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The sidewalk bit into Niall's thrashing body like teeth. Every deep breath sat cold and dry in his lungs, every muscle drawn painfully taut beneath Ruben. Their limbs tangled frantically as they fought to overpower each other. They writhed on the ground together like a dance without music, its disjointed rhythm bordering on intimacy in spite of itself.
Ruben had torn Niall’s trousers down and was still grappling with the fabric of his boxers, his effort maddeningly relentless.
"Stop messin’ Ruben! Christ—" Niall’s teeth clacked together as he yelled at Ruben, grabbing a fistful of his shirt and shoving hard at his chest. "Get off!"
Every time Niall managed to tear himself even a bit free, Ruben dragged him back with unyielding insistence. A cold draft ghosted over the bare skin of his thighs, humiliation burned hot through his cheeks and ears, spreading like fire.
“S'only us out here, Shagger—” He interrupted himself with a few worked-up, exerted breaths. “—don’t be coy now, show me,” Ruben finished, each word forced through a tense jaw. His movements had lost any sliver of coordination they had before, reduced to rough, frantic grabbing.
Niall was no longer sure Ruben even remembered why the fight had started, like he wasn’t really angry about it anymore and just wanted to prove his dominance over Niall.
As if to say, see? I am a man. I can provide. I can overpower. I can take what I please. I am a man. How dare you try to take that from me?
He struggled to kick himself free from his trousers, desperate for even the slightest bit of leverage. They had twisted uselessly above his boots and only knotted tighter with every frenetic movement he made, binding him like a lamb trussed for slaughter. Above him, Ruben continued talking through ragged little bursts of laughter, like this was just some harmless bit of roughhousing between two brothers.
Typical Ruben, eh? Takin’ the piss like always!
Truthfully, years ago, Niall probably would have thought that.
Ruben’s voice blurred somewhere above the rush of blood pounding through Niall's ears, words dissolving into meaningless noise as his fingers hooked into the waistband of Niall’s boxers and attempted to strip them down again, unsuccessful only because Niall clung onto them so tight that his knuckles blanched white. “Stop, Ruben!”
“Just fuckin’ show me, Niall,” Ruben murmured breathlessly, looming over him as he held his head in two hands, the manic playfulness his voice had carried earlier warping into something a little uglier. Niall tried to draw his knees to his chest to force more distance between them, but Ruben caught hold of them and shoved them back down.
Niall rolled onto his stomach and clawed toward the stairs, only to feel large hands clamp around his sides and haul him backward like he weighed nothing. It tore an embarrassingly pitiful, frightened noise from him. Ruben continued his rambling in rapid, winded fragments behind him. Quieter now, words slurring together through uneven breaths that felt too warm against the nape of Niall's neck as Ruben climbed onto him.
“Ruh—Ruben! Stop!” Is all Niall was able to choke out before a thick arm banded around his throat from behind, trapping him. Ruben’s chest pressed firm against his spine, his legs caged Niall’s hips from either side. Their bodies fit together perfectly. It made Niall think about when they were teenagers, curled up together wordlessly on cold twin-sized mattresses in the dead of night, dim street lights illuminating the room. Ruben was so much bigger than Niall that he seemed to eclipse him entirely, draped across his body like an annoyingly oppressive second skin.
Every uneven breath and shift of Ruben’s hips was impossible to ignore against his half-naked body. The cold bite of his jacket sleeve against skin, the heavy press of his groin atop the cleft of Niall’s arse.
“C’mere Bambi,” Ruben whispered into his ear, ragged and restless. The decades old nickname made Niall recoil and twist beneath him, a panicked little movement that only earned him a tighter hold. “No, no—shh,” He hushed.
“S’alright, just settle…” he murmured, each word slow and weighted, beard tickling Niall’s cheek as he spoke. “You can trust me. Course y’can. We’re brothers, yeah?”
The question sat wrong in Niall’s chest, heat clenching beneath his sternum like a fist closing around his heart.
"N—ngh—" Niall managed to wheeze out beneath the crushing weight of Ruben's arm at his throat, the sound collapsing into a wet, pathetic imitation of a no.
No, he really shouldn't trust Ruben.
"Shut up. Shut the fuck up," Ruben hissed quietly through his teeth at Niall's sputtering, squeezing harder; the same way he used to when they were lads. When Ruben would lift him by his shirt and spit whatever grievance had simmered under his skin long enough to boil over, and Niall would take it no matter how scared he was because that’s just how brothers are, as his mum would say.
And still, beneath the thin wire of fear that pulled tightly through his chest, Niall felt himself leaning into that anger, a quiet satisfaction blooming right beside it. It wasn't always just Ruben's reaction that Niall chased but the collision that came with it, too. Like the brutal impact of two cars crashing into each other hard enough to crumple together into something indistinguishable. The kind where they can’t tell whose body parts are whose in the aftermath.
The truth was there wasn't a single person on God's green earth Niall trusted more than Ruben, no matter how much he wished that wasn't true, or how little sense it made.
It had never really felt like a choice for Niall; more like something wrought into him years ago, back when Ruben had first moved into their home, his room, and stopped being something Niall could meekly step around like he did every other thing in his life.
We’re family now.
Instead, Ruben became something that settled in permanently. He filled every corner of Niall's life like the thick smoke of a house fire, until there was nothing left he hadn't touched, nothing that didn't carry his soot.
Niall's days had started warping around Ruben instinctively, until being without him felt like he was missing a vital part of himself. Like being born in withdrawal; brought into life with a nameless craving, built from the start for someone like Ruben to fill. So, when he finally found his way into the hollow shape that was Niall’s life, it felt less like he discovered something new and more like his body recognized the substance it had been searching for since birth and clung on. Like something deep inside him came undone and whispered oh, there you are. From then on, separation from Ruben felt like his body no longer knew how to function without it, no matter how much it ruined his life or hurt him.
Even now, with Ruben’s arm cinched around his throat, some dark part of Niall found that same grim comfort in it, in the way resistance felt more performative than instinctive. The same way a person jumping off a building might feel a brief, terrible stillness in the seconds before the ground rises to meet them. Their body is still full of fear, but it goes quiet because there is nothing left to resist anymore. Because in the end, they chose this.
Ruben pressed his face into the back of Niall’s hair and inhaled, slow and deep. His breath was hot against Niall’s scalp as he exhaled a rumbling groan. “Easy,” He whispered and dragged his nose upward, breathing more of him in. There was something undeniably gratifying about being inhaled with the sort of single-minded hunger usually reserved for a fresh line and a rolled-up banknote. In moments like these though, that hunger unsettled him a little too.
Their lives had become so woven into one another that cruelty began to function as a dialect between them. It was easier than tenderness, easier than saying outright what either of them meant to the other, easier to hide lingering touches if they were just brothers. It let them touch each other without confronting the vulnerability beneath it, let devotion disguise itself as violence and still feel like something they were permitted to have, because men like them had never been taught how to hold each other gently without feeling diminished by it.
Ruben’s hand slid effortlessly down the back of Niall’s thigh until it settled behind his knee, fingers digging in against sweat-damp skin there. Without lifting his chest from Niall’s back, Ruben gave a sharp tug and hauled the leg upward beside Niall’s torso, contorting his hips crooked into the sidewalk.
The position left him pinned in an ugly sprawl, flat on his stomach, hands splayed across the ground. His head remained half-lifted only because Ruben's arm was still locked across his throat; keeping him suspended between earth and air like a living noose.
Niall bucked beneath him in a panicked and graceless twist of movement; like a rat trapped beneath the weight of a boot, desperate enough to flay itself for the chance to escape.
Ruben immediately crowded into the space he’d created, keeping one leg hooked along the outside of Niall’s while forcing the other between his thighs to keep the raised knee pinned there. The added pressure wrung another helpless writhe out of Niall.
There was something devastatingly familiar about the struggling weight of Ruben on top of him, like the old muscle memory of wrestling on bedroom floors dragged kicking and screaming into adulthood. The same ugly little power games, only meaner now in the bodies of grown men.
Ruben was still muttering against him, his words slurring into low, indistinct grumbling that Niall could no longer fully parse. Something about Mona, something about doing better next time. He wasn’t entirely sure anymore, and at this point he didn’t really care. Whatever Ruben wanted him to agree to, he would have done it if it meant easing the crushing pressure around his windpipe.
Ruben’s nose pressed into the curve of Niall's cheek as he spoke, breath too warm and far too close, carrying the taste of whatever he'd been drinking before this. Something slick and nasty pooled deep in Niall’s chest, thick as oil. He couldn't really name it yet. Anticipation, maybe. Dread. Shame arriving before it had anything to attach itself to, settling in to wait.
He thought suddenly of Ava stepping outside and seeing them, ‘what the hell is going on here?’ she’d say, concern knitted throughout her face, ’It's getting late, maybe you can come back another time..’ and Ruben would stand with a chuckle, like this was all just a game after all, and head home. The scene played out in his mind with terrible clarity.
And horribly, irrationally, the thought only made Niall pray she wouldn't come out at all. That maybe she'd already drifted off on the sofa waiting for him to come inside, like she often did.
A large hand settled with crushing force against Niall’s hip, driving the bone into the rough bite of concrete each time Niall writhed beneath him, leaving marks that would bloom purple come morning. Ruben’s arm squeezed tighter around Niall’s throat, the way serpents choked out little rats before they ate them whole.
Somewhere through the panic and struggling, a miserably blissful thought flickered across Niall's mind: that maybe if they pressed close enough, hard enough, they could finally stop ending where the other began. It caused a shiver to run down Niall’s spine.
Niall's hands, which had been scrabbling uselessly against the ground for anything solid to anchor himself to, flew instead to the arm locked around his throat. His fingers clawed desperately into Ruben's jacket sleeve, into skin, into the dense muscle beneath, but the grip only constricted further in response to his struggle.
Heat built in crushing waves behind Niall's jaw and ears as the pressure around his neck steadily narrowed his airway. Each breath thinner than the last, shallow little pulls that never reached deep enough into his lungs no matter how desperately his body fought to draw them in, like trying to breathe through a straw.
A sinking sense of dread settled in Niall as he began to feel himself blur around the edges, the world going soft and distant like like watching television through the haze of creeping sleep.
Ruben was going to choke him to death, Niall realized with strange detachment.
This was how Niall Brandon Kennedy died: half-naked, choked out in the middle of the street, pinned beneath his brother.
A failure son. A shite friend, a worse partner. A wean’s dead father, before they even had the chance to draw a breath.
Every ugly thing he had ever feared about himself finally folded into one humiliating conclusion. All the therapy and money and desperate attempts to be normal collapsing into this single moment.
And still, that same ruinous but intoxicating kind of comfort crept up his spine.
Niall's head throbbed, pressure swelling behind his eyes like a balloon ready to burst as his neck strained against the angle Ruben forced him into, the smothering breadth of Ruben against his back, all dense muscle and unbearable heat pressing through skin, and bone like he was trying to push Niall straight through the ground to the earth's core.
So much was happening at once that he barely registered the pressure of a hard cock pressed against his body through the fabric of Ruben's joggers. Niall stilled completely, every muscle freezing.
Ruben was hard.
Ruben was hard against Niall.
The realization struck him like a stone thrown into a hollow cave, ricocheting around the inside of his skull long after the impact, echoing in spaces he'd tried to keep empty.
Niall probably could have convinced himself it meant nothing, that it was just some involuntary bodily reaction, or even that he'd imagined it entirely—if Ruben didn't begin to roll his hips in a slow and deliberate rut, grinding himself into the cleft of his arse.
Niall only noticed then that Ruben had stopped rambling entirely now, the slurred muttering replaced by a low and breathless growl vibrating against his back like thunder felt through the ground. Niall remembered hearing him like this the night he made the mistake of vandalizing his Mercedes. Ruben had chased him through his neighbors back garden, hunting him with that same primal instinct, that same single-minded determination. It had frightened him then, was frightening him now, but something odd swirled around deep in his belly despite that fear.
Ruben must have felt Niall finally going limp in his grasp from the lack of oxygen, because his arm loosened just enough for Niall to finally suck in a full breath. The air tore greedily into his lungs before collapsing back out of him in wet, sputtering coughs that wracked his entire body.
Pins and needles prickled through his lips and fingertips, distant and electric, the familiar awful static that came with panic attacks in plain rooms with locked windows, sheet-less beds and shoelace-less trainers. His throat burned raw and aching. Bile crept up the back of his tongue and tears spilled hot down his cheeks without asking for permission, much to Niall’s dismay because men don’t cry.
"Ruah— Ruben—" Niall choked out, a ragged sob catching painfully in his throat as Ruben continued moving against him in a rough, uneven rhythm. Niall clutched onto his arm with twitching fingers like he’d fall off the edge of the earth if he let go.
Niall had forgotten what he had even meant to say by the time Ruben's name left his lips. The lack of air had left his thoughts distant and waterlogged, the world dwindling down to nothing but Ruben. The hot drag of his breath against the back of Niall's neck, his hand beginning to wander his trembling body, his overwhelming presence swallowing everything else whole like a black hole consumes light.
Ruben's violence was nothing new to Niall. He had spent years watching it pour out of him in ugly, uncontrollable surges. Split lips and broken noses and fists wrapped in bloodied bandages. Niall had been on the receiving end of it often enough himself, of course: crooked knuckles twisting in his shirt, fingers closing around his throat, hot breath and threats spat into his face.
But this was different. A different type of violence.
The kind that even Ruben had condemned before the trial, the kind that ripped the souls out of bodies. The kind that had made Ruben just barely come apart at the seams, showing a split-second glance of vulnerability behind all of those walls. Niall could still hear him, if he pressed the memory hard enough.
Ruben shouting himself raw, spit flying, voice cracking under the weight of whatever wordless trauma he carried within him.
The kind of violence that, shamefully, had followed Niall into more than a few fevered dreams during his school years. Dreams of Ruben's arms closing around his throat the way they had the night the boy’s father came to yell at their window. Being shoved into walls hard enough to leave marks in the plaster. Ruben's nose pressed into his, breathing heat directly into his face, so close their breath mingled as he screamed in his face.
Niall wondered what changed for Ruben.
Was it prison? A sudden conclusion made in there in the night, or during dinner? When he married Mona? Was it tonight, when Niall threw his infertility in his face? Or had it been decided for him long before Niall ever met him, passed down in touches that taught him love and hurt were the same thing? That intimacy had always carried the shape of pain?
He wasn't sure.
Niall had decided long ago that the hospital didn't count to him in that way. There had been no hunger in it, nothing desperate or aching, just anger and fourteen years, seven months and twenty-three days of resentment that finally found somewhere to land. But here, now, Ruben was hard, and grinding against him, and breathless.
A small, broken whimper escaped Niall before he could bite it back, warping into ragged, uneven sobs no matter how hard he tried to swallow them down. Niall wasn't really sure why he was even crying anymore. Tears burned across his cheeks as he screwed his eyes shut, his face scrunched up pitifully.
Slowly, Ruben's arm loosened from around Niall's throat, only for his hand to settle heavily over his mouth instead, palm warm and slightly damp with sweat. He hushed him quietly under his breath, the way someone might soothe a frightened child.
Niall was his baby brother, after all.
Ruben's thumb dragged thoughtlessly through the tears on Niall's face, smearing them warm across his skin as he mumbled soft and restless little comforts against the side of his head. Words that might have been sweet in a different context, or maybe if they came from a different mouth.
"Shh, quit your fussin’ Niall," Ruben hummed, his voice wavering with the rhythm of his movements as his body bore down into Niall. His free hand roamed possessively over Niall's arse and hips, rucking up his shirt to squeeze between the concrete and Niall’s soft belly. He squeezed the flesh there like Niall's body was just another thing Ruben owned.
Somewhere deep down, Niall wasn't sure he hadn't given it over years ago. Wasn't sure if there had ever been a choice.
Niall obeyed Ruben the best he could, which really just meant he stopped his squirming. He sniffled quietly as he willed embarrassing sobs to dry up inside him, to be swallowed back down where they belonged, while breathing in the scent of Ruben on his palm in a sad attempt to ground himself.
His fingers shook weakly against the cold, gritty concrete, short nails scraping uselessly at dirt and stone while Ruben continued manhandling him. His belly stirred once again, a wave of prickly heat flowing through his body.
Niall had spent thirty thousand pounds trying to hollow out this feeling out of himself.
Thirty thousand of Ruben's money, dissolved into little rooms that smelled distantly of bile and stale coffee, courses run by soft-spoken men with rehearsed concern and empty eyes. Cups filled with bitter liquids they swore up and down would help recondition unhealthy impulses, rewire the broken parts. Long sessions spent staring at photographs and grainy videos until nausea clawed violently up his throat, turning him inside out and attempting to train his body to meet that desire with sickness instead.
Mostly, it had just felt like learning newer, more expensive ways to hate himself, like paying someone to teach him the proper vocabulary for his own disgust.
But Christ, Niall had wanted it to work.
Wanted to be normal so badly that it made his chest ache with the weight of it. Wanted to look at his girlfriend and feel nothing except simple, uncomplicated happiness, the kind other people seemed to find so easily. The kind Ruben seemed to find effortlessly in Mona. Wanted to be the sort of man Ruben could clap proudly on the shoulder and say, Proud of you, Bambers. Knew you'd sort yourself out eventually.
For a while, Niall had almost convinced himself he'd somehow managed it. Buried it deep enough that it couldn't claw its way back up. Poisoned it into silence.
But here he was, still folding instinctively in Ruben's hands like wet clay, like Ruben had spent years pressing his fingerprints into him so deeply that Niall no longer remembered what shape he was supposed to hold without him there to mold him back into place, to remind him who he was.
Niall's cock twitched against the cold, hard sidewalk despite himself. His toes curled inside his boots, muscles flinching with every slow grind of Ruben's hips. Subconsciously, his legs drifted a little wider apart. His knees scraped against the concrete as his hips gave the smallest, most humiliating shift backward, a movement so instinctive it arrived before shame could intercept it. Ruben only groaned softly in response.
It was wrong, so unbearably wrong. Niall could feel it like an infection beneath his skin. Something so sick and diseased in a way no diagnosis could touch it, no treatment could undo it. After this, he thought, they’d certainly have to put him down like a dog.
Ruben was his brother.
And still Niall stayed, suspended somewhere between revulsion and bliss. The harder he fought to hold himself motionless, the worse his trembling became. Thighs quivering uncontrollably as his breath came in stuttering pulls against Ruben's palm, each one a small surrender.
"Sit still for me," Ruben muttered through his teeth, frustration tightening his voice as his hand clamped harder around Niall's jaw, fingers digging painfully into the soft flesh there to force his head steady. Niall wondered silently what Ruben’s face looked like.
What had thirty thousand pounds and all those days puking his guts up been for, if he crumbled this quickly? If all it took was Ruben's hands on him to undo everything? He figures that's how it had always been between them though.
You only have to say the words.
Ruben was a master at ruining Niall’s life in ways so careful and intimate they barely felt like ruin at all.
"Puh—leese…" Niall slurred weakly, lips moving against Ruben's palm, the salt on his skin blooming across his tongue as Ruben ground into him with growing brutality. Niall wasn't sure whether he was begging for him to stop or to keep going anymore, the words losing meaning somewhere between his brain and his mouth. Ruben seemed to ignore the plea all the same.
His hips drove Niall's smaller frame forward, punching shallow little breaths out of him in short, involuntary bursts. The thick bulge in Ruben's joggers pressed and rubbed down so hard against him that Niall wondered if Ruben was trying to fuck him through his clothes.
"Shh— I’ve got you," Ruben gasped against the side of Niall's head, voice gone strangely soft; the sort of tenderness that always felt wrong coming from him, like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Niall shivered a little at it.
A few beats later, Ruben eased back enough so that his chest was completely off of Niall’s back. The absence of it probably should've felt like relief, but Ruben still loomed heavy behind him all the same. Large and inescapable, encompassing the space around Niall even in retreat. The same way a storm doesn't stop being a storm just cause a part of it has passed overhead, the threat remains.
Cool air finally swept across the sweat dampening Niall’s back. His jacket and undershirt clung wetly to his skin, heavy with heat, like another suffocating layer of skin he couldn't tear off of himself no matter how badly he wanted to.
Niall's muscles still twitched with the urge to bolt, but exhaustion and panic had turned his body sluggish beneath him, unresponsive. Ruben was simply too big. Too heavy. Too practiced at forcing Niall back down whenever he tried to run, like gravity itself had learned his name and grown hands to keep hold of him.
Niall could hear Ruben moving behind him still, though. He meekly peeked back just enough to find him framed by the streetlight, its glow washing over his back. With rough, impatient movements, Ruben shoved his grey joggers and boxers down just far enough to free himself. Niall could have sworn he felt his stomach drop right down to hell at the sight of his brother's thick, flushed cock. It bobbed gently in the cool air before Ruben wrapped a large hand around the base, giving himself a slow stroke that made Niall's mouth go dry.
Niall had never seen Ruben hard before.
Naked?— Yes, of course. They'd shared too much of each other growing up for bodily closeness to ever feel entirely foreign. Cramped bedrooms. Fights over towels. Ruben wandering around half-dressed after showers without a second thought while Niall pretended not to look too long.
It was everything Niall had imagined it to be.
Beautifully veined, the flushed head already slick and shining in the dim light from grinding against Niall. A coarse, neatly trimmed thatch of hair the color of his beard framed the base. Niall's heart stuttered in his chest like a bird against glass.
Niall was hardly inexperienced. There had been plenty over the years; strangers in library toilets, parked cars, dark little corners of Glasgow where no one asked questions afterward.
But none of them had ever crawled under his skin the way Ruben did. None of them had ever made anticipation feel so much like dread. Like something very, very bad was going to happen to him.
Niall didn't know the men he had fucked, and he had preferred it that way, frankly.
Men without names, without histories, without anything that asked to be remembered afterward. Just bodies reduced down to heat and motion and breath. Nothing beyond the rhythm of it. Skin against skin, breathless noises swallowed in silent alleyways, trainers squeaking faintly against cold bathroom tiles. No love or adoration, no tenderness.
He never had to think about them once it was over.
And afterward, once he'd finished on a hand, or mouth, or inside of a warm body, that awful and intoxicating quietness would settle over him.
Like the world paused just long enough for him to stop being himself for a few blessed minutes, to be nobody at all.
But Ruben was not a stranger. Actually, he was the farthest thing from a stranger to Niall.
Ruben had a name. A history, an adolescence tangled so tightly through Niall's own like roots grown together underground. He existed outside those moments in ways others never had. There was no reducing Ruben down into sensation alone, no leaving him behind in some dingy bathroom once it was finished, no pretending he didn't exist come the next day.
He lingered, spread like ink in water.
And worse than all of that combined, Ruben knew him too. Better than anyone.
That was the part Niall couldn't reconcile with. Couldn't breathe around. Couldn't just swallow down.
Because if it was just Niall that had to live with it afterward, it would be easier. Just another thing he could bury and pretend had never taken shape at all.
"See? S'not that hard, Niall," Ruben murmured, cruel, cocky amusement curling lazily throughout his voice when he caught him staring, like he'd known from the beginning exactly how this would end once he got his hands on him.
Sometimes Ruben felt less like a person to Niall and more like some predatory, volatile force of nature that had simply decided to take an interest in him. Something impossible to reason with once it turned its full attention your way. Like the tide coming in, It’s crash against the shore always inevitable.
Ruben's jaw hung slack as he slowly stroked himself, pressing his free hand between Niall's shoulder blades, pinning him back down against the concrete like a butterfly to a pin board.
This was really happening.
Ruben was about to fuck him right here, out in the open, in his neighborhood where anyone could see.
Niall felt sick, his face was sticky with drying tears, and his cock traitorously throbbed between his belly and the ground, begging to be touched despite his horror, despite everything.
"You gonna be a good lad for me, Niall?" Ruben murmured, low and deceptively gentle, heavy-lidded eyes fixed on him with that same awful certainty, like he already knew the answer, cocky bastard he was.
Niall's first instinct was to ignore him, to pretend he hadn't heard, to take his chances and crawl away, or scream.
But the moment Ruben’s hand pushed him down, something inside him seemed to buckle like a dam giving way. The motion fractured somewhere between panic and instinct, shrinking into a weak, uncertain nod before he could properly stop himself.
Shame rose through him like a fever, a corrosive heat under the surface of his skin.
He turned his face away sharply, pressing the side of his face hard against the cool concrete. His eyes darted frantically toward his front door, then the dark stretch of street beside them, searching for witnesses to his shame.
Someone's going to see.
The thought struck him over and over in sickening waves.
Someone's going to walk by and see us like this. See what I am.
Ruben let out a satisfied, grumbled hum at Niall's long awaited submission and adjusted his position as his fingers slipped beneath the waistband of Niall's boxer briefs and slowly dragged the soft fabric down his legs. He shifted back in between his legs and forced his legs wider apart with his knee in one rough motion, spreading Niall open like he imagined he’d done to many a bird before. He could almost feel Ruben’s eyes dancing on his skin, taking him in.
Every distant sound made Niall's heart slam violently against his ribs. The low growl of a car somewhere down the road. Wind rattling weakly through the gardens across the street. The scrape of what could’ve been footsteps somewhere nearby. Each tiny noise sent another spike of panic through him.
Ruben didn't really seem concerned in the slightest.
A crooked, cocky sort of smile lingered across his face instead, like the possibility of being caught barely even registered to him. Or worse, like part of him almost enjoyed it, got off on the risk.
But really, Ruben had always been like that.
Loud where other people learned to be quiet. Reckless where people knew to be careful. He moved through the world with the sort of ruthless certainty that made consequences feel like things that only happened to people who weren't Ruben.
Uni student halls. His neighbors' back garden. Hospital beds. The porch of his brother's home. It never mattered much where Ruben lost his temper, where he bled, where he touched, where he made a scene, where he took what he wanted or fucked because the world seemingly bent around Ruben more often than Ruben ever bent around it.
Ruben groped Niall's arse, kneading the soft skin there, pulling little pitifully stifled noises of fear and pleasure from his brother while Ruben inched himself closer like a predator savoring the moment before the kill. Niall found himself wondering, bitterly, whether this would have turned out differently if he had just kept his mouth shut. If he hadn’t allowed his pettiness to slip. He wasn't sure if he would have done anything any different regardless, though.
Niall didn’t know if he could do this. He couldn’t tell if it was a dream come true or his worst nightmare. Maybe both. The aftermath kept flashing through his mind, too fast to grasp, a blur of consequences, and shame, and guilt piling over each other.
“Ruben, don’t do this—” Niall managed roughly, shifting beneath him in small, testing movements, still searching subconsciously for somewhere weak in Ruben’s grip even now. He was good at running away from his feelings, an expert at it, really. Most times, he wasn’t even truly sure what he was feeling. “We can just.. talk this out tomorrow, yeah? I just don't— don't think it’s a good idea.”
"Don't be uptight now, Niall… you'll bend over and play cockslut for every bawbag in Glasgow and I just miss out? After all I've done for you?" The words hit like a slap, cruel and precise. Niall wasn’t even sure how he had found out about that. Ruben let out a short, huffed sort of laugh under his breath as he looked down at him in open disbelief. His head tilted slightly to the side, brows drawn together faintly like the objection itself didn’t quite compute, as if Niall were complicating something that was so obviously straightforward.
"Mona," Niall tried instead, words tumbling out unevenly. "What d'you think Mona would say?"
For a second, Ruben said nothing at all, but Niall saw it anyway. The tiny shift in his expression. The twitch in his jaw, glancing away from Niall with a barely noticeable “hm.” Could almost see the gears turning in his head as he thought for a moment.
Mona was Ruben’s wife. His.
And Ruben carried marriage the same way he carried everything else he possessed: like a claim staked permanently into flesh. He bought her nice things, housed her, slept beside her every night with one heavy arm thrown across her waist like a guard dog made human, fucked her well.
The ring on her finger was not so much romance to Ruben as it was proof.
A warning sign hammered into the ground, saying ‘Mine’.
So Mona having sex with another man would have been betrayal. Because she was his wife. He owned her. It would be a rupture in an already decided deal between the two of them.
But Niall never sat within that same logic. Not because he was outside it, but because he never belonged to the system in the first place. Niall was embedded too deeply inside Ruben’s life to be measured in those terms at all, he barely existed outside of Ruben in the first place. Having sex with Niall was as simple as having a wank.
He had laid claim to Niall Kennedy years ago on the stained carpet of a cramped bedroom the moment he decided they were brothers. Niall was his too, in the same unexamined way Mona was, just differently.
Ruben jerked Niall an inch or two backward by the soft jut of his hips, rough enough to pull a trembling gasp from him as his body jolted. Niall was so close to Ruben’s cock he could almost feel the heat radiating off of it.
"Stop actin' like you're better than me," he rasped softly, "We share everything, no? S'not much different from when I held your prick up for Mona," Ruben’s fingers slid up to Niall’s sides, then down to the swell of his arse, then back up slowly. Gentle in a way that felt like restraint rather than tenderness. “I know you want it, Bambers. You can't hide yourself from me.”
At this point, Niall had no plays left and barely enough resolve to keep himself from humping pathetically against the ground beneath him just to find some kind of relief.
Ruben slid the length of his cock against the cleft of Niall’s arse, the feeling of it was so hot and so undeniably real. Not a dream, not a fantasy. Real.
A thick surge of dread spread through Niall like wet cement and it settled right behind his ribs as a long whine left his lips. Something inside him loosened slowly. The tight, desperate grip he had kept on himself eroding beneath Ruben’s arousal until yielding felt like relief. A weak roll of his hips against the floor, legs quivering from the effort of it.
"Settle, settle," Ruben whispered. His breath hitched into a low, ragged gasp as he began to move, eyebrows knit together with concentration. He slid himself between Niall in slow, deliberate strokes. His shaft dragged along Niall's skin, teasing over his hole with every grind of his hips. A promise and a threat wrapped into one beautiful gift, just for Niall.
The sound of spitting rang above him, obscene in the quiet night. Saliva mixed with precome allowed Ruben to glide with ease, slick and filthy. Each stroke became wet, the noises it produced made Niall's stomach twist with fresh guilt and nausea, made him want to crawl out of his own skin and come all over himself all the same.
Fingers tangled in short, sweat-damp hair, tightening into a fist and wrenching his head back hard enough to drag a sharp, involuntary sound out of him. The blunt head of Ruben's cock pressed against his hole, testing, circling.
A panic-stricken, broken noise slipped out before Niall could stop it, high and humiliating, his legs shaking uncontrollably like his body had finally stopped taking orders from him.
He had never properly bottomed before. Only a few clumsy, half-hearted attempts at fingering himself alone in his old bedsit, driven more by loneliness than desire. Never more than two fingers. Never enough to prepare him for this.
"Wait—Ruben! Wait—" Niall gasped, the plea breaking apart in his throat before he could shape it properly. His voice came out thin and unsteady, dragged raw. "I've never—" He cut himself off. Embarrassment grabbed hold of his throat and left his mouth to open and close soundlessly, words falling somewhere behind his teeth.
"Never?" Ruben's voice was flat. Curious, maybe. His cock pressed harder, insistent. "You've never let anyone fuck you?"
Niall couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe. He managed a jerky shake of his head.
"Huh." A pause. Then Ruben spat again—Niall heard it, felt the warm wetness land directly on his hole. Ruben's hand moved, two fingers pressing against him without ceremony, spreading the spit around. "You do all the fuckin' then?"
There was something quietly triumphant in his voice, like he took satisfaction in knowing his baby brother belonged to no one, was no one’s bitch.
"You fuck 'em hard?" Ruben continued, his fingers rubbing slow circles against him, pushing just barely inside. "Make those poofters cry? Big-cock-Niall Kennedy." The laugh that followed was short and mean, like he genuinely found it hilarious. Niall Kennedy, handing it out to old men in public bathrooms. "Bet you made 'em beg for it. Bet you liked it."
Two fingers pressed inside without warning. The stretch made Niall suck in a breath, but it didn't hurt much. Not yet. What made his stomach drop was the realization that it was Ruben's fingers inside of him. Ruben, who was going to take something no one else had. Niall could’ve come at the mere thought of that if he focused hard enough.
"Tight," Ruben observed, almost clinical. "Virgin tight. Saved yourself for me, did you, Bambi?"
"No.. I didn't—I wasn't—"
A third finger joined almost immediately, forcing its way in alongside the first two and causing Niall’s voice to falter into a quiet whine. The burn started then, sharp and insistent. Ruben worked his fingers in and out with deliberate efficiency, scissoring occasionally, but there was nothing truly gentle or caring about it.
"Ruben—" Niall started, voice breaking on the name.
"Quiet.” Ruben's fingers twisted, found something inside him that made Niall's legs nearly give out, tore a humiliating moan from his throat. "You can take it."
It wasn't a question.
"This’ll hurt," Ruben said, almost conversational as he pulled his fingers out. Niall felt the blunt head of his cock replace them, pressing insistently. "But you'll be good for me. Won't you, Bambers?"
"Yes," Niall breathed quickly, hating himself. But he would have done anything, grovelled, licked the dirt from Ruben’s boots, sobbed at his feet, anything at all just to feel that mind numbing pleasure again. "Yeah, I'll—I'll be good."
"Good lad."
Ruben drove forward with a low grunt, the head of his cock forcing past the resistance of Niall's smaller body. The stretch was overwhelming, far bigger than fingers, more tangible, far more pleasurable. Stars burst behind Niall’s eyelids like fireworks over black skies as he was forced to accommodate the intrusion, his body fighting against it even as Ruben kept pushing, kept claiming, as he did with everything else in life.
A pleased sound rumbled in Ruben's chest as he slowly drove deeper, determined to bury every inch inside. To carve a Ruben-shaped hole into his brother. "There you go," he said quietly, almost like he was speaking more to himself than he was to Niall. "Opening up for me, like a good girl,"
Niall's legs trembled uncontrollably and tears finally slipped down his cheeks again. His jaw fell slack and he felt drool slip down his lips and patter onto the ground. Eyebrows knit together in pain, his eyes screwed shut against the world. The burning radiated outward from his core in waves, each one threatening to split him open and spill the blackness that resided inside of him all over his front steps.
Underneath the pain, something heated and shameful that made his stomach clench with revulsion at himself began to unravel— But the feeling of Ruben inside him, inside him, was so beyond anything Niall could have ever imagined, it nearly drowned that self-loathing out. It felt so right, like puzzle pieces sliding into place. Some sick part of him had been waiting for this, what felt like his entire life.
Ruben buried himself to the hilt, hitting Niall’s insides in a way that was almost too good, too much, tipping clean past the point where he could hold himself together. Niall lurched forward immediately despite himself. A loud, fractured moan tore from his chest, low and helpless, reverberating raggedly through the space between them.
Ruben’s response came quick and merciless. With scarcely a flicker of hesitation, he drove Niall’s face into the concrete hard enough for the impact to split through the alley in one sharp, abhorrent report. Bone and flesh collided with stone in a wet, ruinous crack that seemed to resound endlessly through the hollow of Niall’s skull. Heat blossomed beneath his nose and blood welled in dark ribbons over his mouth, sliding languidly across his lips before pattering softly onto the pavement below.
The taste of copper that spread across his tongue was metallic and intimate, carrying with it something eerily familiar, like coming home. With each shallow breath, another thin thread of red spilled free. In the dim light, it looked almost delicate, little more than wine dark droplets gathering beneath him.
Niall sobbed pathetically, dazed and sputtering as his cock throbbed hard against the cold ground. The brutality of it nearly made him come right then and there. A sick feeling washed over him as he realized that this was truly the closest he’d ever felt with anyone; arse pressed snug and trembling against his brother’s hips, their bodies locked in savage union, while warm blood trickled from his nose and painted his lips.
It felt so good that Niall couldn’t even make himself feel ashamed for liking it anymore.
”Shh.. settle, settle.” Ruben whispered in response, petting the back of Niall’s head in a tender way that was so out of place it almost frightened Niall more than being cracked open. “S’okay Bambi, just stay still, yeah?”
With both hands locked around Niall’s hips, Ruben hauled him upward with brutal ease, forcing him up to his knees, arse in the air while his cheek remained smushed against the blood-slick concrete. Every inch of him felt exposed, pried open for Ruben. The sharp change in angle allowed Ruben to sink even deeper, his thick cock pushing forward with a slick, obscene squelch as he forced more of himself into the tight heat of Niall’s body.
"Fuck," Ruben breathed. "You're soaked. Drippin’ for it."
And Niall could feel it, the warm wetness of precome slowly tracking down his thigh.
He thought, silently, about the first time he had met Ruben as a child. Hiding behind his mum’s body, fists tangled tight in the fabric of her skirt, his little face pinched with fear. Ruben had only smiled at him then, all crooked and strange, gaps where teeth should have been, a few bruises dark across one cheekbone.
Niall remembered being instinctively afraid of him. Not for any reason he could have explained at the time. It felt more like a reflex from somewhere deeper, as though the universe itself had quietly foreseen what a brotherhood like theirs was destined to become and, for a brief moment, had tried to pull him back from it. Tried to keep them apart for the sake of everything they might damage, and everyone they might eventually reach.
“Can feel you thinking,” Ruben drew his hips back only to snap them forward again with enough force to knock the breath straight from Niall’s lungs, and the thoughts from his head. The impact jarred through his entire body, pressed him harder into the unforgiving ground. “Stop that. Just feel.”
He kept Niall’s hips tilted high, locked in place. His other hand slid underneath him, wrapping around his aching cock with slow, deliberate strokes, a softness that sat uneasily beside the harsh rhythm his hips had settled into.
The wet, filthy sounds of his cock sliding deep into Niall’s body filled the night air. Every stroke dragged perfectly over his prostate, sending sharp, electric jolts through his pelvis and up his spine. He couldn’t help the pathetic little noises it coaxed out of him.
Ruben leaned in close, pausing just long enough to take him in. A groan left him, rough and involuntary, as he exhaled slowly against Niall’s sweat-slicked skin. He lingered there, unhurried, then sank his teeth into the curve of Niall’s neck in a firm, possessive bite; a wordless assertion of ownership.
Niall couldn’t hold back the broken moan that tore from his bloodied lips, high and needy and stripped of whatever shame had once accompanied it. His hips began to arch back to meet every thrust, greedily pursuing the devastating ecstasy Ruben carved into him, fucking him toward sweet oblivion.
“Yeah,” Ruben gasped against his skin, his grip tightening just enough to remind Niall he wasn’t going anywhere. “Takin’ me so well.”
Niall’s hand drifted down without thought and wrapped around his own cock, fingers folding over Ruben’s; a small, wordless concession that spoke louder than any plea.
Ruben withdrew his hand, carrying that same infuriating look he always wore whenever the world behaved exactly as he’d expected it to, and locked both hands around Niall’s hips instead. His thrusts lost what little restraint they had possessed before, becoming steadily more brutal with each passing second. “You’re mine. Say it.”
“I—” Niall’s voice cracked.
“Say it.”
Another brutal thrust punched the words out of him, “I’m yours,”
Niall whispered it like a sin, tears hot on his cheeks. It felt so devastatingly good, like something inside him was finally breaking in the right direction, pain and relief twisting together until he couldn’t tell them apart anymore. A heavy, almost unbearable sweetness flooded through him as he realized with overwhelming clarity— He was Ruben’s. So much so that whatever parts of him had once existed beyond Ruben’s reach had steadily diminished, swallowed so gradually he had scarcely noticed they were gone until now. And Niall couldn’t find it within himself right then to hate him for it.
“I know.” Is all Ruben said.
Ruben’s fingers slid into Niall’s mouth, sliding over his tongue, fucking it lazily while the metallic tang of blood from his nose mixed with the salty traces of precome still coating Ruben’s skin. Niall moaned around the intrusion, the filthy cocktail of copper, precome, and Ruben overwhelming his senses. He tasted like ruin and salvation all at once.
Niall’s lower belly felt impossibly full at this angle, nearly every deep thrust slid against his prostate with overwhelming precision, the heavy drag and grind making his vision blur at the edges. Guilt and shame still flickered through him, but it was drowning now in blissful ecstasy. Each punishing stroke milked a sound out of him he didn't recognize as his own. Hot pressure built in waves, and he knew with sudden certainty that he wasn't going to last much longer. It was bordering on too much. He couldn’t even bring himself to touch himself anymore, every brush of his own fingers felt like it would shatter him.
“Please—” Niall moaned, long and broken, the word vibrating around Ruben’s fingers. He squeezed his eyes shut so tightly it throbbed behind his temples. “Please, Ruben— I can’t— I can’t—”
“Shh-shh, yes you can.” Ruben stated, his voice low and unhurried as he shifted in closer, folding himself over Niall. One hand settled against Niall’s lower abdomen, firm and deliberate, fingers splayed over the spot just above his pubic mound. With every quick, grinding hump he could feel his cockhead outlined through the muscle, ever so gently pushing the wall of Niall’s belly outward like he was mapping territory. “You can take it, Niall. You were made to take it.”
With that, Niall's entire body went rigid, every muscle locked tight as the pressure finally crested, as everything inside him broke open at once. Release seized him with a raw sob, halfway between surrender and desperation. His cock throbbed in deep, helpless pulses, sending thick, warm ropes cascading onto the ground beneath him, streaking in glistening strands across the soft curve of his belly as shuddering waves of euphoria reduced him to pure, liquid heat.
“That’s a boy,” Ruben’s breath ghosted hot against his neck, his voice a low, velvet murmur thick with possession. He continued fucking him through the lingering throes of climax, rolling his hips in slow, deliberate motions. Ruben seated completely inside, claiming every inch of him. Niall’s legs drifted apart, limp and trembling with overstimulation.
After a few moments, Ruben pulled out slowly. The bliss that flooded through him was almost frightening in its intensity, vast enough to swallow every other feeling whole. Niall had always chased sex for the silence that followed it, for the brief suspension of his own existence. With Ruben, he did not feel suspended from himself at all. He felt completed by him. As though some missing piece buried deep inside himself had finally been returned. Like they had once belonged to the same soul before life split it violently in two, and now, for one impossible moment, Niall could feel the halves fitting back together as they were always meant to. He could not fathom how he had ever brought himself to fuck anyone else.
Niall stayed where he’d been left, cheek pressed to the floor, his body crumpled awkwardly against the cold beneath him. His own release painted his belly and the earth beneath him. His breath came thin and ragged. The blood under his nose had dried thick and tacky. He could feel Ruben’s stare cataloging every piece of the wreckage he’d made behind him, then he gently patted his arse cheek.
"Up,"
Niall’s limbs felt borrowed, clumsy and distant, as though they belonged to someone else entirely. Still, he forced them to obey. He pushed himself upright on shaking arms that trembled beneath the effort, threatening to buckle at any moment.
He sat back heavily on his heels, swaying faintly, and tipped his head up through the damp curtain of hair plastered to his forehead. Sweat cooled against his skin in the night air, leaving him chilled and feverish all at once.
Ruben stood above him. Cock still rigid and flushed. The sight twisted Niall’s stomach, caught between revulsion and hunger.
A car door slammed somewhere down the street. Niall's head whipped toward it, panic bright as a flare in his chest. His eyes darted toward the darkness beyond the sidewalk, searching for movement, for witnesses. Mouth slack like a deer caught in headlights.
“You’re not done yet,” Ruben spoke in that same lazy, unhurried drawl, like they weren’t standing exposed in the middle of Niall’s neighbourhood where anyone could turn the corner and find them like this. He reached down and gathered a fistful of Niall’s hair into his hand, not pulling yet, just holding him there with the kind of casual possession that made heat coil low in Niall’s stomach.
“Open your mouth.”
“Ruben, no—” The words scraped out hoarse and wrecked, cracking in his raw throat. “Someone’ll see, I can’t,”
"Don't care." Ruben cut him off, thumb pressing against Niall’s bottom lip, still sticky with blood. “Open.”
His jaw ached already. Throat still raw from the sounds Ruben had fucked out of him. He opened up for him anyway. Slowly. Obediently. His tongue trembled faintly behind his teeth while he waited there on his knees, exposed down to the marrow of himself.
Niall Kennedy had learned long ago not to resist the vicious force of nature that was Ruben Pallister. And besides, Niall wanted this. Wanted Ruben’s cock in his mouth, wanted the taste of him lingering on his tongue, wanted to be handled and reshaped until there was nothing left of him except the impression Ruben pressed into him. Part of him wanted people to see it, too. Was excited to go inside and cuddle up next to Ava with Ruben’s come still drying on his lips.
"That's a boy," Ruben murmured with a smile, syllables dragging lazily from his mouth.
He guided Niall's head forward, slow and deliberate, until the head of his cock pressed between parted lips.
Niall hesitated. Some final scrap of dignity struggling weakly toward the surface before instinct could smother it again. But Ruben’s grip tightened, and Niall’s resolve dissolved with it. His tongue slipped out before he could stop himself, catching the intimate salt-and-musk taste of them both lingering on Ruben’s skin.
The taste of himself on Ruben should have repulsed him. Instead, heat coiled low in his stomach, sharp enough to make his spent cock twitch weakly against his thigh. A small, fractured sound lodged in his throat, trembling in the space between shame and want.
"Look at you," Ruben said, breathless. "Gettin' hard again. You're fuckin' depraved."
Niall wanted to deny it. Wanted to pull away, spit at his boots, tell Ruben to go to hell. Instead, his tongue slid along the thick underside of Ruben’s shaft, lapping at the slick evidence of where it had just been buried inside him. The heavy weight on his tongue. The scent of Ruben filling his nose.
He supposed, at this point—half naked and wet on the front steps of his own home, his brother's prick sliding across his tongue—if he was already damned, he might as well sink all the way down.
Ruben pushed himself forward. Niall’s lips stretched wide around the thick girth, jaw forced open as the heavy head slid over his tongue and pressed toward the back of his throat.
Niall could almost see himself. On his knees, Ruben standing above him like a monument. It made everything feel more ceremonial, like he was worshiping a god. Ruben fed his cock into his mouth inch by inch, watching his face the whole time, studying every wince and flutter of his lashes.
"Breathe through your nose," Ruben said simply, telling him how it was going to be. "You can take more than you think." Niall tried to obey. Tried to relax himself, breathe through it. But his body fought him. He gagged when Ruben hit the back of his throat and his hands flew up to brace against Ruben's thighs, trembling fingers digging into soft fabric. Ruben didn't pull back. Just held himself there, buried deep, letting Niall feel every inch stretching him open for a second time tonight.
"That's it," Ruben grumbled, fingers gliding down to his throat and up his chin to feel it constrict as he gagged. “Shh-shh, s’alright. Just breathe."
Tears spilled down his cheeks to mix with dried blood and sweat. He could hear the wet, obscene sounds his throat was making, and some demented part of him was proud of it. Proud that he could take this. That Ruben even wanted to give it to him.
His little bastard brother who ruined his life, who owed him thirty thousand pounds, who just threw his infertility in his face minutes, or hours, or maybe even months ago—Niall couldn't tell anymore.
Ruben pulled back just enough for him to gasp in a lungful of air before sliding himself in again. The rhythm was slow at first, languid. Like Ruben was testing how much he could handle before he threw up or passed out.
"You've done this before, aye?" Ruben smiled, voice taking on that mocking edge again.
"Y’let any fag fuck that pretty face in dirty toilets, do you?" His hips rolled forward with more force. "You like it? Like being used like a whore?"
Niall made a sound that might have been a protest, but it came out muffled and desperate around Ruben's cock. His hands fell down to hold onto the fabric at Ruben's ankles, anchoring himself to them. "Nah, doesn’t feel like this, does it?" He continued, his hips snapping forward harder and making a wet, nasty suction noise each time he pulled back. "No one knows you like I do, Niall. Don't know you need someone to see all the filthy, fucked up shite inside you and still want you."
"Need someone to tell you exactly who you are, an' what you need to." Ruben moaned, tilting his head back.
Niall's vision blurred. He wasn't sure if it was from tears or lack of oxygen or the sheer, overwhelming truth of what Ruben was saying.
He was right.
Something that sounded like footsteps echoed somewhere in the distance. Niall's entire body went rigid with terror, nearly pulling off of Ruben entirely.
”Shh, relax, Son,” Ruben murmured, both hands sliding to the back of Niall’s neck, cradling him firmly as his thumbs rubbed slow, soothing circles against his skin. “No one’s comin’, and even if they did—” He snapped his hips forward sharply, forcing his thick shaft deeper into Niall’s throat and drawing a wet, choking gag from him. “—I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.” His pace turned ruthless, fingers tightening into a brutal grip on Niall’s skull as he began fucking his mouth in earnest. Niall’s jaw burned from the brutal stretch, his throat convulsing around the relentless invasion. Thick drool spilled uncontrollably from the corners of his mouth, cascading down his chin in glossy strands before dripping onto his chest in messy, glistening trails.
"Touch yourself,"
Niall only hesitated a heartbeat before his hand wrapped around his own leaking cock, stroking himself in desperate, too-tight pulls. The obscene rhythm of Ruben’s shaft sliding deep into his throat combined with the slick friction of his fist made his head spin.
Christ, he was going to come again. He really was depraved.
A broken whimper vibrated around Ruben’s cock. Niall’s free hand clutched at Ruben’s thigh, nails digging in as panic flickered through him from the lack of air. "Shh. You’re alright, Bambi." He soothed, voice rough with lust. His thrusts grew erratic, hips stuttering. "Nearly there."
Niall gagged hard again, throat convulsing tightly around him. With a final, savage thrust, Ruben buried himself to the hilt, holding Niall there for a long second before yanking him off completely. Niall gasped desperately for air, strings of thick drool still connecting his swollen lips to Ruben’s glistening cock. His hand never stopped working his own shaft.
Then Ruben was coming.
The first thick stripe of come landed hot across the bridge of his nose. The second hit his cheek, gradually trickling down toward his jaw. Ruben aimed the rest directly into his open, panting mouth, coating his tongue and swollen lips with bitter, pulsing ropes. Niall kept desperately stroking himself through it, eyes locked on Ruben’s face as he dragged rough fingers through the warm spend and smeared it across Niall’s flushed skin. With deliberate hunger, he pushed the slick mess between Niall’s lips, fingering it into his mouth.
Niall came hard with a broken, muffled whine, thighs trembling as the taste of Ruben filled his mouth.
They stayed like that for a long moment. Ruben’s fingers still tangled possessively in his hair, Niall on his knees with Ruben’s cooling spend streaked across his face and his own release sticky on his quivering hand.
Ruben’s thumb dragged slowly along Niall’s cheekbone, humming gently at those big, wet, innocent bambi eyes. The smile that followed was not one of victory but recognition. As though, in Ruben’s mind, nothing had changed at all— Rather, Niall had simply stopped pretending to be someone else.
“Aye, there you are.”