Alden, Ilad
There's a touch of impatience to Alden's tap of knuckles to Ilad's door, the sharp sound made into a slight pattern that is reminescent of a simple song. His clothing is still slightly rumpled, made more so by hours seated in lectures, hair tangled by his fingers from the same cause. He's stopped somewhere along the way from the clinic to this door, a minor detour for alcohol if the red glass of a wine bottle in his hands is any indication. At least he doesn't show up with flowers.
Alden's impatience is made worse by the delay between his knock and Ilad's answer at the door although, perhaps, there some minor compensations. He comes to the door wearing a blanket of soft, heavy knit in deep blue, slung across his shoulders. His hair is rumpled, though by now it is dry, a bit like he let it dry wet without bothering to do such things as locate a comb. He is half-naked otherwise, the long, lean expanse of his scar-kissed torso golden warm and bare save for dark pajama pants hanging low on his hips. He isn't holding a wine bottle, though. He is holding a mug, from which he sips as he opens the door. Although his mouth is occupied, his eyes as he looks up at Alden are smiling.
Appreciation brings Alden's gaze sliding over the visible skin for a moment, a touch of a smile pulling at his lips as he drags his gaze upwards and takes in mug and mussed hair. "Hypothermia?" he questions lowly, slipping into the apartment before moving to tousle dark hair between his fingers.
Ilad carefully closes the door behind Alden once he has entered, lifting his mug for another swallow after a quick flicker of his glance up and down the hallway. (The real question is what on earth he would do if they'd been spotted.) He ducks his head once the door is shut, smile trifling wider with the tousling ruffle of Alden's fingers. He uses his free hand to adjust the fall of the blanket, which is starting to slip, and then catches Alden's hand with his own, fingers only so warm as ordinary skin without any of their ordinary fever blaze. "You may have noticed," he says, "I tend to ... run hot."
Wine is settled on the nearest surface to free his other hand even as Alden twines his fingers with Ilad's in comfortable familiarity, the gesture practically rote. "I seem to remember this, yes," he murmurs warmly, the drag of British syllables amused as he steps closer and catches at the blanket. He doesn't move to remove the comforting fabric, instead helping to wrap it around Ilad's shoulders.
"Apparently it is not a good idea to rapidly drop your core temperature in the arctic circle by trying to burn a great deal of, ah, nothing but snow," Ilad says. "Food for thought, hm?" He shifts away only enough to set his mug of spice-scented tea down on the table nearby to Alden's bottle, and lifts his tea-warmed hand to curve fingertips in a light draw around his jaw and neck. Voice dropped to a low, heavily accented murmur, he says: "It was so very cold."
"I'm sorry, love," Alden offers in genuine sympathy, the words whispered as he leans to press his own cool lips to Ilad's with a fleeting kiss. "Extreme temperatures can be rather dangerous." His fingers wrap into the soft blanket, holding it closed at his throat with a idle pull of the fabric to plant yet another light kiss against his lips.
These light and fleeting touches only sufficient to whet a deeper appetite, Ilad claims a longer one, firm and thorough with a demand for heat in the part of his lips, the slide of his tongue. In the mingling of their breaths, there is quiet. He folds his other arm in a clasp across Alden's back, drawing him in closer to leech more heat from him in the press of their bodies.
With that slight permission, Alden abandons claim of the blanket, hand sliding away to seek skin and graze muscles of his ribs as he shifts into him. The dance of his tongue and lips against Ilad's is hungry, desire quick to catch hold as he tries to steal more affection.
This could readily become a brush fire, but Ilad does not allow its ignition beyond this first immediate blaze; he eases off the kiss, drawing it out, slow and languorous, and finally breaks it in a quiet puff of breath to rest his forehead against Alden's. His mouth turned up at the corners, he says, "Extreme temperatures, you say?"
"Both sides of the coin for most of us," Alden continues, disappointment mild in desire softened words. Ilad may have broken the kiss, but fingers still slide against flesh, drawing down the flat planes of his stomach with a slow caress. Murmured quietly, he adds, "Though not all of us run as hot as you."
"Ahuvi, I am not running so hot just now," Ilad murmurs. He ducks his head, pressing a kiss to Alden's temple and then another to his jaw. His lips move against his skin, soft and warm as he says, "I am ... weary. I do not know if there is ice in my bones, or..." He kisses Alden's ear, next, with the soft rush of a long, low sigh whispering into his hair.
Alden's eyes slip closed briefly, his hand stilling against Ilad's skin briefly before it slips harmlessly to curl over his hip in a warm weight. "I do not like to see you weak," he replies, pulling slightly back as his gaze flutters open. He smiles, small and sad, but a smile nonetheless. "If only there was anything I could do."
Ilad pulls back to look into Alden's face, drawing his thumb along the curve of his lower lip to shadow along the shape of his little sad smile. He studies him quietly for a long moment's silence. "There is, ahuvi," he says, speaking the single Hebrew endearment again with little more voice than a whisper, carefully, delicately. "There is." He slides his fingertips over Alden's arms, finding both his hands to take them in his and hold them in a clasp of his fingers. He tugs lightly, drawing Alden along as he moves backwards through his apartment, traversing the open space towards the bedroom hall with easy familiarity. Sorry, were you hoping to actually drink your wine tonight, Alden?
If he was, the hopes of something more are far more important as he doesn't even remember enough to look back as he follows agreeably. "Shouldn't you get some rest, love?" he questions lightly, humor easy over his words as he weaves his fingers through Ilad's yet again.
"Yes," Ilad says firmly. "I should." His bedroom is lit haphazardly by candles, a common conceit of flickering firelight that greets them as he shoulders the door wide. The bed looks unslept in, neatly made. He sits down on it, finally releasing Alden's hands, and rests his palms on the deep brown comforter, looking up at him.
Alden's fingers go to cup his face gently as he draws in front of Ilad, not moving to sit himself as he looks down on the sharp features with a shift of his own tousled hair into his eyes. There is an attempt to study the familiar face with an intentness that speaks of thoughts beyond candlelight and bedspreads. "I missed you," he finally brings himself to say.
"I was not gone that long," Ilad points out, with a faint quirk of his mouth to match the ghost of quiet humor in his dark eyes. "Though I will admit," he says on a long indrawn breath, "it felt long."
"I know. I'm quite the thirteen-year-old girl when it comes to you," Alden admits himself with a wry smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Gone two nights and I miss you still."
"I think that I disbelieve your premise," Ilad says. He draws a knuckle down the curve of Alden's cheek, one eyebrow cocked. "At least, if you are at all a thirteen year old girl, I think we must rethink our options." He glances aside, then. One of the candles flickers, and dies; then another, a slow dimming of the light in the room to cast their figures on the bed in softer shadow. His next words aren't as soft and warm as the lighting. "Ponting in the cells. He is wounded."
"I know," Alden repeats with a breath, tightness sliding into his jaw. He shakes his head slowly, the movement paired with a practical crawl into Ilad's lap, a leg slipping between his as he leans to smooth a kiss against his collar bone. "They will retaliate for this."
"Good. Let them come. Bring them all on." Ilad laughs. It is not much of a laugh, all breath and little voice. He twines his fingers through Alden's hair in a long and pulling stroke. "Save us time and effort hunting them down, would it not." He scoots backward on the bed, drawing Alden with him with a tug and the tangle of their limbs across the soft, cool fabric.
"We do not know their force. We don't know what they could be capable of, if they would overwhelm us." The words hold a firmness to them even as Alden's body yeilds to Ilad's, limbs twining how his wants rather than seeking their own comfort. His lips bury in a slight nuzzle to his neck, murmuring further, "We cannot know that we'd win." He shakes his head softly, the gesture slight in the tight space of their tangle.
"That's what commanding officers are for," Ilad mumbles. He cants his head at an angle against the pillow, hand curving in a long and gliding stroke down Alden's shoulder, over his back. It stills. After a long beat's quiet, he says, "You won't hate me if I tell you how tired I am?"
There is a raw honesty to Alden's words as he answers with more seriousness than the question demands, "I could never hate you, love." He doesn't make any move to unwind himself from around the other man, his weight shifting slightly however as he sags, realizing he's not getting laid.
Ilad hardly makes any move to stir away from (poor, sexually frustrated) Alden. If anything, the shift of his body and the loop of his arm seem better designed to try to eliminate what space might yet breathe between them. His voice quiet, he says, "Such a strong word. Never." At this angle, he is best able to brush his mouth into Alden's hair, where a sigh's breath stirs it through a dry ghost of humor. "I am glad you are an optimist."
"Not so much that. I'm just certain you'll end up hating me before it ever comes around the other way," Alden murmurs with careless humor, fingers curling into naked skin with a tight press of nails at the thought. It smoothes away quickly enough, however, into a soft, calming caress of fingerpads in lazy circles against his shoulder. "Now go to sleep, Ilad."
"I thought you might think that," Ilad murmurs, slurred edges to his accented words as he speaks quietly into Alden's hair. His tone likewise pretends that it is a joke, lashes sweeping his dark eyes in a long slow blink, but they open again rather than staying closed. "I know you too well to ever walk that path, ahuvi."
A low laugh meets the joke, exhaled against Ilad's jaw as Alden kisses it briefly before drawing slightly back to watch the man. "Of course, of course," he agrees quietly, fingernails drawing in a trace of the same circles as he smoothes his other hand over his brow.
Ilad watches him for a long moment after this, dark eyes thoughtful, and then makes a low exasperated noise for some reason. Lifting his arm to draw it across Alden's shoulders, he tugs with a quiet sort of insistence, as though he might convey some somber meaning he has failed to put into words in the pressure of his bare arm beneath the slipping blanket. But he does close his eyes.
It takes Alden a moment to give in to that insistence and find the comfort of closeness again, but he does eventually. It is longer still before his own eyes closed and the tracing circles slow and then stop.
It is a much longer while before Ilad stirs awake again. But Alden probably won't complain much, right?
No, he won't.
(:
I think Alden came to regret reminding him.