you're paralyzing me, any

[isakov]

throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped

He can feel the dark stallion stiffen and it puts a little spasm in his heart.
But the heart softens when the dark stallion softens, too.
It emboldens him. Perhaps more than it should.
He draws his mouth gently along the curve of his shoulder while he ponders, a mindless kind of touch. A comforting sort of gesture.

It fills him with heat, Isakov. All of it. Heat and wonder and a kind of breathlessness that he’s never known until now. It makes him want to curl himself against Sleaze’s side, lay his head across his spine, find rest there with him.

He listens, perhaps more intently than he has ever listened to anything before, when Sleaze tells him what he loves. Listens like it’s the only thing in the world that matters. And perhaps it is. Because Isakov goes quiet for a long beat, hardly even breathes, fashions himself into the thing that Sleaze loves to the best of his ability. The water barely stirs around him, the breathing so shallow that it disturbs almost nothing.

He remains this way as long as he can, his mouth still pressed against Sleaze’s shoulder. Until, finally, he exhales a long, slow breath and drags his mouth up the length of that dark neck. Brings it to rest at his poll. “I can be quiet,” he murmurs, an offer.

He retreats then, just enough to look into those remarkable brown eyes. And he smiles. “Is it terribly loud?” he asks, tilts his fine head, “your mind, is it loud?”

isakov