Private SL: Untilt

[radicalliars]

Loker was running through the halls to the room number that Cal had sent to him. There were so many different scenarios running through his head now, worry a tinge to his thoughts. Monsters? He couldn't believe he was actually thinking that, but the more research he did into it, the more it seemed like the truth. And it wasn't as if that was

Comments

[radicalliars]

Cal's right, of course, and Loker shifts in slight ways that's all admission at the accusations. This doesn't change how he feels, because he's always been interested in this side of Cal, in the one that got thrown out of Vegas, the one that took a Master's degree and the founding principles of the facial action coding system to conning people at gambling. Sometimes, he can't help playing to that side of Cal, and now he's somehow - impossibly - standing in front of him, and they're not really talking about it. Not like it's a problem, like it's a puzzle to solve, but that it should have been what Eli was talking about first

[cardsharpcal]

Cal was waiting for it, so certain it was coming that he'd have put a bet on it, so when Eli asks, the corners of his mouth quirk up, and he shifts his head on the pillow a few times, to get comfortable, and get so he could see Eli easily

[radicalliars]

Eli is looking at Cal, half expecting the usual brush off, half expecting something worse. But, Cal isn't brushing him off, instead he's turning to better look at him, and Eli's heart flutters in his chest with a mix of hope and worry as he looks up at Cal. He stays quiet, listens as Cal talks, offers to try, and even just that fills him with warmth. He lets his longer legs curl with Cal's, runs fingers against his side

[cardsharpcal]

Eli looks terrified, and Cal wishes the man wasn't so vulnerable, but he knows that it's because he wants so much more than he thinks he can have. Truthfully, Cal isn't sure just how deep his own feelings run, doesn't know the limits of what he wants with Eli, but he knows what it's not

[radicalliars]

"I'm not either."

Eli volunteers it, although he knows that it's redundant, that Cal already knows. Both because Loker wouldn't risk this thing they have, even as tentative and uncertain if this is anything at all as it is, and because Cal would have known. Would have seen the shame on his face as surely as if he'd told him.

Even just that admission, that he wants it to be exclusive, at least gives him ground to stand on. He could try and deal with stumbling through this blindly, if he at least knew that it meant something, that he at least wasn't just another warm body.

Cal's voice is so small when he admits he doesn't know what he wants, but that he wants more. Eli can't help the way he shifts, pressing up against him, his arms wrapping around Cal as he buries his face into the other man's chest. Because it's what he's wanted since this started. Really, talk too much deeper than this is dangerous. Too much deeper and Eli will be fighting to put words to how he feels for Cal, and inevitably making statements that Cal can't

[cardsharpcal]

Eli didn't need to tell him for him to know that Eli wasn't sleeping with anyone else. He just wouldn't, not with how much this clearly means to him. Cal's grateful, in a way, that he's not putting words to it, putting him in a more awkward position after he's already said he doesn't know what he wants, what exactly he feels.

When Eli moves close, Cal slips fingers through his curly hair and holds him close, enjoying being able to just lay here with him. It's more than comfort, and with the way things are these days, strange and far from home, he needs these nights where things seem almost normal, where he has someone to hold on to, to forget.