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It had been a while since he’d kissed someone. It’d been even longer since he’d kissed someone and really meant it.
But he meant this, and he wanted Vaughn to know it, and the second they’d gotten out of the Gortys building still alive he’d grabbed Vaughn with both arms, hugged him until his spine had cracked, and then kissed him with his whole mouth, his face pressed against his friend’s. When he’d finally pulled away, Vaughn slowly opened his eyes and smiled, like he’d been waiting years for that to happen. Maybe he had been. Rhys’s face had felt wet.
Everything between then and now was a blur of running, and driving in shifts, and napping fitfully in the back of the caravan, arms around each other protectively, and finally this tacky bar where they’ve got a night to collect their thoughts before deciding what direction to take next. A tacky bar with hot water and cold beer and rooms for the night, all three suddenly such overwhelming blessings that when Rhys turned to the “H” on the shower dial in the hall bathroom he’d almost broke into tears at the thought of getting all the caked blood out of his various crevices.
They’d sat in the bar with Fiona and Sasha, drinking until the room was just short of spinning, nerves jangling still, so relieved to be alive that even if they were exhausted they’d have to be drunk just to kill the adrenaline enough to fall asleep. Sasha went drifted off to her room first, then Fiona, and then they were alone, and they just stared at each other for a while, trying to figure out what to do with themselves. “We almost died,” he finally says after a long silence, and Vaughn just looks at him.
”You almost died,” Rhys adds, very quietly but pointedly, looking away.
Vaughn finished his drink, then reached over and clinked Rhys’s empty beer down onto the bar himself like a judge’s gavel. “Let’s go upstairs,” Vaughn had said, like in a movie. Rhys laughed but he could feel his face get hot at the thought that this could finally be happening - that the kiss they’d had earlier had meant what he thought it did. They stumble up the stairs together, leaning on each other, and Rhys lets his hand drift to Vaughn’s waist. 20 steps have never felt longer.
There’s a vend in the hall, and Vaughn stops to feed it the handful of bills he’d had left in his wallet and punches in whatever it is he’s getting. Rhys is a little baffled until Vaughn fishes the package out of the drop bin and it’s a familiar-looking Hyperion-branded yellow foil packet: lubricant and a handful of condoms. Vaughn meets his eye and almost blushes, his bit of practiced self-confidence sneaking away from his face. “I’m not misreading the situation right? The whole ride over here you - I’m sorry if this sort of moving fast but I don’t want to wait any longer and - “
Rhys can’t wait for him to keep nervously babbling and pushes him against the wall next to the vend, kissing him again for the first time since they’d left the facility. It’s a whole other realm of existence apart from the first one. This is slow and heady, their lips parted against each other, Vaughn’s tongue heavy and sinuous, tasting like scotch and sodas. Rhys accidentally nips him out of desperation, and Vaughn moans quietly into the other man’s open mouth, trying to say something that would resemble words. Please, room, bed, now.
The room is taken up mostly by a ragged twin bed, covered in a threadbare blanket that ten years ago might have been black. It could have been on fire and Rhys still would’ve leapt onto it and pulled Vaughn down on top of him. They break apart long enough to lock the door behind them and they’re horizontal on the decade-old-petri-dish-duvet, gasping into each other’s airstreams. Rhys grazes his teeth down Vaughn’s neck, gets his shirt loose, and tries not to look too excited to run his fingers over his friend’s incredibly well-defined abdomen. Vaughn had looked annoyed with all his attention before and now, in a different context, here in a bedroom with his shirt half off, he’s basking in it.
There’s a moment where Rhys isn’t sure of how this should go, but Vaughn takes the initiative, slinking his half-striped pants off and pressing the heat of his mouth against the outline of Rhys’s dick in his gray boxer-briefs. Rhys has to slap a hand over his mouth not to yelp at the feeling, or at the way Vaughn pushes his glasses up onto his forehead and slips Rhys’s dick out of his underwear, kissing the head teasingly. He looks up at him, a little unfocused, as he wraps his lips around the wet crown and licks the underside to get it wet enough to comfortably slide a condom onto him while he works his other hand at getting his own pants off.
When he does, he slides forward again into Rhys’s lap and presses their dicks together with a little gasped “oh”, then guides Rhys’s hand around them both and uncaps the lubricant, slicking his own fingers and getting started with prepping himself. Rhys forgets he even has two dicks in his hand, he’s so distracted by the way Vaughn spreads his surprisingly-clever fingers, scissoring himself open. His mouth is a vicious red, swollen from the nip Rhys gave him earlier, and it falls open in a slow oval, little stuttered breaths escaping from the effort. Rhys is bewildered by the theater of skin in front of him, he’s not sure where to look - the maddening slide of digits, the sinuous line of the upturned neck above him, the other man's swollen prick pressed against his. He squeezes his eyes shut, and right behind his eyelids there’s practically a stained glass window of his friend riding him, complete with a halo.
"God, how are you this hot?" is what tumbles out of his mouth, exhaled in one breath. "Are you - can I - " he starts and stops, not sure of how to ask. "Say ‘please’." Vaughn grins like mad and rocks against him, and Rhys’s hips roll involuntarily in response.
"I want to be in you, please, ” Rhys growls and pulls Vaughn’s head down to kiss his mouth shut as Vaughn reaches for Rhys’s dick to guide him into place. Rhys resists the desire to just bury himself and pushes just enough to get the head inside the ring of muscle, with just a bit of a “hss” of breath sucked between teeth. Vaughn moans in a way that somehow makes Rhys blush; even with half his dick in his friend’s ass that is more obscene. He settles into a sitting position on top of him, working the rest of the shaft inside himself and watching Rhys’s face.
"Oh fuck yes," Vaughn groans, finally settling all the way down onto Rhys’s cock and grinding deep and slow, letting his mouth fall open. His hips roll forward and back lazily, and Rhys is surprised at his total lack of shame. "I never thought you’d be doing this," he says, glancing away instinctually.
"Doing what?"
Rhys throws his hands in the air and gesticulates wildly at all of him. At Vaughn on top of him, entirely in his lap. “This. All of this. I didn’t think we’d be alive right now, much less -” Rhys trails off. His friend bends and kisses him again, all wet heat, trying to assuage his sudden nervousness. “I just never thought you were interested in me like this,” Vaughn replies, tempered with a sly smile. Rhys looks up at him and watches him move for a moment, the pressure on his dick and the easy way Vaughn is riding him, slow and steady, finally melting Rhys’s nerves. He almost doesn’t continue, the view is so nice, but he has to. He can’t wait until they’re dead now. He has to tell him.
"Why not? I’ve felt this way for a while but I didn’t want to…act on it. I was afraid of fucking something up, or you thinking I was just using you. Everyone is out to screw everyone up there on that piece-of-shit satellite and I know what it’s like to get used." Vaughn looks upset what Rhys is implying at the end of that sentence but he shakes his head and smiles warmly again.
"Guys like you - you’re executives. You’re a Face of Hyperion. You fuck models, you don’t fuck the guy from accounting."
Rhys finally laughs at that. Not that it’s funny; just that Vaughn right now looks the furthest thing from “the guy from accounting”. He looks like a porn magazine: he’s flushed pink all the way to his 12-pack and his dick sways a bit with the way his hips keep moving. Rhys rubs a thumb along it and watches Vaughn bite off a moan. “Are you kidding me? So you’re a little height-challenged and you dress like a blackjack dealer who also sells ice cream. You’re fun, you have a good sense of humor, you’re really cute when you smile. You’re absurdly ripped. Plus your tight little biker ass feels fucking amazing,” he trails off into a moan, biting his lip and rocking back and forth to emphasize that last point.
"Oh come on, fashion sense jabs? You look like someone took a pair of scissors to the Hyperion douchebag manual and glued it back together in the dark," Vaughn snaps, but he’s still smiling and he keeps moving his hips in a way that’s making Rhys sweat. "But. You’re secretly a good person, buried way down under all that ego. You’re loyal. And I think you’re insanely attractive. God, I thought you were there for a photoshoot when I first saw you on Helios. Please don’t let that go to your head.”
"I’m honestly letting the fact that you’re letting me fuck you right now go straight to my head," Rhys retorts, pausing to run his tongue along the plush wet line of Vaughn’s lower lip. "Speaking of, can we stop talking so I can just fuck you senseless now?"
Vaughn just groans at that, lets Rhys kiss him deeper, guides his hands to grip the sharp juts of Vaughn’s hipbones and just keep him upright while he rides his dick with a steady stream of nonsense and obscenities and short little moans. Rhys isn’t exactly on the bigger side (quite the opposite really) but Vaughn doesn’t look like he minds, and he really seems to know what he’s doing. Even getting distracted, Rhys is close already; his nervousness combined with the newness of having his best friend riding him, looking like he does right now, making the noises he keeps making - he pulls Vaughn down to fuck him harder, hoping he can last long enough to get him off too.
Vaughn’s breathing through his mouth now, lips parted and brows knitted in concentration as he rocks down onto Rhys harder, pushing himself up fully to get a better angle. Rhys is transfixed at the sight of him - all the hard muscle of his torso in motion, the way the lines of his arms stand out against the dark cloth of the bedspread, the huge blackness of his pupils. The way his hair, normally in that nerd part, has fallen across his forehead made him look a lot drunker, more disheveled, a little wild even. It suits him, oddly enough. He slows a bit to lean back, pushing his ass all the way down to Rhys’s balls and making the other man almost have to hold his breath not to finish right there. Vaughn keeps smiling that weird little half-smile, grips the rails of the headboard for leverage, then changes his technique from just rolling his hips to picking himself up as far off of Rhys as possible before falling back and sliding him totally inside as fast as he can. Rhys thinks he must be showing off by now, because he’s never topped for someone like this and still felt like he was the one getting fucked.
Rhys just does what he can to keep up and thrusts up into him, rough and deep, and Vaughn loses his rhythm, throwing his arms around his neck and collapsing across him. He tries to match his timing with his hand on Vaughn’s dick, sliding up and down with a little twist under the head, and each one earns him a renewed round of swearing and moaning, until “fuckfuckfuck, please,” is the last thing Vaughn manages before Rhys wrings an orgasm right out of him, come spilling over his hand, his body clenching around Rhys’s dick. His head falls forward into the curve of Rhys’s collarbone, and he bites it just enough to sting. Rhys follows him a moment later with a gasp.
"Thought I’d pay you back for my lip," Vaughn laughs, kissing the spot where his teeth had been. He pushes Rhys onto his back and carefully lifts himself off his lap, slipping off the condom and flopping backwards to lay his head in the crook of Rhys’s arm.
He thinks they kiss again for what feels like a long time, until everything is quiet and blurry and safe. He thinks he says he’s sorry, and he’s not certain of what he’s sorry for, just that he is. Vaughn forgives him. Whatever it is, Vaughn forgives him.
The last thing he remembers is soft, measured snoring into his arm, and that he’s never fallen asleep harder or more quickly in his life, here in a strange bed on a strange planet with his best friend.