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Anden sits at the bar, absentmindedly swirling the ice cubes around in his glass. He pauses. The cubes fall into place with a clink, clear and reflective of the light despite the dark brown color of the liquor. He takes a sip.
It’s his day off—not on-call for the hospital, no presumed dealings with the clan unless some emergency happens. Ever since splitting with Jirhuya some months ago, he’s come to this bar, a small dingy hole-in-the-wall in No Peak territory with few people and few eyes on him to relax and decompress from his packed schedule. He limits himself to one drink and one drink only, sitting for a long time at the bar and nursing his drink slowly, making it count. The owner of the bar knows his relation to the clan and leaves him be, and Anden appreciates the quiet among the whirlwind of his usual activities.
He takes a glance around the room to see the handful of other patrons sitting at tables. It’s mostly older men, some playing card games and smoking, others sitting and drinking alone. A handful of times since the breakup, Anden has managed to find a man to hookup with here, often lonely older men who have families and a desire to keep their preferences under wraps. Anden didn’t expect himself to be the kind of person to do hookups, especially with how paramount his job is, but with no Jirhuya around anymore he himself has become victim to loneliness and therefore turned back his old rules on not seeking out hookups. The hookups have been few and far between, at any rate, so it’s not as if he’s bringing back a new man every night of the week.
The front door of the bar chimes open.
“Welcome!” calls the bartender, back turned as he fills someone’s drink. He turns to place the drink on the bar and blinks in surprise. “Oh, Lott-jen!” He brings his hands into a forehead salute. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Just a soda,” answers Lott’s deep, monotone voice. Anden’s stomach twists at the sound of it, and he can’t help but glance over his shoulder. Lott approaches the bar, looking as he always does with his wavy hair and unimpressed sulk, exposed jade from his piercings and jewelry glittering in spite of the meager light.
Lott meets Anden’s eyes and something changes under the surface of his flat expression. He nods in greeting. “Dr. Emery,” he says, perfunctorily, sitting down at the bar several seats over from Anden.
“Lott-jen,” Anden returns.
The bartender returns with Lott’s soda and places it before him. “Here you go, Lott-jen. Is there anything else I can do for you? You sure you don’t want something stronger?”
Lott shakes his head. “No, this is fine. Thank you.”
“Well, if you change your mind, please let me know and I’ll be right over.” The bartender slowly backs away, bowing slightly.
With the bartender occupied with cleaning some glasses, Anden and Lott sit in utter silence, the only sound the dim murmur of the card game several tables over. Anden sneaks a glance at Lott. Lott’s throat works as he swallows a mouthful of soda, adam’s apple prominent.
“You don’t drink?” Anden asks before he can stop himself.
Lott sets the glass down. “Not usually. Don’t want to be drunk at an inopportune moment.”
Anden nods and pulls his eyes away, focusing again on his own drink. The condensation clinging along the outside of the glass wets his fingertips.
Silence pervades, both Anden and Lott separately working through their own drinks. Still, after all these years, Anden is never sure how to approach Lott. The two of them see each other plenty now that Lott is the Horn and Anden is often involved with clan activities despite not directly holding a clan position, but rarely do the two of them ever interact one-on-one. Since their conversation when Anden treated Lott in the hospital, there has always been someone to act as a buffer between them—Hilo, Shae, lower ranked Fists and Fingers. Alone, the awkwardness between them is palpable. It’s not the same awkwardness Anden has with Cory or with Jirhuya. It makes sense given Anden’s history with both Cory and Jirhuya for there to be awkwardness, but it’s almost as if the absence of history itself between him and Lott is the cause of their awkwardness.
“Didn’t know you also came to this place,” Lott says, breaking the silence. He speaks to his glass of soda rather than face Anden.
“Ah, yeah. I don’t have much free time, as I’m sure you don’t either, so when I do…I don’t know, it’s quiet here.”
“Yeah. No one pays much attention.”
Anden takes a small sip of his drink. The ice is beginning to melt and water down the flavor of the liquor. He always forgets to ask for less ice, yet again making a mental note to ask for next time.
Lott says, “I heard…That you and your partner split up.”
“Uh, yeah,” Anden says, taken aback at the suddenness of the statement. He didn’t think Lott even paid enough attention to him to notice a detail like that. The pause in Lott’s voice before uttering ‘partner’ makes Anden suspicious and defensive, but Lott appears to be asking in good faith, so Anden makes no remark on it. “Didn’t work out, I guess.” He hesitates. “…And you? I know you’ve been divorced for a while now.”
“Ah…” Lott runs his finger around the rim of his glass. “Yeah. Didn’t work out, I guess. I don’t know…I don’t think marriage is really something for me.”
“Hm.”
“How is it, then?” Lott asks, finally turning his head to look at Anden squarely. Even though Anden is a fully fledged adult with a career and life experience, he still feels jitters under Lott’s dark, serious gaze like he did when he was a nervous, lovesick teenager. “Being a doctor and all. Taking care of us getting banged up in clan business.”
“It’s good,” Anden answers carefully, unsure what Lott is really asking. “Well, it’s never easy or relaxing or anything like that. It’s hard and stressful, but it’s worth it. I feel like I genuinely can make a difference. And hopefully other nations will come to appreciate the healing properties of jade in time.”
Lott nods.
“And you? How is it, being the Horn?”
Lott looks away and does not immediately answer, taking a sip from his glass and setting it back down on the bar. He stares at the glass, and Anden studies how long and full his lashes are. “Hard. Stressful. Sometimes I can’t really believe that I’m here, that I made it this far.”
“Well, you’ve worked hard to earn it,” Anden says. “Hilo-jen obviously saw something in you. He wouldn’t grant you the title without trusting you to be able to handle it.”
Lott goes silent, looking entrenched in his own thoughts. Anden wants to prod him more, pry him open and study what’s going on inside like he can cut open someone’s body to see the source of their pain, but like always, there is some barrier between the two of them, some high walled fortress keeping Lott in and Anden out.
“I’m sure it’ll take time for you to find your footing and your own style as the Horn,” Anden offers. “It might seem like you have big shoes to fill after Juen-jen, but he had big shoes to fill too and had to figure out what worked for him. Even Hilo-jen had to figure things out when he became the Horn. Wasn’t he the youngest Horn in the history of the clan? That’s a lot of pressure. So you don’t need to worry about being perfect right away. You’ve got a tough job, and it’s only gotten more complicated since Hilo’s time.”
“I know. I wasn’t asking for a lecture.”
Red hot anger rises up Anden’s throat, surprising him with its quickness and volatility, and he struggles to swallow it back. “I was just stating my thoughts, not lecturing you.”
Lott knocks back a few swigs, brow pinched in visible irritation. Tension radiates from him.
Innards twisting as he stews on it, Anden swallows a few mouthfuls of his own drink, the kick of the liquor warming the back of his throat. Anden tells himself to forget it, leave it be, maintain the civilized professional relationship he’s had with Lott all these years. But the heat rises.
“I don’t get it,” he blurts. “Every time I think you’re trying to connect with me, you do something to push me away and hurt me. What’s your problem with me? I wish you’d just stop wasting my time and tell me what it is.”
Lott stares at Anden, eyes wide with shock. Anden immediately regrets his outburst, realizing how inappropriate it is for him to address the Horn like that. Lott isn’t Hilo, Anden can get away with speaking to Hilo like that because of their familial bond, but he has no such connection with Lott to justify such brazenness.
“I—I mean—” Anden stammers.
Lott readjusts in his seat with a sigh, and his expression shifts to a muddied mix of emotions Anden can’t fully read. “You’re right,” he concedes, quietly. “I don’t…It’s not that I have a problem with you, exactly.”
Anden sits silent, waiting.
“It’s that…I was jealous, in a way.”
“…Of me?”
“Yeah. I don’t know, with the circumstances of your family and your identity—being a Kaul, being half-Espenian—you never really had the choice to fit in, because you never were going to fit in. So it wouldn’t matter as much if you didn’t fit the expectations of clan society, since you already were an outsider in other ways.”
Anden frowns. “And, what? You think that made it easy for me?” he snaps. “You think I didn’t feel the pressure of those same expectations too?”
“No, that’s not what I—” Lott huffs in frustration, seemingly more at his own inability to express his thoughts rather than at Anden’s reaction. He runs a hand through his hair as he works through his next sentence. “I don’t mean that it was easier for you and that you didn’t feel pressure too, I just mean that I had no choice but to mold myself into exactly what people needed of me, while you never could do that because you never would’ve fit into that mold in the first place. And I’m talking about what I felt, not what was reality. I wouldn’t—I’d never try to claim that one of us had it easier or harder. Just that it was different. Everything I have, I’ve built myself. And you’re a Kaul.” His eyes lock with Anden’s, and for a rare fleeting instant, they are full of emotion, beseeching to Anden, Do you understand me?
Taken aback by the rawness in Lott’s expression combined with his outpouring of words, Anden says nothing for a long moment, still feeling as if he’s still missing a vital piece of the puzzle to understanding what Lott is saying. “Okay, so…You were jealous of me. That doesn’t mean it was right for you to treat me so coldly time and time again. I get it, if you’re not interested you’re not interested, but I never did anything wrong.”
Subtle shame creeps over Lott’s features. “I know.” He picks up his glass and downs the whole thing, clearly stalling for time. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and looks aside. “The way I’ve acted, it—it doesn’t mean that I don’t…” He trails off.
After a long moment of confusion, the pieces fall together in Anden’s mind. “Oh,” he says. “You—?”
Lott refuses to look at him, sulky lips pressed into a hard line. He doesn’t speak for a long moment. When he finally opens his mouth, his voice is hushed and fragile. “It—It wasn’t you that I was trying to push away. It was me and my feelings.”
Anden cannot form a coherent sentence yet, too shocked and too busy replaying back all his interactions with Lott up to this point through a different lens.
Lott’s eyes nervously flick to Anden’s face. “I knew I was hurting you. I just couldn’t—I can’t—”
“I understand,” Anden says, because he does, and because he’s still too angry to say something like It’s okay or I forgive you yet.
“So that’s why—Why I was jealous of you. Like I said, you were already an outsider, being queer was just one more way you didn’t fit the ideal of a Green Bone. But that’s not how it was for me.”
They sit in silence for a moment, mulling on the change in atmosphere between them.
“You know,” Anden says, a little more softly than his previous words, “things are changing. Hilo-jen wouldn’t care, you know. If anyone were to speak badly of you, he’d take care of it.”
Lott shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter whether he tells them to stop it or not. They can still think whatever they want, regardless of what the Pillar says.”
“So? Yeah, people are going to think what they want. You can’t control them.”
“Yeah, but—There’s no going back. People already have reservations about me because I’m not a family man like Hilo-jen or Juen-jen. There’s no way for me to regain that trust once it’s out, especially from a bunch of men. And so many of my subordinates are younger men, too. I—” Lott’s jaw clenches. “I just can’t.”
Light laughter erupts from the table of men playing cards across the bar. The ice cubes in Anden’s drink continue to melt, the dark brown of the liquor looking more and more watery.
The bartender approaches. “Can I interest you in another, Lott-jen?” he asks, noticing Lott’s empty glass.
“Sure,” Lott answers, gruffly, with none of the emotion from his prior reveal.
The bartender turns away to refill Lott’s glass with soda and replaces it, reminding Lott once again to let him know if he needs anything else. When the bartender leaves them alone again, Lott sits there with his head hung low, hand curled tightly around the glass without taking a sip.
“I’m sorry,” Lott repeats, breaking the silence, still avoiding Anden’s gaze. “For how I’ve treated you. It wasn’t— you. I felt I had to distance myself, prove that I wasn’t like you. And I’m sorry.”
“Why are you telling me all this now? After all this time?”
“I don’t know. I’m tired. I’ve tried so hard to be a normal Green Bone. Got married because I thought it was the thing I had to do. I did care about my ex-wife and loved her, but not in the way a husband is supposed to. I was so determined to make it work and be normal that I would probably still be married to her if she hadn’t been the one to want a divorce. But I’m tired.” Lott meets Anden’s gaze. “And here you are.”
Anden does not know how to respond to that. His pulse thuds in his veins. “Me?”
Lott studies him, his expression going through a kaleidoscope of emotions beneath the cool surface as he hesitates. “Your ex-partner,” he finally says. “The Abukei guy. Why didn’t it work out?”
“Jirhuya?” Anden blinks in surprise at the question. “I don’t know. Our lives were just too different, I guess. He could never really understand the clan. We’re still on good terms, but we both knew it wasn’t working. We tried to make it work for a long time and there came a point where we just couldn’t any longer.”
“I see.”
Anden pauses. He side-eyes Lott. “Why do you ask?”
“I was curious.”
“Curious. About me?”
Lott says nothing for a long moment. “Yes.”
A long stretch of silence hangs over them, tension strung between them like guitar strings waiting to be strummed. The sound and scenery of the bar around them fades away.
Anden picks up his drink and finishes the whole thing in one go. “It’s late. I should probably head back home.”
“I can drive you,” Lott immediately offers.
“Really? But—”
“You’ve been drinking. I’m sober. Hilo-jen would kill me if he found out I didn’t make sure you were taken care of.”
Anden considers it a moment. “Okay.”
The two of them close out their tabs with the bartender and do not spare another word or glance until they are outside the bar and in the heavy humid summer air of Janloon. The city glows and bustles with nightlife.
As they walk to Lott’s car parked obtrusively in front of the bar, Anden says, “I only had one drink, you know. I’m not drunk.”
“I know.”
Lott opens the passenger side door for Anden, a gesture Anden isn’t sure what to make of, but he clambers in anyway, letting Lott close the door for him. Lott walks around the car and slips into the driver’s seat. He digs out the key from his pocket and starts the ignition.
They do not speak during the drive. Anden does not need to give Lott directions, as Lott knows the layout of Janloon better than anyone as the Horn and likely is very familiar with where each member of the Kaul family lives, so they sit and bask in the unadulterated silence. Anden has never ridden in Lott’s car before. It’s quite clean, leather seats filling the air with a distinctive scent. Occasionally, Anden glances to his side as if to confirm that yes, it really is Lott beside him. Lott keeps his eyes on the road. At red lights, Lott’s index finger anxiously drums the steering wheel.
Eventually, they reach Anden’s street. Lott slows and stops along the sidewalk just a couple doors down from Anden’s apartment building. The car hums, engine idling.
“Do you want to come in?” Anden asks, grateful for how dark the interior of the car is, not sure he could look Lott in the eye in broad daylight. “I know you don’t drink, but I have non-alcoholic stuff too.”
Lott grips the steering wheel with tense knuckles. “I shouldn’t.”
“I didn’t ask if you should. I asked if you want to.”
Lott does not answer.
“If you’re worried about how it looks, I can promise you’re not the weirdest guest I’ve had,” Anden says, thinking about the time he took care of Ayt Mada after the Janloon bombing.
A few seconds pass, and Anden is about to give up and head back home by himself, until wordlessly, Lott turns off the ignition. He steps out of his side of the car, leaving Anden to hurriedly unbuckle his seatbelt and follow.
Standing on the curb of the sidewalk, Anden talks over the roof of the car to Lott as Lott locks the doors. “You know, there are closer places to park.”
“Here is better.”
Anden does not argue the point further, and the two of them walk along the sidewalk to Anden’s apartment, Lott lagging a few body-lengths behind Anden like he’s a bodyguard. Anden elects to take the back stairwell in rather than pass by the front reception, and they pass up the flights of stairs, the stairwell echoing with their discordant footsteps. They reach Anden’s floor and Anden unlocks the door to let them in.
The apartment is dark, so Anden flicks on the light closest to the front door. He shucks off his shoes and leaves them in the entranceway. Lott hesitates just inside the door before he too takes off his shoes.
“You can sit anywhere you like,” Anden says, heading to the compact kitchen and flicking on more lights as he does. He opens his cupboard and scours his drinks, pulling out some bottled teas from behind an unopened bottle of hoji he once received as a gift.
He sets the drink options out on the counter, covertly glancing up. Lott stands rigid like a stone statue in the middle of Anden’s living room. There’s something comedic to Anden about Lott standing there in his usual Horn getup but with socks instead of boots.
“What do you want to drink?” Anden calls out. “There’s different kinds of tea, coffee, juice…”
“Just water.”
Anden fills up glasses for Lott and himself and carries them out to where Lott stands rooted to the floor. “Here you go.”
Lott says nothing as he takes the glass from Anden. He drinks, looking aside and avoiding Anden’s gaze. Though not particularly thirsty, Anden takes a sip too for the sake of having something to do other than stare at Lott.
Lott lowers his glass. There’s a hint of wetness left behind on his full lips. Anden’s attention zeroes in on his mouth despite his attempt not to stare. Lott notices the attention, but Anden, for once, does not pull away in shyness or in shame, instead keeping his eyes on Lott’s face. For his part, Lott does not pull away either, matching Anden’s gaze with fingers clenched tight around his glass.
They’re not teenagers in school any longer, and they haven’t been for years, but for so long Anden has lived with an image of Lott in his head as his childhood crush, an unattainable ideal. He hasn’t paid as much attention to Lott as the years have passed, and as a result hasn’t really merged his image of teen Lott with the mature man before him. While Anden himself wears a shorter haircut these days, conscious through his jade legalization work in Espenia of how long hair is perceived as more feminine under Espenian norms than under Kekonese norms, Lott wears his hair a little longer than he once did, wavy locks ending around his jaw. Even when he was young, Lott always appeared deep in thought, perpetually reflecting back on something serious, and now there are defined worry lines between Lott’s brows from years and years of furrowing his brows and thinking things over and over.
Heat coils in the pit of Anden’s stomach. Without a word, he sets down his glass on the coffee table and steps up to Lott. Lott stiffens at the close proximity, but he does not step back, serious eyes watching Anden’s every move with a strange cocktail of curiosity and alarm.
Anden reaches out and cups the side of Lott’s face. Lott flinches, but he does not pull away. His jaw flexes under Anden’s hand.
Gently, Anden brushes his thumb over Lott’s cheek, and absorbs the strangeness of this: here is the Horn of No Peak, a seasoned Green Bone warrior only outclassed in tactical experience by Hilo and Juen, trembling in fear at Anden touching his face.
Lott swallows, thickly. In what appears to be a great surge of courage for him, his hand jerks up to press over Anden’s, his long fingers shaking. After a long moment, Anden takes the glass of water from Lott’s other hand, severing the touch to set it down on the coffee table beside his own glass. He returns to face Lott.
Lott opens his mouth, shuts it, then opens it again. Hoarsely, he asks, “Can I kiss you?”
Anden does not immediately answer, instead thinking about how much sixteen-year-old him wished and dreamed to hear those words come from Lott’s mouth. Softly, he says, “Yeah.”
With an inhale, Lott grabs Anden’s face with both hands and kisses him.
The ice broken, there is no more holding back. Lott kisses fiercely, hungrily, like a starved stray dog tearing through a steak. It’s not the most graceful or adroit kiss Anden’s had, but the rawness of the desire makes his stomach swoop and his knees weak. Lott’s hands make their way into Anden’s hair, messing up the orderly style. He bites and tugs on Anden’s bottom lip with his teeth.
For a few minutes it is a frenzied exchange of push and pull, both of them kissing with such impatience and intensity that Anden barely has time to process what is happening, but eventually, Lott softens, clutching Anden closely to him by the waist but with the ravenousness of before somewhat sated. Anden takes the reins, backing Lott up against the sofa until Lott sinks back into the couch cushions.
Anden breaks the kiss a moment to peer down at Lott sprawled on the couch. Lott’s eyes are filled with desire as he looks up at Anden, his pouty mouth puffy and reddened from the force of the kiss.
With the breakneck speed of the past few minutes, Anden decides to slow things down. He leans down into Lott, wedging his knee between Lott’s legs and spreading them wider, but he does not press into Lott’s cock. Lott’s hips buck up, crotch grazing Anden’s knee.
“Anden,” Lott urges, breathlessly.
Anden takes on a coy tone of voice. “Are you so accustomed to getting what you want, now that you’re the Horn?” he asks. “If you want something, you have to ask.”
“Please.”
Anden cups the back of his neck. “That’s more like it,” he says, placing an open mouthed kiss on Lott’s lips.
While Anden has had a decent amount of experience at this point with his past lovers, for the first time he feels truly in the lead. With Cory, Cory was so much more experienced than Anden to begin with that no matter what they did, Anden felt like he was several steps behind. Meanwhile Jirhuya was always so sure of himself and his values and desires, while Anden wasn’t. But with Lott, Anden feels for the first time like he is truly leading, that for once he is the one who is sure of himself, while Lott is the one who is uncertain and in turmoil.
Anden breaks the kiss to ask, “Can I…?” His hands rest at the collar of Lott’s shirt.
Lott nods.
Anden kisses Lott’s neck as he slowly unbuttons Lott’s shirt, gradually revealing Lott’s skin and hard-won jade. He mouths over the base of Lott’s throat just above the jade pendant around his neck. Lott exhales softly.
When the shirt is fully unbuttoned, Anden pulls back. Lott’s body is not that of the teen Anden once idolized: scars from various fights stretch across his skin in sharp, jagged lines and angles, some faded enough to almost blend into Lott’s skin, while some look fresh enough to have only recently closed up. Decades worth of won jade is embedded into his skin, vibrant and green. Anden thinks about how in another life, how this might’ve been what his body looked like.
Anden does not touch any of the jade, both not wanting to get a contact high and feeling like touching Lott’s jade would be too intimate with how hard Lott worked to earn it on his own in the first place. So he places a hand on the side of Lott’s hip and dips his head into his neck, kissing Lott’s exposed skin. Lott has a distinctive scent Anden’s never been close enough to perceive, but now his senses are overflowed with everything about Lott, and his cock stirs in interest.
He ignores his own needs for now and focuses entirely on Lott, trailing kisses over Lott’s shoulders and chest. Lott shifts underneath Anden, pushing his hips forward to grind into Anden’s knee and inform Anden of his hardening dick.
Eventually, Anden drops down lower, sinking into a kneel on the floor as he draws a trail down Lott’s chest and stomach with his mouth. He stops at the waistband of Lott’s pants and looks up. “Can I give you a favor, Lott-jen?” he asks.
Lott flushes darker, already looking disheveled and sullied. “Call me Jin.”
“Jin,” Anden repeats, testing the sound out. The name tastes unfamiliar and intimate in his mouth, something he never imagined he’d say. “Can I give you a favor?”
Lott nods.
With that, Anden gropes Lott over the fabric of his pants. Lott lets out a hitched breath and squirms. Anden can feel the heat of Lott’s gaze on him, never leaving for a second as Anden unbuttons and unzips Lott’s pants and pulls down the waistband of his underwear to set his cock free. Anden takes in the reveal of Lott’s cock without touching it yet, instead leaning down to kiss the exposed skin of Lott’s hip. Lott’s cock is about the same length as Cory’s, but slightly thinner. He briefly glances up to meet Lott’s gaze. He grabs Lott’s dick and slowly begins stroking him.
Lott tenses at the sensation. “Fuck,” he breathes.
When Lott is fully hard, Anden stops teasing and begins sucking him off properly, mouthing over the head of Lott’s cock while his hand works the base. Lott grabs a fistful of Anden’s hair and slumps weakly back into the couch. As Anden sucks him off, Lott is mostly quiet, which doesn’t surprise Anden, only letting out short, sharp breaths. It’s a vibrant contrast from Jirhuya, who talked and moaned openly during sex, but Anden gathers from how strongly Lott grips his hair that Lott’s quietness does not mean a lack of enjoyment.
Lott releases his grip on Anden’s hair to brush Anden’s cheek with the back of his fingers, a gesture so small and tender it shocks Anden. “Gods, you look so good with your mouth around my cock,” he says.
Anden is not someone easily swayed by flattery, but the fact that it’s Lott makes him flush. He says nothing, continuing as is, and Lott exhales and leans his head back, hand returning to grip Anden’s hair. Anden misses the touch on his face.
Lott’s breaths become more ragged and guttural. Anden braces one hand on Lott’s thigh and can feel how Lott’s legs are trembling with pleasure.
“Wait,” Lott says, releasing Anden’s hair again.
Anden stops, pulling his mouth off of Lott’s dick with a lewd smack.
“I want to fuck you.”
Anden’s dick pulses with heat. “Okay,” he says.
He takes a brief detour, leaving Lott on the couch to dash to his room and quickly retrieve lube and condoms from his bedside table. When he returns, Lott stands from the couch to peel off his unbuttoned shirt and pants, and Anden has a full view of his leanly muscled warrior body.
Noticing the lube and condoms in Anden’s hands, Lott steps into Anden. He reaches up and pulls off Anden’s glasses, then carefully folds them up and sets them down on the coffee table beside the forgotten glasses of water. His eyes dart over Anden’s bare face before he leans in to kiss his neck while his hands work unbutton Anden’s shirt.
Vision hazy without his glasses, Anden tilts his head into Lott’s touch and lets his gaze lie unfocused on the room, perception narrowing in on the sensation of Lott’s mouth on his skin instead. When Lott finishes unbuttoning the shirt, he pushes it off Anden’s shoulders. Anden lets it fall to the ground. Anden’s torso bare now too, Lott leans down lower, his mouth trailing down Anden’s shoulders and chest, his hands roaming Anden’s back and fingers digging into his skin.
Tossing the condoms and lube to the sofa, Anden undoes his jeans and shuffles out of them and his boxers, half-hard cock springing free. He kisses Lott on the mouth, and slightly clumsily, Lott backs him up against the sofa, pushing Anden to lie flat underneath him.
They make out for a few moments like this, limbs intertwined and cocks needily rutting against open skin, until Anden fishes out the condoms and lube from where they uncomfortably poke him in the back. “Watch,” he instructs Lott.
Lott sits back. Anden makes a show out of uncapping the lube and fingering himself, more performative than he ordinarily would be in an average hookup. His cheeks burn with heat under the weight of Lott’s attentive gaze, and he relishes the obvious lust in Lott’s eyes as he watches. Laying it on thick, Anden lets out some sharp exhales and keens at his own touch, yet never once breaks his eye contact with Lott, whose expression reeks of torment and impatience.
“Okay,” Anden finally says, taking his hand—fingers slick with lube—away and handing a condom to Lott.
Lott wastes no time, ripping the wrapper and sliding the condom onto his cock, then hurriedly covers his cock with a layer of lube before propping himself up over Anden. “Okay?” he asks.
Anden nods.
With a small groan, Lott enters him. Anden squirms at the sensation with a small exhale. Lott begins thrusting, quickly getting to a fast pace, the sofa squeaking underneath them and Lott’s jade pendant swinging around his neck with every thrust.
Hair hanging messy and loose around his face, Lott bears down on Anden. “I’ve wanted you for so long,” he says into Anden’s neck, impulsively, like he’s saying the thought as soon as it crosses his mind. He pins Anden’s arms on either side of Anden’s head, lacing his fingers with Anden’s. “You’re so…”
Anden can say nothing coherent in response. The jade gemstone on one of Lott’s rings touches Anden’s skin and he is flooded with sensation, now able to Perceive Lott’s dense, fierce jade aura.
Delirious with the jade and the feeling of Lott inside him, Anden loses himself in the momentum and thinks of nothing but Lott pushing and pulling him back and forth, gradually picking up speed and heat. Droplets of sweat trickle in rivulets down Lott’s neck, occasionally dripping onto Anden’s chest. Lott pants harshly with the effort.
“Fuck—I’m going to come—” Lott says. He rams into Anden at a feverishly quick tempo, moaning in a low voice, the sound almost too much for Anden to bear.
When Lott finishes, he doesn’t immediately pull out. He hovers over Anden and breathlessly asks, “Can I touch your cock?”
Anden nods. Lott jacks him off, slowly at first then gradually picking up the pace. The combination of the contact high from Lott’s jade plus the sensation of Lott simultaneously inside him while stroking him off makes Anden dizzy.
“Lott—” Anden gasps and writhes, back arching off the couch and head craning back, fingers clenching tight around Lott’s hand. Cum falls hot and wet onto Anden’s stomach.
For a few seconds after he finishes, Anden lies there, panting heavily. Slowly, he comes down from his high and catches his breath, dimly aware of Lott licking clean the cum from his stomach and Lott pulling out of him to discard the condom.
Lott crawls back over him and flops down on top of him. Comforted with the weight of Lott on him, Anden lightly strokes Lott’s back, feeling the clamminess of his skin from sweat. Neither speaks as the minutes tick past. Anden stares up at the ceiling, a little in disbelief of what just happened.
Lott’s shoulder shakes. At first writing it off as Lott merely shifting, Anden does not think much of it until the shaking continues and Lott sniffs loudly, and horror creeps over Anden with the realization: Lott is crying.
Bewildered, Anden blinks, unsure what to say or do. He turns his head to Lott, hoping to get a glimpse of Lott’s expression, but Lott has his head turned away from Anden, giving Anden only a view of his dark hair.
Anden whispers, “Lott?”
Lott says nothing, only letting out a muted, stuttering breath, his back rising and falling underneath Anden’s hand. Without warning or explanation, Lott jumps up, immediately turning away from Anden to pick up his discarded clothes, though not before Anden catches a glimpse of his contorted expression.
“Wait, Lott—” Anden goes to sit up and regrets moving, dizziness from jade withdrawal hitting him like a truck now that Lott’s jade is no longer touching him. Anden squeezes his eyes shut and tries to breathe evenly until the feeling passes, and by the time it does and he reopens his eyes, Lott is nearly fully dressed, buttoning the last few buttons of his shirt.
“Lott—”
Lott turns his back on him, snatching up his jacket from the floor and storming to the door, stopping only to slide on his boots.
“Wait—” Anden slips on his pants and chases after Lott, getting to the front door just in time to see Lott vanish around the hallway corner. Anden stands there a moment, hoping for Lott to turn back and come around the corner again, but the seconds pass and there is no Lott.
Exhaling sharply in aggravation, Anden slams the door shut, the noise echoing throughout the now empty apartment.
Anden weakly punches the door with his fist. “Shit,” he chokes out. He bows his head and presses his forehead against the cool surface of the wood, squeezing his eyes shut. A deep, gnawing weight settles in the pit of his stomach.
After a minute, Anden straightens up and gets to work reorganizing the apartment, ignoring the nausea within him. He stashes the lube and condoms back in their place in his bedside table, he reorders the sofa cushions so the depression in the upholstery isn’t so obvious, and he takes the two glasses of water back to the kitchen, all while feeling like he’s hiding evidence.
Anden replaces the different teas and coffees he pulled out to their rightful places in the cupboard. The bottle of hoji sits where he left it, still unopened. He stares at it in a moment of indecision, then pulls it out. He breaks the seal and pops it open.
He gulps down a mouthful. The hoji burns the back of his throat.