Chapter 18 #3
"She spent two hundred pages building toward something and then stepped around it at the last moment," he said finally. He turned his own fork over, looking at it rather than at Landen. "The whole book is pulling in one direction and then the ending just doesn't go there. "
"A scared choice."
"Yes. Exactly."
Landen nodded slowly.
"I've been trying to work out how to tell her that without losing her entirely," he said.
Adriel looked up at that.
"I think she already knows," Adriel said. "You can feel it in the writing. The way she approaches the ending and then pulls back. She knows."
Landen looked at him for a moment. Something in his gaze shifted; warmed, maybe, or sharpened, Adriel couldn't tell which.
"That's perceptive," he said.
Adriel looked down at his plate. "It's just what I thought."
"It's what you thought because you pay attention." Landen's voice was matter-of-fact. "That's rarer than you think."
Adriel didn't know what to say to that. He picked up his fork instead, took another bite of the food he'd barely noticed he was eating.
They ate in silence for a moment.
"I know what you mean," Landen said.
Adriel looked at him. "I'm not describing it well."
"You are." Landen leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table. The movement brought him closer, made the space between them feel smaller. "There's a writer; Celia Hart. Mid-nineties. Have you read her?"
Adriel shook his head. "No."
"I'll find you the book." Landen said it like it was nothing.
Like offering to share his books, his time, his attention, was simply what you did.
"She does this thing; she sets up an expectation and then subverts it, but not the way you're expecting.
She doesn't pull back. She leans in. But the thing she leans into isn't the thing you thought was coming. "
"I'd like that," he said. "To read it, I mean."
Landen nodded. "I'll put it on the desk. You can take it when you go."
Adriel turned his glass on the table. Watched the candle flame shift in the small current of their movement.
"My roommate Jenna would have a lot to say about the Harlow ending," he said.
Landen looked at him. "What would she say?"
"That the author is a coward." Adriel smiled slightly. "She's more direct than I am."
"What does she read?"
"Everything. She goes through the library the way other people go through streaming services." He turned the glass again, watching the light catch the rim. "She's faster than me, which is embarrassing given that it's my job."
"It's not a competition."
"Try telling her that."
Landen's mouth curved. That small smile, the one that changed his whole face. "She sounds interesting."
"She's been my best friend since first grade." Adriel paused. "She's also slightly terrifying."
"The best people usually are," Landen said, completely seriously.
Adriel laughed. It came out before he could stop it; a real laugh, surprised out of him.
The candle burned low between them. The city glittered beyond the windows, endless and indifferent. But Landen was watching him with that expression again. Open in a way that made Adriel's chest do something it had no business doing.
The warmth climbed Adriel's throat. Spread across his cheeks. He could feel it, could feel the heat of it, could do nothing to stop it.
He looked down at his glass.
"Sorry," he said. The word came out on instinct, the way it always did.
Landen was quiet for a moment.
"Don't be," he said quietly.
Adriel kept his eyes on the glass. Turned the stem between his fingers once. The silence stretched.
Adriel looked up. Landen was still watching him.
"I'm not used to…" Adriel started. Stopped. Started again. "People don't usually…"
He couldn't find the words. Couldn't shape what he meant.
Landen waited.
"I don't know how to be looked at like that," Adriel said finally. The words came out quiet. Honest in a way that scared him. "I don't know what to do with it."
Landen's expression shifted. Softened. Something flickering in his eyes that Adriel couldn't name.
"You don't have to do anything," he said. "You just have to let it happen."
∞∞∞
After dinner, Adriel drifted to the large window while Landen cleared the table.
He did offer to help. Landen had waved him off with a small gesture when he'd started to rise, a silent I've got it that Adriel was still learning how to accept. So he'd moved instead to the glass, to the view, to the city spread out below like something from a dream.
It was beautiful. The buildings rising and falling in their familiar skyline, the streets traced in gold and white, the whole thing sprawling outward until it blurred into dark at the edges.
High enough up to see the shape of it. High enough to feel, for a moment, like you were outside of it rather than in.
Adriel stood with his hands loose at his sides and let himself just breathe.
The day fell away. The fear that had been riding him since the moment Landen had said come to my place tonight.
It didn't disappear exactly, but it quieted.
Settled into something background, something he could exist alongside.
He heard Landen move behind him. Soft footsteps. The click of the kitchen light going off. Then nothing for a moment.
Then Landen's arms came around him from behind. Slow. Unhurried. His forearms crossed over Adriel's chest, pulling him back against warmth. His mouth found Adriel's neck.
Adriel melted. There was no other word for it. He melted back into Landen without meaning to, his body simply going toward the warmth like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like he'd been cold his whole life and was only now discovering what it felt like to be in the sun.
Landen kissed up the curve of his neck. His lips pressed to the skin just below his ear, then lower, then lower still. His tongue traced the tendon there, just once, and Adriel's breath caught.
He tipped his head to the side. Gave him more room. More skin. More of himself to be kissed and tasted and claimed. His hands came up to rest on Landen's forearms.
Landen made a sound against his skin. Low. Approving. The vibration of it traveled through Adriel's whole body, settled somewhere deep.
His mouth opened on Adriel's neck. Sucked gently. Just enough to feel it, just enough to make Adriel's hips press back against him without permission.
They turned toward each other. Adriel didn't know who moved first. Didn't matter. One moment he was facing the window, the next he was facing Landen, close enough to see the dark of his eyes, the slight flush on his cheekbones, the way his mouth was slightly parted.
Then they were kissing.
Soft at first. Landen's hand came up to cup his jaw, thumb tracing his cheekbone, and Adriel made a small sound against his mouth that Landen answered with a deeper press of his lips.
Landen walked him back. Step by step, slow and deliberate, until Adriel's shoulders met the glass.
The city glittered cold behind him, all those lights, all that distance.
But in front of him was Landen; warm and solid and consuming, his body pressed against Adriel's, his hands in Adriel's hair, his mouth taking Adriel apart with that particular focus that Adriel was learning was entirely specific to him.
Landen kissed like he had all the time in the world.
Like there was nowhere else he needed to be, nothing else he wanted to do, no one else he wanted to do it with.
His tongue slid against Adriel's in slow, deliberate strokes that made Adriel's knees weak and his hands grip tighter at Landen's shoulders.
He kissed and kissed and kissed, and Adriel let him, gave himself over to it, let himself be taken apart piece by piece.
He felt Landen grow hard against his thigh. The awareness of it moved through him like something electric. A jolt that started where their bodies pressed together and radiated outward, through his chest, down his arms, settling low in his belly.
Landen wanted him.
The thought should have been terrifying. It had been terrifying, earlier. But now, with Landen's mouth on his and the evidence of that want pressing hot against his thigh, it wasn't terrifying at all. It was something else. Something that made him bold.
He thought about the office. About the way Landen had looked at him, that dark intent gaze. About Landen's thumb at his lip, pulling down gently, slipping in. About the thing Landen had said, about Adriel's pretty mouth.
The words had lived in his head since then. Had played on repeat in the quiet moments.
Pretty mouth.
He debated with himself for a moment.
The part of him that wanted, that had always wanted, that was tired of being scared. And the part of him that held back, that waited, that braced for rejection. They warred in his chest for a handful of heartbeats.
Then he gathered himself and slid down.
Out of Landen's arms, down his body, down to his knees on the hardwood floor. The transition was sudden enough that Landen's hands dropped, confused for just a second, before Adriel looked up at him from where he knelt.
Landen's breath caught. Adriel saw it happen. Saw the shift in his expression; surprise first, and then something darker, something hungrier, something that made Adriel's pulse skip.
"Adriel." His voice was rough. "You don't have to…"
"I want to." The words came out suprisingly steady. He held Landen's gaze for a moment longer, letting him see that he meant it, that this was a choice, that he was exactly where he wanted to be.
Then he reached for Landen's belt. His hands shook slightly as he worked the buckle. But he kept going, kept moving, pulled the belt free and set it aside. The button of Landen's pants was next, then the zipper, the sound of it loud in the quiet room.
He looked up again.
Landen was watching him. His chest was rising and falling faster now, his breathing audible in the space between them. His hands were still hovering, still ready, still waiting for permission.