the songwriting process goes. Dev would fidget with something in his hands, a pencil, a guitar strap, the drawstrings of his hoodie, and growl with frustration when the lines refused to land. Crow with delight when they did. Laugh with his entire belly when language or the lateness of the night tipped into the absurd.
Niall would observe the crinkle that appeared at the bridge of Dev's nose. The flash of white teeth, the stretch and pull of his face when he smiled. The glitter of his eyes beneath fairy lights, rich dark brown threaded with amber.
He observed and he wanted. Privately, secretly, harboring a crush that only continued to grow as time spiraled forward.
That night in the cramped London flat, the band freshly signed with Crucible, the two of them worked on a song for their debut album. A song about desire. The profound yearning for something, someone, that maybe you shouldn't. When you want but the world or your fear tells you to stop, pause, think first.
And you do it anyway.
Forward movement, a rush of the heart, risk over fear.
Red light go.
Niall had no idea whether Dev carried feelings for him. Dev flirted, relentlessly, but then, Dev flirted with everyone. As their band's popularity rocketed upward, so did the number of Dev's admirers. He had no shortage of beautiful and interesting people to choose from. He didn't date anyone, but to hope felt embarrassingly quaint. So, Niall didn't. He fought for contentment with close proximity, the shared highs and lows of band life and making music together. He stole every moment he could to share space. Lost sleep so he could sling lyrics back and forth, post-midnight scribbles and strumming, even the obnoxious snap of Dev’s gum, the slightly queasy way the smell of cinnamon collided with faded coffee.
Anything to be with him.
The song taunted Niall. The lyrics an echo, a reflection, an autobiographical canto of his own pulsing desire that flooded his veins and spilled onto paper. Two verses complete, pushing onward to the third, We’re finishing this tonight, it’s there, I can feel it, Dev’s voice getting raspier as the minutes inched closer to dawn, his eyes bright at a line Niall offered, tapping the page of Niall's notebook with his finger, That's brilliant, write that down, and the following drag of his knuckles along Niall's leg as he pulled away.
Niall caught Dev's gaze, held it, the roar of his blood loud, and red, so red, begging him to lean down, close the distance, kiss him.
Dev tasted like cinnamon, and his mouth opened immediately beneath Niall's. His fingers wrapped around the back of Niall's neck, keeping him close, and time spiraled forward some more, lyrics and notebooks forgotten, as they made out on the floor. They didn’t finish the song that night, or they did, without lyrics, as they both surrendered to their desire for each other. Not a solo, then, but a duet, one building for years, their pent-up want blistering into a wildfire that sang its own song through their blood.
They performed “red light go” at shows, and Dev would wink at him before launching into the first verse. Niall grinned back, faintly delirious at another dream coming true. Nobody knew about them in the earliest days, save for Baz and Keris and Trix, but they sang their story in sold-out venues to the screaming fervor of their fans.
When Dev sang the stripped version in Brussels, he couldn't have sent a louder message. Niall froze the first time he saw a video from the show online. He watched it a dozen times. Listened to it over and over. As he washed dishes or chased after sleep. Dev's powerful voice carrying the entire song, his heart laid bare through stripped notes and raw emotion.
All for him.
Niall abruptly stands. "Let's go for a walk."
Dev blinks up at him. "Yeah, sure. Okay." He gestures to the drinks. "Are you done?"
"I don't—" Niall couldn't give a shit about his drink. He needs to move, so he doesn't fold himself over the table and claim Dev's mouth. This alley café may be a hidden secret to most, but it's still public and all it takes is half a second, from a dog walker or postal clerk or barista, and Niall isn’t about to risk another photo scandal. Not when ICARUS is so close to getting away from Crucible for good.
Niall sweeps the mugs from the table and returns them to the barista window, flashing an apologetic smile and requesting paper to-go cups. By the time he receives the drinks back, Dev is beside him, and they exit the alley onto the bright pavement of south London. Dev slips on a pair of dark sunglasses, takes the latte Niall offers him, and tucks his hand in the pocket of Niall's elbow.
"This okay?" he murmurs.
"Yeah. Yes." Niall clears his throat. "There’s a park across the way."
They pass through the gate to Brockwell Park, and for a minute, or five, they walk together in the relative quiet of mid-morning. The winter sun lilts in the sky, bright but unable to defeat the cloistered frost in the air. Birds flit between branches, flashes of red bellies, a choir of cheerful trills, and a few people are out, pushing strollers, jogging the tree-lined path, all focused on their own lives and not on them, or the close press of Dev's fingers upon Niall's arm.
Niall silently curses his choice of a park. A public park? When all he wants to do is taste Dev's mouth? Follow the chapped ridges of Dev's lips with his tongue?
He’s wanted to kiss Dev since Sweden. No—since the listening party at Pray Tell. When Dev wore those ridiculous sexy pajamas, unbuttoned just low enough for his gold chain necklace to catch the light. A willful choice on Dev’s part. Wearing jewelry Niall had given him on his 25th birthday.
But it stretches even further back, doesn’t it?
Maybe all the way to their last kiss, which Niall hadn’t even reciprocated because they argued the night before. A simple yet sincere press of lips from Dev, on his way out the door, Niall too irritated, too tired, too angry to kiss him back.
Firsts, by their nature, are easily recognizable. First lost tooth, first concert, the first blush of summer strawberries. First kiss. The last of something can occur and its significance isn’t known until later, once you can no longer savor it.
Niall glances over at Dev. He looks even paler directly under the midday sunlight, washed out, exhaustion hanging off his cheekbones. Niall can see the outline of his molars against the skin of his jaw, his teeth clenched, a habit Dev does, unthinking, when stressed. It hasn’t even been twelve hours since he left the arena last night.
“Hey,” Niall says, gently, “did you get any sleep last night?”
“Not really.” Dev sidesteps a puddle, the action bringing his body flush against Niall's. Without meaning to, Niall leans into the warm, solid expanse of him. “Nothing’s got the memo yet. That the tour is over. I feel all over the place and—” He grips his cup, so tightly the lid cracks, and he tosses it in the next rubbish bin they pass. “I dunno, I was nervous, I guess.”
“About this?”
He nods.
Niall studies him. “Are you … still?”
Quiet stretches between them, electrostatic, with a charge Niall can feel along the surface of his skin.
“I don’t know what's in your head, Ni,” Dev finally says. “You didn't—” A faint blush stains his cheeks and he tilts his chin up, watching a crooked V of geese fly overhead. “Um. You didn’t kiss me. In Sweden, or Scotland. And then at the café, we were getting real and … flirty, even, and then … you got up. For a walk.”
Oh.
Dev's hair glints fiery obsidian under a pocket of bright sun, and Niall thinks back to the hotel room in Stockholm, Dev’s head on Niall’s chest as he slept, his unruly hair tucked beneath Niall’s jaw, tickling skin, and directly before, the way Dev looked at him, anguish held in the corners of his mouth, believing he wasn’t good enough, worthy, of Niall loving him.
“You don't answer my calls or texts for a year and a half,” Dev goes on, not slowing down or pausing when Niall guides them to a smaller path, bringing them into a small walled garden, nor when Niall throws his cup away so he can slide the sunglasses off Dev’s nose. “Then, you do. And we start chatting. Facetiming. It kinda feels like before. But it's different too. You say you miss me. You say ... you love me. But love can change, mean different things, and I need to—” His voice becomes a bruise. “I just need to know, Ni, what that—means for you, what you want …”
Dev’s words trail off when Niall grabs his face between his hands. His heart is a drum. His thoughts spiral, his own panicked voice saying, No, no, don't. Don’t do it. Stop. Wait, just wait, until you’re not in public.
Stop.
“No,” Niall murmurs, and kisses him.
Dev makes a surprised noise that dissolves into a soft moan. His hands slide to the small of Niall’s back, pulling him closer, and Niall moves with him, rising onto his toes, his arms looped around Dev's neck.
Dev’s mouth is wondrously familiar, their kiss the doorway to an entire library of memories. University cobblestones. Sticky stage floors. The fuzz of amps. Cinnamon. Coffee. Stolen kisses backstage and leisurely fucks at home. In Dev’s loft. In Niall’s flat. Wanting to live together but told it was too risky, so the road became their home, tour bus bunks and hotel sheets. Those three blissful weeks in Greece, under glittering sun and salt-studded air, the ocean postcard-perfect turquoise, as they filled their bellies with oysters and their hands with each other. Dev in swim shorts. Dev in a slip dress. Dev in nothing but sandals and sunscreen. His raspy laughter and sharp grin. Long eyelashes. Generous soft heart. His favorite person. Best friend. The one who knows Niall better than he sometimes knows himself.
“I want you,” Niall says, words sprawling over Dev’s mouth. “I want to be with you. That—never changed.”
Dev draws away just enough to look at Niall, his dark eyes darting between Niall’s own. Searching. Painfully hopeful.
“Wasn’t that obvious when I showed up in Sweden?” Niall whispers.
“Ni, baby, you’re never obvious.” Dev presses his thumb to the sharp curve of Niall’s chin. “If you hadn’t kissed me all those years ago on your floor, I never would’ve known you liked me. We spent a week in Italy, and for the first half of that trip, I thought you were having second thoughts about us.”
Niall stares at him. “I … that’s where I wrote ‘thee, thine, mine.’ For you. As an anniversary present. And—” Dev lifts an eyebrow, and Niall raises his hands in surrender. “Y’know what, noted. I will be more … verbal.”
“Or you could kiss me again.”
Niall grins, capturing Dev’s mouth in a filthy brief kiss. When he breaks away, Dev chases his mouth with a confused sound.
“We’re in public,” Niall says.
“So?”
“So, Baz would murder us if we get caught and complicated his plan.”
“Then he’d be a hypocrite. Also,” Dev bends to nip the curve of Niall’s ear, “I don’t care.”
Niall shivers. “Dev … this is—”
“This is what you wanted.” Dev kisses his hair. “No more—” The slant of his cheekbone. “Hiding.” His thigh slips between Niall’s legs. “No pretending.”
Niall tips his head, Dev’s mouth warm on the side of his neck, and he allows himself one more cycle of breath, one more twist of Dev’s creamy sweater between his fingers, a final press of hips and, with it, the electrifying knowledge of Dev’s arousal, before pulling away. He glances around the garden. At the frost-bitten ground and naked rose bushes, all thorn, no bloom. Empty pathway.
“I want you in my bed,” Niall says. “My flat’s close by.”
Dev blinks, feline slow. “How close?”
“Half mile or so.”
“My dick will break off. Let’s get a car.”
Niall laughs. “Come on.”
He grabs Dev’s hand and leaves the dead garden and freezing park behind them.
They hop over dirty puddles and dart in front of passing cars, desire swelling with each street. By the time Niall is unlocking his front door, Dev’s hands are all over him, and the heat of Niall’s blood throbs low in his groin. He attacks Dev’s mouth as soon as they’re inside, his tongue sweeping past lips, his fingers unbuttoning Dev’s trousers, pushing his coat from his shoulders, shoving his sweater up until it bunches at his armpits. Naked. Niall needs him naked. He needs Dev’s skin against his, from chest to the soles of their feet.
“You, too,” Dev pants, halfway to the bedroom, as he yanks Niall’s sweater over his head, kissing his throat, and shoving a hand down Niall’s jeans. His hand curls around Niall’s packer, squeezing, and he whines. “Shit, I missed you so much.”
“Bed,” Niall gasps. “Now.”
They fall onto the soft duvet, Dev between Niall’s legs, nudging him further up, more, until Niall is fully stretched out on the bed and Dev covers his body with his own, smearing a new constellation of kisses across the ridge of Niall’s shoulder, down his sternum, across his chest scars, the scoop of his stomach, hungry and reverent.
Dev rakes his tongue over the deep groove of Niall’s hip.
Sucks a bruise to the skin just below his belly button.
Niall’s breaths shorten, then shallow, extending to every corner of the quiet room. His toes curl. The scrape of sheets. Then a long moan, exultant, a relief, his body finally returning home as Dev’s mouth closes around his dick.
Dev purrs at the twist of Niall’s long fingers in his hair, vibrating wet and warm, and Niall grips just a tiny bit tighter. Pulls Dev closer. Dev licks and sucks in all the ways Niall craves. And his expression—the bliss of it. Like this is all Dev’s wanted.
Niall’s stomach curls tight and hot. An unguarded whimpering sound slips past his lips.
Dev’s eyes open lazily, as though pulled from a dream, and flick up to Niall. A jolt of dark glazed heat. He sends the sexiest barely there smirk before burying his face deeper, his fingers slipping over Niall’s hip bone, descending past his busy mouth to lightly press against Niall’s first hole.
“Yes,” Niall breathes. “Give me your hand.”
He sucks three of Dev’s fingers into his mouth and laves his tongue between each digit, slicking them up with spit, whining with pleasure at the salt of Dev’s skin, his rough callouses, the way Dev’s fingertips curl inside his mouth, into his cheek at the same time Dev curls his tongue around him. Niall's vision whites out.
He had forgotten.
The incandescent feeling of someone knowing his body.
Not just someone.
The person he’s loved with every part of his being since he was 20 years old.
Spit-slick fingers enter him, and this time, Niall’s moans reach the ceiling.
His thighs fall open wider. His hips begin to move in little circles. No words, rarely any words, just a steady flow of whines seeping from his throat, leaking over linens, a rising tide of breath and need, gathering volume, stealing thought, until pleasure spools around his spine and everything tightens with an unbearable, divine heat.
He comes with a hoarse cry, his cunt seizing around Dev's fingers, his dick throbbing with blood, sensitive, yet still greedy. Dev drags the broad width of his tongue down his center, slow, rasped, like a cat, before pressing wet, open-mouthed kisses to the soft inner skin of his thighs, dozens of them, luxurious and indulgent, then fixated and merciless as the kisses return to his slick folds, and another wave of pleasure comes crashing back, flooding his belly, down his spine, in his feet, everywhere, all at once.
Finally, a word, a single gasping Fuck, his back bowing off the bed, fingers tangled in Dev's hair as Dev feasts his way to claiming a second orgasm. After, Dev crawls up Niall's body, his lips never far from Niall's sharp angles, his inked skin and heaving chest, and curls around him.
“I think I'm dead,” Niall pants. “You just—you …”
He feels the grin of Dev's teeth against his neck. "You orgasm in waves, babe, I'm just following your body."
Niall threads his fingers through Dev's hair, skimming his scalp, then fisting a handful of curls to angle back his head, exposing his throat. He sucks at the tendon. Scrapes his teeth over Dev's Adam's apple. "Still obsessed with making me come twice in a row."
His lips vibrate from Dev's laugh, a small rumbling thing that warms Niall's insides. "Mm, guilty. And you're still greedy for it."
Niall rolls on top of Dev, assailing his jaw, his throat, his chest with biting kisses, moving down his body, a body he's missed, with a longing so sharp and deep there were days he thought it would swallow him whole and spit out his bones.
When he squeezes Dev's balls, Dev groans and shifts his hips. He's leaking over his stomach. Niall swipes his tongue through the wet and hums at the bittersalt tang. Another reunion, another archive of memories released.
“Shit,” he murmurs into Dev's skin, “you taste so good.”
Dev makes a tiny frayed bitten-off noise that loops through every last bone in Niall’s rib cage, and tugs deliciously.
“Want more.” He drags his lips across Dev’s thigh, inhaling deeply at the crease between his leg and groin, stomach swooping at Dev’s familiar musky scent. His mouth waters. It’s too empty. He needs Dev to fill it. He needs Dev to come. He’s gonna make Dev come, here in his bed, with the sunlight draped over Dev’s sweat-shiny body. Holy shit, he is so fucking beautiful and Niall needs—he’s gonna—
"Hah!" Dev exclaims when Niall wraps his mouth around Dev's cock.
Dev’s hands flail in the air for a short moment before clutching the sheets. Then he’s pressing them against the headboard. Twisting them in Niall's hair.
Oh god, yes. He pushes his head against Dev’s palms, and moans when Dev grips him tighter, pulling at the roots.
A broken sob breaks from Dev’s throat. “Fuck, Ni, I'm not—shit, I'm not gonna last.”
Niall pulls off just long enough to rasp, “I want it all,” and then he’s sliding his lips back around him, down, so full, pumping and twisting his hand in time with his mouth.
Dev comes, hard and long, his entire body shuddering, and Niall swallows him down. Everything he can get. Sticky warmth trickles from the corners of his mouth, drips down his chin, and still it’s not enough.
He is greedy, voracious; he’s frantic with it. He wants to keep sucking Dev's cock, suck until it softens against his tongue, then the skin behind his knees, between his toes, suck all of Dev into his mouth, until he's thoroughly intoxicated with the elements of his body. The most carnal eucharist. He wants Dev in his stomach and in his ass, under his fingernails, Dev's scratchy smoky voice in his ears, his smile risographed behind closed eyelids, the stretch of Dev's breath folding and unfolding against his back while they sleep.
How did Niall navigate more than eighteen months without him?
Dozens and dozens of agonizing weeks not wrapped in Dev's spicy, musky scent. His laughter. The beacon and balm of his smile. Hundreds of days. Niall’s mouth empty—aching—from the absence of Dev's kisses.
All that time, separated from the person who always knows how to make him laugh. Who reminds Niall that perfectionism is a tyrannical god. Who loves him through the hard days, and the harder days.
His best friend.
The keeper of keys to his heart.
Niall walked away from all of that. All of him.
Maybe he had needed to. Maybe they both needed the agony of cracking apart to understand how much better they fit together.
It's a lesson, clarion bright, Niall will carry forward, in the pocket of his heart, to be taken out and remembered during inevitable future moments when his anger sparks white hot and running away from Dev feels like the liberating option when it's ultimately one that leads to maddening heartbreak, a prison of misery and regret.
“I missed you, too,” Niall says. He realizes he hasn’t yet said it, and Dev needs the words. He kisses Dev’s stomach and crawls up, resting his head on Dev’s chest. “I missed you so much.”
Dev makes a pleased rumbling sound, reverberating beneath Niall’s cheek. When Niall tilts his head up, Dev’s eyes are shining.
“Get up here,” Dev says, voice raspy, sex-hazed. “Wanna kiss you.”
Niall slides up Dev’s body and tastes the shape of his smile. They kiss.
And kiss.
I missed you.
They kiss for the here and now, and for all the time they lost.
I miss you can sometimes mean I love you.
It can mean, I remember.
I remember you, and I know you, for you are part of me, and I swear to you, I will not forget.
You are my favorite place.
—Lucy Dacus, Best Guess, Forever is a Feeling
DEV
Sometime in the afternoon, the early winter sun already declining in the sky, splashing the walls in marigold, they make tea and toast. An old ritual restored. Easy movements like a dance across kitchen floorboards, the swath of a knife through butter and jam, splash of milk into tea. They snack against rumpled sheets, not bothering to put on clothes, and then reach for each other again.
They make out leisurely, refamiliarizing with one another's bodies. Discovering new changes. Sunburst lines around warm brown eyes. A new scar, stretched thin and silver, across the top of his foot. Longer wavy hair that curls around his ears.
Dev had hoped, upon rising that morning, sleepless, his nerves shot with anxious anticipation, to reunite with Niall. Gain clarity. Hopefully kiss him.
But he hadn't dared to dream he would end up here, in Niall’s bed. With the taste of him still faint upon his tongue, layered beneath plum preserves. The sheets smell of Niall—eucalyptus and cedar and desert rain—and now, also, of Dev. His spice and his sweat. They’ve created a cloud of scent, a cozy nest of limbs, and it all feels new and achingly familiar, the way returning home feels after a long absence.
Dev’s head rests on Niall’s thigh, and Niall’s other leg is hooked over Dev’s waist, their bodies a perfect, tangled pretzel. He traces the edge of a tattoo that sits just above Niall’s hip bone.
“Is this an oyster?” Dev asks.
“Mm.” Niall’s fingers play languidly with Dev’s hair. “Remember that little spot in Greece?”
“Shit, yeah.” Dev sweeps his thumb over the ink, then kisses it. “We should go back.”
He runs his fingertips through the soft trail of hair on Niall’s stomach and brushes over another tattoo—a bundle of esparto grass—a memento from his time in the desert. Earlier, Niall shared stories from the weeks he spent in Andalusia. The long walks. Sleeping in. Local bookstores and fresh loquats. Cortados on his tiny hotel balcony. Horseback riding under big open sky. Dev demanded to see photos, and his heart gave a strange little painful twinge at the mixture of heartbreak and serenity captured in Niall’s images.
Dev adds Spain, alongside Greece, to his mental list of places to return to, with Niall.
His hand travels down Niall’s thigh, the one resting over Dev’s hip, following more lines of ink, stems and leaves and petals, twisting around a trio of swords.
“This one’s new, too,” he murmurs.
Niall’s eyes flutter closed as Dev continues to touch him. Dev kneads the meat of his quad, moves down the full length of his shin, over ink and tendon, before curling his hand around the arch of Niall’s foot.
Niall releases a lush sigh, a happy sound that catches on a groan when Dev drags his knuckles up Niall’s calf muscle. “I missed your hands.”
Dev turns his head into Niall’s thigh and kisses the skin he finds there. “Just my hands?”
“Your mouth, too.” He grins, a long syrupy stretch of his perfect mouth. “Nobody touches me like you do. Nobody knows how to make me feel good, not like you.”
On their first tour, Dev missed a stair coming off the stage. A step into nothingness, the lurch and disorientation, stomach heaved into lungspace, a twist of nausea.
That’s how this feels.
Dev had the vague understanding, over the past year and a half, that Niall had sex with other people. Faceless men and women, from apps or bars or, hell, the supermarket. Foreplay in the form of flirtatious banter over baskets of apricots. Dev understands this reality. But he’s done his best to not think about it because the second he does a kind of snarling possessiveness sinks into his chest, one he isn't proud of, and to now be confronted with that reality, however indirectly … stings. It hurts.
He hates how much it hurts.
Pain and grief churn through his gut, followed by a sharp swell of anger. Not at Niall, but at himself. For missing out on this, too. Sex-drenched afternoons and pulsing nights. Groggy mornings under the haze of lust.
Niall filling that need without him.
Niall in the desert. Without him.
Niall shedding his ICARUS skin for ink and metal and scruff, a breathtaking metamorphosis, without him.
Making a new best friend, a new music partner, developing his new sound, producing an entire album—
Niall finding the root of the root of who he is, snatching it with both hands, and bringing it forth into full sunlight.
And Dev not being there for any of it.
“Hey, c’mere,” Niall says softly. He grasps the upper part of Dev's arms, tugging him up, and Dev goes easily into his lap, his knees a loose bracket around Niall's hips. “I missed way more than your hands and mouth.”
“Okay?”
“I’m stating the obvious.” Niall drops a light kiss on Dev’s shoulder. “I told my boyfriend I’d do that more.”
His heart skips at boyfriend.
“Stop being so nice,” Dev rasps, using Niall’s words from earlier.
“No.” He cradles Dev’s face. “I can see you spiraling. Don’t disappear on me, okay?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I told you no more apologies.”
Dev kisses him. Desperate to feel Niall’s mouth on his. To remind himself this is real, and they’re here, together. Dev presses his body against Niall, chest to hips, until there is nothing between them save for the heat of their skin. Greedy noises climb from behind his rib cage, traversing the channel of his throat, unstoppered, and pass from his mouth to Niall's. Like a folded up note, made of spit, covertly slipped between lockers.
Niall’s hands slide to Dev’s ass, a claiming sort of grip that unravels something deep inside of him. Dev rocks his hips. He needs to be close, closer—
He belongs here. Under Niall's hands, with Niall's tongue sliding against his. In Niall’s bed, with their scent clinging to his sheets. He wants to wake up tomorrow morning with Niall wrapped around him, his messy copper hair, his bare toes pressed against Dev’s shins, sleepy and gorgeous and his, like so many mornings they shared, before it all fell apart.
“I should've told you,” he says, his lips traveling all over Niall's face. “I should've waited. I didn't—I had no idea—”
Confessions lift to his tongue, slippery, words he’s carried inside of him for almost two years, and he can’t hold them any longer, no more than he can stop the curl of his toes or the wet warmth trapped behind his eyes.
“I was gonna wait to talk to Lamb like we had agreed, I swear,” Dev says.
“What … ?”
“I went in for some studio time,” Dev babbles, unable to stop, “only he pulled me into his office. He's always doing that. That day he wanted me to listen to some new artists. Stuff he wanted to influence our next album, all shit. I told him it was rubbish and I should've—I should have left his office, but I was there and feeling high from telling him off and I—I told him. That we were going public and there wasn't anything they could do to stop us.”
Dev blinks furiously, and Niall goes watery in front of him, a blur of salt. He tastes the brine of his tears.
“He gave me this ... pitying look and I swear to god I thought he was gonna give me the same bullshit projections he shared with both of us before. How our public relationship would tank sales and destroy the band.”
Distantly, he’s aware of Niall’s hands moving up his back, sloping over his shoulders, and coming to rest on either side of his face. “He didn’t?” Niall asks.
Dev shakes his head. Leans into Niall’s touch. “He said you already had it hard enough, and I'd just ... make it worse. Harder. It was difficult enough for fans to accept a trans guy but a gay trans guy?” Dev frowns. “He never did seem to get the bisexual memo. For either of us.”
“I think bisexuality confuses him.” Niall sweeps his thumbs over Dev's wet cheekbones. “What else?”
“He—Said my ... my antics would harm you. Damage your likeability with the public and fans.” Dev releases a long breath. “Why would the sweet, soft one chain himself to the crazy one?”
Niall freezes. “He weaponized your disorder?”
“I think so? He always spoke in circles, turned words around until he was asking me questions as though I had been saying whatever he had all along. I always left our meetings feeling confused, and stupid.” His eyes cut to Niall. “Same as that day. I felt disoriented. Worse, I believed him. That I would fuck up your reputation, and later—when you—when I told you he said we couldn’t go public but I didn’t tell you why, because I didn't know what to say … I didn't want to put you in the position of choosing me over your own success, and then you asked, I remember this so fucking clearly, ‘What would you do, Dev? If Crucible gets tired of this and tells us to end our relationship?’ And I—” His voice breaks. “It was the pause, wasn't it? I paused, way too long, and I saw it on your face.”
Niall's gaze drops to the duvet beneath them. He whispers, “I thought ... if you had to choose between me and the band, you'd choose the band. That you had already made that choice, and I was just dumb and slow to realize it.”
“I had failed you by that point. I’m not—” A mangled sound claws its way out of his chest. “I’m not surprised you thought that.”
“Dev—”
“It's true. I listened to Lamb. Like an idiot. I did what he wanted.”
“You aren't an idiot,” Niall says fiercely. “You never were. You were manipulated.”
Dev slumps forward, his forehead dipping to press against Niall’s. “That's worse. I should've, I dunno, known. Put a stop to it. I was fucking complicit. Just like Fiona.”
“That is ... not the same. At all.”
All the tension, the frantic desperation, drains from his body, replaced with a familiar dull weight he would call resignation if he had more control over it. With a heavy sigh, Dev rolls off Niall so they’re lying side by side. He stares at the exposed wooden beams along the ceiling, his eyes trailing over the dark wood grain, and focuses on a knot along one of the edges. “Once, he invited me to this dinner party at his house. Told me some really important music industry people would be there. He wanted me to represent ICARUS. And I—” Dev bites down on the inside of his cheek. "I liked it. The attention. The party itself was gross. Boring. It was a bunch of suits, you know? Thirty minutes and two drinks in, I realized he was ... shopping me around. Introducing me to these brand executives, teasing sponsorships and collabs, he'd touch my face and say how striking my cheekbones would look on the screens at Piccadilly. As the next Rolex ambassador.”
Niall's breathing has shortened. His warm brown eyes have grown dark, and a low, guttural humming emanates from his throat. It's quiet, the barest growl, air catching over vocal chords.
“It sounds more terrible than it was,” Dev says.
Absently, he twirls a strand of Niall's hair around his finger, watching the coil of copper slide and catch the late afternoon light. “And I stayed. I could've left, at any time. Certainly after dinner, once half the guests had gone and Lamb started sharing stories about how talented I was, how exceptional, a once-in-a-generation performer. His words felt good, and I stayed, even when white women touched my hair and told me how handsome I was, how exotic I looked, because Lamb always knew what to say to make me feel like—” He chokes on the shame rising in his throat. “Like I was special. I ... I fucking went along with it.”
“You never told me about this,” Niall says quietly.
“You were up north visiting your mums that weekend, and afterward I ... felt embarrassed.”
“That's not—” Niall suddenly leans over and kisses the ridge of Dev's nose. “I meant, why didn't you ever tell us he ... paraded you around to all his friends like you're some kind of merchandise?”
“It didn't seem worth complaining about. And I wanted to protect you, all of you, as much as I could. I ... constantly felt like I was letting you all down. Every time I had an episode. Every time I forgot a practice or missed an interview. The label made every excuse for me because I was Dev Pitch but we were always a team, and I ... didn't put in the same amount of work as the rest of you.”
“That's not true.”
He shrugs. “True enough.”
Niall scoots closer and cups the side of Dev's face. “Look at me. Please.”
Somewhat desperately, Dev blurts before Niall has a chance to say whatever is making his brow knit together so tightly: “It's nowhere near as bad as what he did to you. I was complicit in that, too.”
“Dev, no, stop.”
“So he trotted me around like a show pony. S'not a big deal. Compared to what he did to you, it's really not that bad.”
“It is bad, exploitative, and he never should've done it." Niall's fingers drift from his jaw, down his throat, to the plane of his collar bones. Back and forth, like his cello, soothing, a whispered glide of warmth. "That wasn't the only time, was it?"
Dev opens his mouth to deny, to diminish, It was only a silly dinner party, he doesn't even know why he brought it up, but a cabinet swings open in the basement of his mind and several more memories spill out. Of networking and bourbon, flattering words purred through cruel smiles, a hand light on his spine, kind words seemingly genuine in the beginning, I believe in you. I've got you. We'll prove your family wrong. Stick with me, son, and I'll make sure everyone knows your name. A replacement father, one who believed in him, who delighted in and rewarded the very things Dev was shamed for as a child. His loud personality, his dramatic flair, his cheekiness and chaos. A brilliant artist, Lamb would defend when Dev's behavior splashed across the media, nobody understands you like I do. Money thrown at shrinks and wellness coaches and psychiatrists, a hunt for the chemical cocktail that could tame the monsters inside his head while still allowing Dev Pitch to gleam. Affirmation and advocacy, then impatience and silky threats, warnings, the use of fear, sometimes obfuscated but increasingly outright, the man removing the mask to reveal Dev's father underneath, a cosmic joke, trick mirrors in a funhouse, an ancient reptilian predator that had lain motionless beneath water until it was too late, its long jaws snapped around his throat. A shapeshifter, smoke against glass, first a lion, then a crocodile, Ammit, devourer of the dead.
"Dev? Sweetheart? Ro?"
He blinks and sucks in a breath, like he had forgotten to breathe for several minutes.
"Come back to me." Warm lips press softly on the curl of his ear. His hairline. The side of his nose. "I'm right here. You're okay."
"I ... know? Sorry, what—" He pauses, startled at the expression on Niall's face. "Why do you look like that?"
"You're shivering."
"Am I?" Dev glances down. His skin is pebbled over, and tiny tremors shake across his torso. "Oh," he says faintly. "Weird."
Niall is suddenly on top of him, his lean body stretched out against Dev, elbows pressed into the mattress and framing Dev's head, his weight settling over him. Holding him fast to the bed. To each other. Niall takes up every inch of Dev's vision, the span of his shoulders blocking out the rest of the room, his hair aflame, a glowing titian corona in the fading sunlight. Hip bones nestled like spoons, the press of their bellies together. Pulse humming everywhere they touch.
Solid and real.
Niall nuzzles Dev's neck, more warm kisses, heat radiating between them, and Dev wraps his arms around Niall. Hooks his ankles around Niall's calves—the scratch of hair beneath his heels.
“You feel good,” Dev murmurs. “So warm.”
“I love you,” Niall says. He won't stop kissing him.
“I love you, too.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Why?”
“I should have protected you more.”
“That's my line.”
“Can we promise each other something?” Dev looks up, eyes caught in Niall's steady gaze, and his heart tumbles within his chest. “Promise we'll talk to each other. About the stuff caught in our heads, the scary shit. Even if we think we're doing the right thing by keeping something inside.”
“I—”
I don't want to burden you with my shit. I can handle it. You already carry so much. I won't make your life worse. Complaining is for failures.
But Niall's eyes are blazing, ferocious and tender, a burning declaration, and Dev whispers, “Yes.”
Niall brushes a tangle of hair from Dev's eyelashes. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He swallows thickly. “I will do anything to be with you. Even if it scares me. Even when it's hard. Even when I think I'm no good for you.”
Niall kisses him. “I love you.”
“You said that already.”
He kisses Dev again. He kisses his eyebrows, sucks on them, and then kisses his eyelids. He lightly bites the bridge of Dev's nose. “I love you.”
Dev opens his mouth for Niall, and groans at the way Niall dips his tongue inside, flattening it against Dev’s own. Heat licks at the base of his belly, fresh wildfire in his veins. Every warm inch of Niall's body, every drag of their lips, a promise, that this person truly does love him, who just might love him always, who will fight for him, believe in him, who still wants him when he's tired and ill, no gleam at all, only an exposed nerve and bared teeth, sick of the world and his place in it.
“I promise not to hide,” Dev says, his breathing gone desperate.
Niall kisses him. “I promise not to give up.”
“I promise to be braver. Like you.”
“I won't walk away again. I promise.”
“Thank fuck.” He arches into their next kiss. “I don't think I'd survive it.”
“Me either.” Niall rocks his hips, a bruising grip on Dev’s waist. “I need to fuck you. Please. Can I?”
He moans into Niall's mouth. “Yes.”
“Okay.” Niall kisses his swollen lips. And again, even as he rises up onto his knees, like he can't stop. “Okay.” Another kiss, Dev's new favorite punctuation. Niall retrieves his strap and silicone cock from the top drawer of his dresser. Lube from the nightstand.
“How do you want me?” Dev asks.
Niall rakes his gaze over Dev's body before licking his lower lip. “On your stomach.”
The sheets are wrinkled and warm against Dev's skin as he rolls over and spreads open his legs. He expects the snap of lube and cool press of silicone, but instead long lithe fingers drag along his cheeks, massaging, spreading them apart, followed by a short huff of breath and the hot swipe of tongue.
“Oh, fuck,” he groans, his voice disintegrating. “Oh my—god.”
“You stopped waxing,” Niall observes. Dev blushes into the sheets, his entire body aflame.
“Yeah, um, I didn't, uh, haven't—”
“I like it.” That's the final thing he says before spreading Dev wider, sealing his lips over his hole, and sucking deeply. Dev cries out and collapses onto his forearms, hands fisting sheets, his hips in the air, knees wide, the heart of him split open like ripe fruit.
His moans sink into the mattress, muffled, his nose filled with eucalyptus and spice as Niall takes his time, licking and eating with such intense appetite Dev is already shaking apart. Scratched from Niall’s stubble. Sobs caught between his lungs. All manners of groans and whimpers ripping free from his throat.
"Yes, baby," Niall rasps, "shit, I missed the sounds you make." He bites the curve of Dev's ass. "Turn over."
Dev sprawls on his back, breathing heavily, and … drinks in the sight of Niall kneeled between his legs, flushed all over, his chin and upper lip rosy raw, shiny from spit. There’s a wild glassy light in his eyes, black obliterating golden brown. His chest moving at the cadence of desire.
Reaching between them, Dev places his palm over Niall’s heart. The rhythm of Niall’s blood hums against his fingers, in symphony with his own. They don’t break eye contact, not once, as Niall presses a kiss to Dev’s inner wrist. Slicks up his silicone cock.
When he begins to push inside, despite the loosening from Niall's mouth, Dev's body immediately tightens against the intrusion, betraying the length of time that's passed since someone has done this to him.
“Breathe, baby.” Niall has stopped pushing and is gently skimming his palms up and down Dev's thighs. Niall leans over him and kisses his jaw. “We don't have to—”
“No. I want this. I need you ... in me, I just...it's been a while.”
Eight months to be precise. Just once. A single, heartbroken fuck on the 14th floor of a hotel in Manhattan, after the Met.
“D'you want a different cock?” Niall sends Dev a lopsided grin, his hands never pausing, massaging, his touch an anchor. "I've got several."
Dev's mouth lifts in response. "No. This is my favorite."
“Okay,” Niall says softly. His cock is entirely out, resting against Dev's hip as Niall kisses the side of Dev's neck. The hinge of his jaw. Then his mouth, simple and sweet, borderline chaste for several moments before Niall is slipping his tongue past Dev's teeth, tracing the ridges along the roof of his mouth, and swiping beneath Dev's upper lip. Finally, he brings their tongues together, and Dev dissolves fully into the kiss.
When Niall scrapes Dev's lower lip between his teeth, a slow long pull, Dev whines. His dick hardens, and he rolls his hips. This time, when Niall slides into him, his body sucks him in.
“Good?” Niall asks when his thighs are flush with Dev's ass.
“Yeah,” Dev gasps. “You gotta move, baby.” He bites off a groan at the first rock of Niall's hips. “F—fuck, yes. Yes. Again, please.”
“Christ, you're so pretty.” Niall licks the length of Dev’s sternum. “Come apart for me.”
They move together in a rhythm they've perfected over the years. Niall kisses Dev as he fucks him, Dev's ankles crossed behind Niall's back, his heel fitting into the groove of Niall's spine. He moans at Niall’s long sure thrusts, each one sending a knife of pleasure through his belly. He doesn’t touch himself, not yet. He hasn’t felt this full of Niall, this surrounded, this suspended, with exquisite aching need, for far too long. He wants to stay here forever.
He wants to shatter.
Dev’s eyes burn with fresh tears. It feels like his chest is cracking apart. He grasps the back of Niall’s neck. Fingertips pressed into sweat-damp hair. His other hand finds Niall’s, braced beside his head, and he threads their fingers together.
“Don’t stop,” he begs.
Niall sucks a kiss along his jaw. Warm breath against his neck. “Never.”
Dev says Niall's name, and hears his own back, and when he looks up, he sees Niall staring at him with wonder, like Niall is the lucky one.
Like Dev, with all his needs and failings, is extraordinary.
Something precious, and worth having.
With their fingers still knotted together, Niall slides his other hand up Dev's neck, thumb pressed to Dev's shiny, swollen lips, and he rasps, “Mine.”
Dev makes a sound he’s never heard before—a gasping broken cry pulled from the deepest part of him. He clenches tighter around Niall. Hears himself beg.
“I’ve got you, baby,” Niall says, squeezing Dev’s hand, hips speeding up. “So good.”
Fresh sobs catch in his chest. He’s trembling. The backs of his thighs burn from the slap of their skin. Bright sweet heat crackles along every nerve ending, gathering low and tight in the pit of his stomach, and Dev finally curls his fist around his aching cock. Releases a shameless moan, his orgasm rising up from the soles of his feet. Niall growls above him, Yes, c’mon, a sloppy kiss on his neck, the gold of his eyes glowing and locked intently, absolutely, on Dev as he drives into him, the angle known, familiar, perfect. So perfect, so good, oh god—
Dev comes like the crash of the sea against rocks. Ears ringing, a cosmos of color behind his eyelids, gasping as Niall fucks him through it. He can taste the pounding of his heart on his tongue. A full-body shiver rolls down his spine.
“Kiss me,” he says hoarsely. And again, “Kiss me.”
Niall captures a string of come at the base of Dev’s throat with his tongue, groaning around a swallow before covering Dev’s mouth with his own. They kiss, slowly, a little sticky, and all the lines of Dev’s body soften. He melts back into the mattress, holding Niall close. Kissing him so much they’ll have bruised lips by nightfall.
He whines a little when Niall's cock slips out of him.
There's an amused breath of laughter. “S'not going away forever.”
Dev opens his mouth to retort, but his throat is tight. His eyes still sting around the edges. He doesn’t want to let Niall go. Not even for a second.
Niall watches him as he removes his strap, and a soft knowing look crosses over his face. He presses another kiss to Dev’s lips, murmuring, “I’ll happily fuck you again after dinner.”
“You’re gonna make me come three times?”
“And again before bed.”
“Four?”
“Sweetheart, we can do this all night.”
Dev lifts an eyebrow, even as warmth blooms throughout his chest. “I won't be able to sit tomorrow.”
“Mm,” Niall flops onto his back with a wicked grin, “sitting's overrated.”
“Now who’s the demon?” Dev leans over the edge of the mattress, snatching his discarded underwear, and wipes the come off his stomach. When he turns back around, Niall is stretched out against the pillows, lazily stroking himself, his eyes half mast. The fading winter light catches on his eyelashes, crescents of copper fire.
Christ, he’s perfect.
Wordlessly, Dev sits against the headboard and pulls Niall to him with Niall’s back to his chest. Niall makes a contented humming sound when Dev kisses his neck. Dev snakes an arm around Niall’s chest, and Niall gasps when Dev’s other hand reaches between Niall’s splayed legs.
“Oh, shit,” Niall murmurs, “that feels good.”
Dev strokes him, enjoying the scorching heat of Niall’s small, fleshy cock just as much as the thick one Niall straps on to fuck him. His thumb finds the most sensitive part and drags from base to tip, then back again. Niall's pulse jumps in his throat. His abs flex beneath ink.
Niall’s head falls back onto Dev’s shoulder—panting—his hands gripped around Dev’s muscular thighs as he ruts against Dev’s fingers. The most gorgeous tiny cries lift into the air above them. A song of heat and breath Dev has memorized.
Dev tightens his hold around Niall's chest. “I promise,” Dev rumbles in Niall's ear, “to choose you, every time. No matter what.”
Niall whimpers. His hands lift from Dev's thighs, reaching behind him, and hook around the back of Dev's neck. When Niall turns his head, Dev is waiting for him and brings their mouths together. Niall's orgasm shudders across his lips.
They stay like that, entwined together on the bed, for several long minutes. Kissing through the comedown. Eventually, Niall slides down Dev’s chest, settling against him, and the final tendrils of winter sunlight slip from the windows.
Niall whispers, “You're staying the night, yeah?”
“Yeah.” He dips down to kiss the crown of Niall’s head. “Yeah, I’m staying.”
Dev doesn’t know all that lies ahead. With the label, or his future as a musician. Whether he even wants to perform anymore. Who he is if the glossy shine of Dev Pitch vanishes. Bleeds out.
But he is certain of one thing.
“I’d move in tomorrow,” Dev says impulsively, “should you want.”
Niall looks up at him. And Dev savors the slow happy stretch of his mouth. “Really?”
“Tonight,” Dev grins. He can’t stop. “Right now.”
“Okay … yeah.” His brown eyes gleam. “Let’s do that.”
Niall told Dev once that everything sings. That deep inside any particle is a tiny vibrating string. Musical scales share this phenomenon with human DNA. With celestial bodies in the farthest reaches of space. Along the ocean floor. The universe sings in concert with blue whales, with his cells, with his heart.
With Niall’s heart.
They’ve been creating music their whole lives, their very existence a song, breath like soundwaves, traveling across time and distance, and Niall is the one Dev’s soul wants to sing with. A paired melody sweeter than the sum of their strings.
“We can make your key in the morning,” Niall says, ever practical.
Yeah, Dev’s gonna marry him so hard one day.
His heartsong.
“Sounds perfect.” Dev kisses Niall and then reaches for his phone. “Is your favorite food cart still down the street?”
Niall beams at him. “You remember.”
“I was thinking we could get their loaded jianbing for dinner.”
“Just save room for dessert.” Those gold brown eyes spark, his throaty laugh wrapping around Dev’s shoulders, lips once more upon his.
The phone drops to the bed. Dinner can wait a little longer.