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Daniel's body wasn't entirely sure how to react.
His heart is racing, but discerning excitement, anxiety, and overstimulation is nearly impossible. Hunter's touch is guiding, and yet seemingly hesitant as well. Daniel prays this isn't because his apprehension is noticeable.
It's all flushed skin and greedy lips, and Daniel's head is filled to the brim with anxiety that his inexperience that the most he's ever done is a couple of chase kisses and roaming hands with one-week girlfriends in high school is blatantly apparent.
He fears Hunter is regretting this encounter, and he's not good enough, and Jesus fucking christ, he doesn't deserve to have this moment right now with this person.
He feels strange, unsure of his place, yet fully confident that he has no idea what he's doing.
Okay, fuck, Daniel calm down.
Hunter nudges him onto his back, and Daniel takes in a shaky inhale as he admires the form above him. Hunter ducks down, and Daniel involuntary gasps.
Lips connect with Daniel's neck. He's all gentle kisses and soft nips, nothing that would leave a lasting mark, and Daniel mulls the idea of saying he wants marks before deciding that perhaps that's not something you're supposed to say, or that it would break the mood of the moment, or maybe it's not something Hunter would want to do, so he keeps his mouth shut.
Hunter's touch is warm, almost exaggeratedly so. Daniel can hardly think straight between kisses, and he struggles to catch his breath. Hunter's hands explore him with confidence, Daniel feels a rush of chills and tingles and good go up his spine as Hunter's hands find their way under his shirt and rest on his bare ribcage as they kiss. It lasts seconds before the hand is gone, now gripping the hem of Daniel's shirt and pulling up. Daniel's heart rate is through the roof, and he's instantaneously overcome with insecurity and pangs of inferiority. Its most active in the moments Hunter presses kisses to his protruding ribcage, then a hand is on his narrow hipbone.
He knows he isn't good enough for Hunter. That Hunter is smarter, more charismatic, funnier, a better person, wise well beyond his years, adventurous, strong, brave, handsome, has made it through so much, and acts like it's nothing. All of that and so loving and caring and kind and protective to those he cares about most.
And what is Daniel?
Just some gangly idiot. No friends, no life. Nothing. Forgettable. It haunts him how much he doesn't deserve Hunter. If he lets the thoughts get too ugly, he finds himself fighting back the tears. Because it's challenging to be this in love with someone while at the same time thinking you're nowhere near the person they deserve.
Hunter says, reasonably often in the most casual moments, just simple things he likes about Daniel. Says sweet things unprompted. Gives praise and love without having been asked to, and not merely as an act of reciprocity. It makes Daniel feel warm, swells his heart within his ribcage. It melts away every sad emotion he's had for the day. But Daniel still can't see in himself what Hunter sees and loves about him. All he can see in himself is bad.
He wonders if, when Hunter occasionally shies away from affection or rejects compliments, it's for that very same reason.
The juxtaposition of seeing stars for the intensity of their intimacy, while also being so afraid, and so insecure, and terrified that he's going to fuck this up somehow is maddening. He can feel tears welling in his eyes, and all his strength is going into inwardly calming himself down. Daniel wants this more than anything, and the thought of fucking everything up at such an important landmark of their relationship- the possibility of causing everything they have to crumble, is devastating.
Keeping his breathing even is hard, made more difficult when Hunter is looking down at him. The sensation and experience sometimes make Daniel feel like he's been hit in the chest. It'd be easy if it were just looking into beautiful muted blue-green eyes.
But everything with Hunter is always so otherworldly and so extraordinary.
Hunter looks at him like he can see everything.
Like he already knows things Daniel hasn't told anyone in his life.
He looks at Daniel like he could read his thoughts; it's like he understood everything that could ever pass Daniel's mind without needing Daniel to say a word.
It's the only moments Daniel has ever felt seen, understood. Daniel longs to hold Hunter's face in his hands and stay like that, just absorbing each other for eternity. Daniel knows nothing will matter as much to him as their bond does. That he could never replicate the love and passion he has for Hunter with any other person. He'll never try to or want to. That there's this and nothing else for him. That this will always be everything he's ever wanted. If this disappears, he can replay the memories over and over, and that's all he'll need.
Hunter presses a kiss to Daniel's cheekbone, and it's like he reintroduced air to someone who nearly drowned.
"Are you okay?" Hunter asks quietly, and Daniel's lips part to speak, but nodding in affirmation is all his brain will allow him.
Thank you, Daniel wants to say. I'm always okay when I know I have you.
Daniel is present now, and the world feels like it's moving so slow and so fast at the same time. Hunter's kisses feel like they're happening in slow motion, but still not enough so that Daniel could truly savor it as much as he wants to. At the same time, he can't process the speed of which Hunter is hooking his fingers around Daniel's belt loops and pulling him further down on the bed.
Daniel tries to conceal the yelp of shock, but a strangled noise still leaves him as Hunter moves him so easily.
Hunter slowly works the button of his jeans open and drags the zipper down at a pace that has Hunter's heart beating so fast he's sure residents in the next city could hear it. His blood runs cold as Hunter tugs his pants down. The removal of clothes is far too fast to even begin to process, and the moments immediately after, where every single inch of himself is wholly bared for Hunter's eyes, for Hunter's touch, moves so slowly it feels like Hunter's eyes scan his body at the rate of one millimeter per hour.
Hunter doesn't say anything, and Daniel doesn't know if it's better or worse that way.
Daniel feels like all the air has been stolen from his lungs when a hand is palming him.
He looks to Hunter's eyes, desperately searching for something to ground him as pleasure threatens to float him off to soft, mindless bliss. It takes so much for his mind to process, but he stares into beautiful blue and sees… devotion. Love. Hunger. Want. And Daniel thinks, for nearly a second, that maybe he isn't even in the room. He's a specter. That he has astrally projected into another human's body. Because he knows with every inch of certainty, no person has or ever would look at him like that. He's not something that is wanted. By anyone.
But yet those very things continue to be geared towards him even after he blinks to full consciousness.
Hunter, oblivious to the never-ending swirl of pitiful insecurities and self-doubt within Daniel's head, presses a kiss to Daniel's abdomen.
And it really is that simple.
All the malice in Daniel's head unwinds itself instantly, receding into the darkness and freeing him of the agony to be in this moment. Years of losing the fight against the inner demons, but Hunter can make them vanish without even knowing of their presence.
Hunter continues to guide Daniel slowly and delicately through pleasure as he explores Daniel's body with kisses, fingers, licks, and it leaves Daniel chewing his bottom lip swollen and raw as he feels he can do little more than lay back and receive it. Hs nails scape across Hunter's scalp before he's retreating the touch, and a shiver runs through his body as Hunter looks up at him.
Hunter continues until Daniel is shaking, until he pulls Daniel to the point he's panting and struggling so, so hard to make words. to say Hunter's name, profess his love, to beg for more, anything.
His hands tense, body unsure of how to react as Hunter enters him. The noise he makes feels and sounds completely foreign, and he feels the heat rise to his face. He feels mortified, beyond embarrassed, but Hunter doesn't seem to react negatively. Hunter looks down, catches Daniel's eyes, and raises a hand from gripping Daniel's hips to rest on his cheek. Daniel gives a sharp gasp as Hunter's hips pull back and push in slowly,
"Okay?" Hunter whispers, and Daniel nods, fingers tangling in the blanket and pulling at the bedding to keep himself grounded.
Hunter chips him apart bit by bit with each thrust, making Daniel gasp and moan, digging his fingertips into the sheets harder. He can't handle the sound he makes each time their bodies connect fully. Daniel feels hot and floaty, at a level of euphoria he hadn't known before this moment.
Hunter meets his eyes, and they trade hesitant eye contact for several moments before Daniel's eyes move down to where their bodies are meeting. Hunter groans through gritted teeth and presses his forehead to the skin just under Daniel's jawline.
His lips and teeth connect with Daniel's collarbone, move up to the sensitive indent where Daniel's shoulder and neck meet. When he fees Hunter's teeth kneading the area and the skin being pulled into his mouth, Daniel is on cloud nine. Daniel wraps a hand around Hunter's wrist, and he fully leans into all the pleasure Hunter is offering him.
They trade lazy half-kisses as they both meet their climaxes. Hunter stays in place inside of Daniel as he pants against Daniel's ear. The warmth of his breath and hs frame around Daniel sends shivers up his spine more than once, and it's an intoxicatingly comfortable sensation that leaves him reaching out for Hunter when he finally sits up. He's rewarded with a gentle kiss to the bridge of his nose and a smile that makes his heart swell.
Idle moments like this, where even in verbal silence, there's so much closeness and intimacy. Where Daniel's mind can wholeheartedly, and for perhaps only a second, let him feel like every single inch and aspect of himself is loved.
Hunter pulls back wholly and settles himself next to Daniel, wrapping themselves in each other's arms and getting them both under the covers. Daniel squeezes where his arms are locked over Hunter's ribcage and allows himself to be fully comforted by the warmth of Hunter's body.
"I love you," Daniel whispers against Hunter's shoulder. He feels like he's said it a hundred times telepathically, just as often if more more than he's been breathing, blinking, existing.
Hunter gives a content hum, pecks Daniel's forehead gently. "Love you." It comes out so casually and simply like he’s been saying only that his entire life, like Daniel asked him what color the sky is. But the amount of emotion surrounding it is tangible.
Daniel can replay the sound in his head a thousand times, and it never gets old. He presses his face into Hunter's skin a bit more firmly, and they breathe in each other in silence until they're asleep.
it's so simple and so sweet, and for once, Daniel truly understands what it means to be wholeheartedly happy in your life.