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Post by Jon Osterman on Jan 2, 2020 23:15:29 GMT -5
"Are you trying to seduce me?" he asked, not flirtatiously - almost with a flattered detachment.
"Seduce implies a manipulation of a power imbalance," Adrian said with a modest shrug. There was a faint tint of color in his face, a slight dilation of the pupils, a minor breathiness... "As two men on equal footing... I'll be plain with you - I'd like to go to bed together."
"You know you had only to ask," said Jon gently. He kissed him a fraction of a moment before Adrian had been to take a breath, and his hand slipped powerfully into his hair.
"You taste like - I don't know what it is. You're like an energy source," he said, out of breath, both sexual desire and philosophical fascination shimmering in his eyes. "Please - do it again. I might," he added drily, just as he had been about to taste his lips again, "spark some kind of brilliant idea for sustainable energy."
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jan 2, 2020 23:22:06 GMT -5
And there it was again, oh God- that warm tingling feeling he had once been so accustomed to. It felt good enough that Adrian pushed himself away after only a moment.
“Are you saying that only because you’ve seen that we will?”
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Post by Jon Osterman on Jan 2, 2020 23:26:04 GMT -5
Jon hardly loosened his fingers in Adrian's hair - a bit sandier than it had once been, though there was no grey, yet.
This time it was difficult to read anything into his expression.
"I thought you knew how I saw time a little better than that," he said.
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jan 3, 2020 10:32:10 GMT -5
Adrian smiled grimly at this and cast his eyes downward.
“It’s been two years,” he said softly, “and twenty-nine days. Four hours, give or take.”
He lifted his eyes to Jon’s again, having grown used to telling where Jon was looking despite their blank luminescence.
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Post by Jon Osterman on Jan 3, 2020 11:42:06 GMT -5
"Yes, it has," Jon replied, the pad of his thumb brushing Adrian's cheek. Once, with Janey, or even with Adrian at a point, he might have lied, and said he'd missed him. But it was difficult to miss, difficult to grieve, something that was always present. Even Jon was not so far gone as to tell Adrian this, however; he could be dishonest without lying. "Do you still think of us as partners?"
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jan 3, 2020 12:04:36 GMT -5
“No,” Adrian said, quickly and firmly. There was no reason to be anything but blunt with Jon. Nothing like this could wound him. “I don’t know the last time I did, if I ever did at all.”
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Post by Jon Osterman on Jan 3, 2020 12:09:16 GMT -5
There it was, almost a smile - an echo through years of an original smile.
"You told me you did. More than once," Jon reminded him.
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jan 3, 2020 12:14:54 GMT -5
“Sometimes we convince ourselves of things that may not be true in order to find solace in the moment,” said Adrian, with a tired smile. “It doesn’t matter.”
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Post by Jon Osterman on Jan 3, 2020 12:17:56 GMT -5
Jon's head tilted barely an inch. "It doesn't?" He looked away, over the lab, perhaps, before returning his gaze to Adrian's eyes. They were a greyed green ("the color of money," one of Jon's government contacts had commented with a cackle once, after Adrian had walked away), but in Jon's presence they looked as blue as a springtime sky. "I thought of us that way myself. For a time," he conceded.
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jan 3, 2020 12:20:47 GMT -5
“It was always over, though, wasn’t it? And it does neither of us any good to dwell,” said Adrian, who was in the process of unbuttoning his shirt by now anyway.
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Post by Jon Osterman on Jan 3, 2020 12:23:38 GMT -5
"For me," said Jon, watching him undress. "I'm sorry you feel that way about it."
He hadn't, always. Every intimate moment - snatched, one could say, if one were someone else; Adrian and Jon did not snatch moments, they scheduled them - catalogued, compiled, compared to this one, and for a time Adrian had certainly not dwelled on a time they would break up.
"When did it start?"
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jan 3, 2020 12:26:13 GMT -5
“I don’t know if that matters,” Adrian said again. “My vision of these things is, unfortunately, considerably more limited than yours.”
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Post by Jon Osterman on Jan 3, 2020 12:30:40 GMT -5
"I can't help but feel I should have done something to prevent it. If I had noticed."
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jan 3, 2020 12:37:54 GMT -5
“I suppose I’ve taken it so much for granted that you can see what is, to me, the future, that it slipped my mind entirely that you’re also, by default, living in the past,” said Adrian, as he finished pulling off his shirt.
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Post by Jon Osterman on Jan 3, 2020 12:42:14 GMT -5
He touched Adrian's chest with a warm, glowing hand, as if painting him with light.
"I suppose you could call it a permanent state of nostalgia," Jon said.
He closed the distance between them and kissed him again.
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