From a professional standpoint, James was adamant that Leo needed sleep. After forty-eight hours awake—and likely longer, because knowing Leo, he had underestimated—it was remarkable that Leo was still standing, let alone coherent. He needed a dark room, uninterrupted quiet, and some nourishing food upon waking.
But Leo wasn’t his patient. He was his—lover? Friend? Both designations seemed inadequate, almost coy, when used to describe a person who was becoming the fixed point about which James’s world orbited. And right now Leo needed him. Not to fret over him, not to put him to bed, but to—well, to take him to bed.
This was how Leo got when he was done with a mission. James was familiar with this reaction from the war. Some people responded to brushes with death with an urgent need for sex. James did not. James responded to brushes with death with an urgent need for barbiturates or, failing that, a place to quietly panic.
This train of thought was interrupted by Leo’s mouth reaching a particularly sensitive part of James’s neck. “I missed you,” James said, and Leo’s only answer was to slide James’s braces down his shoulders and start in on his shirt buttons.
“Just so you know,” James said a little breathlessly, “I’m viewing this as first aid.” Leo shoved James’s undershirt up and started mouthing at his collarbone. “Oh Christ—no, don’t stop, that feels nice. Anyway, I’m viewing all these encounters as first aid. Because otherwise I couldn’t make myself fuck a man who really needs sleep. No, Leo, why did you take your mouth away, damn you?”
Leo kissed him soundly and pushed him backwards onto the bed. “Because I don’t care if you view it as first aid or last rites or an arcane ritual. I just need you.”
“You have me,” James said, the words coming out more earnestly than he had intended. “You have me.”
It was wildly frustrating, one of the chief inadequacies of the English language as far as James was concerned, that there were no words to express exactly what James felt about Leo, and what Leo meant to him. You have me wasn’t nearly enough. The alternatives seemed either trite or florid, and he doubted Leo would appreciate them almost as much as he doubted his ability to deliver them with a straight face.
That left him with no choice but to try and show Leo how he felt, and right now that meant pulling Leo down to the mattress beside him, making quick work of his jumper and shirt, then getting a hand inside his trousers.
Leo hissed his approval and James rolled on top of him, bracing himself on one forearm. He kissed Leo again, trying to keep it slow and soft. He brought one hand up to cup Leo’s jaw and felt the other man’s pulse in his neck, a steady, reassuring thump. God, it was good to have him back. They had only met a little over two months ago, but James couldn’t cast his mind back to a time when he hadn’t known what Leo felt like beneath him, when he hadn’t memorized the precise shape and feel of Leo’s lips against his own.
Now Leo brought a knee up so their hips fit more closely together. James gave an involuntary gasp and pressed down in an automatic search for friction, then groaned when Leo arched up, evidently seeking the same.
He kissed Leo’s shoulder and saw the edge of the bruise that he had expected to find there, given how stiff Leo’s left side had seemed earlier. “Any other wounds I ought to know about?” he asked.
“That barely even counts as a wound,” Leo said, his voice rough. “More of a muscle strain with a bit of decorative coloring, really.”
Still, James made a show of kissing his way down Leo’s torso as if inspecting him for injuries. Actually, there was no as if about it: he was very literally reassuring himself that Leo was in one piece. He shoved Leo’s trousers and shorts down and then off and carried on his inspection. No sense in doing things by halves.
“What do you need from me?” James asked.
Leo looked down at him, slightly dazed in a way that made James quite pleased with himself. “You’ll be doing all the work, so dealer’s choice,” he murmured.
James nearly rolled his eyes because when Leo said things like that, he knew what he’d get. When he needed something hard, something with an edge, he asked for it. When he didn’t ask—well, he was still asking, but for something else.
He bit Leo’s hip, just hard enough to keep Leo from falling asleep on him. Then he shoved both Leo’s knees up, kissed the inside of his thigh, and climbed back up his body to take his mouth in another kiss. He thrust his hips, testing the position, seeing how they rubbed together like that. And God, it felt good. Like this, he could kiss Leo senseless until he felt the other man come apart beneath him.
Leo wrapped his legs around James’s waist and sighed, like nothing so much as a sleepy, lazy cat. Their kisses fell apart until they were only mouthing hungrily at one another. One of Leo’s hands found its way to James’s chest and the other held firmly to his hip. James brought his hand up to Leo’s mouth; Leo took the hint, licking James’s palm. Then James grasped them both in one fist.
“Can you come like this?” James asked.
“Don’t stop,” Leo said, as if there were any chance of James stopping.
James loved it when they were slow and quiet together, when he could almost believe they had all the time in the world. And he loved when Leo let things unfold like this, unhurried and almost calm. He loved watching Leo’s pleasure gradually crest and finally overtake him, loved that he now knew the tightening of Leo’s grip and the slight hitch in his breath that meant he was close, loved above all how in these moments, when the two of them were cocooned in pleasure and fondness, the rest of the world receded into soft focus irrelevance.
“James, I—” Leo broke off, biting down on James’s shoulder as he came. James found himself, as he often did in these moments, murmuring soft and soothing nonsense into Leo’s ear, praise and promises, senseless words of gratitude and affection. When he came it was with Leo’s name on his mouth, Leo’s callused hands on his overheated skin.
He allowed himself a minute to lie there, collapsed half on top of Leo’s body. Then he wet a flannel in the adjoining bathroom and used it to clean Leo off.
“Now go to sleep,” James said, kissing Leo’s temple.
“You like to take care of me,” Leo said.
“If you’re only figuring that out now, you must be a terrible spy.”
At the corner of Leo’s mouth was a tired smile and James had to kiss him there too. He pulled the covers up to Leo’s chin and then turned the lamp off before getting himself ready for bed in the dark.