The Grand Meridian's 42nd-floor suite smelled like fresh linen, expensive candles, and the faint citrus of Ryder's cologne. Miles had bought him the cologne for his 22nd birthday, the bottle Ryder claimed was "too fancy" but he wore it every single day after. Miles, a year younger than Ryder, had splurged on this room. Six months of saving, every extra shift at the city archive, every skipped coffee and brown-bag lunch, all so he could give them this: one night in a place that felt like they'd made it, like they were the kind of people who belonged in rooms with crown molding and marble bathrooms and windows that looked out over the entire city like it was theirs.
They'd just returned from a white-tablecloth dinner at a fancy place with a prix fixe menu that cost more than they spent on groceries in a month. Miles had watched Ryder try to hide his shock at the prices, had reached across the table and squeezed his hand and said, "Just let me do this, okay?" And Ryder had let him, because it was their night, their anniversary, and Miles wanted everything to be perfect.
One year. One whole year since Ryder had dragged him out of that rain-soaked comic shop at midnight. Miles was clutching a bag of back issues he'd been hunting for months, Ryder dripping wet and grinning like an idiot. He kissed him against the brick wall in the alley. Hard. Urgent. Like he'd been holding it in for weeks. "You ready to do this, nerd?" Ryder had asked, and Miles had kissed him back, glasses fogging up, heart hammering so hard he thought it might crack his ribs. Ryder took that as a yes.
Ryder had laughed when he saw the rose petals scattered across the bed. "Jesus, Miles. You trying to romance me or summon a demon?"
Miles adjusted his glasses, cheeks already pink. He'd spent twenty minutes arranging those petals, making sure they looked artfully scattered and not like he'd just dumped them out of the bag. "Shut up. It's our anniversary. I wanted it to be perfect."
Ryder crossed the room in two strides, always moving like that, taking up space without trying, all confidence and easy grace. He took Miles's face in those big, calloused hands. Hands that had held him through panic attacks and bad days and the morning his grandmother died. Hands that knew exactly how to touch him. He kissed Miles slow, soft at first, just a brush of lips, then deeper, the kind of kiss that promised they had all night and he intended to use every minute of it.
"It already is," Ryder murmured against Miles's mouth, and Miles felt something loosen in his chest, the anxious knot he'd been carrying for weeks finally unraveling.
They took their time undressing each other. Ryder's shirt hit the floor first, revealing the dark ink that snaked across his chest and down his arms—a phoenix on his left shoulder, geometric patterns on his right forearm, a date in Roman numerals over his heart that Miles had been there for. Miles loosened his tie with shaking fingers, and Ryder caught his hands, steadied them, smiled that slow smile that still made Miles's stomach flip even after a year.
"You're nervous," Ryder said, not a question.
"I want it to be good," Miles admitted. "I want...I don't know. I want this to matter."
"It matters," Ryder said simply. "You matter. We matter." He kissed Miles's knuckles, one by one. "Now stop overthinking and get over here."
They were laughing about the champagne bucket. Miles had accidentally ordered two bottles of Krug instead of one, and now there were four hundred dollars worth of champagne sitting in ice. Then the first explosion hit.
Not thunder. Miles knew thunder; he'd grown up in the midwest where summer storms rolled in like freight trains. Not construction, either, though the city was always tearing something down or building something up. This was something else. Something massive and distant but unmistakable, a sound that hit him in the chest like a physical thing.
Things had been tense for more than a year. Miles knew that much. You couldn't avoid the news crawling across every screen, the talking heads with their grim faces, the way people had started looking at each other on the subway with suspicion instead of just indifference. But Miles and Ryder were two young guys in love, trying to live their lives, and they'd made a silent agreement to focus on what they could control: their jobs, their tiny apartment, each other. The world had stopped feeling normal long before they met, but they'd kept going anyway, kept choosing each other, kept planning for a life because that mattered more than whatever was happening in capitals and war rooms halfway across the world.
More explosions. The windows rattled in their frames. The champagne flutes on the nightstand chimed softly.
Ryder froze, hand still on Miles's hip, fingers pressed into the pale skin just above his waistband. "What the fuck..."
Another explosion. Closer this time. The lights flickered once, twice, then held. The chandelier above them swayed, crystals clicking together noisily.
Miles stepped to the window, shirtless and sock-footed on the plush carpet. Below, the city looked wrong. It took him a moment to process what he was seeing: orange flashes blooming between skyscrapers, bright and sudden like flashbulbs. Smoke rising in thick, black columns that twisted against the evening sky. The regular grid of streetlights flickering, whole blocks going dark in waves.
Sirens. Layered and frantic, a chorus of them rising from every direction.
Ryder came up behind him, arms sliding around Miles's waist, chin hooking over his shoulder. His breath was warm against Miles's neck. "That's… not fireworks."
Miles's brain was trying to make sense of it, categorize it, fit it into something logical. A gas main explosion. A terrorist attack. An accident at one of the chemical plants across the river. But there were too many fires. Too much smoke. Too many sirens screaming at once.
Another explosion. This one felt like it was close by. The windows lit up with a flash of sickly orange-red, the color of burning chemicals, casting their shadows long and dark across the carpet. The light washed over them for a heartbeat, then faded back to the dim glow of the burning city. The chandelier swayed violently. Miles felt Ryder's heartbeat against his back.
The intercom crackled to life, the voice nothing like the smooth professionalism you'd expect from a place like this: "This... this is an emergency. You need to evacuate. Use the stairwells. Don't use the elevators. Please..." Static. Then silence.
The silence that followed felt thick, suffocating. Miles could hear his own heartbeat, loud and fast in his ears. He could feel Ryder's pulse where their bodies pressed together, rapid and quick against his spine.
Then another explosion, even louder and much closer, near enough that Miles felt it in his bones. The floor trembled under their feet. Something shattered far below, they could hear the sound of glass raining down onto pavement.
Ryder's grip tightened, fingers digging into Miles's ribs. "We gotta go. Now."
Miles didn't move. He couldn't stop staring at the skyline. A building two blocks over that he'd walked past a hundred times, was listing sideways like a drunk leaning into a bar. Miles loved that old art deco tower with the restaurant on the ground floor where they'd had their third date. Fire licked up its side, bright orange, consuming floor after floor.
People were running in the streets. Tiny figures from this height, but Miles could see them scattering like ants from a kicked hill. Cars abandoned in the middle of intersections. Someone had driven their sedan up onto the sidewalk, doors hanging open. A city bus was overturned, even emergency vehicles were abandoned.
It was the end of the world in real time.
"Miles," Ryder said more urgently, his voice edged with something Miles had never heard from him before. Fear. "Buddy. We need to get the..."
The explosion that interrupted him was the loudest yet. It was too close, it shook the building. The lights died instantly, plunging them into darkness. For a moment, nothing. Then the orange glow from outside filtered in, painting everything in shades of fire and shadow. The floor rolled under them like a ship in rough water. They turned quickly when something shattered, the champagne flutes. Miles thought distantly as several of the crystals from the chandelier hit the floor with a musical crack.
"No. Fuck. No."
Ryder turned him around, hands on his shoulders. Behind Miles's glasses, his eyes were steady. Focused. The blue of them the most colorful thing in the room at the moment, except for his bright red hair. "What?"
"No," Miles repeated, softer this time. Calmer. "I'm not running down forty-two fucking flights of stairs into that." He gestured out the window at the growing chaos. "Not tonight."
Ryder searched his face, looking for panic, for shock, for anything that said Miles wasn't thinking clearly. He knew him well enough to know this look. "You're serious."
Miles reached up, fingers brushing along Ryder's jaw, tracing the line of stubble there, the curve of his bottom lip. "We've got one night. One stupid, perfect night we planned for a year." His voice didn't shake. "I'm not giving it up because the world decided to end today."
The building groaned around them, metal and concrete protesting. Somewhere distant, the sounds of sirens was replaced by gunfire, screams, terror. The orange glow outside pulsed brighter as something else caught fire.
Ryder exhaled hard, shaky, his hands trembling where they gripped Miles's shoulders. "Fuck. Okay." He laughed once, disbelieving, eyes bright with something between terror and awe. "Okay. You're fucking insane, you know that?"
Miles smiled fierce, the smile he wore when he'd made up his mind about something and nothing could change it. "You just figured that out?"
He pushed Ryder back toward the bed. Not rough, but firm. Confident in a way that still surprised them both sometimes. Ryder backed up willingly, sitting on the edge of the mattress, rose petals crushing under him, releasing their perfume into the air. He looked up at Miles like he was seeing him for the first time. He was still in awe of the fact that he fell in love with the least likely person. Miles was a skinny, red-haired guy with the thick-framed glasses, soft freckles and a shy smile. He moved through the world carefully and quietly. He was the nerdy guy who'd somehow become the center of Ryder's entire universe.
"Are you sure about this?" Ryder asked, voice low. Not scared, exactly. Just needing to hear it.
Miles took a breath. Looked at Ryder, really looked at him. He studied Ryder, as if he would never see him again. He memorized the way the firelight from outside lit up his dark eyes, the perfect lines of his sculpted torso, the ink that covered his skin like a story only Miles got to read. Guys like Miles weren't supposed to end up with guys like Ryder, but here they were.
"Being here with you, like this," Miles said quietly, "it's going to be so much better than whatever's waiting for us out there. Even if we make it after tonight, what kind of life are we going to have? I know that if we did go out there, you would protect me, but..." He stepped closer, fingers threading through Ryder's hair. "This is better. Us, together, until the end. I'm sure. I'll go if you insist, but I really want to just stay here for however long this building remains standing."
Miles stepped between his legs, hands sliding into Ryder's dark hair, fingers tightening just enough to make Ryder's breath catch. Outside, the city burned. Inside, Miles looked at him with those blue eyes and said, quiet but absolute: "On your knees for me."
Ryder's breath hitched. To most of the world, he was the one who looked like he'd break someone in half, he was the guy who gave the orders. Ryder was six feet tall, broad-shouldered, covered in ink. He's the guy who worked construction and rode a motorcycle and scared Miles's parents the first time they met him. But when it was just them in the space they'd carved out for themselves, Miles was the one in charge. Not in an aggressive overly controlling way, but without a doubt, there was no question between them. It didn't take Ryder long to let go. To give himself to the skinny nerdy boy. To trust. To surrender to the one person in the world who'd never hurt him.
He hesitated for just a second, his fear still there, the what-ifs trying to claw their way back in. Miles's thumb brushed along his cheekbone, gentle and certain, and Ryder felt himself relax into it. Into Miles's confidence. Into the steady calm that said they were ok, no matter what was happening around them.
He slid to the carpet without a word, knees hitting the plush fibers. Looked up at Miles, waiting.
Miles undid his own belt, slipped his pants and underwear down and stepped out of them, eyes never leaving Ryder's face. His hands were steady now. There was no nervousness, no second-guessing. Just certainty. "Look at me," he said, and Ryder did.
Miles guided himself to Ryder's mouth, and Ryder took him in, slowly, reverently. It took Ryder some effort, even after a year, to take all of Miles - yet another surprise from a boy filed with them. Miles's hand tightened in his hair, not forcing, just holding, grounding them both. He set a gentle rhythm with his hips, watching Ryder's eyes flutter half-closed, watching the way his tattooed shoulders flexed as he braced himself.
The world kept falling apart outside. Glass cracked somewhere down the hall. Shouts echoed in the corridors as panicked guests, Miles assumed, were running for the stairwells like they'd been told. But in their suite, time moved differently. Miles whispered things only they could hear. "You have so good for me… so good to me... always so good… I love you so fucking much…"
Ryder made a low sound in his throat, desperate and pleased at once.
When Miles pulled back, Ryder's lips were slick, his breathing rough. Miles hauled him up by his hair—gentle but firm—and kissed him deep, tasting himself on Ryder's tongue. "I love you," Miles said against his mouth. "Whatever happens. I love you."
"I love you too," Ryder managed, voice wrecked. "Miles, I..."
"Shhhhh..." Miles hissed.
He pushed Ryder down onto all fours on the carpet, facing the window so they could both see everything. He couldn't explain why if he had to, but he wanted to watch it - the smoke, the fire, the impossible ruin of everything they'd known. Miles knelt behind him, hands sliding over tattooed skin, over the hard muscle of Ryder's back, gripping his hips. "Fuck, you are hot. You ready for me?"
Ryder's voice cracked. "Always."
Miles took his time. He prepped Ryder slowly, carefully, the way he always did, the way he had to. He whispered reassurances, dropping kisses along Ryder's spine. Ryder trembled under his hands, forehead pressed to the carpet, breathing hard.
When Miles finally pushed in, gently at first, Ryder let out a yelp that sounded like it came from someone much less masculine than him. As Miles moved deeper inside him, Ryder's arms shook, his head dropping forward. But Miles caught him right under his chin, grabbing his neck and tilted his head back up. "Look," he said, nodding toward the window. "Look at us."
Their eyes met in the glass reflection. They were two naked bodies framed by apocalypse. Miles pale and lean, red hair a shock of color against the smoke-hazed sky. Ryder dark and solid beneath him, tattoos stark against his skin. Together.
"Look how fucking perfect we still are," Miles breathed, and started to move. He fucked Ryder steady and deep, making him groan with ecstasy. Miles had one hand braced on his back, the other reaching around to Ryder's neck, holding his head up and squeezing his throat just enough. There was no rush. They weren't afraid of anything anymore. It was just them, claiming every last moment. Making it mean something. Refusing to let the world take this from them.
Outside, another explosion lit the sky. The building groaned, metal and concrete protesting. But Miles didn't stop. Miles increased his pace, his thrusts becoming more insistent. He kept his focus on Ryder. He loved the way his body responded, the sounds he made, the way he pushed back into each thrust like he needed it, needed Miles, needed this connection more than air. They made it last.
When Ryder came, he did so as he shouted Miles's name, his body locking tight around his cock, head thrown back. Miles followed seconds later, burying himself as deep as he could, forehead pressed to Ryder's shoulder blade, gasping "love you love you love you" against his sweaty skin.
They collapsed together on the carpet, tangled and gasping. Miles's glasses had fallen off at some point, but he didn't care. He could see everything that mattered, Ryder's face inches from his, eyes dark and soft and full of something that hurt to look at directly.
Outside, the sounds were more disturbing, more final.
After a few minutes, maybe longer, Miles pulled Ryder to his feet, led him to the bed. They climbed under the covers together, still naked, still catching their breath. Miles retrieved the two bottles of Krug from the ice bucket, condensation dripping onto the sheets, and handed one to Ryder.
"Our glasses broke." Miles chuckled. "Fuck it." They clinked the bottles together and took a drink. Champagne overflowed from the bottles when they left their lips, spilling all over them and the bed. They laughed, actually laughed, like it was just any other night. The sound of it was bright and real in the darkness.
"You're such a bad influence." He took another long drink from the bottle. "An adorable, sweet, sexy, awesome bad influence."
"Yeah, well." Miles drank, the bubbles sharp and cold. "I had to be if I was going to be with such a bad boy." More laughter, more explosions, more bright orange filling the room.
They lay there under the covers, drinking and spilling champagne, bodies pressed together for warmth, for comfort, for the simple fact of being alive and together. Ryder told the story about the time Miles had gotten so absorbed in a book at the coffee shop that he didn't notice him pull the table about three feet away. "When you went to put your book down... oh shit... the loud noise when it hit the floor..."
"Yeah? We're gonna play that game? How about the morning you made me breakfast in bed... or more accurately tried to set the building on fire! We had to run out so fast we were standing in the rain in our underwear!"
"That girl who lived next door never looked at you the same after that."
They told stories, made out with each other, they laughed... a lot. When the champagne was gone, they raided the minibar. And, in the dark with the world burning outside, they pleasured each other in ways they hadn't imagined they could. Why not? What else was there to do? What else had ever mattered but this? The two of them, the sound of each other's voices, the way they fit together like puzzle pieces.
"I hope we're not the only ones who are having this much fun right now." Miles wondered.
"Only if they are as certifiable as you." Ryder smirked as Miles batted his nose playfully.
The explosions had slowed, even if only for a while. The city was certainly decimated by now. It wasn't long, they both quietly thought to themselves. The reality of the situation was closer now, looming overhead. Ryder pulled Miles against his chest, making Miles the little spoon. He wrapped his arms around him tight. His fingers traced lazy circles over his smooth chest, over the familiar landscape of ribs and freckles he knew better than his own body. They both jerked when they heard an explosion that was definitely in the hotel.
Ryder's voice was wrecked when he spoke. "Happy anniversary, nerd."
Miles kissed his hand, soft and lingering. "Best one ever!"
"You're fucking crazy," Ryder said, but he was smiling. Miles could hear it in his voice.
"Yeah, well. You love me anyway."
"I really do," Ryder said, and his voice broke on the words. "I really, really do."
They lay there for a long time, listening to the world end. The smoke was getting thicker outside, darker. More buildings burning, collapsing. There were no more sirens, not many screams either. Something caused the building to shift drastically. Their window shattered, glass flying into their room. Miles has pulled the blackout curtain closed near their bed. As the smoke drifted into the room, they buried themselves under the covers. Miles wondered if anyone was left. Wondered how many people had made it out... somewhere. Wondered if it mattered.
"Do you think it will hurt?" Ryder asked quietly. "At the end? Do you think it will be quick?"
Miles considered. "I don't know. Guess it depends. We are 42 floors up. Who gives a fuck anymore? We're together. That's gotta count for something."
"Yeah," Ryder said. He laced his fingers through Miles's, held on tight. "Yeah, it does."
The building shook again, longer this time. Something far below collapsed with a sound like thunder. They felt the floor shift again.
Ryder pulled Miles closer, buried his face in the curve of his neck, and breathed him in. Memorized the smell of his skin, the feel of his heartbeat against his palm. "I'm happy I'm with you," he whispered. "If it has to be like this, then this is where I want to be. I'm glad it's you." Ryder kissed Miles's temple. "There's no one I'd rather be with at the end of the world than you, Miles Grayson."
Miles laughed. "That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me."
"I mean it," Ryder said. "Every word."
They turned to face each other and kissed again, and again, holding each other tight under the comforter. When the walls started to shake in earnest, when the ceiling began to crack sending debris on top of them, when the floor tilted even further, and the chandelier crashed to the floor, they just held each other tighter.
And for one last night, for one last hour, for one last perfect moment, they were the only thing that mattered in the world.
Just them.
Until the end.
A slight departure from some of my other stories, but I hope you like it as much as I do. I was messing around with creating X-rated AI images and ended up creating two boys in front of a hotel room window, naked, looking at each other lovingly as the world collapses around them. Then I had them sucking and fucking. And then I kept thinking about the story behind that image and this is the result.
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