There are moments when your brokenness hits you like a ton of bricks or a punch in the gut. When the reality of your life sets in and you realize how powerless you are. How huge the forces that turn the Earth can be. How simple it would be to tear you loose from your foundations and send you flying into outer space—or insanity.
Suddenly, nothing feels real. You're clenching the crappy motel sheets in your fists just for something to hold on to, but they could be made of air for all the good they're doing. Your breath is hitching in your chest and you feel like you might scream. It's like everything is rushing past you and you're being left behind to be buffeted back and forth by the wake the universe leaves behind. You are nothing, a speck of dust carried on an eddy of cosmic wind.
It's not even a conscious decision to go to him. It's as if the moment he walks in the door, you're drawn to him, the only proof that anything but raging chaos has ever emerged from the darkness. One look into his eyes tells you all you need to know—he sees your nightmare, unfolding in the backs of your eyes, and he is here to save you. Just like he has always done.
Your lips touch his and the weight crushing your chest flees like dark before the dawn. You're drawing great gasps of air, interrupting the kiss, but he doesn't tell you not to, doesn't shove you away. He times his own breathing to be slow and even, kissing you between sobs. Funny. You hadn't even noticed your were crying until the callused pad of his thumb rubs the spilled-over tears from the angles of your cheekbones. He hasn't said a word, hasn't even hushed you as he tends to do to try and keep you calm. Perhaps he knows it would do no good. He only stands and lets you break apart in the circle of his arms, catching the occasional whimper between his lips.
The void behind your sternum feels like it has reversed direction. The sense of an implosion becomes a sense of filling, and then over flowing, and there is nothing you can do but press your lips to his all the harder, trying to fit all of your needs and all of your wants into the pressure of lips and tongue. You should have known he would understand.
And suddenly you're nervous, because he hasn't wrapped his hands around your wrists to keep your fingers from tracing the planes of his chest over his shirt, and he hasn't backed away with that look at screams pity for you and your sick attraction to him. He's still letting you kiss him, and he's even returning the favor, sliding his tongue across your bottom lip, like maybe he knows the way the world just won't fucking stop, and maybe he knows that he's the only thing that feels like it won't fall away from your hands when you grab it.
You're pressing yourself against him like you want to crawl under his skin, make a home in the spaces between his ribs so you would be safe, and maybe he knows a hell of a lot more than he's ever let on, because now his hands are on you, wrapping protectively around the back of your neck, sneaking under the hem of your shirt. If you could do it without ruining the moment, you'd be holding your breath. You're wondering when he's going to pull away, tell you enough, stop this, but he isn't. His fingers are wrapping themselves in your shirt, sliding it up over your skin, and you're taking his lead. Before you've really had a chance to think about the miracle of it all, you're both shirtless, and he's got you backed up against the wall to hold you steady.
Grips on each other's belt buckles are shaky. You don't miss the way his fingertips jitter over the metal and leather, but you can't ignore the way your own hands tremble. If it were anyone else, you'd be embarrassed and ashamed, but not now, not with him. The irony in that thought is bittersweet.
You feel like some teenager fumbling around the the darkness, trying to keep something hidden, and he must feel your fear in the vibrations of your breathing, because he's kissing you again, whispering calm and safe and real into your mouth, the curve of your ear, the skin on your neck as it arches back to bear itself to him. Some of that panic is back, acidic doubt working its way down the column of your spine. He's going to stop, he's going to laugh at you, he's going to leave you here alone to be washed out to sea on fate's tide.
And then you don't have room to be afraid. There's no space inside you for anything the moment you feels his hands on you, really on you, except for an instant to wonder if he's only doing this because he loves you in an entirely different way, if he'll wake up in the morning and hate himself for tonight. But the way the hand on your neck tightens as you whimper is the only answer you need, and you're fighting with the denim of his jeans so that they'll puddle on the floor to join yours.
The rest of it is heat and gasped blasphemy that would send you both to hell if you hadn't both already been there. You lose track of what part of you he's touching and your own hands can't seem to find enough of him. You know you're losing time, great chunks of it that you won't be able to fill in in the morning, but it doesn't even matter. A lifetime of love and lust compressed into one night is bound to be too much for any mind or heart.
He doesn't have to ask and you don't need to give an answer. He knows you better than you know yourself, and conversations like these have never really been conversations at all, not between the two of you. It's all trust and synchronization, and you would never have it any other way.
He's thrusting into you slowly, and even when it does sting, does hurt, you've got your fingers digging dappled bruises into the flesh of his shoulders and your head thrown back in nothing short of ecstasy. He's still got his hand around you, and you match the movement of your hips to his rhythm as best you can, stuttering in your pattern every so often as he hits the right spot at the right time. He doesn't seem to mind.
And he's murmuring in your ear again, his breath hot and his words hotter against your skin. He says, "You're okay, you're okay, I got you. I promise." Then he moans out your name, and you're done for, the love and want and need and fear and trust and doubt all spilling over. You cry out his name at the top of your lungs, something you've done too many times in your life, though never quite like this. He feels you tightening around him and the way your body shudders, and he's filling you in a way you never thought you'd have.
When you both come down, you realize your knees are weak, and he laughs, a deep and throaty sound that tugs at your heart. He pulls you away from the wall, onto the crappy double bed that was originally his-and-only-his-go-sleep-in-your-own, and those motel sheets you were grabbing onto earlier suddenly seems like bed-garb of the gods, all because of the way he hugs you closer, body wrapping around yours, a perfect fit.
You find that maybe you can sleep tonight, the feeling of his breathing on your skin, the beat of his pulse against your back, and you smile.
Existence may be infinite, uncontrollable, impending, suffocating—but it will never be bigger than what you have at this moment. What you've had your whole life.
A brother who will stop at nothing to keep you safe.