“You’re doing real good, sweetheart,” Jackson manages to rasp out, already a little bit washed away by the feeling of Holland so hot and tight around him. He clears his throat some as if to pardon the pet name, eyes gone to the gold chain hanging around his partner’s neck. “Take your time.”
“Why don’t you take a fuckin’ hike with that sweetheart bullshit,” Holland says around a snort, though everything from his cheeks clear down to his chest has flushed dark and rosy since he heard Jackson say it. His thighs are already straining as he moves, trembling along with the next few words that drop into the quiet air between them. “Should’ve known you were a daisy in the sack, Healy.”
“Yeah?” Jackson asks, thrusting up halfway to meet Holland’s body where it’d been suspended mid-stride, and the low whine that breaks in his chest is all the more reward. “I think that’s debatable. Might even apply both ways.”
“You think so, huh,” Holland says, bearing down on Jackson’s cock again, palms pressed flat out on his chest now as if that’s all he’s got left to keep himself upright. “I’ll have to show y—oh fuck, Jack, fuck me, there it is. Goddamn right there it is.”
Holland’s eyes have gone glassy, forehead creased and his bottom lip getting bitten wet and raspberry-bright. Jackson rolls his hips again, grinding up into him with a deep jerk that makes sparks flare behind his eyes, and feels his own lungs stutter and hitch when Holland’s lips part open in a gasp.
“Just like that, baby,” he murmurs, gone somewhere more feverish now where sweet nothings aren’t grounds for ridicule anymore. Holland leans further over Jackson so the gold ring at his throat hangs between them in a delicate pendulum now, catching light bleeding from the floor lamp standing vigil near the bedroom door.
Jackson thinks that he wishes Holland could see himself like this, sweat-damp and riding dick like he was fired and forged for it, eyes clamped tight while he rocks the both of them slow and steady toward release. Not any of that mirrors on the ceiling shit, no shag rug on the floor—but just like Jackson sees him now, lithe and silhouetted against a halo of dim light.
It isn’t until Holland lets out a breathless edge of laughter that Jackson realizes he’d said so many words out loud.
“We’ll get the mirror later, old man,” he says, rolling his hips so the tip of his flushed cock grazes his stomach, leaving the tiniest pearl of wetness there. “Don’t think you’ve noticed yet, but I’m kinda busy here.”
Busy fucking himself into a burning ecstasy on Jackson’s cock, and how either one of them have the barest scrap of breath or mindfulness left he doesn’t know—but he’s here, with Holland, balls-deep and halfway praying to whoever’s got an ear bent to listen that he lives long enough to see how things unfold from here on out.
When Holland lets out a pinched whimper and braces both hands around Jackson’s rib cage he knows they’re rounding the corner for the final finish. It’s too damn hot in this rental’s master suite and they’ll need a fan if they keep this going, but Jackson’s already got a private daydream in mind of a bedroom built from the ground up and that thought alone—of Holland there with him, Holland flat on his back this time and getting fucked raw into the mattress—is nearly enough to do him in on the spot.
But Holland beats him there, sobbing out something between a laugh and a moan as he comes without a hand lent edgewise, leaving ribbons of hot silk to bloom across his stomach and the skin between them. Jackson tries to gentle him through the rest of it despite the tension coiling like a spring in his own body, but when Holland tips his head back and bares the line of his throat he’s going and gone, falling right over into the edge with Holland clenching tight and sweet around him.
It seems like they sway against one another in the lingering tide of what they’d made, Holland gone limp and heavy against Jackson’s chest with his breath panted out fast and damp. His hair’s plastered to his forehead and Jackson reaches up to brush it back without thinking too much, letting the pads of his fingers sweep along the younger man’s temple.
“Think I might’ve spotted ol’ Nixon there for a hot second,” Holland says, letting a smile crack across his face when he feels laughter rumble underneath him. One broad arm comes up to drape around his shoulders and they’ll have to move in a minute, untangle from each other and clean up, but for now Jackson’s content enough to hold Holland here as close as he can keep him.
“Still a daisy in bed but major props where they’re due,” Holland says, dropping a quick kiss onto Jackson’s chest with a tiny laugh that means he’s kidding. “I guess I’ll take what I can get.”
“Not bad for an old man, hmm?” Jackson hums, running a hand down Holland’s back so a thumb follows the line of his spine.
“Not too shabby at all,” Holland says, and then draws himself up a bit with a little wince so he can see Jackson’s face, blue eyes glinting some in the half-light. “Now you get to go ahead and explain this mirror business to me, since it seemed so important at the time.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Jackson says, feeling his own face go hot. “It’s not important.”
Holland scoffs again but lets his voice go a touch quieter, threaded with something verging on bashful as he dips his head again to lay against Jackson. “We could, if you wanted to,” he says. “In the new place—when it gets finished, I mean.”
“Yeah?” Jackson asks, not even realizing that he’s been tracing lazy shapes on Holland’s back this whole time.
“Might take the whole next fucking century but I don’t see why not,” Holland says, suddenly a little more sure of himself, and then goes still while a new thought dances through his head. “You’re explaining that one to Holly, though.” He laughs aloud, bright and earnest. “I’m not touching that shit with a ten-foot pole, man.”
Jackson lets out a low groan and passes a hand over his eyes. “No mirror, then. There’s not a rat’s chance in hell—I’d sooner take up sleeping on somebody’s couch for the rest of my life.”
Holland kisses him, a familiar smile planted warm and lingering against his mouth, and Jackson Healy doesn’t know if he's the kind of man who deserves something like this but god damn if he doesn’t need it.
“It’s a good thing you won’t have to, then,” Holland says, and maybe—just maybe, Jackson thinks to himself—that nice guys might not finish so far last after all.