Chapter Text
Sometimes, when Noah looks at him, Jonas feels like stained glass, broken on purpose and put back together just to be revered. In fragments, shattered. Sometimes, when Noah looks at him, Jonas believes—the sunlight may never reach him again, but if it does… if it does, perhaps he could be beautiful. More than anything, he hates that this still matters to him. These aren’t thoughts that he should be having, especially not this late, in bed, white-knuckled, as he tries to refrain from touching himself.
Lightning splits the sky outside, like a scar, painting the newly-built cabin burningly white. A flash, and then it’s gone. Dark again. Jonas is sick to death of fleeting things. But he hates what lingers more. The glances, the pain, the need. All of it feels ancient, and it makes his skin crawl— crawl as if it wants to get away from him in his pathetic state. He’s half hard, unwashed, quivering, wishing he could think of Martha without throwing up. That really happened. The last time he tried. It felt like desecration. Her grave and her bed merged in his mind, and he retched until there was more blood than acid in his throat.
No. He can’t think of her anymore. Who else? What remains in the world?
Jonas closes his eyes, takes a ragged breath, and remembers this morning. Noah had found some apples and brought them back to the campsite before dawn. Seeing them, Jonas felt his stomach turn with something—not revulsion as usual. Hunger. He ate like a beast, and it hurt, but he kept going, unable to stop. Only now, locked away in safe loneliness, can he admit to himself that this craving was only partly his. The weight of Noah’s gaze on him as he chewed… That hunger bled into his own. Suddenly, the skin breaking under his teeth, the juice coating his tongue, the meat in his mouth… felt like something else. He choked.
Noah reached for him. “You’re a little too eager,” he murmured.
“And you’re a little too fucking close,” Jonas snapped.
His cheeks burn, adding to the horror by making him feel alive. He wishes he’d said something crueler. He wishes he’d had the courage to hit him. In his mind, he rewinds the memory and tries to change it, to picture himself tackling Noah to the ground; the two of them rolling in the cold mud, as he and Bartosz rolled in the rain. That fight gave Jonas a split lip. Once he ended up in the future, it was a source of shame… and comfort. It reminded him of his betrayal, but also that someone had cared enough to touch him, however brutally. When it healed, tears stung his eyes.
With Noah, it would be different. There would be no one—no one like Martha—around to scream and make them stop. Jonas shudders at the thought. What would happen? How many bruises would Noah leave? Probably none. And that would hurt much more.
Except, hands aren’t the only thing that can leave marks.
Fuck. He shoots up and throws away the blankets. He feels feverish, shivering all over from the ghost of Noah’s lips on his throat. Sucking on the sensitive skin. Though his legs tremble, he makes himself stand and stumbles blindly through the dark, cramped cabin. He built it himself, and it still feels like a prison. A cage. Anyone would lose their mind in here, he tells himself desperately. Anyone would sink into madness, become a stranger to themselves.
Finally, he finds the bucket of water that he keeps as a sink. He holds his breath, then sinks his head into it. It isn’t nearly cold or deep enough. Frustration eats away at him as he emerges dripping wet. Out of options, he flees into the freezing arms of November. The ground might as well be covered in shards of glass; the wind is sharp as a blade. Nevertheless, it’s a relief. Exhaling shakily, he leans against the door and focuses on his own heartbeat.
Then he sees them. Illuminated by the glow of an oil lamp. Noah and Elisabeth huddled together by the door of the other cabin. It’s close enough that, once his eyes have accustomed to the dark, he can see their hands moving gently. They’re talking. Whispering. He can’t make out the signs, and even if he could, he probably wouldn’t understand. They’ve been speaking the same language for years. Ever since he joined them, he’s been struggling to catch up. Maybe it’s time to admit that he never will.
Bitterness fills his chest.
When Noah tucks a strand of Elisabeth’s hair behind her ear, Jonas turns away. He doesn’t have to watch to know what will happen next. He doesn’t have to witness it to be consumed by dread. Resigned, he returns to his bed—the ratty mattress he pulled from the bones of the home that isn’t his anymore. It carries several curses. Every night, he tosses and turns for hours until the usual nightmares assault him: Martha moaning softly—then bleeding out—beneath him; his father hanging from a beam, covered in dark-matter-like paint that won’t ever come off. Jonas knows the horrors by their effect on his heart. His father makes it writhe like a dying animal. Martha, when she finds it in that state, is the sun that makes it rot.
It doesn’t end there, though. On this particular night, his heart becomes a carcass, and then he comes flying to pick at it. A priest at his bedside, holding a finger to Jonas’s lips. Slowly, he leans down to press his mouth against the shell of his ear. No sound leaves him, but as the words take shape against his skin, Jonas understands them anyway. Don’t be afraid. You are becoming. He pulls off his black robes and is suddenly decades younger. The moonlight catches him like stained glass. In fragments, shattered. Jonas can’t see the bigger picture. All he sees is brokenness—battered limbs and filth. But, wrestling in the sheets, they’d fit. And if they slipped into each other like that, it wouldn’t matter. If it hurt, it’d hurt good. If it ended… if it ended…
Jonas wakes with a start. The hand on his shoulder. It burns. It burns so well.
Noah stands above him in the pale light of the beckoning morning. “Hey, don’t be afraid,” he says. “You told me to wake you at dawn. Remember?”
“No,” Jonas mutters angrily, pulling his arm back to safety. His body feels chained—all it can do is make noise as it longs for things outside of its reach. He’s always been a horrible pretender, and he’s afraid that Noah can sense his heart pounding; his cock straining against his briefs; his tremoring breath that comes from being thoroughly fucked.
“What are you still doing here? Get out,” he continues sharply.
Noah’s lip twitches. Closing his eyes, Jonas battles the sudden desire to press his thumb to it. Instead, the gentleness claims his tongue. “Sorry. Just… Go. I’ll meet you there.”
“Okay. Gomorrah?”
Jonas swallows hard. “Sure.”
Gomorrah is their codename, given by Elisabeth on a particularly bad day, for the broken-down mobile home where Peter was killed. All provisions have been stripped from it over the past few years, including its wheels, but the faucet still works. They usually start their days there whenever they’re running low on water and don’t want to risk venturing further into town. For good reason, Elisabeth never comes along. So it’s always just the two of them. Alone.
Jonas has never had a problem with that. Then again, he’s never…
It’s been almost five years since the world ended. Six years since he had sex. By now, the urge should’ve died. But, just like him—it seems, it can’t. All this time, it’s been a sleeping beast. Locked in a cave, waiting to be roused by its next meal. Jonas is brought back to the day before, the apple that swelled and took up an unnatural amount of space in his mouth.
His eyes water. It could’ve been a lifetime ago that he was trapped in the purgatory of the boys’ locker room, struggling to breathe from the shower steam, the towels used as whips, the jokes, the bodies, the jokes about the bodies (Hey, Kahnwald. Who are you looking to impress with that thing? I’ve heard there’s a trailer somewhere—). He was always quick with the comebacks. Now, thinking of it makes him feel disgusting. Some words, after all, are nastier than anything else you can put in your mouth.
His jaw trembles, just as it did then. It could’ve been a lifetime ago. It could’ve been yesterday.
He tells himself, just as he did then, that the layers of clothes are armor. The tank top, the hoodie, the jacket, and the cargo pants, weighed down by useless tools, protect against the cold winds as he drags himself toward Gomorrah.
Noah is there, waiting for him. Leaning against the door that’s always open and askew.
“Took your time,” he says flatly.
Once again, Jonas wonders if he knows. Once again, he’s quick with a comeback. “Yeah. How many times did you get to wash your hands and pray?”
Jonas has known about Noah’s obsession for a while. He’s noticed the patterns; how he spends an hour in front of the dinnertime fire picking dirt out of his fingernails, as though it were something worse. He was the one who suggested they put “sinks” in the cabins. Now, every night, he retires early, and Jonas listens carefully for the gentle splash of water that can be heard from behind his closed door. It’s like a ritual, shared secretly between them.
Walking up the steps, Jonas tries to brush past him, but Noah turns around, making their chests touch. “I don’t pray,” he says, smirking. “I don’t need to.”
Jonas frowns to hide that his breath has caught. “Okay. So?”
“I’m more concerned with another kind of worship.”
“And you need to be squeaky clean for that?”
“Just in case.”
Noah’s gaze has turned heavy. Jonas senses his throat go dry as he’s pulled in by the blackness of his blown pupils. Losing himself, here and now, would be so easy. He knows it. He fears it. Just as he knows and fears the kind of worship that Noah prepares for every night. Sex. With Elisabeth.
“Whatever,” Jonas tries to scoff, but it comes out strained. He turns to finally enter the trailer. “Did you go over the maps without me?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
They fill a couple of containers with water and sit on the near-collapsed wooden frame that used to be a bed. Munching on fire-roasted hazelnut crackers, they pore over the maps that Jonas has drawn of Winden’s remains. They’ve explored just about everything on both sides of the wall, retraced their own steps over and over in hopes of finding something salvageable that may help them tame the God Particle. Without Claudia, they’re fumbling through the darkness. Jonas was distraught when she left last month. Noah, on the other hand, seemed relieved.
“We should try the hospital again,” he says, pointing to the red cross on the map. “Elisabeth told me that we’re running low on antiseptic.”
“It’s already been stripped,” Jonas says, irritated despite himself. “There’s nothing left there.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Claudia said—”
Noah huffs. “Of course, if Claudia said it—”
“And if Elisabeth said it, then nothing else matters, right? You waste your time following her lead,” he interjects harshly. “She just makes you chase things you don’t need.”
Jonas meant to allude to their shared fate of immortality. There’s no real need to clean your wounds when the sepsis can’t kill you. Or is there? Maybe there is. Maybe he’s just grown so used to suffering that trying to alleviate it seems pointless.
Noah leans forward so suddenly that Jonas thinks he might finally receive a blow. Instead, he halts an inch from Jonas's face and lowers his voice to a loaded whisper, “What do I need, huh? Tell me.” His warm breath grazes Jonas's chin, and it feels like a caress—what he thinks caresses used to feel like, anyway.
Trying to keep his voice even, Jonas says the first thing that comes to mind. “You need to focus.”
“On getting the right things?”
“Yeah.”
Noah smiles knowingly. “Okay,” is all he says, but Jonas doesn’t really hear it. He’s too busy digging his fingers into the crumbling wood beneath him.
They end up going where Jonas wants them to go—which is the aid depository. Noah would undoubtedly prefer if they were fully self-sufficient, cut off from the rest of this godforsaken place. Jonas is torn. Part of him hates what’s left of humanity. Part of him longs for it. Every time they come here for food, he’s forced to face the fact that he’ll never be one amongst the hungry faces in the crowd. He’ll never be next in line. He’ll always be the villain, the thief hiding in the shadows once darkness has fallen. By now, stealing is just another routine operation. They do it to keep themselves off the ever-shortening list of surviving Winden residents.
As far as the world is concerned, they don’t exist. How lonely that is. How precious, too.
“I found your favorite,” Noah says, tossing him a green apple from a barrel.
Jonas catches on reflex, then gawks at it. He can’t deny how perfect it looks, but he has more important things to worry about. “This is where they’re from? You’ve been here alone?”
“Of course. Do you want to starve?”
“I thought we agreed—”
“You don’t need to follow me wherever I go, Jonas. You’ve already shown me the way.”
A dreadful shiver courses down his spine, as it always does when Noah’s voice takes on this tone of eerie reverence. It makes him want to crawl out of his skin. “You mean he’s shown you. Adam.”
Their eyes meet across the depository. It’s no bigger than Jonas's cabin but, at this moment, it seems vast—too vast, as if they’ll never breach the gap between their respective sides. With shaking hands, Jonas stuffs packets of nuts and jerky into his backpack. “I’m not him. I’ll never be him,” he bites out. “I won’t show you anything.”
(But, of course, he already has).
Dinner is a silent affair. It always is, given that they stick to sign language at mealtimes. Tonight, however, the silence is oppressive. Elisabeth tries to include Jonas in a discussion about whether they should risk harvesting nettles for soup before the ground fully freezes. She thinks they could be safe to eat; the new ones that sprang this year seem unmarred by radiation. Although Jonas listens, he doesn’t actually care, so he answers her questions in one-or two-word sentences.
Eventually, she stands and brushes dirt off her knees. Glaring at Noah through the flames, she signs, ‘Whatever’s wrong with him, make it right again.’
And then she leaves. Shuts herself in the biggest cabin that she shares with Noah.
Jonas pretends that he didn’t understand. Hugging his legs, he focuses on the heat of the fire that strokes his face. Some nights, he’s tempted to reach out and touch it. Right now, he feels afraid of it. When Noah sighs and moves closer, Jonas resists the desire to draw a line in the dirt between them. Don’t go past here. Don’t even think of it. But he’s not sure who the warning would be for.
“I don’t want you to be someone you’re not,” Noah says at last, trying to catch his eye.
Jonas refuses to give him the satisfaction. Kicking a crumbled leaf into the ashes, he flinches. “I don’t believe you. You think I’m becoming… him.”
“When did I say that?”
In my dream, Jonas almost blurts, but he catches himself at the last second. He settles for a non-answer—a scoff.
“We keep having the same conversation,” Noah points out. “And I keep thinking that there has to be more to it. More to you. But you resist change. You’re terrified of it.”
Jonas bites the inside of his cheek. “You’re not.”
“No. I embrace it because I know it’s meant to be. The prophecy—”
That word triggers an eruption. “Shut up! Fuck! I’m not talking about your damn prophecy!” Jonas is shaking now, losing control of his tongue. “I know you’re sleeping with her, all right? That’s what I meant.”
For once in his life, Noah has the decency to look surprised. Feeling antsy and exposed under the weight of his widened gaze, Jonas toys with a thread on the cargo pants. His throat tightens around a lump of what he’ll never have the courage to say. Something about worship. Something about wanting to know what it feels like.
“I’m not,” Noah murmurs, shocking Jonas out of his thoughts. When their eyes meet, he adds, “She’s… still haunted by what happened at Gomorrah.”
Elisabeth doesn’t like to be touched. Jonas realized as much when he had to bandage her elbow last year. She tried to do it herself, many times, using her non-dominant right hand. To no avail. Once tears of frustration appeared in her eyes, Jonas took the gauze from her. He reached for her wrist, and she backed away from him on all fours. She kept shaking her head as blood from the gash poured down her forearm. Eventually, they worked it out together. He didn’t have to touch her if she just kept still. To make her tremors settle, he told her about a fox he’d seen the night before. It was blind in one eye, but at least it was alive. Somehow. Clever, resilient creature.
“So she doesn’t want you,” Jonas infers, wishing he weren’t breathless.
Noah is quiet for a moment before he asks, “Do you want her? Is that what this is?”
“God. No.”
“What do you want, Jonas?”
The callback to the trailer makes him wince. “Nothing,” he says. To convince himself that it’s true, he’s forced to reach inside his own heart. “You can’t understand that, I know, but there’s nothing… I don’t want to do anything, I don’t want to be anything. I just want to disappear.” He swallows hard, staring at the flames in front of him. They look blurry. “And I think I’m almost there.”
He expects Noah to unleash his usual spiel about promises and fate and Paradise. He senses it coming, and he’s opened his mouth in anticipation, ready to snap, when Noah finally says, “How long has it been since anybody touched you?”
Jonas deflates. He clenches his jaw to smother the sob that’s suddenly lodged in his throat. The last real touch he remembers is Martha’s fingers in his hair. But he can’t recall that without reawakening the worst pain he’s ever felt. The grief is unbearable, crushing everything else. He tries to recall his father’s arms. Despair. His mother’s arms. Shame. Bartosz’s fists. Violence.
“Oh, don’t ask me that,” he says finally, trying his best at a self-deprecating laugh. It sounds pathetic, as if he’s drowning. He wishes he were.
Without warning, Noah places a hand on his knee, making him jolt.
“What are you doing?”
“Relax,” Noah says gently. “Just let me.”
Jonas gawks at him. “Let you?”
Noah doesn’t say anything. He holds Jonas's gaze as he, slowly and deliberately, moves his hand toward his thigh. The burn that follows reminds Jonas of this morning. The hand pressed to his shoulder. In reality, that’s the last real touch he’s felt—and fuck, does it scare him to death. He forgets how to breathe. All he can do is stare, frozen, at Noah’s fingers as they splay across his hip. Too close to his crotch. Panic grabs him by the throat, and he shifts, desperate to flee. But his body—treacherous as it is—turns in the opposite direction, and suddenly he’s facing Noah, their legs are touching, and if he had to draw a map of himself, he’d have to start there, at the meeting of their knees. Noah continues his upward trail, reaching the oversized hoodie and slipping his hand beneath it. Though there’s another layer of armor—the tank top—Jonas reacts instinctively, clutching Noah’s wrist to stop him.
Noah looks at him, patient as ever. “What are you afraid of?”
Jonas gulps. “I don’t know,” he mumbles, the truth hanging off his lips. In the end, he can’t hold it back. “That it’ll hurt.”
It’s ridiculous. He’s been beaten, shot, and hanged. For years, his life has been a web of pain, and he’s almost become desensitized to it. But maybe that’s the crux. Maybe he’s afraid that being touched will bring his body out of numbness. If Noah touches his skin, will his scars start screaming anew?
“If it does, it won’t be for long,” Noah assures him. “You’ll get used to it. I’ll be gentle.”
Jonas hesitates, his heart hammering. What kind of intimacy are they talking about again?
Noah must sense a change in him that he himself is unaware of, because he grabs his hand. “Guide me,” he whispers.
Jonas wants to say, ‘Absolutely not.’ Instead, he folds his hand over Noah’s and places it on his chest. Anticipating the worst, he takes a deep breath, but no pain comes. His ribcage rises and falls steadily under Noah’s palm. The hoodie might’ve spared him. There’s no way of knowing. Unless… Unless he dares to test it. He could, except nowhere feels safe. His body is a minefield, waiting to be triggered. If he’s wrecked, he’ll take Noah with him.
He realizes—for the first time—how much he’d hate that.
Squeezing his eyes shut in frustration, Jonas tilts forward, only slightly yet enough to make their foreheads touch. Their noses graze, and Jonas wants to cry—not because it hurts but because the tenderness feels devastatingly alien.
“Don’t be afraid,” Noah says.
The dream. Jonas's heart lurches. At the next moment, Noah’s lips land on his. Jonas doesn’t think; he just reacts to the sudden, unreal softness. He gasps low in his throat. For a few, blissful seconds, he’s supple, just taking what’s offered, in awe of it—that something like this still exists for him. Then, inevitably, as it deepens, he tastes the lingering notes of apple on Noah’s breath, and his brain catches up to what’s happening. He's being kissed. By…
Alarmed, he pulls away. “S-sorry,” he stammers, his face burning. “Shit, sorry. I’m—I’m not…”
“What?” Noah says, unfazed. “Ready?”
Jonas gulps. “... Gay. I’m not—”
As he utters the word, Noah’s eyebrows shoot up, forcing Jonas to realize how unbelievably stupid it sounds. His rowdy classmates aren’t here. They can’t mock him. They’re dead. So is his mother and everyone else who might’ve had an opinion about this. He never thought that’d be freeing, but… He licks his lips. They are tingling with need.
Noah looks at them shamelessly. “Sure,” he says. “You’re not anything.”
And, at this moment, it doesn’t matter that Noah’s eyes reveal what he’s really thinking. You’re everything. It doesn’t matter that Noah wants him to be something he’s not; that he’ll never be what Noah wants him to be. It doesn’t matter that it’s all a lie.
Because, held in their mouths, that lie tastes like liberation. It emboldens. When they come together again, Jonas pulls off his hoodie, craving the feeling of Noah’s clean hands on his skin. Once he’s felt them, grazing his arms, he wants them everywhere—and yes, he guides them. To cup his face. To clutch his shoulders. To breach the final barrier and trace his ribcage. It hurts, but it hurts good.
The kiss is wild. Deep. His tongue remembers a long-forgotten purpose, running along the seam of Noah’s mouth and claiming the last bits of sweetness. For a minute, Jonas lets himself go someplace else: a sweaty club in a foreign city where his stolen youth may find him again, where the only thing he has to be is a man kissing another man.
Then Noah’s pinky catches the leather cord around his neck. Saint Christophorus. The illusion shatters. Martha’s beautiful, sunlit face at the lake flashes in Jonas's mind, and he breaks away, breathing heavily.
In a dark and detached voice that doesn’t sound anything like his own, Jonas says, “Take it off.”
Noah complies immediately, lifting the cord off his neck with so much care that it might as well be a sacred act. Once Noah holds the necklace, Jonas feels a pang of possessiveness and rips it from him. He stuffs it in his pocket. For safekeeping, he tells himself. But he can’t deny the weight that’s fallen off him suddenly. He can’t deny the fire that’s still smoldering in his veins. In an instant, he wonders if this is how his mother felt every time she took off her wedding ring to fuck Ulrich.
That thought should put an end to whatever this is.
“I’m going to bed,” Jonas says, unable to look away from Noah’s face. A terrifying mix of hunger and devotion lives there. Although Jonas swallows, the next words remain on his tongue and slip off it, so huskily, “You should do your ritual… Just in case.”
Without uttering another word, Jonas leaves, returning to his cabin. Alone in there, he washes his hands, too. Not just his hands. He removes his tank top and pants and starts scrubbing. There’s nothing spiritual or soothing about it; it’s a frenzied attempt to return to a state that resembles normalcy. He wants to lose the wilderness, the ashes, the shame, but it seems buried deep in his pores. Eventually, his skin starts to feel raw, so and he gives up. He sits on the mattress, pulling his knees up to his chin. Shivering in the darkness, he might as well be a pathetic kid again. He has no plan, no idea what might happen to him—if he’ll come out of it more broken than before.
He doesn’t even know if Noah will turn up.
Feeling lost, he lies back. The necklace burns in his pocket, so he takes it out. It gleams in the moonlight, but it could just as well be the moon; that’s how far away it seems. How far away she seems. Clenching it in his fist doesn’t help. Bringing it to his lips doesn’t either. Eventually, he realizes that and tucks it away in a crevice between the mattress and the wall.
The knock startles him, even though it’s quite soft. He shoots up, stares at the door. Just like that, his heart is pounding again. What if he doesn’t answer? What if he pretends to have fallen asleep? Would Noah hold it against him? Probably not. But, deep down, Jonas knows that he’d hold it against himself. Perhaps forever.
Gathering courage, he stands and walks to the door. He’s way too aware of being almost naked, dressed down to his briefs. It’s been years since he’s shown this much of himself to anyone, but there’s no way back now. Noah must’ve heard his footsteps. It doesn’t matter if he’s ready— it’s already happening.
Jonas opens the door. Struck by the sudden need to seem nonchalant, he says, “You took your time,” recalling what Noah said at Gomorrah earlier.
A smirk appears on Noah’s face. His eyes run over Jonas’s body, alight with something unbelievably hot. “Well,” he exhales, “I had to be squeaky clean.”
He steps closer until their noses are almost touching again, right there on the threshold. Unable to bear the tension, Jonas steps aside, letting him in.
“You don’t have a lamp?” Noah asks.
“It’s by the mattress,” Jonas blurts, too anxious to consider why on Earth he’s asking.
That becomes evident quickly. When Noah finds the oil lamp, he pulls a box of matches—stolen from the aid depository—out of his pocket and strikes one. The tiny flame illuminates his hands and, once it’s been trapped in the glass, the entire cabin. It’s low, warm light, not unlike the fire they just kissed by. Jonas tenses in anticipation.
“I want to see you,” Noah says. “Okay?”
Much to his own surprise, Jonas replies, “You talk too much.”
A look of intrigue appears on Noah’s face, lifting some of the solemn shadows, and then he crosses the small space. Jonas doesn’t give himself time to doubt, grabbing the back of Noah’s head and kissing him hard, messily. Part of it is due to nerves… The rest is unnameable, tied to an unknown part of him that wants to claim everything within reach. Noah’s hair feels more perfect in his hand than it has ever looked in the pale daylight; Noah’s lips make more sense against his than they do when they say anything at all; Noah’s clothes would look much better on the floor.
On that issue, at least, they seem to agree. Within a minute, they’re in the same state of dress. Jonas breaks away to breathe, to take that in. The knot in his stomach loosens a little. To him, the equal ground feels better. More natural. On this issue, they’ll never agree. Noah makes that clear by dropping to his knees and gazing at him with intense reverence. Jonas feels his blood turn to ice. He doesn’t know the person that Noah is looking at. He doesn’t want to know him.
To convey that, wordlessly, Jonas follows him to the floor and kisses him again. This time, it’s less desperate, more passionate—and though Noah clearly likes that, there are other things on his mind. Placing his palms on the floor, he starts crawling, forcing Jonas to move backward until the bottom of his spine collides with the edge of the mattress. Then he kisses Jonas’s throat, paying special attention to the scar—the mark of his ultimate failure. His curse.
“Don’t—” Jonas pants, but he doesn’t wait for Noah to stop. Instead, he buries a hand in his hair and pulls his head back.
Noah doesn’t flinch. On the contrary. He slips his hand into Jonas’s briefs and grabs his cock.
Jonas chokes on his own breath. He stares at Noah in disbelief as he grows harder, trying to fight a blush and a moan; naturally, he fails at both. His moan is broken, his blush fierce, and he scrambles for a bit of control by yanking the briefs down past his ass. Noah removes them completely, and Jonas doesn’t want to dwell on his nakedness, but he’s forced to. Noah kisses his shoulder and trails downward, toward his stomach, splaying his hands over the bits of skin that his lips don’t reach.
At first, Jonas can only watch—in part fascination, part fear—how his body becomes a body again. Under Noah’s attention, it ceases to act like a machine. The usual systems fail. Suddenly, his eyelids flutter, his chest floods with warmth, and his lips quiver. Time, miraculously, seems to slow; that is, until Noah grabs his thighs and puts his mouth on him.
“Holy—fuck,” Jonas bursts out.
His knees shake from the sudden rush of pleasure, and he has to clutch the mattress to keep still. He doesn’t know what he expected, but somehow, it wasn’t this. He has no idea what to do with himself in this position. It doesn’t feel real, even though he can see everything—his cock in Noah’s mouth, Noah’s piercingly blue eyes staring up at him, his cheeks hollowing at the first genuine suck.
“Oh—”
One thing is certain: He can’t keep watching. If he does, this will all be over in a second. Feeling wrecked, Jonas lies back on the mattress and tries to think of something, anything, that will keep him together, but all he does think about is how he never thought this would happen to him. And that thought spawns the realization that he’s always wanted it to happen. Tears press against his closed eyelids, not helped by the sudden, insistent work of Noah’s tongue.
A whimper escapes Jonas as pleasure sparks at the head of his cock and courses through the rest of him, tingling. He feels it in his fingertips. Then Noah swallows him down further, making heat coil in Jonas’s abdomen. Unwittingly, he thrusts upward, and Noah makes a strangled noise at the back of his throat. Jonas hates that he wouldn’t mind hearing it again. And again.
Still, he digs his teeth into his bottom lip, clinging to self-control. In the last couple of years, he’s found himself on the roof of a destroyed building, longing to leap off the edge. What held him back was knowing that he’d still be alive once he hit the ground. Now, Jonas is on the edge, trembling at the thought of what’s next. The end.
“No—” Jonas is trying to say his name, but the pleasure makes it sound like a desperate refusal. “—Ah!”
Noah just sucks harder. And maybe that’s as true as they get. Jonas doesn’t want to fall apart. Noah needs him to. Who wins in the end? It seems preordained.
Jonas’s mind goes white. It’s not that different from being hit with the handle of a gun, except, of course, for the lack of pain; pleasure has taken its place, as if it belongs there, in his fucking head. It feels heavy and warm. He blinks profusely until Noah comes into focus. The sight of him, open-mouthed and flushed, is too much for Jonas. Groaning, he reaches for the back of Noah’s head and pulls him down for a kiss. It’s dirty and rough, fueled by adrenaline—and so is what Jonas does next. Slinging an arm across Noah’s back, he flips them.
As soon as Noah is pinned beneath him, Jonas begins his own line of kisses. Inevitably, his is messier, less rehearsed. In truth, he has no idea what he’s doing, only that he’s desperate to give something back, to balance the scales. When he reaches the bulge in Noah’s boxers, the need takes over, and he mouths at it, without fear.
Now, Noah pulls him back by the hair. “What… what are you doing?”
Annoyed, Jonas snaps, “What do you think I’m doing?”
Noah stares at him, seemingly dumbfounded still. “You… You shouldn’t want—”
“Oh, really?” Jonas would’ve laughed if he didn’t have something to prove. “Interesting. Why don’t you tell me more about it while I—” Cutting himself off, he kisses the head of Noah’s clothed cock. He’s awarded with a sharp breath and a loud lack of words.
What follows is weird. Not the giving-a-blowjob part—Jonas enjoys that quite a lot, as long as he’s able to overlook that Noah is troubled at the receiving end of it. His every reaction seems restrained; his moans are muffled, his breathing shallow. It’s easy to brush off at first since Jonas is preoccupied with the newness of having a cock in his mouth, and he doesn’t know if this behavior is normal for Noah, self-possessed as he is.
But when he gets close, Jonas recognizes that the resistance is different from his own. For Noah, it isn’t about being afraid of the end; it’s clear, in the tortured, scrunched-up expression that crosses his face, that he doesn’t want to come in Jonas’s mouth… Because he thinks it’s wrong. Not in the classically shameful way. It looks like he thinks he’d be breaking the law, tearing up the fabric of the world itself. Forsaking Truth. Jonas can guess, based on what Noah said about his wants, why this is.
It makes him furious. Driven by it, he takes a page out of Noah’s playbook.
When Noah tries to pull away, Jonas just sucks harder. Until everything happens the way he wants it to. Noah unravels, spilling down his throat, which isn’t particularly pleasant, but the reality of Noah’s defeat more than makes up for it.
Satisfied, Jonas swallows and drops down next to Noah, who’s staring at the ceiling.
“What?”
Noah’s jaw works, clenching and unclenching. “I just… I didn’t…”
“Oh, you expected me to be different?”
Finally, Noah turns slightly to meet his eyes. The glow of the oil lamp flickers across his face, only to be swallowed by the next descending shadow. “No,” he says at last. “Not really. I guess it makes sense.”
Jonas frowns. “What do you mean?”
Noah’s lip twitches. This time, Jonas gives in to the urge and touches it with his thumb. It makes Noah exhale raggedly. Then, without a word, he stands.
“Wait—” Jonas protests, bewildered. “You’re leaving?”
Noah finds his pants and pulls them on. The glance he throws at Jonas seems… steeled. Running a hand through his hair, he says, “Elisabeth has nightmares.”
“Oh,” is all Jonas utters. A loud, pathetic part of him wants to proclaim, ’I do, too.’ But he’s certain it wouldn’t make a difference, so instead, he adds, with forced nonchalance, “Okay. See you tomorrow?”
“As always. Goodnight, Jonas.”
When the door shuts, Jonas is left naked and cold and wondering whether the sun will shine tomorrow. If it does, will it reach him? If it does, might he feel beautiful? In a world where even the biggest of changes seem destined to change nothing at all, he doesn’t dare to hope.