He groaned and stirred, pinching the bridge of his nose and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Evan wasn’t surprised by the presence next to him in bed. They’d been doing this a little while now, after all. But it was still a moment of pause as Evan looked over at the other man, taking in the sight of him.
“I know you’re awake.” He sat up and stretched. “Might as well get your shower in before you go, right?” Lest someone see his prissy a** leaving the motel room suspiciously tousled– “Make it quick. I have to get back up for work in a couple of hours.” Evan raked his fingers through his own disheveled hair, fingers snagging on the curls. He had to get back home and go back to bed, and that was all the way across town–
“Hey, you listening?”
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Was he listening?
Mostly.
Evan wasn't wrong. Adam had been awake for a while, eyes closed and mulling over his next move. He knew the logical step. This had been going on too long, and it kept diverting from his actual intention with this guy. He figured he'd have a bit of fun, and then he'd fulfill his quota. Easy enough.
But somehow, this guy was still alive.
Really, what was he providing that kept pulling him from not just pulling the goddamn trigger? Adam wasn't exactly short on hookups, this guy was just… wily.
Adam opened an eye.
"Cute. The toiletries here suck." Not that he could let anyone see him looking this disheveled, but that wasn't a problem he had, really. He had the easy fix. "I'll just put on a hat or something. Got one in the car."
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Evan rolled his eyes. “Hey, you want to go out smelling like a musty hotel room, that’s your prerogative. Dibs on the shower and cheap soap, then.” He slid from the bed and got to his feet. “Hey, toss me my shirt.”
While he waited for Adam to actually do that, Evan glanced around the room. It wasn’t that bad. It served a purpose, and it served it well. It wasn’t the first sketchy motel they’d gone to, and this one at least didn’t have a dead bird outside the door and suspicious red smears on the bathroom wall… And they hadn’t woken up with bed bugs yet, which was another plus. He wondered when he should just invite the guy to his apartment. It was definitely better than any of the motels they’d gone to, and it meant Evan wouldn’t have to wake up extra early just to get home–
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Why the ******** should he do that? Evan should get his own damn shirt–
Adam rolled his eyes, rolling across the bed to retrieve the shirt that had assuredly seen better days. Probably didn't help that Adam had all but tore it– "I won't, but thanks."
This guy had no way of knowing why. Did it matter if he knew or not? It wasn't like he was going to remember once Adam actually acted. He likely wouldn't remember anything.
Stop ******** delaying.
Taking that as a signal to himself to stop beating around his own mental bush, he chucked the shirt in Evan's direction and left a completely different outfit of his own behind. He could feel the power in his fingers almost instantly, and the satisfied smirk he gave might have looked familiar for all the wrong reasons. He eyed his fingers, and then Evan himself.
And then he was closer to Evan. Much closer.
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“Oh, some magic armpits you’ve got, then, because–” the rest of what he said was muffled as he caught his shirt and pulled it haphazardly over his head. No one was that odorless. Evan didn’t care who you were. Not that he was about to get up close and personal with Adam–at least not without other things going on–but he was pretty sure Adam had the same armpit stink as everyone else.
Not to mention–
His thoughts cut off as he pulled his head through to find someone suddenly in his space. What, he hadn’t heard anyone enter. Where was Adam? Evan brought his hands up to shove the stranger away, shouting for Adam to watch out. Sometimes patients were combative. Evan was used to that. Adam was much prissier. He probably wasn’t.
As he shoved forward, he snapped for the other man to step back away from him. It was firm, practiced. So much so that, post-shove, Evan instinctively went for the restraint he normally carried at his hip should a patient get that combative. They tried only to use them in emergency situations, but a break-in was an emergency enough.
Of course, Evan didn’t have them with him since he wasn’t in uniform. Blood and adrenaline pounding through his body, Evan ducked down and away from whoever the ******** this was.
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There was something to the sudden panic that brought a thrill to his veins, a reminder of the intent, a reminder of what he was doing here. Borax watched with a distant amusement, seemingly unfazed by the shove beyond placing one leg behind himself to keep his balance. It was a distant thought that such ability could be useful to SpecOps, but it wasn't so present as to change his mission.
He snatched Evan's arm, yanking him closer and pressing his body to his chest. His right hand summoned forth his spear, and he placed it tacitly in front of Evan to stop him from going anywhere.
"Evan," Borax purred, a smooth tone that may have felt familiar from other ventures as unfamiliar as he looked, "where do you think you're going?"
Nowhere else, for sure.
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Evan froze. With the spear in front of him, there wasn’t much else for him to do immediately. His eyes flicked over his new not-friend’s shoulder to the bed, which sat rumpled, but empty. Figured. Adam must’ve cut and run as soon as the guy was inside. Evan wasn’t sure he blamed him.
His name made Evan swing his full attention back. “How do you know me?” Moreover, did that mean this was targeted? Did the guy let Adam run, because he was really actually after Evan? Who the ******** would even be after Evan? It wasn’t like he owed anyone any money.
The tone was familiar, sure, but that didn’t register to Evan.
“And get the spear out of my face.” Maybe he shouldn’t be talking back to an armed man, but hell–it wasn’t a gun, and there was something about it that got Evan’s heart beating faster.
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“Because, Evan,” notably, a certain not-friend wasn’t removing the spear, “we’ve been ******** for a few weeks now.”
His lips upturned as he let go of Evan’s arm. The spear would do enough to contain him while he slipped his left hand along his back, searching for that crucial spot where he knew the soul would lay.
Perfect.
Borax slipped his hand inside.
“Feel that?”
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“A few–” One second, then the next, “Adam?!” The incredulity was enough to make him forget, for a moment, the spear at his back. “What the <********>” And, suddenly, it was plain as day somehow that it was Adam in front of him, holding him still, doing something with his hand at Evan’s back…
He brought up his hands to brace them against Adam’s chest. “Stop ******** touching me–”
Then, a touch a lot more intimate than a moment ago, and something made Evan’s heart thud thud thud. “What are you doing?” His voice had gone quiet, level. Curious. He didn’t understand why, quite, but a thrill sang through him.
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“One and the same.” He almost had the gall to sound smug, of all things. “It’s Borax in this form, though. That won’t matter to you in a moment here.”
There was almost a pity that these sorts of interactions couldn’t be repeated. There was a finality to this that was both terribly appealing and terribly regrettable. What he wouldn’t give to feel the way Evan was both bracing himself against him and faltering in that approach more than once. He supposed that was the way of all of this, though.
However, this was much different than the violent or simple approach he often took. There was something to the game.
“There’s something inside you, Evan, that I find myself in need of. Nothing personal.”
He found that glistening seed inside and pressed Evan closer as he wrapped his hand around it.
“Do you believe in a soul?”
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Something took Evan’s breath away as an icy stillness settled in the center of his chest. The smugness in Adam’s voice rankled him, of course, and Adam got a venomous look in return for it. “You’re after my soul, are you?” He didn’t answer Adam’s question. He didn’t feel like he needed to. If Adam was here to rip Evan’s soul out of his body, then he could forgive Evan his rebelliousness.
Besides, what actual authority did this man hold over him, anyway?
“Don’t suppose leveraging favors,” Evan’s eyes shifted slowly, meaningfully, back to the rumpled sheets, “will get me out of it.”
He just had to get a second of leeway, just one–
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Borax’s gaze didn’t slide with Evan’s, knowing that giving this man even a moment would mean that he would struggle out of his grip. “I am.” And he had intended to be after that soul from the moment he had rolled down his window a few weeks ago.
“And your living so long was because of leverage, anyway. But my patience has worn out.”
His brow lifted.
“Guess you flirted too much with danger.”
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He laughed. Despite the gravity of the situation, Evan laughed. “I did more than flirt with you.” Was this going to be how it was? A spear at his back and ice spreading through his body? Fine. But Evan couldn’t deny that some of the ice was his own, the adrenaline now cold fire.
Crushed as he was to Adam’s chest, it was easy enough to wrap an arm around Adam’s waist. To pull him closer, if that were even possible at this point. “And if I had weeks of leverage, then I must be something special.” A purr of his own answered Adam’s from earlier.
His fingers wrapped around the hilt of the dagger at Adam’s hip. “Be a shame if you’re throwing it away like this.” Evan yanked, then, on the dagger’s hilt, only for the dagger to stay right where it was, bonded to the sheath it sat in. <******** was, and perhaps that was the problem.
Borax knew it wasn’t terribly hard to find someone else to hook up with. A combination of the good looks he knew he had and the money he possessed was something like catnip to most who were interested in hookups with men, he found. There were very few cases where that had faltered, and it had certainly not faltered with Evan.
It was why his methodology had been so convenient.
But there was something to the man who pulled him closer and went digging around for peace-bonded daggers that had stopped him from simply yanking his soul out at that moment.
“Nice try, Ev. That disappointed me too, when I received this uniform. No usable weaponry there.” He dug the spear a bit deeper into Evan’s back. “Just this. Effective for giving people hope, though.”
Borax pulled ever-so-slightly on Evan’s soul.
“Not throwing away. Cultivating. Any last attempts?”
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“If,” Evan’s voice was light, airy, “you’re going to call me Ev, you might as well take me out to dinner first.” Breathy, almost. He met Adam’s eyes, the pupils on his own nearly blown out and swallowing the iris. He dropped the dagger and let it thump down against Adam’s side. If it was useless to him, then it was useless to him.
But he didn’t move his hand away from Adam’s hip. His voice sounded distant, far away, when he laughed again. “No, I guess not.” He pressed them close together, feeling the brads and buckles on Adam’s uniform dig into his skin through his own woefully thin t-shirt.
“Do it, then.”
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“Too bad you’re not going to get any dinner out of this.”
In some respects, maybe Borax would. He could make a whole thing out of it, a show of pride as he returned several starseeds with a celebratory meal. Borax could even consume the soul itself and get the kick of energy out of it. Feel that energy fill his body from his head to his toes in a way only a few things could emulate.
Evan sounded confident but the fear in his eyes was obvious. Perhaps it was hopeless adrenaline. Perhaps it was accepting his fate with the way he told him to do it.
Giving permission? Goading him on? He hadn’t experienced someone telling him to go ahead and kill them before. His fingers tightened. He pulled, just slightly, but not all the way. Perhaps he wanted to elongate the pain. Perhaps he wanted to feel that terror. Perhaps he couldn’t justify it all to himself.
“The ******** is wrong with you,” relented Borax, though he hadn’t let go of that crucial element inside of Evan.
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Evan’s breath came in a gasp when his starseed was pulled on, but he didn’t break contact or his hold. No dinner? That was a shame. But Evan hadn’t thought, previously, what it would be like to have his literal mortal soul be in danger. It always sounded like something he might hear from someone proselytizing on the street corner.
But what it felt like–
“If you want my soul that bad,” he leaned into Adam, lips only the difference in their height away from Adam’s ear, “******** do it, then.”
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He did want his soul. The way Evan gasped made that desire stronger.
The way Evan hissed into his ear made the desire grow, too, to just handle the situation and leave the victor.
The victor against what? Evan was a ******** civilian. He was useless in all respects in this magical war beyond the soul sitting in his chest. He could be mined as an energy farm if they could sustain him well enough, but the transcended ones were better for that.
But at the same time, that desire waned. Evan had been right in that the weeks of leverage implied something special. He was also more useful than Adam would like to admit. A strong EMT with a boy scout background was nothing to sneeze at. They could embed him into the Negaverse’s hospital.
He was also out of his ******** mind.
Borax’s grip tightened.
“Alright, Ev,” his voice was a low purr at their distance. “Maybe I have another use for you.”
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The purr sent a thrill of its own through him.
“Prove it.”
Seiana_ZI
