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Leo had not taken his clothes off in roughly fifty years. He’d forgotten that he could, and now that he did, he wanted them gone more than anything.

“Yes,” he said.

Nate rid Leo of his sweatshirt, and then his undershirt, and then he just… looked.

Leo bore it for three whole seconds. “Say something.”

“I’m going to need a bigger cabinet door,” Nate said.

“What?”

“I need to paint all of that.”

“You’re not painting me naked!”

“Oh, I definitely am.”

“Nate—”

Nate kissed him quiet, and gathered him in, and the moment skin met skin, Leo lost the argument. He lost every argument he’d ever planned to have. There was too much information arriving at once. The heat of Nate’s body, the drag of calloused hands over skin that had not been touched in decades, the weight of being held, it all arrived in one long shuddering rush.

“Easy,” Nate murmured, into his hair. “I’ve got you.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re shaking.”

“Am not.”

“You are.” Nate didn’t say it like an argument. He said it like a fact he intended to do something about, and then he did — he wrapped both arms around Leo and simply held him, skin to skin, chin resting on top of Leo’s head, and stopped moving entirely.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“We were in the middle of something!”

“We’ve got all night.” Nate’s hand moved slowly up and down his spine. “You’re fifty years out of practice at being touched. Let’s let you catch up.”

Leo wanted to object. But Nate’s palm kept traveling his back, unhurried, and the shaking eased out of him a little at a time and he forgot why he wanted to object in the first place.

His body sorted itself out. The flood of sensation settled from a roar into something he could stand in. He became aware of individual things again: the hair on Nate’s chest against his cheek. The warmth of him. His own hands, flat against Nate’s back, holding on.

“Better?” Nate asked.

“I was always fine.”

“Sure.”

Leo lifted his head and kissed him, regaining control. He pressed Nate back through the air, slow and deliberate, and laid him down on nothing at all, and Nate went, weightless, letting himself be arranged, looking up at Leo with dark eyes and absolute trust.

Leo took his time.

Everything he half-remembered of getting physical with another person was hurried — dark rooms, held breath, one ear always listening, expecting to be discovered.

Not so now.

And Leo explored Nate the way Nate explored a house: thoroughly, with his hands, cataloguing what he found. The soft skin inside the elbow. The ribs. The trail of hair below the navel, which he followed with one finger until Nate’s stomach jumped and his breath went uneven.