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The glass bottle bounced and rolled across the pavement. Lorenz watched it disappear behind the farthest of the gas pumps, frozen, the tip of his shoe still hovering above the faded parking line, not quite touching the ground. Although the parking lot was empty, he strongly considered retreating back to the cover of his car.
Perhaps it would be wiser to leave, come back later, make a less noticeable entrance. Claude was right, they really should have taken his car; Lorenz's stood out too much.
Lorenz stood out too much. At the very least, he should have worn less expensive shoes. Who knew what state the soles of his loafers would be in after this? Except he didn't own less expensive shoes. Or any piece of clothing at all that would have made him look like someone who could have had a legitimate reason to visit a dingy little gas station in the middle of nowhere.
There were sunglasses in the gloves compartment, but that wouldn't make him look any less conspicuous at this hour of the day.
Perhaps he should leave.
The passenger side door slammed shut, and with it Lorenz's window of opportunity. Lorenz stood up, resigned. Before Claude could come around the car to meet him, he composed his expression into something appropriately confident. He knew better than to show weakness.
Claude was still sporting the mocking half-grin that had been a permanent fixture of his face for this entire duration of the ride when he approached him. He glanced down at Lorenz's hands, his grin widening as he examined the supplies Lorenz had retrieved from the back seat.
“So your plan is to lick bleach? Are you sure that's healthier?”
“Very certain,” Lorenz replied dryly. “Surely even a place like this will have a sink available?”
Claude shrugged noncommittally. “Maybe.” He glanced down again. “I don't think you should be wearing your good shoes.”
Damn him.
Claude started walking toward the side of the lone building, and Lorenz followed. They stopped in front of a door near the back. There was a large dent on it just below shoulder height, Lorenz couldn't help but notice – as if someone had punched it with all their strength, and that someone possessed the strength of a small excavator. Helpful lettering informed them that this was indeed the bathroom.
Lorenz took a deep breath, his grip tightening around his bottle of cleaner. (“Bathroom formula! With bleach! Fresh citrus scent!” the label boasted.) Resisting the urge to turn and check if Claude was watching him, he reached for the handle.
The handle didn't turn.
“You need a key for that,” Claude said, not even bothering to hide the victorious edge in his voice that told Lorenz that he withheld that information on purpose.
Lorenz stiffened. “I was unaware.”
“I expected no less from you, your prissiness.” Lorenz turned to see him bend into an exaggerated curtsy, walking backwards. “Relax,” he added, looking up. “I'll go ask for it for you. No need to show your face.”
“Thank you,” Lorenz said, with begrudging sincerity. A thought occurred to him. One last faint hope. “Is there a possibility they'll refuse?”
“Hm.” Claude stopped walking and looked him up and down, seemingly considering the question. “You look like you wouldn't be here unless you were desperate, so if they turn me down, you can always go beg. Make sure you make this exact face, it's almost pitiful enough to make me feel bad.”
Lorenz scoffed. A wink, and Claude was gone.
As soon as Claude had his back turned, Lorenz wiped his hand on the leg of his pants. Gloves. He had forgotten to bring gloves. He shouldn't have let Claude rush him into this.
Claude had been harassing him since the very moment they finalized the terms of the bet, but that was how it usually went. Sometimes Lorenz wondered if seeing him humiliated was Claude's primary source of entertainment. It was a shortsighted way of going about it, in Lorenz's opinion; the faster Lorenz would be done, the faster Claude would have to fulfill his end of the deal.
Considering the unprecedented difficulty of his present task, Lorenz wished he hadn't given in so soon. A trial such as this one required mental preparation. And preparation, in the general sense. As it was, Lorenz was feeling more unprepared with each passing second.
Never mind the gloves, he should have brought mouthwash. Damn Claude and his impatience.
Lorenz took a few aimless steps forward, feeling restless. Stray pieces of gravel crunched under his feet, and he had to resist an inexplicable urge to kick them. He didn't quite know what to do with himself, with Claude gone. There was a sense of isolation to empty expanses of asphalt and concrete at dusk that must have been exclusively urban. Or maybe it was the dread, settling in.
A car drove past, the first one Lorenz had seen on the road since they arrived. He followed it with his eyes anxiously until he couldn't, raising a hand to his brow to shield his eyes against the early sunset. It didn't even slow.
At least Claude had stayed true to his word: there would be no other witness. Hopefully, by the time Lorenz had to face another person, after another thirty minutes drive back the way they came, he would have managed to stitch the remaining scraps of his dignity together into a serviceable imitation of the original. And in all likelihood, by the same time tomorrow, the stitches would have healed over.
That was the thing Claude had neglected to take into account when he had convinced himself that he was getting the superior deal. There was no such thing as a wound to the pride so severe that time wouldn't heal it. Humiliation was a temporary state, a self-contained event, a fleeting moment. After the fact, only a memory remained, and time was bound to blunt its sharp edges to harmlessness. A small price to pay for the reward Lorenz would be earning.
It was also true of their last bet. One day, Ignatz would be able to look him in the eyes again, and Hilda would stop pretending that they didn't know each other in public eventually, but Claude was unlikely to forget the correct way to brew a cup of tea anytime soon. In that sense, Lorenz had left a permanent mark on Claude's life. A long lasting reward in exchange for Claude's temporary amusement.
The effects of the as-of-yet-undiscovered plague that Lorenz was likely to contract as a result of the reckless stunt he was about to pull could very well turn out to be less temporary in nature, however. But the less time spent thinking about that, the better. Any musings about the permanent nature of death were best left to philosophy class. Lorenz had already resolved to entrust his life to the cleansing power of bleach and citrus.
The reward would be worth it, Lorenz had made sure of that. One month, Claude had promised. How Claude could pretend that these terms were to his advantage was beyond him, but he supposed it was the sign of a successful negotiation for both parties to come away feeling like they had gotten one up over the other.
Though it hadn't escaped him that Claude's last proposal had raised the stakes rather abruptly. Perhaps he had been dissatisfied with the results of their previous deal, after all.
Claude's motives didn't matter, ultimately. Lorenz had already agreed.
Or maybe they did.
He wished he had brought a toothbrush. He wished Claude had left him enough time to prepare.
He was starting to think that Claude's motives actually mattered very much.
He wished Claude would hurry.
Just as Lorenz started to seriously wonder whether he should go fetch him, an artificial chime sounded in the distance and Claude reappeared, sipping a bright blue mixture in a transparent plastic cup through a large straw. He caught Lorenz's eyes and flashed him a smile, waving a single key on a ring.
Lorenz waited for him to get within conversational distance before he said, “It occurs to me that you may have had an ulterior motive in designing this particular dare.”
Claude's smile faded. He swallowed his mouthful of whatever it was. “I leave you alone for five minutes.”
“Vengeful escalation wasn't part of the deal.”
Claude sighed heavily. “Alright. Look.” He took a loud sip of his drink, chewed it thoughtfully before swallowing. “Don't call it vengeful. You're making me sound like a comic book villain.”
“Fine. Perhaps petty would be more accurate.”
Claude's detestable grin was back on his face. “I'd prefer you call it thematic coherence.”
He said it with finality, like he imagined that he had successfully deflected Lorenz's accusation with semantics. Lorenz caught his arm as he tried to walk past. “And the theme is bathrooms, I presume? How puerile. Should I take it to mean that you actually made it to one in time?”
Claude raised his chin, eyes narrowing, grin still firmly in place. “Wouldn't you like to know.”
That's bait, warned every one of Lorenz's Claude-specific instincts. He swallowed back his denial – too defensive.
“So you're being dramatic, as well as petty.” He let Claude go.
Claude shrugged instead of replying, sipping his drink with noticeably forced nonchalance. He only made it two steps past Lorenz and toward the bathroom door before he seemed to change his mind and turned around.
“Ten cups of tea, Lorenz! I thought I was going to burst.”
“It would have been less, if you applied yourself. You were perfectly aware of what you were getting into.”
“Well, excuse me for assuming you’d have mercy.”
“Evidently, you assumed wrong.”
Claude somehow managed to give him a look that clearly read, “Are you serious?” even as he sucked in more of the drink.
“I made my terms perfectly clear!” Lorenz repeated. He refused to be made to feel guilty by Claude's studiously guilt-inducing expression. “I had to taste each one, if you'll recall. Your first attempt was an act of violence committed upon my taste buds, and the following ones weren't much better. At least my best tea leaves didn't go completely to waste.”
“Hey, it wasn’t that bad. I thought the last three cups were pretty good, even. If you were anyone else, I would have suspected you of judging my performance in bad faith. Maybe even of having some sort of –” Claude paused briefly, as if to make sure that Lorenz knew that he was about to say something he believed was clever “– ulterior motive.”
Lorenz didn't consider rolling one's eyes to be particularly mature body language, but the temptation to do it was there. “Oh, stop it, you’re being ridiculous. Why would I sabotage the very thing that makes this arrangement sustainable? None of this would work without a minimum of good faith and mutual trust. And why would I even be here if I–”
He fell silent, frowning. This wasn’t at all how he had expected this conversation to go. “I shouldn’t be the one defending myself.”
“Don’t look at me, I didn’t start it.” Claude smiled. He seemed to be back in good humor, spinning the key around his index finger. “So you wouldn't be here if you didn't trust me? Keep talking like that and people will start thinking we're friends.”
“Perish the thought,” Lorenz replied distractedly, realizing just how loud his half of the argument had gotten. He swept the parking lot with his gaze. It was still empty, thankfully – raising his voice unnecessarily in the parking lot of a commercial establishment was bound to rank low on the list of indignities he would be participating in today, but it was still embarrassing behavior.
He turned back around just in time to intercept the key before it hit him in the chest.
“Come on then, let’s see what we’re working with,” said Claude cheerfully, eyes twinkling in amusement as he watched Lorenz fumble. “Unless that was your way of telling me you’re chickening out?”
“Of course not,” Lorenz heard himself say, a beat faster than he could finish asking himself, …Was it?
But he was feeling calmer now, oddly enough. He wondered when it was, exactly, that Claude’s teasing had taken on the soothing quality of the familiar. If they were in fact friends, theirs must be a uniquely unpleasant sort of friendship, if any of this could pass for camaraderie.
After taking a deep, bracing breath, Lorenz stepped toward the door, key securely in hand. It turned in the lock with surprising ease given the door’s battered appearance. Ignoring Claude’s cheerful slurping, he reached for the handle. This time, it turned.
And behind the door was–
Well, it was simply a bathroom.
It had a toilet, and a sink (of course it had a sink). The corners of the room didn't bear looking at too closely, there was a stain on one of the walls that Lorenz carefully avoided applying his imagination to, and the floor drain was in dire need of a vigorous scrub, but nothing about it was unbearably repulsive. It wasn't clean, not for any definition of the word that Lorenz was willing to accept, but Leonie had stories about working in a similar place that she loved to horrify him with and this wasn't anything remotely comparable.
Even the unmistakable notes of dried urine mixed in with the distinctive smell of too much humidity and not enough fresh air were tolerable compared to what Lorenz had feared. Suddenly, he felt much more optimistic about his chances of survival.
Claude leaned around Lorenz's shoulder to peek into the room. “Huh. Could've been worse.” He shoved his cup in front of Lorenz's face. “Hold this for me.”
Lorenz obeyed without thinking. Before he could blink, Claude had pushed past him, and he found himself staring at the closed door once again.
“Claude, what–”
“I'm using the facilities for their intended purpose,” came Claude's muffled answer, before Lorenz could even finish asking. “The employee I got the key from expects me to. I'm sure you wouldn't want to make me a liar.”
“Could this not have waited until after?” But Lorenz doubted that this had anything to do with integrity.
“Ten cups of tea, Lorenz,” Claude accused gloomily from beyond the door, the small room adding an echo to his voice that made it sound like it could have belonged to a disembodied ghost come to remind Lorenz of his past greed.
“That was days ago!”
“And my bladder will never be the same.”
A questionable claim, though one Lorenz would have to leave unquestioned. Through some unfortunate accident of acoustics – perhaps the dent in the door prevented it from sealing as well as it should – the soft clinking of Claude's belt buckle reached him with upsetting clarity, as did the burble of a stream hitting water.
With no one to see him do it, Lorenz rolled his eyes. Petty, dramatic and vengeful. And all Lorenz would get for having been right was a few more uncomfortable minutes standing alone in front of a bathroom, a rag and a bottle of soap in one hand and a frozen drink the color of window cleaner in the other, wondering when Claude had managed to swallow what sounded like the volume of either a large pond or a small lake completely unnoticed. He glared at the offending drink, resenting it for the part it must have played. Was there anything Claude couldn't turn into an instrument for his tasteless schemes?
What else could this be, if not petty revenge? An underhanded way of reminding Lorenz of exactly what it was people used that room for and of the immensity of what he was about to do, in the hope of making it harder for him to complete the task. Either that, or...
Bait, bait, bait, Lorenz's instincts chanted. For what kind of trap, Lorenz couldn't say. He had nothing to confess that Claude wasn't also guilty of. He wasn't the one who first made it inappropriate. Claude was the one who crossed that line, and after that it was only a matter of degree.
Surely Claude didn't stand to gain much from catching him in the act of... standing right where Claude had left him and having functioning ears. If Claude didn't want to be heard, he could try peeing less vindicatively.
Do you even hear yourself? Heat rose to Lorenz's face. Perhaps what their friends had been saying was true, and they really were a terrible influence on each other. Lorenz was in danger of forgetting what shame felt like, it seemed, and one needed only look at Claude to know that nothing good would come out of that.
He listened to the melodious trickle of the last drops with a much more appropriate level of shame. Claude got up, hard plastic against porcelain. Running water, a reassuring sound – so it was a functional sink. Lorenz took a step back to avoid getting hit by the door, cheeks burning, head held high. If Claude chose to read anything improper into the color if his face, that was his prerogative.
“Are you quite done?” Lorenz asked acidly as soon as the door opened a crack.
Claude stepped out, holding the door open, looking entirely too proud of himself. “It's all yours.”
“You did not actually succeed in making this significantly worse, for the record.”
Claude's eyes lit up, a sure sign that what was about to come out of his mouth would be some novel nonsense. “Why, Lorenz, I didn't expect you to be so casual about indirect butt licking – ack!” He jumped back to dodge the soapy spray, leaving Lorenz to catch the door with his foot. “Careful, you could have ruined my shirt with that!”
“And nothing of value would have been lost.” The shirt in question was a plain t-shirt in a particularly heinous shade of orange. Lorenz certainly wouldn't mind not having to look at it again for, oh, say, an entire month.
That's right. Keep your eyes on the prize.
He handed Claude back his drink, redirected his aim to the toilet seat, and got to work.
After deciding that Lorenz was done threatening his shirt and he could safely come back within spraying range, Claude leaned against the hinged side of the door frame, keeping the door wide open as he watched Lorenz scrub. Whether he did it out of kindness or simply deemed this the best position from which to grace Lorenz with his commentary (“Look at the bright side,” he said, “at least you're not the guy who's never had to clean a bathroom anymore,” whatever that meant), Lorenz was grateful for the improved ventilation. The chemical smell of bleach had not improved the general unpleasantness of the air.
Soon – sooner than Lorenz expected – Claude's supply of witticisms seemed to run dry, and he contented himself with watching, uncharacteristically silent but for the occasional loud sip. It wasn't the blessing Lorenz hoped it would be. Without the distraction Claude's chatter provided, there was nothing to keep him from thinking about the porosity of old, scratched plastic and the limitations of his cleaning method.
Perhaps he should let it soak.
Spraying the seat with soap a second time only earned him a skeptical raise of an eyebrow, disappointingly. Claude ought to have been able to come up with a quip about how he was only trying buying time.
He was trying to buy time, wasn't he? He shouldn't need Claude to inform him of that. Lorenz wiped the soap off with a sigh. No point in delaying the inevitable any longer.
Once he had the toilet seat rinsed and dry, he washed his hands in the sink with the provided soap, which smelled like what he would have expected almonds to taste like if almonds were this same exact shade of bubblegum pink. The sweetness of it lingered on his skin, adding to the already noxious mix of smells. After careful consideration, he pulled a couple of extra sheets of brown paper from the dispenser and spread them on the floor; there would be no doing this without kneeling. He tucked his hair behind his ears; no need to risk unnecessary contact.
There. This was as prepared as Lorenz was ever going to be.
“Close the door.”
When Claude removed the straw from his mouth to comply, Lorenz saw that the tip of it had been bitten flat. He stared at it, captivated by the indentations left by Claude's teeth in the way that those who wanted desperately to direct their attention anywhere but where it needed to be were prone to fixate on inconsequential details.
Enough. He made himself kneel.
From up close, it was hard not to notice that the surfaces adjacent to the seat were still speckled with unspeakable residues in places.
Stop. Just get it over with.
Claude sipped his drink with a noise like a clogged drain. Lorenz closed his eyes, and swallowed.
And swallowed.
And swallowed.
“Lorenz?”
Lorenz didn't answer. He couldn't. He barely dared to breath.
“Hey, come on, don't make yourself sick. Here, let me open the–”
“No!” He opened his eyes, alarmed by the rattle of the doorknob. Claude looked back with genuine concern. It grated against his pride like nails on a chalkboard. “Leave the door. Just –” he gestured at Claude vaguely “– stop this.”
Claude blinked at him in silent confusion, then placed his cup on the narrow strip of counter next to the sink with a “sorry” so quiet and sincere that it made Lorenz flinch. Lorenz shut his eyes again and took a slow breath, in through his mouth, out through his nose.
“You can just touch it with your tongue. Just a little poke. I'd count it.”
The proposition was tempting. If he were more like Claude, he would not hesitate to take advantage of Claude's sympathy. And if he were Claude, he would use this as an opportunity to haggle him down.
Lorenz shook his head. (And replaced his hair.) He felt blindly for the relatively innocuous looking spot he had already picked out. “You better be watching. I will not do this twice.”
“...Yeah.”
For as much as every second leading up to it had seemed to reluctantly crawl by, the act itself was over with quickly.
As irony would have it, it was Claude who had provided Lorenz with the image that allowed him to go through with it, in the end. If the thought of the anonymous, unwashed masses (some among the masses had to have been unwashed) whose naked posteriors must have once rested where Lorenz was about to put his mouth was intolerable, then let him limit the scope of his imagination to just Claude. It was easy – perhaps worryingly easy – to picture him: his smug grin as he mocked Lorenz through the door, the relaxed spread of his knees, the meat of his thighs pressed against the seat. The idea of putting his mouth where Claude had sat wasn’t nearly as daunting; Claude’s hygiene had never featured on Lorenz's exhaustive list of reproaches.
And from there, why not take it a step further and turn Claude’s own logic on its head? If to lick the surface of the seat was to lick the skin that had touched it, albeit indirectly, then it stood to reason that the reverse must be true, making the two equivalent, at least for the purpose of licking.
Sophistic, yes. The reasoning wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny, but Lorenz didn’t need it to. All he needed was for the illusion to hold long enough to allow him to substitute clean bare skin for excretions-soaked plastic in his mind for an instant. A particularly firm backside, perhaps, or the hairless underside of a thigh. It didn’t matter much, once his tongue was already flat to the plastic, that both the temperature and the texture of it were wrong. He didn’t have to leave it there.
And so it was quick, but there it was, with a wet trail of spit serving as his proof: an inarguable, generous, proper, terms-abiding lick.
Lorenz examined the spot where his saliva made the toilet seat glisten, heart pounding, mouth still hanging open to keep his tongue from touching the roof of his mouth even though he knew, rationally, that it didn’t make a difference at this point, until another wave of nausea hit him and forced him to avert his eyes. Claude wouldn’t be able to contest his victory, whether or not he had been watching, but, oh, Claude had better be watching. Claude –
Claude was staring at his phone in wide-eyed fascination.
If time had seemed to slow before, here it seemed to very nearly stop, letting Lorenz observe every stage of Claude’s reaction in the finest of granularity. He saw the moment when Claude noticed him noticing, the ensuing surprise and the following guilt – the revealing flash of guilt – pass on his face in rapid succession, before Claude’s expression turned sheepish.
“Uh.” Claude didn’t often direct this apologetic smile at him. It alarmed Lorenz just as much as the guilt. “I’d tell you it’s not what it looks like, but I guess that depends on what you think it looks like.”
His face was flushed, and Lorenz too was feeling too hot. The air was too stagnant and the space was too cramped. Just by extending his arm, Lorenz could have easily grabbed Claude’s leg and pulled him off-balance, and used the advantage to wrestle the phone from him. If he weren’t feeling so light-headed, he might have attempted it.
“You took a picture,” he accused instead with terrible, terrible confidence.
“It’s a surprisingly flattering picture, actually,” Claude babbled, in a tone that must have been trying for light, as if Lorenz could possibly take this lightly, “despite, uh,” he made a wide gesture.
“You said no one else would know about this!” He indisputably did, Lorenz had known to search for loopholes. Though the lopsided terms of their bet suddenly made an awful lot of sense, didn’t they, if Claude never had any intention of upholding them.
“Okay, so it’s not what it looks like. I’m not going to show it to anyone, I just…” There was that apologetic, pleading smile again. “Mutual trust, remember?”
Lorenz certainly had a memory of it.
Claude glanced at his phone, tongue darting out to wet his upper lip. “I can definitely see why you say that’s your good profile.” As if Lorenz could possibly be in the mood for his jokes.
“I don’t care. Delete it.”
“That’s… fair,” Claude said slowly, like it pained him. He looked down at the screen of his phone again with a small sigh of regret, then past it to where Lorenz was still kneeling on the floor. He opened his mouth as if to speak, hesitated long enough for Lorenz to rise to his feet shakily, bracing against the wall opposite the door, self-conscious under Claude's stare.
Claude’s gaze followed him up. Finally, he said, "I’ll make it six weeks if you kiss me."
Lorenz's first thought was that it must be another one of Claude's jokes. After what he just had Lorenz do, he would increase Lorenz's reward by half (almost by half, if Lorenz was being strict with the numbers, which he always strived to be), only for touching his lips to his? Claude wasn't this poor a negotiator.
“I mean with tongue, just so we're clear,” Claude added, failing to actually clarify anything. He paused, and Lorenz could almost see him pile up the pros and the cons on their respective side of the balance. “But I'm willing to give you, let's say, four extra days if you do it without. Make it an even thirty-five.”
He's serious. Generations of business savvy Riegans wept. But as Lorenz went to accept, tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth as he prepared a sharp comeback, suddenly he saw the cruel genius of it.
Up to this point, he had managed to avoid thinking of himself as tainted. Claude, with the uncanny perceptiveness he sometimes demonstrated, must have noticed that Lorenz wasn't as disturbed as he intended for him to be. And now, faced with the prospect of pressing his mouth to another's, Lorenz was forced to face the fact that his mouth was filthy. Filthy enough to contaminate by contact. Filthy enough that his filth could be spread.
Lorenz touched his fingers to his lips. Oh, it was subtle. It was smart. It made Lorenz want to pick up the soap from where he left it and point the nozzle to his mouth. It was – for lack of a more polite expression that would still convey the strength of his feelings – the single most effective proposition Claude could have made for the purpose of fucking with him. Lorenz ought to demand compensation just for having been made to consider it.
And if Claude imagined that it was enough to shock him, he hadn't been paying close enough attention.
“Six weeks,” Lorenz confirmed. He took a step forward, and Claude took a step back. Or he tried to, but his back was already to the door. “And you'll delete the picture?”
Claude scratched the back of his head. To Lorenz's surprise, he looked appropriately bashful. “Nah, I'll delete it either way, since it bothers you so much.” The corners of his mouth twitched, like he tried to grin and couldn't quite manage it. “I'll delete it right now if you... want...”
Lorenz stepped closer, interrupting Claude as he thumbed at his phone. “After.” He'd rather not spend any more time in the small stuffy room than he strictly had to, and what they were about to do wasn't something they could do outside in the open without risking making a spectacle of themselves.
When he tapped a finger under Claude's chin to make him raise his head back up, Claude gave him a look not unlike a deer caught in headlights. Lorenz half expected him to announce he'd changed his mind – a satisfying outcome in itself – but then he tilted his chin up at a workable angle readily enough. Claude was taller than anyone else Lorenz had kissed, but there was still enough of a difference between their heights that the logistics would be much the same.
And a kiss was indeed what this was. That bothered Lorenz, to an extent. Although some of their peers had been known to dare each other to worse with no more incentive than the arbitrary spin of an empty beer bottle to justify it, Lorenz himself ascribed more weight to such intimate physical gestures.
But this wasn't the first time their game had crossed the line into inappropriateness, Lorenz recalled as he leaned down. It was all just a matter of degree.
“Don't frown like that, you're hurting my feelings,” Claude teased quietly. His eyes were very green, from this distance. The inside of his mouth was stained blue. The inner part of his lips tasted faintly of cheap syrup, but not, predictably, like anything resembling raspberries.
For a moment, Claude stood stiff and unresponsive, like Lorenz had taken him by surprise. Then he made a sound, a muffled groan that rose from his throat and died in Lorenz’s mouth, when Lorenz pushed his tongue past his teeth. But he’d asked for Lorenz’s tongue, and he was welcome to it. Lorenz didn't particularly want to keep it inside of his own mouth, considering where it'd been.
Lorenz had been breathing through his mouth and Claude was warm in contrast, and he slid his tongue against Claude’s with a shiver that couldn’t be attributed in its entirety to his persisting queasiness. Not exactly skin, but indisputably flesh. Something to override the sickening feel of plastic.
Through no deliberate intention of his own, his hands found Claude’s waist. To call it a habit would be to exaggerate the sum of Lorenz’s experience, and to call it instinct would be to overstate the role instinct played in this sort of thing, at least as far as Lorenz’s modest experience went, but he had always felt that this was a good, unassuming place for his hands to be. Here it was out of place, made it feel too much like the genuine thing, but a kiss was a kiss. Lorenz couldn't think of a convincing reason why this one should be exempt from the rules of courtesy, and so there his hands stayed.
Perhaps in response, Claude gripped Lorenz's arms just above the elbows, hands brushing against his sides on the way. And if Claude hadn’t realized how disgusting this all was until this very instant, it was none of Lorenz’s concern; he really should expect Lorenz to call his bluffs by now. But rather than push Lorenz away, Claude held him in place and chased his mouth up when he made to withdraw.
Suddenly, Lorenz was effectively pinning Claude's head to the door by the lips while Claude kissed him back with an enthusiasm that, in any other set of circumstances, Lorenz would have taken for very real hunger.
Surely Claude had been kissed before, presumably in a more suitable location than the dirty bathroom of a gas station by someone who had needed only take one look at his pretty face and full lips to be persuaded, and his clumsy eagerness was mostly for show. Or so Lorenz had to assume, for lack of another non absurd explanation. He wouldn’t have put it past Claude to be opening his mouth too wide on purpose to intentionally turn this into an unnecessarily sloppy affair. Either that or the lack of fresh air was getting to him too. Lorenz was becoming less and less convinced that there was enough air in here for the both of them to breath.
Claude wrapped his arms around Lorenz's neck when Lorenz tried again to break the kiss, thus proving that he was indeed fully capable of finding something less awkward to do with his hands than to dig finger shaped grooves into Lorenz's upper arms. That too was both natural and out of place, though maybe to kiss this deeply without otherwise touching would have been more strange.
Even more strange was the fact that they were still kissing. The deal was for a single kiss, or so Lorenz had assumed (he should have made sure, a rookie mistake), but what did that mean when their lips never parted? Lorenz had never pondered the question, and even now it seemed awfully ungenerous to attempt to quantify it.
He supposed it would be Claude's right, in the absence of an agreed upon definition, to define it however he pleased, but Claude didn't appear to want this to stop. And Lorenz understood, on some level; he didn't have anyone to kiss right now either. He might even have liked it when Claude's hand slid up through his hair if it didn't make him aware of the cold sweat that beaded the short hairs at the nape of his neck. But surely Claude had been kissed before, and this didn't compare favorably. That thought bothered Lorenz more than it should have, but his head wasn't working right. It hadn't been for a while.
He was much too hot. He needed to get out.
Lorenz wasn’t the one who had locked the door, and he struggled blindly with the mechanism until Claude finally disentangled himself from him. He blinked up at Lorenz with the dazed look of someone who got forcefully pulled out of a particularly engrossing daydream.
“Air,” Lorenz gasped. “I need air.”
Thankfully, Claude had the wisdom to get out of the way before Lorenz shoved him bodily aside. The abandoned plastic cup, apparently not empty, clattered to the ground. Claude swore, but just then the lock clicked open, and Lorenz couldn't care less.
Lorenz surfaced into the glow of a newly lit streetlamp and a soft breeze that chilled the damp skin under his collar. He swallowed the clean air in large gulps and almost doubled over with relief. Even had he been drowning, it wouldn't have tasted as sweet.
“You alright?” Claude asked from somewhere behind him.
Lorenz took the bathroom key out of his pocket and threw it in that general direction, not bothering to turn around. His aim must have been wildly off, because he heard it hit the brick of a wall. Before Claude could comment on it – or say something about how he'd left Lorenz breathless, or something else equally as hilarious – Lorenz marched off.
Claude didn't follow him to the car, and that was just as well. He took a minute after seating himself behind the wheel to breath in the safe, clean scent of leather and air freshener. Then he examined himself in the rearview mirror, wincing at his sweat-damp bangs and sickly pale skin. It was a wonder Claude had tolerated being near him at all, he looked like something recently fished out of a bog and not given enough time to dry. Claude's dares may be of questionable taste, but his commitment was truly commendable.
There was nothing to be done for Lorenz's looks, however, short of a hot shower and a good night's sleep. In fact, a hot shower sounded like the solution to most of his problems.
He let his head fall back on the headrest, suddenly exhausted. Adrenaline, he thought vaguely. He glanced toward the door to the bathroom, only partly visible from this angle, now closed again. The mess they'd left shouldn't be too much for Claude to handle. He was well equipped. He had soap and a rag.
With only the slightest pang of guilt, Lorenz inserted the key into the ignition, set the AC as low as it would go, inclined his seat, and closed his eyes.
Rhythmic tapping on the window woke him up, and he lay motionless for several minutes confusedly trying to recall whether that night's forecast had predicted rain before it occurred to him to unlock the passenger door to let Claude in. When he sat up abruptly, he was reminded of why he usually avoided naps. He pinched the bridge of nose as Claude climbed in, hoping that the beginning of a headache that throbbed lightly in his temples would dissolve along with the grogginess.
Something cool touched his cheek. “I got you water. It’s cold.”
He took the bottle from Claude's hand with a nod, too grateful to object to Claude's method of getting his attention. As he did so, he noticed that Claude's arms were covered in goosebumps. He caught sight of the time when he adjusted the AC and couldn't help a puzzled frown. While the color of the sky already suggested that it was late, the time on the display confirmed it. Mopping up a few ounces of sugary water and returning a key shouldn't have taken Claude this long.
Claude had his phone in his hand and was staring at his lock screen, no doubt having reached the same conclusion. It would have been overly optimistic of Lorenz to expect him to come forth with an explanation, but he could fill the gap easily enough. For all that he liked to mock Lorenz for his comfortable upbringing, Claude wasn't all that closely acquainted with manual labor himself. That darker wet streak all down the front of his shirt must've had quite the tragic story, and of course Lorenz would never hear it.
When he saw him looking, Claude started rummaging through the content of a plastic bag – hopefully not hunting for a snack of the crumb-producing variety, they had already had that conversation. He seemed to wait until the precise moment when Lorenz took a sip of water to present him with a small metal box.
Lorenz raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“I got breath mints too, in case that helps.”
Oh.
Lorenz took the box. That seemed to embolden Claude some. “They had toothpaste, but no toothbrush.” He gave Lorenz a tentative smile. “I assume you don't do gum.”
“The sentiment is appreciated,” Lorenz said, and meant it, though he set down the box unopened.
He found that the state of his mouth hadn't been upsetting him as much, since the kiss. As though Claude's spit had cleansed him. There was some scientific basis for that, he was sure, something about organic matter and solubility and such.
The mints would have done nothing for him regardless, but Lorenz still found the intention sweet.
Claude fiddled with his phone, though he was no longer looking at it. Instead, he examined Lorenz's face intently, like he didn't mean so much to look at him than through, which was a habit of his that Lorenz disliked, which Claude already knew. But Claude had come bearing gifts, and no snark as of yet. Maybe he thought Lorenz was angry. It was true that Lorenz had left him behind a tad brusquely.
You flung a key at his face. And you missed.
Right. Not one of Lorenz's most dignified moments.
He considered the box of mints, took another grateful drink of water. “You know, after reflection,” he gestured with the bottle, “this might be the reason why people think we're friends.”
“Huh?” Claude stared blankly. “Oh, right, because I said…” He forced out a laugh.
So much for Lorenz’s attempt to lighten the mood. He drank some more.
“Just wait until I have to start dressing like you, then they'll start thinking we're the kind of friends who touch their lips together sometimes.”
Lorenz almost choked. “I’m not going to have you wear my clothes!” he spluttered.
That got a genuine laugh out of Claude, for some Goddess-forsaken reason. “That's the part you're objecting to?”
“They wouldn’t fit right! And what sort of monster do you take me for, that I would dress you in purple and cool grays?”
That started Claude on another fit of laughter. Lorenz had to assume it was nervous. It was also oddly satisfying to be the cause of it. He made a show of tilting his head to the side and squinting. “Pink, maybe. I may allow yellow, in moderation, but definitely no orange.”
“Stop." Claude shook his head. "I can't believe you're planning on making me look good. You could make me go to class wearing a cute animal onesie, I gave you the power!”
“You'd enjoy that way too much. I bet you already own one of those. Do you own a tie?”
“Is that a threat?”
“Why, yes. Yes, it is. I believe I have earned the right to make you look as good as I think you should.”
The expression that twisted Claude's face in response was positively tortured, which Lorenz took to mean that there should not only be a tie, but a full suit. Several suits. Six weeks worth of outfits would require variety. A shopping trip was probably in order.
But perhaps not as soon as tomorrow. Lorenz stifled a yawn. The hour wasn't that late, but he'd had an eventful day.
“You want me to drive?”
“Absolutely not. I’ve seen you drive.” He started the engine.
His eyes met Claude's as Claude slipped his phone back into his pocket, and something nagged at Lorenz's memory. Claude paused mid-movement. His lips parted.
"Green."
Claude blinked. “What?”
“You should wear green. It would bring out your eyes. You have very nice eyes.”
It was a factual statement, and an awkward way to phrase it. Lorenz ripped his gaze away from Claude's and focused on maneuvering them out of the parking lot, hoping that his blush wasn't as visible as it felt.
“I guess that's in your hands for now,” said Claude after an extended silence. “It's not like I can stop you.”
They didn't exchange another word to for the duration of the ride. When Lorenz stole a glance in his direction, Claude appeared to be lost in thought, but then he caught himself lingering on the atypical furrow between Claude's brows instead of looking ahead, and he didn't take his eyes off the road again. Even the way Claude wished him a good night when Lorenz dropped him off was unusually subdued.
It was long past the hour when Lorenz could still have reasonably called Claude to ask about it when he finally remembered the picture.