Chapter 8 #3
He thought about what Adriel had said about the monologue. The color in his face afterward. He thought about all of it, the weeks of it, the archive and the stairwell and the break room and every careful step back he'd taken and whether any of it had made the slightest difference.
It hadn't.
He was sitting in a lamplit office at ten o'clock with Adriel's knee warm against his and the smell of his soap in the air and the memory of his shoulder solid against his own thirty seconds ago, and all the distance he'd been so carefully maintaining had quietly, incrementally collapsed.
He didn't think he was going to be able to rebuild it.
He wasn't sure he wanted to.
∞∞∞
It was late.
Landen didn't know how late. His phone was somewhere under the manuscript, and he had stopped caring about the hour a long time ago.
Adriel made a final notation and his pen went still.
Landen looked at the manuscript. At the screen on his computer screen. At everything except Adriel, which had been the project of the last hour and had not been going well. Every time he tried, his eyes drifted back.
He needed to end this. Any more and he'd stop being able to pretend it was about work.
"We should wrap up," he said. "Go ho…"
He turned his head, and the words died in his throat.
Adriel was close. That was the first thing, how close, because neither of them had made a decision about it.
It had just happened, the way it had been happening all evening, the slow incremental collapse of distance until now there was almost nothing left.
Their chairs had drifted together over the hours.
Their knees had touched and stayed. And now Adriel was right there, close enough that Landen could feel the warmth of him, could feel the faint brush of his breath.
Adriel's eyes went wide the moment Landen turned. Like he'd only just realized it too.
He didn't move.
Neither did Landen.
The moment stretched. Landen could see everything; the slight part of Adriel's lips, his chest rising and falling just a little too fast, the color rising along his cheekbones.
That particular pink, the one that lived in his face like weather.
It was deepening now, spreading to his ears, the soft skin at his temples, disappearing down his throat beneath his collar.
His eyes dropped to Adriel's mouth before he could stop himself.
His lips were slightly parted. The lower one soft, pink, slightly fuller than the top, and Landen looked at it and the wanting hit him somewhere low and specific and completely unambiguous. He wanted to close that space. To feel those lips against his. To taste that breath.
He looked back up.
Adriel's eyes hadn't moved. Still fixed on him, dark and shining, and there was something in them Landen had never seen before. Something open. Unguarded. Something that looked, impossibly, like it might be the same thing Landen was feeling.
Adriel's breath was shallow against his mouth now, warm and faint and unsteady, each exhale a small, devastating gift. The pulse going at his throat, rapid and visible.
Then he made a sound.
Barely anything. A breath. A small, helpless exhale that hit Landen's mouth warm and soft, and something in him just gave.
He leaned in. The distance narrowed to three inches, then two. Adriel's lips parted further. The flutter of his lashes. The exact moment his breath caught and held.
Landen’s phone rang.
Landen jerked back as if burned. He grabbed the phone without looking, and answered on instinct, his body operating on reflex while the rest of him was still back in those two inches, still feeling Adriel's breath on his mouth.
He turned to the window. Put his hand on the cold glass. Said yes and of course and I'll call you tomorrow, making the appropriate sounds while his heart slammed against his ribs. The call lasted ninety seconds. It felt like an hour.
He ended it. Stood with his forehead nearly touching the glass, eyes closed, breathing slow, trying to find something that felt like control.
When he turned back, Adriel was standing.
Coat on. Bag on his shoulder. Tugging the hem of his sweater down over his stomach. His face was still flushed, hands not quite steady as he gathered the last of his things.
He wouldn't look at Landen.
Landen watched him and said nothing. There was nothing to say that wasn't too much or not enough. Nothing that wouldn't make this worse. For the first time in his life he felt entirely lost.
"Thank you for staying late," he said eventually. Hollow. Meaningless. Not what he wanted to say at all.
Adriel looked up.
The flush deepened. His eyes met Landen's for just a moment, dark, still too bright, something in them Landen couldn't read.
"Goodnight," he said quietly.
Then he was gone. The door clicked shut. Footsteps faded down the corridor, soft, and then the distant ding of the elevator, and then nothing.
Landen sat down. Let his head drop back and stared at the ceiling.
A sound came out of him. Low and rough and completely involuntary; half frustration, half wanting, entirely undignified. He didn't bother trying to stop it. There was no one left to hear. Just him and the rain and the ghost of Adriel's breath still warm on his mouth.
And the realization of his cock, hard and pulsing in his pants.