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They'd been sleeping together for months--well, they'd been sleeping together for longer than they'd been fucking each other; he'd slept in Newt's bed or Newt in his every night since he'd learned Newt's name and known he was precious beyond telling. Sleeping was not even slightly the problem.
Actually, it wasn't entirely fair to call it a problem-- it hadn't been, until about forty seconds ago. Hadn't pinged any alarm bells when they'd discussed it; Grindelwald hadn't often bothered to take him like this, back-to-front, on their sides, much less with fingers tangled and endearments murmured into the nape of his neck. Not with the language of his people tripping off Newt’s tongue--the first word he had asked to learn was an endearment, Percival's favorite, and Newt used it liberally.
It had never occurred to him that he had anything to fear from sex that was this gentle, so soft he’d ached with the sweetness before it had soured so suddenly--not when Newt could manhandle him face-down into their sheets and fuck him and leave bites and marks down his neck and pin his hands so he couldn't get one wrapped 'round his cock without even the slightest twinge of fear. Not when all that just made his prick drip and ache with wanting to try to press back, knowing that Newt might choose to carefully torment him, overwriting cruelties with something so much better.
"I— No, no more— Newt—" Fear flashed harder still when Newt stilled; senseless panic that didn't have any good reason to be roaring across his brain, but it didn't need one, any longer.
"Was that a 'no, more ' or a 'no more'," Newt asked. He was entirely still — pulling away could be just as frightening as staying near was, sometimes, and sometimes it was frustrating to the point of infuriating, because Percival didn't care to be treated as fragile and Newt had suffered too often for the roughness of others, and sometimes there was nothing better than a lightning strike orgasm to rinse away the sour flavor of panic.
If he weren't involuntarily drunk on fear, Percival would have appreciated how level Newt's tone was.
"Sss--st-stop. Please. Get, get it out, get—"
He was empty in a heartbeat, Newt shifted away, so slick it didn't even sting. Felt gutted, left hollow, aching somewhere much deeper than any sex act could have inflicted.
"Touching or no?"
"Stay," he gasped, and he flinched when Newt's arm wrapped around him but clutched at pale freckled skin before Newt could flinch away from him. "Stay."
He sighed, shaky, to have his lover nuzzle at the back of his head and duck down against him to kiss carefully at his neck. Shivered still, adrenaline and fear still achy shocks through him, but it was easing, slowly.
“I’ve got you,” Newt murmured, soft, and he seized tight without understanding, twitching in Newt’s arms.
“ Don’t .”
Newt startled, but he tucked closer still, firming his hold as Percival’s shudders kicked up into something that wracked his body, tightened that knot of something wounded and ugly low in his throat where he couldn’t swallow around it.
He could have wept for gratitude, that Newt stayed , held him tighter.
“I'm— that phrase?”
He managed to nod, wriggled around in Newt’s grip to face him instead, to hide under his chin. “Don’t. Please,” he begged, into warm skin. Buried it against a scar on Newt's collarbone, given by a dragon that Newt still spoke of lovingly, clung to the assurance of that incredible generosity.
“No,” Newt whispered, and ducked to kiss his temple, his hair, awkward but so damned sweet. “No more of, of that. Oh, love, I am sorry.”