Here With You | ✔

CHAPTER FOUR; part one

Calvin Sumner 

     I wake and I've forgotten where I am.

     And I have no idea what woke me until I smell it. Something syrupy sweet, something fried and doughy. I could be waking in the middle of a state fair.

     I'm not, though. I'm in our bed and Dres is not. I roll onto my side, spreading my arm across the space where he should be. I have no idea what time it is. It's definitely not early. I feel rested, really rested. Sated, too. Just on the right side of sore. My muscles are sinfully strained.

     I think about last night, about coming home. The disorientation that accompanies reuniting with someone you've been missing so much.

     I think about the heated quickness of fucking against the front door, offset by the slow and agonizing way Dres buried himself inside me after we had napped. A sort of sleepy sex, like we weren't quite awake and were finding our way to each other in our dreams. Dres had sprawled himself across me, lying so perfectly in line that every part of me was touching him, every part but his mouth that hovered over mine so I could swallow his quiet moans as he sank into me and stayed like that for too long. Long enough that I had to whine and nip at his mouth to get him to move. It was all the contempt I could manage, since he had my arms pinned above my head, his fingers laced through mine.

     Dres always liked to slow things down, to make me feel it, ache with it, with him. Like I needed any sort of reminding the power he had over me. Slow asked for a certain amount of control I didn't have when I was around him. He watched me the whole time, his eyes wide, the blacks of his pupils nearly absorbing all of the light. I wanted to know what was going on in that head of his. I wanted to ask him if it was good. I just wanted to say something, anything, to break the spell, to pull us back a bit, because we weren't there anymore.

     But I didn't say anything. I just took it, all of him, in the slowest and deepest way he could give it to me. We're tethered, destined to go on forever even after it was over.

     Dres didn't move right away when he finished, when we both had. I had tremors in my legs so I was in no hurry, either, trying and failing to find air in the small space between us. The release had bought an onslaught of sleepiness and so I started to rest my eyes, just for a minute. He moved his head, pressing his cheek against mine so he could sing our song into my ear, the one I'd played for him outside his door during quarantine, so soft I could've missed it if we hadn't silenced the universe already.

     Whenever you need me, I'll be there.

     It was a sort of love making that doesn't end even when the sex does, an intimacy that sticks. A moment that would flash before my eyes as I died so I could take the feeling with me into my afterlife.

     I'm still thinking about it, replaying the night like it's a fantasy I created and have lived in my dreams, when Dres comes up the stairs. My eyes are closed so I don't see him, but I can hear his steps, however soft they are. I keep my eyes shut and he pads over to the bed. His weight shifts the mattress. I feel his breath near the side of my neck, and then he says my name right into my ear.

     "Cas." He nudges at my jaw with his nose. It's more like a nuzzle, feels strangely primal, and wakes more than my conscious. And then, "Baby, wake up."

     I was prepared to jump this man in that moment.

     So I do, naturally, turning swiftly and pressing my lips to the first bit of skin I can reach. I land on Dres's chin, shifting upwards to kiss his mouth next. He pulls away saying, "How'd I know that'd wake you up?"