Chapter 17 #2
“Oh, so this whole apocalypse situation has actually been a good time for you?” Mads teased, voice dry but laced with that familiar affection.
Lionel huffed out a laugh but couldn’t stop the smile that tugged at his lips. He shoved Mads lightly in the chest. “Not all of it,” he said. “Actually running terrified for my life has not been as much of a turn-on as I would’ve expected.”
Mads tilted his head, peering at him with that amused glint in his eye. “But some of it has?”
Lionel’s smile faded a little. He swallowed hard, and then—still not quite able to meet Mads’ gaze—nodded, just once.
Mads didn’t tease him for it. He didn’t laugh. Instead, he leaned in close, enough that Lionel could feel the breath between them, warm and shallow. His voice was softer now. “You’re very interesting, Lionel,” he said. “You’re constantly surprising me.”
Lionel’s throat tightened. He glanced up at Mads briefly, then back down again. “I feel like you should be far more freaked out by me telling you this,” he muttered.
“I don’t mind,” Mads said with an easy shrug, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Lionel’s brow furrowed. “I feel like you should,” he whispered. His hands twisted nervously in the blanket around them.
Mads hesitated. For a moment, he didn’t say anything, and Lionel’s stomach dropped, panic blooming sharp and fast like it always did when he opened up too far.
But then Mads reached up and touched his face, fingers brushing lightly over Lionel’s jaw.
His expression had shifted, gentler now, more serious.
“Maybe I’ve been infatuated with you for too long,” he said, quiet but firm.
“I don’t think you could tell me much that would scare me away easily. ”
Lionel blinked at him, throat tight with a thousand things he couldn’t say. He felt like his skin was being stripped away in slow layers—vulnerable, bare, but somehow still safe.
“Infatuated?” he asked, a little dazed.
Mads huffed a soft laugh. “Yeah. That’s the polite word for it.”
Lionel let out a breath that was half a laugh, half a tremble, and let his head drop against Mads’ shoulder. “You’re weird,” he murmured. “We only met a few days ago.”
Mads smiled sheepishly as he shook his head. “Yeah, we met only a few days ago—but I’d known you for a lot longer,” he admitted. “I doubt you ever even noticed me, but… I saw you around the building pretty often, and I thought you were… interesting.”
Lionel blinked at him. “You saw me around?” He racked his brain, but he knew that if he’d ever been called to Mads’ apartment, he would have remembered the guy. It was one of the first things he’d thought when they met, that he was shocked he didn’t recognize him.
“Yeah,” Mads huffed out an awkward laugh.
“I never got up the courage to call you to come fix my apartment or anything, but I saw you walking around a lot. You were always running around helping everyone else. I thought it was interesting that not many people ever tried to talk to you past just greeting you or telling you what was wrong.” He shrugged.
“I had so many questions I wanted to ask you.”
“Really?” Lionel couldn’t help how he squirmed slightly at the words. He felt like he had in elementary school when his friend told him a girl had a crush on him and had noticed him at soccer practice. “Like what?”
Mads' hand trailed up to cup Lionel’s chin, his thumb brushing over his skin.
“Like, why did you always have a smile on your face until you were out of sight of the residents, and then you looked so exhausted and sad. Or why you never seemed to mind even when people called you at all hours of the day and night.” Mads’ smile grew until he laughed, “I also just wanted to ask how you take your coffee and what your favorite color was, too, though.”
“Yellow,” Lionel said quietly.
Mads laughed louder at that, head tilting backwards with the force of it. It was the first true, genuine laugh Lionel had heard in such a long time that he almost forgot what laughter sounded like. He couldn’t help the grin pulling on his own lips as he started laughing along with Mads as well.
“That was probably a weird thing to tell you,” Mads said, repeating Lionel’s earlier words. “So, we’re even, yeah? I know you have a fear kink, and now you know that I was a bit of a… secret admirer of you.”
“Is that a nice word for being a stalker?” Lionel laughed.
“Ouch,” Mads said, grabbing his chest in mock pain.
“No, it’s cute that you apparently had a crush on me before this,” Lionel said, reaching up to trace one of his knuckles over Mads’ jaw. “I’d never even seen you before. It’s weird to think that we might have never met if the literal apocalypse hadn’t started.”
Mads nodded, and Lionel watched as his eyes skimmed downward to Lionel’s mouth. His eyelids were half closed, and what he wanted was blatant as his thigh shifted against Lionel’s cock again. “Now will you let me help you?” He asked slowly.
“I just told you what I get off on,” Lionel said.
“And I said I don’t mind.” Mads took Lionel’s hand, pulling it up to kiss his palm. “We can do whatever you want.”
Lionel’s breath caught in his chest, and he let out a slow, shaky exhale. “I’ve never actually… tried anything with another person. I don’t—”
Mads leaned forward, bringing their lips together. “That’s okay, we can figure it out.”
When their lips came together this time, it was far more teeth and tongue than the tentative, searching kisses they'd shared before. There was no hesitation now, no moment of wondering if it was allowed, just the heat of Mads’ mouth on his own.
Lionel groaned low in his throat, a sound pulled from somewhere deep and aching.
He curled his hand around the back of Mads’ head, fingers threading into pale, sleep-tousled hair before fisting it and dragging him closer.
His mouth moved hungrily over Mads’, biting at his lower lip, sucking hard enough to bruise, chasing the soft, surprised gasps that spilled out in response.
Mads followed each push and pull without resistance, pliant and eager, his lips parting the moment Lionel demanded more. His arms wrapped tightly around Lionel’s neck, drawing them together until there was barely a sliver of space left between their bodies.
Lionel’s hand left Mads’ hair, trailing down his spine in a slow, rough glide that made Mads shiver.
He hooked his palm beneath Mads’ thigh and pulled it up around his hip, hitching it high so their bodies locked together more securely.
The movement pressed them flush, their hips grinding instinctively, urgently.
Mads broke the kiss with a ragged breath, gasping softly against Lionel’s lips. His fingers curled tight in Lionel’s hair, anchoring himself like he might float away otherwise. "Fuck," he whispered, voice shaky, overwhelmed. “You feel—”
But he didn’t finish the thought, just kissed him again, deeper this time, more open and desperate. Lionel could feel the way Mads trembled against him, the tension rolling off his body in waves.
Lionel rolled them over, holding himself over Mads so he wouldn’t crush him, and pressed his own thigh against the front of Mads’ underwear.
Lionel paused slightly when he felt the hardness there, pulling away just enough to look down at where Mads was raising his hips to grind against Lionel’s thigh.
His hands skipped up Mads’ sweatshirt again as he pulled him closer.
“What?” Mads murmured when Lionel didn’t immediately come back to kiss him again.
“You’re just… big,” Lionel said. “You’re definitely bigger than me.”
Mads laughed, eyes squinting upwards into little crescents. “Are you intimidated by that?”
“I would be if I were the one on my back,” Lionel hummed as he leaned in again to capture Mads’ lips.
Mads tugged insistently at Lionel’s shirt, fingers curling into the fabric until Lionel leaned back and yanked it off. He helped Mads strip his own shirt away next, and then they were chest to chest, mouths returning to each other as if they hadn’t kissed in years.
Their bare skin pressed together, but Lionel flinched at the cold that seeped from Mads.
He was always cold, impossibly so, like something left too long in the snow.
Lionel didn’t understand how someone could feel so frozen even now, when their breaths were hot and fast, when Lionel’s body burned from the inside out with want.
Still, he pressed closer, chasing warmth that didn’t come.
Their breaths tangled in the small space between them, hot and damp, enough to fog glass.
But Mads remained cold, and somehow that made Lionel shudder more.
Something about the unnatural contrast made it feel surreal, like touching a ghost he still couldn’t bear to let go.
Lionel’s hand drifted downward, fingers tracing over the sensitive skin of Mads’ inner thigh.
Mads shivered—sharp and involuntary—and his legs slowly parted.
Lionel settled between them, his pulse stuttering as Mads’ long legs wrapped around his waist and crossed at the ankles behind his back, holding him there.
The way Mads moved without resistance sent something twisting warmly through Lionel’s gut. He laughed under his breath as Mads squirmed. “We’re both still wearing pants,” Lionel said, voice breathy as he shifted. “I need to take them off.”
Mads narrowed his eyes like it was Lionel’s fault, but he didn’t argue.
He let his legs fall away, and Lionel slid off the bed, quickly stripping out of his own pants before returning to pull off Mads’.
Mads watched him with that unreadable expression, eyes dark and unreadable, and Lionel tried not to tremble under the weight of it.
Lionel very quickly realized an issue once they were both naked. He groaned as he ran a hand over his face and turned in a slow circle. “We don’t have lube,” he said. “I’ve never hooked up with a guy—we need lube, don’t we? I don’t have any here.”