Chapter Text
Kissing, he soon discovered, was the fastest way to make Azul shut the hell up. The only way, in fact; and even that wasn’t a foolproof plan.
Jamil broke away from him by yanking on his silvery locks and holding his head against the wooden door of the bathroom stall.
“Would it kill you to stop making so much noise?” he hissed through gritted teeth.
Azul’s chest was rising and falling way too quickly. Through narrowed eyes, Jamil watched as he opened his mouth in an effort to reply, just to be interrupted by a nasty coughing fit that left his whole frame shaking.
The great Azul Ashengrotto, reduced to a disheveled mess by a mere make-out session. Forehead damp with sweat, glasses askew, lips glistening and starting to swell...
All because of him.
It should have filled his chest with pride, driblets of dark satisfaction merging into his bloodstream, passing through and corrupting every last one of his organs. But his lips were throbbing and he was taking too long to steady his own breath and the last thing he wanted was for some passersby to hear their wheezes and think that the two of them were anything alike; so he tugged harder, forcing the other to tilt his head upwards.
Which he did, albeit with a grunt.
“Quiet, I said.”
An unexpected, but greatly appreciated byproduct of his current position was that Azul was having trouble making eye contact. Too bad that it couldn’t also deter him from arching one eyebrow and curling the corner of his mouth in what was definitely pure, unadulterated amusement.
“Believe me, Jamil-san, I would,” he drawled, tone too mellifluous to be anything other than utter bullshit, “but you’re not making this easy for me.”
Jamil’s reply was swift, scathing.
“It’s not supposed to be.”
“Had privacy truly been an issue, we could have arranged to meet at a more secluded location. The fact that you always end up choosing these sorts of places for our rendezvous…” Azul’s attention drifted to the darkened ceiling of the stall, lips parting to let go of a contemplative hum. The vibrations made his throat quiver and, for a moment, Jamil felt his muscles tense as he took in the faint outline of veins peeking through that layer of pale, unblemished skin.
Too smooth. Too delicate.
Jamil swallowed, hit with the sudden urge to sink his teeth into the merman’s neck and see for himself if the rumors that octopuses bled blue held a grain of truth.
But the weekend was three days away and such a mark was bound to attract too many curious eyes and, with them, loose tongues. Instead, Jamil opted to close his eyes and settle for a deliberately deep intake of breath, one that was supposed to help him regain focus and peace of mind but that in actuality didn’t help with his nerves at all, because hell, now he was drowning in Azul’s pungent cologne and his nose was itching and—
Scarabia was hosting a dinner party that night. Students from all over the school would come to enjoy the buffet he had yet to plan for and admire the decorations he was in charge of choosing and, and.
What the hell was he doing?
A light cough dragged him back to the present, and Jamil snapped his gaze back to Azul just in time for his blunder to go unnoticed.
“Well,” Azul was looking at him through lowered eyelids, the shadows casted by his lashes seemingly swallowing all traces of blue from the prefect’s irises. “Let’s just say that your tastes have vastly deviated from my expectations.” His smile widened into something wicked. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”
Of course you aren’t, Jamil’s mind supplied.
“I didn’t ‘choose’ anything,” he replied instead, because choosing would imply he had been thinking about pinning Azul against the wall, had been waiting for the right opportunity to snatch him away without any of their dormmates being none the wisest, which was laughable at best, and worrying at worst. “You’ve been bothering me the entire morning. Here just happened to be the most convenient location to put an end to your pointless sales pitches.”
“So harsh, as per usual. And yet, this side of your character only makes your bouts of eagerness even more flattering.”
“Don’t get used to it,” stated Jamil, hiding a scowl behind a mask of carefully crafted neutrality. “There won’t be a next time.”
The prefect’s lips parted slightly, spilling a chuckle that was the condensed manifestation of all the self-assurance and egotism plaguing the halls of Octavinelle itself.
“Mmh, I wonder about that. Our bodies are extremely compatible after all, and—mphf!”
Jamil leaned forward and smashed their mouths together, the momentum making his teeth clack against Azul’s own. It was harsh and merciless, a punishment more than a kiss, and that knowledge was the only thing that allowed him to condone his actions.
Jamil watched with rapt attention as Azul tried to turn his head the other way, no doubt in an attempt to carry on with his prattling; took note of the way his eyebrows started twitching the more he tried to fight off his tongue, pushing and studying and trying to emulate Jamil’s technique without quite managing to muster the same fierceness; pinpointed the exact moment when, ultimately, Azul’s whole body sagged against the door, eyelids fluttering shut. His words, weakened from the lack of air, eventually lost their shape and turned into a cascade of mellow, pitiful noises.
Kissing might not have been enough to completely silence Azul Ashengrotto, Jamil supposed, but at least it made him slightly more bearable.