Work Text:
His hands are moving in a sub-conscious rhythm. Department stores with their joyful tunes finding root in his ears and forcing movement to his fingers. Still slightly burnt over from the explosion, impatient in scarring.
Is it Jingle Bells? Holly-Jolly Christmas? Kaz doesn’t pay enough attention to really understand, more focused on the insistent movement of his hand. Deep within the pit of his stomach, the sensation of disquiet threatens, lingers. Shoves it into the pocket before he can ask himself anymore questions.
Why is he doing this?
Christmas was a secondary, scarcely thought of thing until-
Him.
No, he’s comatose. Wrought to slumber. Dead.
“Shit.” Annoying. Where the hell is Ocelot? Wandering through department stores attached to airports is not the way he wanted to spend his evening-or any for that matter. When he’s a business to get off the ground, a job to do (many jobs, if Kaz is honest, watching a child blow their nose in the fluffy fabric of their mustard-yellow coat sleeve, undoubtedly making some abominable mess for the parent). Didn’t even want to be in the USA when there was so much to get his mitts on elsewhere.
But no, “We have some business in the States, then we’ll catch a red eye after New Years.” Ocelot had said, some 13 hours before.
So here he was. Watching the mechanical hand of a Santa waving back and forth and urging them all to step right up, there’s last-minute deals inside for the child and hard to gift for mother-in-law alike!
Ridiculous, there had to be something else to look at besides festive displays and nonsense bleary-eyed crowds. While he’s been avoiding it in a vague attempt at responsibility mother fucking Ocelot hardly deserves from him, a single turn of the boot heel brings him right back to the airports overpriced, terrible ideas bar.
A single sip into his ‘Reindeer Surprise’ (whiskey and too much cola, apparently), the click-tap of spurs on vinyl makes him tense all over. Without turning around, he accepts the wave of heat to his left, and watches in dull fascination as Ocelot orders ‘Santa’s Baby’ with unblinking certainty.
It’s cheery-red, in a martini glass decorated by sugar crystals and smells sickeningly sweet.
“Thought you hated sugar.”
“It was a long flight.” Kaz eyes him down the line of his nose and hollowing cheek. Pale as Ocelot is and too winter-kissed to tan (and Kaz wonders if he’s not drunk already with that metaphor), there’s some dark red along the cheeks, down the hollow of throat and disappearing into the collar. Red, burnt.
“Must’ve been.” Somewhere hot, then. Not entirely important, their AO’s always are. Stone silence and a thin-lipped sip greets him, and Kaz finds himself fidgeting again, with the same beat of the tune echoing through the airport. Only the idle bounce of Ocelot’s boot against the bar-stool indicates him doing the same. They both glance to each other in unison, and swallow, looking away.
Impossible they’re not thinking the same thing. Of the same man. The only one who might’ve given a shit about such things. Uncomfortable silence follows and drags them through two more drinks. ‘Mistletoe Dance’ for Ocelot, another sugary abomination that’s too green to be appetizing, and some vodka bomb calling itself, ‘Ice Ice’ for Kaz.
Twitchy, and too tired, Kaz breaks their silence through a horrible rendition of Little Drummer Boy that’s been turned ‘modern’ and utterly deplorable to light up, dripping ashes to the Santa’s sleigh ashtray. “Don’t recall part of the meeting being ‘silence’.” Irritable, a touch of that hoarseness he’s carried since his lungs were turned ash and sulfur just under a year prior.
There’s still oil under his skin, the cold bed of the hospital he ditched too soon worrying his spine. Kaz can feel it like a ghosting touch when he tries to close his eyes and finds himself on the floor to retch instead.
“No.” Ocelot looks away, scanning the bar with his laser-like precision. When turned onto a human, it’s enough to feel x-rayed. Flayed. All that disinterest fades to the sort of scrutiny that has one feeling naked fully dressed, as if the very thoughts in their head will suddenly be put to paper by Ocelot’s own pen. “It wasn’t.” Offering little else but finishing his drink all the same. “Come on.”
Four spurred steps ahead before Kaz can fish his wallet, grumbling about implications and ‘when did I say I was buying’? but dropping the bills to the sticky countertop all the same, nearly jogging after him for the speed he’s carried to the airport’s depths.
“Ocelot!” Kaz does not much appreciate being forced to run, knows damned well Ocelot doesn’t either. “Slow the hell-“
They’ve stopped, Kaz skitters just shy of ramming into his back. Hs coats thick and all black, stopping near to Ocelot’s knees, hugged close around himself. Kaz ending up so close behind that his fingers nearly brush its furred texture, before drawing his hand all the way back on a stubborn huff.
Christmas is everywhere. It’s in the music from the bar and the stores beyond, in the signs and on the single TV propped up by a large heavy shelf in the corner. Each of the departure times are marked off with ‘Safe Holiday Flying!’. Snow dots the pavement outside the airport proper, sits on the roofs of buses and taxi’s waiting to pick up jet-lagged passengers. Makes a cold burst form around his mouth in little frozen particles and Ocelot makes a strange, almost mournful noise too fast for Kaz to fully catch.
He's not drunk enough to hallucinate, and those slate-grey eyes are far away when Kaz kicks at him in irritation. Petty and impatient as any child. “Get your shit together, take another hit in the hotel.” Shoving both of his hands in his own coat pocket once more. As if he can protect his skin like he protects the memories.
“One of us has his ‘shit together’,” Ocelot returns, “And it isn’t you, Miller.” Jerking his chin roughly left, “This way.”
They walk, and Kaz hardly minds. He does plenty of it and Ocelot’s self-assured strides prove much the same. Shoulder to shoulder, they say little else on the way. Each step dragging blissfully further from the overbearing crunch of silly things like pretty wrapped presents and uncomfortable reminders.
Would he see it again? Would Kaz be subjected to ramblings of Christmas hams or turkeys? Of the man in a big wide sleigh who ‘absolutely has the ability to do what he does, Kaz’. Why question something as obscure as magic.
“Okay.” Kaz had finally asked. “If he has magic, if..Santa has magic, why?”
“Why shouldn’t he? They say he has magic, so he has magic.”
Conversations one could scarcely believe having with a grown man, one dangerous as he is, but that bounce around Kaz’s skull every moment he’s face-to-face with white, red and the ‘holly jolly’.
Ocelot’s quiet. Stiff and distinctly wit-less. All of the meetings they’ve had thus far have been a mix of biting and prowling. Circling like caged animals desperate to size one another up. Ocelot’s immediate assertion of Kaz being that he was try-hard and vain, but always keeping an eye on him from the corner, the sides. Waiting. Challenging.
Kaz’s opinion was that the man was inscrutable yet full of shit in the same breath. Distinctly, no- painfully obviously reliant on drugs and other vices to keep going. Horribly calculating and so far into the ‘do not trust’ box of Kaz’s mind that he’d become its new banner.
By now, they’re usually an argument or two deep. Instead, his ‘business partner’ remains candidly silent, paying in pure cash for the room and dangling the loose key from one gloved finger. Barely giving the receptionist more than a ‘by your leave’ to vanish down the hallway, again forcing Kaz to chase after him.
“Fucks sake, Ocelot.” Full of grumbles and complaints, an ache in his legs reminding him it’s a sure-fire fact of life, again nearly colliding into the man the second they stop. Brain to slow to realize Ocelot made it intentional, as the door swings shut behind Kaz and he finds himself shoved so hard against orange-tinted wood he sees stars. Blinking against the lack of oxygen before his sluggish fingers acknowledge it’s because Ocelot’s hand is around his throat, and if he wants to kill him this soon along he’s got another thing coming. Easily beating away Kaz’s kicking leg with his own.
“Stop.” Single words don’t suit him. Even Kaz is coming to familiarize himself with lofty descriptions and too many fucking adjectives. It climbs a cold pathway down his crushing windpipe and settles against the uncomfortable pit dragging in his stomach. Makes Ocelot all the more inscrutable as he wheezes uncomfortably and feels the constraint in his trachea.
Prickles of genuine fear, forcing himself to relax, to let his spine sag against the door’s back and allow its support, blinking and clearing the black-white fuzz from his eyes. Ocelot tilts his head sideways, bends, and licks a long stripe up his cheek. Settles at the lobe of his ear and reveals in the triumph of getting Kaz to shiver from it. Heels kicking the green carpet floor with that motion.
“Oce..”
“Shh, what did I just say?” Useless, impossible protests. Inevitability sparks at Kaz’s brain, a fight long lost. Ocelot’s behaviour strange, but when is it not?
Kaz sags, in self-preservation defeat.
******
If every war came so easy, what might they do then?
Shushing Kaz will only get him so far.
Even to Ocelot his own voice feels distant. Far-away. So trapped in memories it’s put a non-functional stoppage in his brain. Watching Kaz shudder, the flicker of genuine fear in his eyes visible even through those heavy, dark-lenses aviators. In the cold burst of sweat that prickled and tickled the inner sinuses. Letting Ocelot drink in the taste, the texture, of short-lived power and assertion.
He won’t say no.
He never does. Even visibly scared, but stubbornly holding on. Forcing himself to relax and accept, less so for the self-preservation and more to the hopeful wonder of what might be coming. Where the snow continues its little dancing path in the window behind Ocelot, how foggy streetlights filter over it, against its smudges and streaks. Bathing him in an eerie glow.
Kaz, somewhat unfortunately, is not stupid.
Every flight to Cyprus starts with anticipation and ends in frustration. Every mechanical breath John takes beats a rhythm of disquiet in Adam’s brain. Tingles at the vague tendrils of hope within, only to be dashed quick as they come. As nothing changes. Not the bars in the monitors nor the beats in his heart. He’s as dead to the world as any living man could be, and with the changing season and approaching holidays, touching down in the USA only dragged that cold prick further.
Up into his skull.
To taunt him.
Kaz’s twitchy irritability reflected Ocelot’s own mood in a way that made him pause. Asserted to him that, in some manner, there is someone else someone who isn’t Eva, that realizes. Remembers. And hates every second of it. Would turn to one of the mall Santa’s waiting for grubby fingered children to give him miniature sized demands and pay him off in untraceable stacks that assure nigh but a second of peace, should he just take the funds and run.
This, Kaz’s heavy panting and sticky breath against his ear, is a more viable distraction. A more tangible prospect. One that can override the comedown of his already missed high and work at the trickles of Christmas carol's John would sing horribly out of tune away from them both. Even if Kaz can’t read his mind, the man’s clever enough to follow suit. Finally taking the long lull as permission and twisting his head until he can sink his teeth into Ocelot’s own top lip and pull.
Burning pinpricks shoot through the thin skin there, break it open in seconds on a burst of iron to his tongue. Good. It’s strong and heady. Immediately surging into him and coating the tiniest taste buds to travel their sinful path down his throat. Stronger, in the scent and the faint growl-moan Kaz emits against his mouth in turn, arching, but constrained completely by Ocelot’s hand tightening its grip on his throat. Where the bones grind dangerously and Kaz wheezes hard enough to dislodge them.
Ever the fighter, Kaz merely drags himself through that semi-conscious haze, wraps one of his legs around Ocelot’s waist, pulls him and forces a grind through their pants, coats, that offers neither of them relief.
A push, and the sudden slackening of a grip once so tight forces Kaz into a stumble, even if he recovers enough to get his footing, teeth clicking and there’s not a single warning, only the disturbance in the air where Ocelot can tense his back before he gets a snarling man wrapping both of his arms about his waist and throwing him back, against the small round table nearest the heavy TV that faces the two twin beds, down to that green carpet below. Ocelot rolls, grabs the first of those two chairs by it’s legs and throws it at Kaz. He ducks, and the chair splinters, cracks on its legs against the opposite wall.
For this, they are unified. Were the day they met, and no words alone had the capacity to give it language. A space carved out in the rot-gut mud of the war machine, blood, pleasure. Pain, sorrow. Each destructive nudge, each adrenaline coursing hit, the only tangible lines towards the temporary euphoria. Forever chased, but never fully conquered.
With Kaz, it was held in the dead-grenade hand, stomped on in defeat.
To Ocelot, in the biting remarks, where he came up short after a lifetime of determined arrogance and smugness. Enveloped and wrapped in understanding. Forced onto a path that’s ever as dark and desolate. As skull-fracturing as the glass ashtray he pitches towards Kaz’s knee. Where it bursts on impact, cuts through cloth, and drags out a snarl so deep from the huffing man above Ocelot sits up as if he could chase it. Finds himself instead ensnared in a violent rolling grasp, where they don’t even try to avoid the bed legs or the walls. Fingernails rake down cheeks, cruel fists pull hair. Lips bite skin, Ocelot manages to get a knee wedged hard into Kaz’s stomach, forcing him to double up and curl. Only to be met in turn by a punch that nearly breaks his long, inviting nose in turn. He sits up, slightly disoriented, and grabs for the first thing he sees.
The phone, pulled right from its socket, it’s connection to the outside world and dragged up, down, slamming against Kaz’s glasses to shatter the lens. He has spares, but it does nothing to soften the pain of glass scraping eyelashes, testing the edges of blindness in the corners, and Kaz snarls. Furious, red-faced, and kicking up. Ocelot flies backwards, lands on hands and knees and there’s nothing keeping him from Kaz’s thicker arm barring his throat, pulling back, and rutting against his clothed ass like an animal in heat.
Heavy, determined, what use is prep when he’s a knife? What do either of them care, when there’s nothing but static in their heads and the assured weight of cold steel just below the belt. His coat rucked up and left in a drape on either side of his waist.
If Ocelot closes his eyes, focuses that attention really hard, he imagines he can smell the steel. More so than hear it slicing through thin material, through cotton and silk. Focus that frays, fractures, with the uselessness of it all.
Spits a shit lubricant, but it’s one old as time itself. The distant cadence of constant mantras and codes obliterate in the explosive pressure in his back. Down the tailbone, spine. It curls it’s be-clawed hand around his bones, drags him down and firm into the present. Panting grunts, short and crisp, almost unheard until Kaz is slamming a hand over his mouth and sneering over his ear like the beast, so few people know him too really be.
One Ocelot wants to drag to the surface, piece by piece.
“Quiet, you want to be kicked out?” As if any moan Ocelot emits compares to the thunderstorm before.
A joke, one that drags Ocelot’s tongue to that palm, where he can bite and taste. Lap up sweat and sink into scarred pores. Skin to thick there, to thin elsewhere. His laugh is swallowed by that skin, wrapping tight in his nostrils, and permeating their way through. All the things he has to recall, all the missions and details he has to aggregate, fading further and further to the searing burn below. To the relentless, knee-shaking thrusts forced into him on each rhythmic push from Kaz’s aggressive, unforgiving hips.
“Never liked this fucking holiday.” Kaz snarls from above, he lies with such talent, draped over Ocelot’s back until they’re nose to nose, Ocelot able to meet the widening of pupils through the cracks in the lens. Nonsense words for nonsense thoughts, and shameful memories.
What would John think of this little tableau?
Ocelot thinks he might find it amusing, or perhaps shameful. A mockery of his pleasant memories. Losing himself only to groans and the final push back, where he begins to meet Kaz thrust for every tearing thrust, shaky on knees and loose on recoil.
For the faux romance of the increasing falling snow outside to the ground below. For the rolling pants of Kaz’s thrusts shortening, quickening. Ocelot curls his fingers in his gloves, arches back in the bend that makes humans envious of any cat, and bites until Kaz is forced to get his palm free.
“Hurry up, Miller.”
“Impatient bitch.” Like they haven’t been going at this breathless, panting pace. Ocelot can smell every fragment droplet of their combined sweat, feel the way the blood drips down his thighs from inevitable tears, how Kaz chafes just so. Where Kaz’s heartbeat pounds against his own thin back. How, when Ocelot reaches back, fumbles, and digs his fingers into that hurt knee Kaz howls, pitches forward and grips tight, spasming in the thick, sore crevice of his ass and chasing heat. Ocelot would say later, on oath, that he does not keen.
But it’d be a lie, one of his many, all the same. Squeezing around that flex, that ebbing twitch, sacrificing his slacks, and underwear, to the slickness of his own orgasm while his ears ring with the impatience of bells. Kaz drips sticky and thick when he pulls free. Even graciously helps Ocelot to his feet, on a single offered hand. One he takes with a grunt, wobbly on his feet.
“Don’t give yourself too much credit.” When Kaz smirks pleasantly, zipping up with carefree smugness. “Like I said..”
“Long flight.” Finishing the lame, half-ass excuse without giving Ocelot the need. Shuffling to the bed furthest the door and collapsing on his back, humming one of those nonsensical little tunes like he just can’t help himself. There’s meetings in the morning, deals to be assessed, schedules to be created.
Frost forming on their dirty window, melting, when Kaz blows hot air against its pane. Ocelot glances down at himself a moment, shrugs and moves to sit against Kaz’s back, who lets him there with only a mumble, shuffles, to give him scant more room.
Steady, still-gloved hands fish in pockets, Ocelot pulls the cigar free. Cuban-of course. Runs his fingers along it and lifts it to inspect in the low yellow glow from the nightstands over-turned lamp. Leans forward into that, giving himself space, not surprised to feel Kaz twist, draping over him once more, a lighter already lit.
It’s flame glowing, hot, tickling the faint blonde stubble on Ocelot’s own skin. A single tip up brings the cigars end to that beckoning call. Smoke curls rich, thick, beneath his nose. That heavy nub a secure weight on his tongue, when Ocelot’s own lips, thin and scarred, enclose around it, and pull. Dragging heavy tobacco and gritty nicotine down thin throat, caressing his lungs in comfortable poison.
When he moves to release the cigar, Kaz is right there. Inquisitive and quick, pulling it free with his own hand, and replacing it with his waiting, willing mouth. Bloody, wanting. Ocelot follows that dance with ease, throat free to push, to expel the smoke back to him and breathe. While the cigar drops little ashes to their knees.
Kaz’s tongue as sour as, welcoming, as the smoke.