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“Have we done this before?”
“Why don’t you see for yourself, golden boy?”
Rover thinks Luuk is getting ridiculous with these questions. It is in his nature to pry, and in Luuk’s to deflect and turn everything rhetorical when it matters least. The translucent hem of Luuk’s jacket brushes the floor as he shrugs it off, angling his body just enough for Rover to see the muscle beneath the torn sleeves, the golden veins glowing faintly along his arms.
What happened to the doctor’s impeccable sense for reading a room?
Slender fingers settle on Rover’s shoulders. Luuk leans in until their faces are close enough for Rover to smell soap in his hair. The urge to ask stupid questions fades into silence. He watches the beauty that is in his arms instead, the flutter of golden lashes, the easy audacity of Luuk blinking without looking away. A lump locked in his throat, and it keeps growing, and growing.
The distance between them closes with an audible swallow.
Luuk smiles into the kiss, tilting his head just enough to allow entry. Their teeth knock together in a brief, needless impatience.
Sentinels. When did he become so…angry?
“Ah, slow down, savior,” Luuk murmurs, brushing a thoughtful kiss against Rover’s jaw. “You must know… the night is still young.”
Rover’s gaze drifts toward the open window of Luuk’s hidden office. Beyond it, the frostland sky burns with motion — lines of meteors scattering across the dark, each streak more vivid than the last.
Luuk, of course, couldn’t see any of it. The doctor mustn’t have cared.
Perhaps that is why his fingers move instead to trace the line beneath Rover’s eyes. Golden strands of his hair fall between them as he studies those golden orbs — the only gold he seems permitted to know, and perhaps the last he would wish to remember.
It is strange. Heartbreaking, almost.
Luuk bends over backwards, licking a slow, mournful stripe along Rover’s brow. Rover finds himself drawn to the softness of his hair, straddling the spill of it without thought. He does not linger on those sightless eyes. The beauty of those strands rivals any woman he has held, any man he has dared share a night with.
Beauty must lie in the eyes of the beholder.
Maybe home exists for those who wait, and welcomes those who have only ever known waiting.
Luuk’s head drops to his collarbone.
(Where did that come from? Where is home — and why does he feel it rests upon his shoulder?)
Anger — it must be — swells in his chest. He watches it knock the air from his lungs, sheering violence through his arms when the doctor stumbles back under a harsh push. Luuk’s addled expression settles into something blank, staring listlessly as Rover closes the distance again and throws him onto the narrow bed.
His hands make quick work of Luuk’s undergarments. In that demented haze, he barely hears the shuddered breath when cold air touches the doctor’s skin, or the careless press of nails against soft flesh. Gold slips from his grasp, away from his care — returning to a void he couldn’t, cannot, reach.
Those twenty years passed like a dream.
Lovers parted. (Lovers?)
Desire forgotten, young and malnourished and on the verge of evanescence.
Luuk is bare before Rover can bring himself to stop. The lump in his throat is so large he can barely speak.
“Rover,” Luuk calls softly. Tender, from his hair to his fingertips, from those fingertips to the lone tear on Rover’s cheek. “Breathe.”
He can’t.
He feels as though he has lost too much. Forgotten too many things. Defeated before he could begin to mend anything.
Abandoned before he could even dream of returning. Abandoned because he couldn’t.
Twenty years.
He wonders what Luuk has done in that long — oh, so long — time.
“Oh, Rover,” Luuk says again, his voice velvet-soft, damp and old. He lifts Rover’s hand and guides it downward, from his chest to the slope of his hip. Luuk hovers over Rover’s knuckles, then massages them gently, repeating the motion.
Up and down, then up again.
His body trembles beneath the touch, his head tipping back so Rover cannot see the want muddled in his eyes. Luuk wraps his legs tightly around a slim waist, hips buckling with unyielding tension. Chest heaving, he beckons Rover closer, to close whatever cold distance still lingers between them.
And yet, when Rover touches him — just below his hips, kneading that soft skin — he jolts and shies away.
Luuk looks almost virginal, but the whimper in his throat is blatantly unchaste. Sweat beads on his forehead before Rover leans in to taste it away, his hands kneading, then pinching, then kneading again into the warmth of his flesh.
Luuk was right. The night is young, no matter how old they feel.
Rover knows when it’s time to hunt.
Mindlessly, he reaches for the bottle of lubrication on the nightstand, unsettled by how familiar the motion feels. Gold spreads across the pillow like a halo. A thin line of spit spills from Luuk’s parted lips, drawn loose by Rover’s touch.
Rover pats his cheek, faintly amused by how unmoored he looks, crimson eyes blown wide and misty.
“Can I?” he murmurs, testing gently, feeling the muscle flutter beneath his touch.
Luuk hisses before nodding, an arm thrown over his eyes as his body yields to what is to come.
Rover presses in a slicked finger, sliding it deep to the knuckle. Luuk tenses momentarily before easing — though not without effort. Small huffs fill the space, most of them muffled into his arm.
Rover twists the finger experimentally before adding another, this time slower at first before pressing both deeper.
“Ngh,” Luuk breathes, the sound soft and wet.
He then goes rigid, his thighs drawing in around Rover’s head as if to trap him there. Rover’s gaze lingers at the entrance, where the sheen of lubricant still glistens beyond where his fingers can reach. He leans in, tracing a slow stripe with his tongue before pressing closer between his fingers. A free hand wraps around Luuk’s dick, urging him to relax into the sensation. He feels the man above choke out a sob, fingers tangling desperately in his hair.
“Y-you! You don’t—ah! You don’t have to—”
The protest falls on deaf ears as Rover continues, until all he can taste is the fondant of Luuk’s walls tightening around him.
“Wait—Rover, please—”
He stretches the space with his tongue before adding a third finger, then a fourth, just as Luuk’s hips lift helplessly into the air with release, some of it spilling into Rover’s hair. The thigh muscles around him twitch wildly, and he cannot help but close his mouth there, his jaw snapping.
Golden fluid seeps from the marked skin, dripping onto the pristine sheets like rain on dark earth.
Rover returns to the spot, gentler now, tracing over the bite with an apologetic lick.
“Doctor,” he murmurs, lifting Luuk’s chin and guiding the arm shielding his face aside. His thumb presses lightly at the hinge of Luuk’s jaw, steady but not unkind. “Let’s make sure we hear you this time.”
Rover fucks him slowly. He doesn’t rush nor does he test the limits the way he has with others.
When Rover wants something to last, he makes it last. Measuring time with his hips, stretching each second thin until it almost trembles apart. He doesn’t know if Luuk prefers it fast or slow — Luuk doesn’t say — but Rover chooses slow. Wickedly careful.
With others, it had always been somewhat simpler. They told him what they wanted. Some begged, some commanded. Rougher. Faster. Hard enough to leave marks, mellow enough to let them drift midway. Rover was never cruel about it. They could have what they asked for. They could come when they pleased, and they did. He rarely adjusted his own rhythm unless he decided to. If he wanted it drawn out, it was drawn out. If he wanted it brief, it ended.
They would both left satisfied.
But Luuk is so quiet.
Luuk doesn’t guide his hands, not anymore. Doesn’t protest beyond breathless sounds swallowed into the sheets. He endures, or he accepts — it’s hard to tell which. Rover finds he doesn’t know what to do with that kind of silence.
So he keeps it slow.
He tips Luuk over the edge until he’s trembling with an immeasurable high, then eases him back only to build him up again. His hips never stop their steady rhythm. His eyes stay fixed on the streak of tears cooling against reddened cheeks.
Because for the first time, he tries to understand.
He wants Luuk to tell him. To be honest.
And until he does, Rover has to keep moving.
“Ugh,” a strangled sound catches in Luuk’s throat before his body slackens, trembling through another crest. Rover has lost count of how many times they’ve come undone tonight. Nor does he care.
Sweet walls clinch to him like a vice, and he only wants them closer, impossibly closer.
“Ah—please,” Luuk sobs, their fingers tangling together as if it’s instinct. Rover wonders how would he ever forget something as beautiful as this? How could he ever?
“I—I can’t—”
“Yes, you can.”
Rover kisses him, drowning himself in those unearthed sounds, feeling the shake of Luuk’s head against his cheek. He stays with him through it — until even Rover’s breath leaves him in a rough exhale and everything finally stills.
Even at the end, Luuk hadn’t said what he wanted.
Rover sighs and lowers his head in disbelief — but Luuk grabs his hand.
“Luuk?”
Luuk brings Rover’s hand to his mouth. He presses a soft, distressed kiss into his palm, then another along his fingers. His tongue traces over Rover’s knuckles, tears and spits messily dripping everywhere.
“Hey, what’s wro—”
Luuk shakes his head and guides Rover’s hand lower, pressing it into his gaping hole. He’s still crying.
“Savior,” he whispers, voice trembling, “c-can you…?”
For a fleeting second, Rover thinks he’s hallucinated it. Exhaustion has finally splintered his mind into something muddier, kinder than reality. But he understands now, he truly does.
What is twenty years to someone who has spent every one of them dreaming of Rover’s heels turning on their back? Of grieving living things and exhuming grudges? When the water had slipped beneath Luuk’s clothes and settled in his lungs, when he let a longing so young and fragile freeze beneath a lake of silence.
“Then we’ll make a promise, Luuk.”
Back when Luuk had been forbidden to yield, Rover had hidden behind a mountain of promises he never kept.
“You’ll open your eyes, and I’ll be standing right here. Just like today.”
He had waited too long. Missed too many chances to make good on words that once felt so easy to say.
Luuk must be tired of waiting, too.
Tonight, however, Rover had only one promise left to give. He would learn the language of Luuk's body again. He would understand the scars. He would stay — no matter how late the hour, how little time remained, or how hollow the words might sound in the quiet of their beings.
Rover tightened his hand into a fist, pressing deep into Luuk’s yielding heat.
“Agrh—” Luuk’s breath hitched, his entire frame convulsing, legs shifted restlessly against the bedding, heels dragging as he surrendered to be seen, to be taken care of. Rover did not pull away when his fist could no longer go further. He stayed until the frantic drumming of Luuk's heart slowed to a steady, rhythmic thrum.
Every patch of their bodies feels sticky, but Rover makes no effort to move.
Relaxed at last, Luuk’s body went limp, the exhaustion of the years bleeding out of him like water into parched earth. He turned his head slowly to face Rover, his eyes glassy and searching. He reached up, his trembling fingers grazing Rover’s cheek, tracing the line of his jaw with a ghost-like touch.
A lone tear again tracked through the salt and heat on Rover's face. Luuk’s brow furrowed in the dim light, his thumb moving with a worried softness to swipe the moisture away.
“What…” Luuk can barely shape the word. “Rover, what’s wrong?”
“I—”
Rover drags his palms over his face like a child. “I don’t know.”
Honesty demands honesty. You don’t get to outrun your mistakes forever.
Aemeath was not a mistake. She could never.
But Rover is. He feels like one.
When Luuk wraps his arms around the small of his shoulders, the force of it aches. Everything aches. Still, Rover folds into him, pressing closer, feeling the fever of their skin and the quiet space they’ve carved out of the night.
“Can I ask you a question?” Rover sniffles.
“…Yes.” Luuk’s answer is barely more than breath. “I’ll be as candid as I can.”
Rover hesitates. The question might as well have lived under his tongue for twenty years.
“Was it cold?”
“...”
“Was it cold underwater?”
Twenty years.
“Yes.” Luuk leans in and presses a kiss to Rover’s cheek. He sounds old and forgiving. “It was.”
He rests his forehead against Rover’s. “Let’s go to sleep now, shall we?”
Rover nods.
They lie chest to chest, breaths evening out in the dark. Rover keeps his eyes open a little longer, listening to the steady rhythm beneath his ear, as if committing it to memory.
When he finally sleeps, he dreams of water that does not freeze, of winters that pass, of promises kept in the morning light.