Work Text:
Jason is a poet of crass words and rough actions. He doesn’t need to be, but no one needs to be anything. Kyle watches him from the bed with only the dim illumination of outside coming through the window, his full lips pursed around a cigarette while scarred hands flick at a lighter, the resulting light caresses the man’s features like a secret.
Where the waning neon and fluorescents did him few favors, Kyle will admit that the gold-red warmth of the lighter redeems him of a certain beauty.
His brows are furrowed in his concentration, flecks of white decorating his eyebrows and lashes the same way they do that stubborn curl of hair that for once isn’t slicked back. If Kyle was a fool, he’d have thought that Jason did that for him, so that the gel of his hair wouldn’t stick to Kyle’s hands after he’d card through it.
Kyle isn’t a fool or at least not enough of one to believe that, but if he were wiser he doesn’t think he’d be close enough to see the freckles dotting his nose bridge, the kind that can go unnoticeable in the winter but wave for attention once they’ve been darkened by the summer sun. He must not be using his hood as frequently, because it’s not just freckles that Kyle notices, but the lined outline of a mask. Tawny skin meeting a richer brown in a divide that he’ll have to even out to avoid suspicion. Maybe he’ll wear those gaudy sunglasses that he nicked at a Galveston gas station the last time that Kyle saw him.
The motion of him is settled, fingers holding the cigarette like a pencil as if every pull is a thought that he’s ready to write in smoke. They’re large hands, hands that he’s seen wield guns and swords with equal familiarity, hands that braided pieces of wire in tresses that hair would envy, hands that have grasped at his back with the fervor only lust and anger seem to bring out.
In Kyle’s experience, they make quite the showing together.
Jason looks at him now, with his lighter back on his window sill and his gaze all the more heavier for it. He doesn’t say anything because they don’t talk about it. At least not until their minds are hazy and words trickle out of their mouths in their inevitability. Words that’ll die in musty air and chase the man beside him to hunt the dawn while it still slumbers. And it was a good round, but not good enough for that to be the case now.
Kyle lifts a hand in silent demand that Jason won’t comply to, but he won’t stop him either when Kyle plucks the cigarette from his mouth to take a pull from it himself.
Nicotine coats his tongue and he breathes out two halo smoke rings above them. He doesn’t recoil at the taste anymore, far too used to it on nights like these.
Honestly it’s all a bad habit.
But habits are formed for a reason and even with his eyes closed he can feel the tracking stare of the man beside him.
Whether it’s his teeth baring grin, a stalking prowl, or assessing eyes, there’s a wolfish quality to him that it’s a certain thrill for Kyle to bare his neck.
“If you’re going to smoke, do it out the window, asshole.”
Kyle eyes the small space left by the window with Jason still there sitting perpendicular to it, not much room at all. He drapes himself over bare thighs to get there and doesn’t say anything about the way the muscles under him tense and relax.
The evening city breeze isn’t much better than the cigarette smoke, but maybe Kyle’s been spoiled by space. There are worse places to be, just like there are better. He leans on his arms crossed over Jason’s thigh, not flinching when his crooked leg stretches over his back like a nut cracker. If anything he’s in a better position to be a nutcracker.
Kyle muffles a laugh in his arms and feels the cigarette taken from his hold.
“What’s so funny?”
Kyle peeks a look at Jason, all of the marks Kyle’s made running up his body contested only by scars made by strangers. He shifts and feels the significant weight of the leg above him and figures that the truth will lead to an attempt of strangulation. He wonders if Jason would admit to whatever they’re doing to make fun of the way Kyle went out at his funeral.
“Just had a thought,” he settles on saying.
“Oh, that’s new, don’t hurt yourself.”
It would really be as simple as moving his arms back to his sides, the collision could even be mistaken as an accident.
He’s a better man than that, so instead he presses on the bruises that he can see and watches the way Jason tries to hide his shudder.
“You know,” Kyle starts. “You’re real fucking annoying.”
“And yet you’re still here.” Jason snuffs his cigarette on the sill even if he’d cuss Kyle out for doing the same and leans forwards, using that same hand to push back Kyle’s hair dragging a nicotine scent that’ll linger. “What does that say about you?”
A masochist , his brain supplies and it’s the same stupid brain that has him tugging Jason closer by the nape of his neck into a biting kiss.