sorserer | ( office hours & overflow )

[ he can feel more than hear hakkyuu’s perturbation at his own nonchalance, but, well. it’s not as though he doesn’t understand, in some way. people still had to work, in the raw aftermath of the infinity war. still had to walk their quieted streets. ]

I suppose this city isn’t half so difficult in comparison.

It's okay.

[He turns to catch sight of the edge of Stephen's head out the corner of his eye as the edge of his mouth quirks upward and he slides over to take a seat on the arm of Stephen's chair. On the chair, mind you, not actually making contact with the sorcerer himself.]

Company's not bad, I guess.

[ it’s a good picture, for all that hakkyuu’s clothes don’t fit and his grace is less lupine rogue and more mistrustful alley cat: stephen utterly at ease in the armchair, pretty thing near enough to his elbow. he’ll remember this with just as much thoroughness as he’ll recall any other detail of the night, if it goes well enough. ]

The best part of the whole thing, easily.

[The scotch has helped take the nervous, twitchy edge off somewhat, but its also winding its way through Hakkyuu's system and mingling with the earlier two fingers he naked on principle, leaving him in those early stages of kind of tipsy where everything is warm and makes the world feel kind of squishy and tingly, but his sense of pacing when it comes to the liquor is definitely off compared to Stephen's, both in a unit sense and in his own fortitude.

But he looks more relaxed at least, cheeks a mildly flushed beneath already much more warmer complexion than his fully grown self carries and his impatient teenage energy transfers to a slight back and forth sway where he sits.]

We know each other, right? [It's a semi-rhetorical question, because he moves right on--] I mean, I know I know you, because I can tell you're a real pain in the ass. So that means we're friends or something, right?

[He turns his head then, setting Stephen with a pointed, skeptical side-eye.]

But you don't seem the right... age for us to be friends--[Yep, it's about you Stephen, not him.] I know a lot about you though so that must mean you matter or something, so what's the catch?

Catch?

[ an innocent enough echo. go on, kid, ask what you wanna ask. ]

Yeah. Do I owe you money or something? We roomies? Did we hide a body together? What's the deal? Because you're sure as shit not teaching me magic, that I know for sure.

Is it that unusual to have older friends?

[ very amused. ]

[Okay, that has him swivelling where he's sat to give Stephen a more direct look.]

No. It's just--[There's that weird itchy feeling again, something's off and missing in his brain and he doesn't like it.]

When everyone you know is stuck behind the same walls of the same city with no way out? No, it's not that unusual.

When you're in this place? It's--[Nope, different question:] Who started it?

Edited 2022-06-07 18:00 (UTC)

[ stephen gives him a long look, assessing again, hawkish blue eyes and nothing too readily readable in his disposition. after a moment, there’s another faintly bemused curve to the corner of his mouth, not yet a smirk. it’s just - that first day. it’s a good memory. ]

We pretty much bumped into each other on our way in the front door. If that’s what you’re wondering.

[ after a moment he sets his glass down on the table. ]

You had a good sense of humor. Something I think most people could’ve used at the time.

[It's a confusing answer and not what he's expecting, though it's not clear what he was braced to hear instead as he stares right back at Stephen. They've gotten closer than he perhaps realises now he's picked this spot to perch on and he can see right into the older man's face and tries (and fails) to learn something more from that.

He can't.]

So I made you laugh and... we became friends?

[ stephen tilts his head to the side, considering: more easy deliberateness. ]

There were some steps in-between.

You buy me whiskey?

[He flashes a grin, tilting what's left in his glass back and forth a few times for emphasis.]

They don’t let you buy on your own here, according to your designation. But we did find drinks. One way or another.

[ he’s not in any particular hurry to reach what is beginning to feel like an inevitable conclusion. it wouldn’t be hard, telling him about that night. it’ll just go places stephen had already expected tonight was going to go.

so yeah, he’s just gonna let hakkyuu meander a little if he wants details. he’s still terrifically relaxed. ]

Our designation.

[He looks down into the glass, his lips drawing up at the corners slightly.]

So we find loopholes and cause people trouble, that about the shape of it? Was I bad influence on you or something? Tried to get you to up the ante every round? Or were you too straight-laced to play along and left it all up to me to get shit done?

[ a little huff of laughter escapes him, because it’s a very funny proposition that hakkyuu could be a bad influence on him. at the very least they bring equal amounts of terror to the table - despite stephen’s best efforts at gentility, at the end of the day they’re both too hedonistic, too sharp around the edges, too much for most. he hadn’t been mistaken, that first night they’d met; they had each looked at each other and seen something they recognized. ]

You’re thinking too far ahead.

[ gently amused. in that tone, he might well be one of the instructors at the temple in kamar-taj, issuing guidance. he’s never been a good teacher, though, never mind a particularly good adult. ]

We went out for drinks. You invited me home.

[ he idly skims the flat of his hand over his thigh again absently to smooth out the bespoke fabric, rests his arm back on the armrest. then he turns sideways to look at hakkyuu again, looks him over for a second, lifts his gaze back up to hakkyuu’s. head tilted again, just so, in skeptical askance. ]

I can keep going.

[A brow arches slowly at the correction, curious enough about the idea that he's skipped over something significant that he turns further in his seat, trying to get a more direct eyeline on Stephen without actually getting up from where he's sat.

It's not that Hakkyuu at this age is clueless about sex, not by a long shot, not after sharing space with Vrenille and debriefing about each encounter with his clients. It's just that sex has nothing to do with Hakkyuu. Stephan, sex, and Hakkyuu are just don't overlap in the Venn diagram, not in the mindset he's in. So he is curious--what did he and Stephen get up to.]

Go on. We what? We ate? Talked? Drank more? Got real wild and slept?

[ oh. wow. it’s really gonna be like this, huh.

there’s no wrong way to answer this question, either. if hakkyuu flees, good for him; that meticulous sense of self-preservation possessed by his older self had its roots somewhere. if he doesn’t, well.

he bites the inside of his cheek briefly to suppress the urge to laugh. he rests his chin on the backs of his knuckles again, riveted, then thinks back. temperate evening, three hours of drinks, the old condo towers. ]

I kissed you first.

[When Stephen is done with all his micro movements and says that, Hakkyuu's expression drops with a single, surprised blink, like it really is the last thing in the world he'd expected to hear.

And then, pretty involuntarily, he laughs. First, a single noise, then a rolling chuckle as he shakes his head and lowers his eyes to the glass.]

That's hilarious, doc.

[He drains the rest of the drink because he really, truly, cannot picture him on the receiving end of a kiss from this man. Or he doesn't want to picture it. Same difference.]

[ stephen reaches up to take the glass from his hand. when he turns his wrist, like a good sleight of hand trick, the glass disappears. ]

You don’t believe me?

[Ugh. Mesmers. Hakkyuu can't help but roll his eyes and then sit back to his head hits the corner of the back of the chair.]

It's not--[His jaw tightens just a fraction, willing himself not to imagine what Stephen's suggesting just in the service of dismissing it.] That's not really what I do. So no, can't say I do.

Not now, perhaps. But eventually.

[ and then, in wry reassurance: ]

If it’s any consolation, you seem to enjoy it.

[Something prickles up Hakkyuu's spine, part excitement, part warning, and the way it shakes out is that the tension that had been present in his form earlier on the other side of the room starts to creep back in.

The alcohol has definitely worn away at the edges of his better judgement--if his teenage self has better judgement--and even with the best of intentions, when someone says 'don't think about a pink elephant' that pachyderm strolls right on through.

So there it is, an image in his mind that springs up out of nowhere--a dark hallway, hands grasping at collars and the front of clothes, the taste of scotch, tongues and teeth, the smell of Stephen's skin and--

His stomach muscles tighten, his breathing already a heavier through his nose as he tries to banish that thought away as quickly as it flashed, fully formed, through his mind and makes the back of his neck feel hot.

And he doesn't have a comeback this time. Perhaps the only time he's been lost for words with Stephen and finds himself frozen in place, torn between bolting and wanting, in spite of everything, to hear more.]

[ stephen clocks immediately the flash of recognition in hakkyuu’s eyes. it’s followed by a delicious flush of heat that flares up in his neck, a splash of color readily visible in the low warm light of the hotel suite.

there’s still a chance the kid will run. there’s also a chance stephen might make his own life harder, chasing this slight noxious high to the end of the line when the friend he knows runs hot and cold with him to begin with. but stephen’s never been accused of making good decisions in the spur of the moment, at least not consistently; and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t already a little hard already, maybe from the second hakkyuu walked in the room, different but familiar all the same.

so, yeah, maybe not a good guy. he shifts just so in the armchair to lean in closer, head at that same tilt. his voice at that same register, a touch softer, oh so level-headed. ]

Think you’d enjoy it now?

[It's mortifying how just with Stephen moving in closer in that slow, deliberate way with his voice pitched low and private like that is enough for the blood to rush fully to his face, pool at the base of his spine, and flood right into his crotch all in a single terrifying second. It's perhaps not so unbearably sudden for a more experienced Hakkyuu, but these are the moments with Stephen that get the sparks lighting up, the moments before contract, the tempting and teasing, though if he took this particular approach with Hakkyuu normally he'd laugh and tell him to try harder because that line is truly awful.

But for Hakkyuu in this moment it feels like some kind of threat no matter how gebtly it's offered.

His eyes flick down to Stephen's mouth before he can stop himself, then quickly back up again with that same skittish energy on display before, except this time he feels locked in place.

The way he swallows feels loud, though it's probably because it feels difficult to do and his with his heart thumping at a million miles a second it makes every other little reaction in his body feel exceptionally on display and amplified.]

I don't think you should.

[It's a panicked blurting, not a real answer to the question at all and still very much about Stephen.]

You're-- I mean, that's... That's not-- I'm not--

[If Hakkyuu could be a fly on the wall for this absolute scene he'd be groaning long and hard at his teenage self and all this excessive, unnecessary sputtering; the duality of being desperate for the experience and terrified of the prospect. As a teenager, Hakkyuu would hang on ever whispered word about sucking and taking cock that Vrenille ever shared with him and yet leapt from even the slightest hint that Vrenille may have wanted to try something like that with him, the two of them getting hot and bothered on the tales, and Hakkyuu always being the one to turn away at that particular game of chicken.

It had been a long, long journey for Hakkyuu to come beyond his fear of his own pleasure, and Stephen's soft, faux-consideration isn't going to magic it away, that's for sure.]

I wouldn't be good at... Anything like that. For you. You-- you wouldn't like it.

[God, is it good or bad for Stephen's ego to seen so hot that he's actually scared a kid horny with it?]

[ honestly, if older hakkyuu gives him shit about that line later he’ll needle back just as well. hakkyuu, after all, could teach a masterclass on the direct approach - it’s just that stephen’s no slouch either. the difference is in technique, timing, the ways in which they read and play off tension.

there’s something grinning and wolfish in the back of stephen’s head that goes utterly unreflected in his expression. he doesn’t move, still that picture of unflappable calm, which only hakkyuu his contemporary would know is just arrogance, stephen’s life and choices all clean, self-assured lines or at least the impeccable impression of them. he’s definitely not a guy who needs an ego boost. not now or ever. ]

Funny. You usually are. And I usually do.

[ he rubs his thumb over the bridge of his scarred knuckles in apparent thought. ]

You want me to tell you how it tends to go? [ he winks. ] I usually make people sit down for storytime.

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