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“Y’know,” Hazel begins one day, glancing up from the restaurant menu to smile at Gat from across the table, “I’d be more’n happy to get ya somethin’, if y’asked.”
Gat glances up. “I don’t need to eat.”
“Yes, yes, I know , but you can eat. Here--let me get somethin’ for ya.” He pushes the menu across the table. “Reckon they oughta have somethin’ here you like.”
Gat glances down at the menu, because it feels rude not to, but he’s already decided. He shakes his head. “We’ll save money and resources for the journey ahead if I don’t.”
“Hmm.” Hazel doesn’t deny that he’s correct, but he also doesn’t take the menu back. “S’pose I could order ya to pick something.”
Gat doesn’t object. “You could.”
Hazel lets the suggestion linger in the air a moment, before brushing it off with a laugh as he slides the laminated sheet back to his side of the table. “Asceticism’s a mighty admirable thing, yanno. Gettin’ by just on what you need.” He glances up and grins. “It’s a godly virtue, in fact!”
*
He thinks that if asceticism really is a virtue, it’s not one that Hazel personally holds to any significant effect.
It’s always just one more with Hazel. Ahh, just one more minute, Gat--I’m so doggone comfortable! when Gat comes to collect him from the bath before he dozes off. Let me see the pack a moment, Gat; just one more little taste? You know what, I don’t need this whole thing, I reckon I’ll break it in half. You sure you don’t want this piece? he says, before putting the uneaten half of the cookie back in their bag, to be eaten by him in approximately eight minutes.
Gat sees it when they’re shopping in town together too, but curiously, Hazel buys very little for himself. He’s gregarious and chatty with the shop owners and artisans they come across, takes an interest in plenty of their wares, but never commits to anything they don’t need for the journey.
Except when it comes to Gat.
Hazel seems to find every opportunity to buy Gat new clothes. He’s used to wearing his clothes out as long as they’re wearable, mending them as needed here and there, but the moment Hazel notices a tear or some loose stitching, he’s plucking and prodding at him, frowning like Gat’s dressed in rags and not marginally worn clothing. “I’m thinkin’ we oughta find you somethin’ a mite more respectable once we get to town. Rough journey ahead, we’ll need t’make sure what we’ve got’ll last.” A pat on his back, before Hazel strides on along the path. “We’ll go out and see what’s what after we find someplace to stay the night.”
At that point, Gat knows that the moment they find someplace to deposit their things, Hazel will be dragging him out to the nearest shopping street. They’ll try on shirts and trousers and leather vests, lingering likely until the shops begin shutting their doors for the night (and often for a bit after, if Hazel turns on his charms). Gat will patiently allow Hazel to dress him as he pleases, stand there while Hazel mulls over different items on the racks, as he nudges him to try them all on and studies him in each piece, scrutinizing the fit, the make, the color. He’ll more than likely have a whole new outfit by the time they’re done.
Gat humors this exercise, but really, truly, couldn't care less about the clothes.
“Here we are, now.” Hazel’s hands arrange the vest over his shoulders, straightening the fabric before his hands smoothe down Gat’s chest. “What do we think of this one?”
Gat remembers, after a beat, to look at the vest, and not Hazel’s fingers. He glances at the garment and answers with a simple, “It’s good.”
Hazel beams. “Perfect.” He turns, and ducks back out of the changing room. “Don’t go nowhere, now, I’ll be right back.”
His fingers shift to chase him after he steps away, and Gat thinks as he watches him rush off to find the shopkeeper that he may not be as much of an ascetic as Hazel thinks. Because a part of him is still eager for this. One more touch of Hazel’s hands. One more soft breath against his cheek as Hazel fixes a bandana or hat into place. One more moment of Hazel studying him with that curious, intense expression.
Just one more.
One more.
One more.
***
When it happens, he’s most usually on top.
He thinks Hazel just prefers it that way.
It can’t be an especially comfortable position. His legs have to part wide so that he can properly straddle his hips. Yet he seems to welcome it, the too-wide stretch in his thighs, the too-full stretch of Gat’s cock inside him. He rocks slowly, cautiously--he’s grown a lot more confident in this, but he’s still new to it, Gat knows that he is--settling into his rhythm
“Does it feel good?” His hand lifts, fingertips grazing Gat’s cheek. “Tell me honest, now.”
You know it does . Gat opens his mouth to reply, but the sound cuts off sharply in his throat, strangled into a grunt as Hazel drops down again. It takes a few seconds more before he can finally manage to say, “Yes.”
Hazel grins, and his thumb brushes over Gat’s lips. Pleased, silently, at the validation, and perhaps relieved, that his revived body can still feel pleasure. “Good,” he says, his voice low, a deliberate attempt to convey his sincerity. “I want you to feel good, Gat.”
He knows he does. He’s come to understand what all these moments are now, in the time they’ve been traveling together. It’s there in the subtle push of a menu in his direction at dinner time. It’s there in the bag full of new, carefully folded clothes that Hazel puts in Gat’s arms with a smile. It’s here now, in this bed, in the way he rocks his hips, in the way Hazel positions his body, in the pleasure he seems to take in Gat’s every shuddered breath and every twitch of his fingers.
At the core of each gesture is an apology. An acknowledgment of a life viscerally and violently altered, of mistakes made, of another person Hazel failed to save.
There’s a spot inside Hazel that always takes a little time to find, but Gat always knows when he hits it. Hazel jolts with a sharp intake of breath, like a bullet just tore through him, and his eyes flicker skyward before they close. When he exhales, it’s hitched and trembling, with a shiver that starts at his shoulders and down to his hips, to where they’re joined. He smiles as he bites his lower lip, hand shifting on Gat’s stomach so he can better brace himself, so he can keep that angle.
Gat knows it’s his cue and he takes it, because he knows Hazel by now. Because he wants to make him feel good too. Because Hazel has spent so long trying to atone for something Gat has long forgiven. Because sometimes all Gat can see in Hazel’s smile are tear-streaked cheeks and panic and a soul-deep guilt, and a boy barely come-of-age trying to hold himself together, straining under the new weight of a life taken and saved. Because Gat wants him to let go of it, let go of all of this, for an hour, for a minute, for a few fleeting, beautiful seconds. His hold on Hazel’s hips is firm, but gentle, and he rocks up fast, pistoning in deep , keeping his hips steady so he can keep the angle Gat knows he likes.
Hazel nearly loses his balance. He’s always a bit taken off guard at this part, no matter how many times it happens, like he still doesn’t expect it. It takes him several thrusts before he’s got a decent hold on his thoughts again, and his hand reaches up to smooth sweat-slick silver hair out of his eyes. “There he is,” Hazel laughs breathlessly, teasing and warm with affection, and though Gat’s heart no longer beats, something seizes in his chest. “You're just--ah--too good to me, Gat.”
It’s the last thing Hazel has the presence of mind to say until they’re done. It never takes long after this. And Gat thinks to himself that he’s visited all manner of churches with Hazel in their time together, heard the hymns sung by their holy choirs, full of passion and of life and of divine awe--and yet however beautiful their songs, they remain forever overshadowed by Hazel’s lilting, desperate cries as he comes.
***
“An’ just where d’you think you’re goin’?”
Gat pauses as he settles on the edge of the bed, glancing back over his shoulder. “I don’t need to--”
“--I know y’don’t.” Hazel smiles at him sleepily. “Ever the ascetic.”
He shifts a little in the blankets, to emphasize that there’s room for him in the bed. There isn’t--not really, not for someone Gat’s size--but he’s fit before and he can do it again.
“I could order ya.”
“You could.”
The suggestion lingers in the air, and Hazel does, for a moment, seem to be considering it. Finally, his hand reaches out, spreading across the mattress, smoothing out the creases they left in the sheets.
“Way I see it,” he begins, “you’re not gonna sleep anyway. So you can not-sleep on the floor, or you can not-sleep in my bed.” He gestures down at himself with a chuckle. “And I’m here, stark naked as the day I was born. I’m gonna get cold, y’know. If you’re here with me--” and maybe it’s because he’s tired and losing that careful control of his tone, but the way he says that, here with me, sounds a touch more desperate and needy than Gat thinks he intended, “--that won’t be a problem. Just a thought, mind. And what d’you think?”
Gat doesn’t need to weigh the question over long, because he had decided about halfway through Hazel speaking what he was going to do.
He turns, swinging his long legs back onto the mattress.
Everything has its time, and everything must return to the earth. Gat knows his time had come and gone, but that it will, without fail, circle back to him. He’s at peace with this. He understands this as an immutable truth of the universe, perhaps better than most.
Yet as Hazel settles in against his chest, as he wraps his arms around him and draws him in under the blankets, he thinks--he would not mind it either, one more night like this.
Just one more.
One more.