Page 43 of Outbreak Protocol
"Erik?"
"I don't want to sleep alone," I say quietly, the admission surprising us both. "These past days... everything feels uncertain. But not when I'm with you."
Felix's expression softens. "You don't have to sleep alone."
His bedroom reflects the same understated comfort as therest of his apartment. We move around each other with careful politeness—Felix lending me a t-shirt and sleep pants, both of us taking turns in the bathroom.
When we finally settle into bed, we lie facing each other in the dark, close enough to feel the radiant heat from each other's bodies.
"This is new for me," I whisper, the admission feeling monumental.
"Sharing a bed?" Felix’s voice is a low, intimate murmur that vibrates through the mattress.
"Sharing anything that matters."
He reaches across the small space, his fingers finding mine. They are warm and strong, the subtle roughness of calluses on his palm a familiar anchor. "We don't have to do anything but sleep, Erik."
"I know." But the memory of his body, slick and solid against mine under the harsh spray of the decontamination shower, has been a low thrum under my skin ever since. That was desperate comfort; this is a different, sharper hunger.
I lift his hand and press my lips to his knuckles, a silent confession. Felix goes utterly still. Then, slowly, he shifts, closing the inches between us until his face is just a breath from mine. His scent—clean soap and the masculine, musky scent of his skin—is dangerously familiar.
"Erik?" he asks, my name a question layered with want.
I answer by closing the final distance. The first touch of his lips is tentative, but I part my own on a sharp intake of breath, and he accepts the invitation. His tongue sweeps into my mouth, not with aggression, but with a sureness that makes my toes curl. He tastes of mint and a thrilling, unique sweetness that is purely Felix. His stubble rasps against my skin, an exquisite abrasion that sends a shudder through me.
We shed our clothes, and this time, it’s not a frantic, grief-stricken necessity. It is a slow, deliberate unveiling. I’d seen him naked before, but that was a blur of steam and sorrow. Here, inthe soft shadows of the bedroom, I can finallylook. His body is a study in functional strength—broad shoulders, a solid chest, arms corded with the lean muscle of a climber. He is compact and powerful, and the way his gaze travels over my own longer, paler form makes me feel not like an anatomical chart, but like something he’s hungry for.
He pushes me gently back against the pillows, his body a warm weight as he looms over me. His hands begin a slow, torturous exploration, mapping my ribs, dipping into the indent of my waist. Then he leans down, his mouth following the path his hands blazed, hot and wet against my abdomen. I gasp, my fingers tangling in his thick, dark hair.
He kisses his way lower, pushing my thighs apart with his shoulders. When his lips finally close over the head of my cock, a broken, guttural sound is torn from my throat. He takes me into his mouth with an expert’s confidence that belies the tenderness in his eyes. He takes all of me, his throat working as he swallows, and the sight, the feeling of such complete surrender, sends my hips bucking off the mattress.
But then he moves lower still. I feel his warm breath, and then the shocking, wet heat of his tongue touches me there, at my most private, vulnerable centre. My eyes fly open. My body arches, a violent, involuntary spasm of pure shock and pleasure. It’s clinical. It’s debasing. It is the most intensely intimate thing I have ever experienced. He plunders me with his tongue, relentless and skilled, and the careful control I’ve maintained my entire life evaporates into raw, animal need.
"Felix," I groan out, the sound ragged. "Please…"
He moves back up my body, his warm hazel eyes dark with passion. "Please what, Erik? Use your words."
"Please," I pant, begging, utterly undone. "I need more. I needyou."
The words hang in the air, a confession more profound than any 'I love you'. A triumphant smile touches his lips. He reaches for the lubricant on the bedside table, and his careful, patientpreparation is an act of exquisite tenderness. He works me open with slick fingers, slow and deep, until I’m groaning and arching into his touch, pliant and aching for him.
He positions himself between my legs, and I stare up at the sight of him, hard and ready, poised to breach my final defence. He leans down and captures my mouth in a bruising kiss as he drives into me.
The feeling is a cataclysm. A tearing, stretching, overwhelming fullness that obliterates thought. It is a pain that is instantly subsumed by a pleasure so profound it feels like I’m being ripped open and remade. I scream into his mouth as my body takes all of him, the impossible intimacy of it sending streaks of white light across my vision. He stays buried deep inside me for a moment, letting me feel the thick, rigid length of him, letting my body clench around him.
Then he begins to move. It’s a slow, punishing rhythm at first, withdrawing until just the tip of him remains before sinking back to the hilt, each powerful thrust a deliberate claiming. The wet, slapping sound of our bodies meeting fills the room, a primal beat. I wrap my legs high around his waist, pulling him deeper.
"Fuck, Erik," he groans, his forehead pressed to mine. "You're so tight, you feel so good."
His pacequickens, his thrusts becoming a frantic pounding that drives the air from my lungs. He finds a rhythm, an angle that grinds against something deep inside me, and my mind shatters into pure sensation. My orgasm doesn't just come; it detonates. It's a violent, full-body convulsion that tears a scream from my throat, my vision whiting out as I arch off the bed, my back bowing as I’m flooded with wave after wave of unbearable pleasure.
My release triggers his. With a final, guttural roar that vibrates through my entire skeleton, he drives into me one last time, his body clamped down on mine as he floods me with his heat.
We collapse together, a tangled mess of sweat-slick limbs. He withdraws slowly, and I whimper at the loss. He pulls me to his side, my head on his shoulder, his arm a heavy, reassuring weight around me. The air is cool on my overheated skin, but inside, I have never felt warmer. For the first time in memory, I feel utterly and completely safe.
Tomorrow will bring new challenges—more patients, additional research, the ongoing crisis that shows no signs of abating. But tonight, in this quiet apartment with a sleeping child down the hall and Felix's heartbeat steady beneath my ear, the world feels manageable again.
I close my eyes and allow myself this moment of peace, this unexpected gift of human connection in the midst of scientific chaos.