Caffeine - String Theory: Aftermath

Caffeine

Log Archive » Logs for January 2009 » Caffeine

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Scene Title	Caffeine
Synopsis	Is a learning aide, comes in disposable receptacles, kindles a useful buzz, doesn't last.
Date	January 21, 2009

Dingy Hotel — Felix's Room

Teo is heavy. Initially, this was kind of the point, but about two seconds after leaping onto the bed and perching his denim-clad butt on Felix he automatically shifted, adjusted, squinted down at the older man's face to assure himself he wasn't causing unaffordable discomfort to the man whose torso he's sitting astride.

His chest is bare, goosebumps fading off his starkly tattooed arms where the cold from outdoors bit into his skin during his walk — run, really — to the drink machine with only the most minimalistic salute to decency: jeans, gun, go. It's a can of coffee that he holds suspended in front of the Russian's nose now, clasped between forefinger and thumb. It was late outside. There was nothing in the car park and no one in the hall.

The table lamp is on, filling the cramped hotel room with light the same dim shade of yellow as rust. "How's work?"

Felix is in even less - boxers, at the moment, under the sheet and bedspread. "Thank you," he says, shifting a bit so he can eye Teo patiently. One of his more feline expressions. "Slow," he says, quietly. "Being woven back in. A lot of debreifing. My SAC knew what I was up to, but most of the rest of the Bureau didn't. There's not a lot of precedent for agents coming back from the dead, Santiago notwithstanding." He reaches for the can of coffee, and takes a judicious sip. It's awful, being from a machine, but his palate is ruined by decades as a cop. "Thanks. You?"

"I think Christian and Minea want to murder Deckard." Not news to the third member of the trio, he imagines. Teo's expression remains quiescent in saying so, bare toes furrowing the linens on either side. "There are bombs set to blow all the bridges in and out of Manhattan and a conspiracy the size of the National Guard and NYPD put together to keep disarming them under wraps. And I had to go play E-mail tag with Homeland Security and the Company, which was fucking weird, because I think they're trying to kill me in a couple weeks." If there's anything left to kill. "And I got into a fight with my best friend. You should become a terrorist. See the world." There's a croaking click of metal and cold vapor as he breaks his own can open: soda. "Doctor Bianco can vouch for you, can't he?"

"To whom?" Felix wonders, as he shifts a bit to sit up, propping his weight against the headboard, as he shifts his coffee to his other hand. "Do you mean literally? What's the point? To whom else can he blow them he hasn't already? Christian has struck me as someone who might kill, but with reason, not out of pique," His voice is cool as he makes this asessment. "Do you think I should warn Deckard? Who exactly is this Company I keep hearing referred to, since you don't mean the CIA? And what exactly is HomeSec doing to help?" He leans over to set the coffee on the nightstand table, and trails a hand down from Teo's throat to belt, utterly unselfconscious. For all that Fel dresses modestly, he has a brutal lack of shame when the suit's off.

Breathing more or less stalls out for the Sicilian for that protracted moment, as the path Felix's hand takes moves contrary to the next lungful of ordinary air he was in the middle of pushing out. That ends in an uncomfortable cough, and Teo wiping some nonexistant trace of carbonated syrup off his lip with the back of his arm. What? Oh. "To your Bureau. S— Doctor Bianco could confirm with your Bureau what you wanted and specifically when. If that's giving you trouble. Chris' pique tends to substantiate enough reason for him.

"Deckard will be okay: he's like a roach. But maybe that'd be nice for you two." He flattens out both hands, the can of Coke rolled between them, an idle fidget, a furrow in his brow at mention of the Intelligence Agency. The FBI doesn't know anything: he keeps forgetting that. "The Company is a clandestine, privately-funded organization that tracks, researches and monitors Evolved around the world. Sometimes means abduction and radioactive isotope injections, other times means electronic bugging devices.

"Or life-sentence in a cage, if you're a dangerous one. They send their operatives out in pairs. One of you, and one of us." Teo turns up the corners of his mouth saying that. It's funny on one level, maybe two. How many arbitrary demarcations segregate the collective humanity, or two men loitering half-naked on a bed. "They've been at it a lot longer than Homeland Security." Whose current work he doesn't articulate, for whatever reason: ignorance or otherwise.

That's….displeasing. Fel makes a little moue of disgust, but nods to that, before sipping from his coffee. "I see. And yes, Deckard is a survivor," he says. Not quite fond there. He takes another swallow sets the can aside, in favor of scooting up to sit fully upright, though his face is still lower than Teo's.

It's Teo's turn to put his drink down now. Tilting sideways astride Felix's lap to sit the can on the bedstand, barely assuring himself that the edge of the can's concave keeps its center of balance far enough from the edge of the small table with the feel of a finger before he rocks back upright, and sits forward. Smiles, lips sealed, no teeth, studying the older man's face with intent enough that it's evident that neither the Company nor Homeland Security are the subject of his good humor. Be as it may that the Federal agent doesn't generally hold much in the way of pleasant associations.

After a moment, he borrows a kiss. Is left considering it, for a brief moment, nose to nose. And then, "Dispensing machine coffee is shit," he observes intelligently, though he fails to propose that the carbonated liquid syrup he'd been imbibing was much better.

"I know," Fel says, ruefully, even as he lightly drags a fingernail over the planes of Teo's stomach. His expression remains grave, professorial, even as he starts to undo the belt, one handed. There's the deftness of long practice there. "I'm sorry. You should see the coffee they try to foist off on us at the Bureau. Or rather, you shouldn't. It's awful," he says, more or less climbing the younger man's body until he's kneeling on the mattress, as well.

Though gravity threatens to push Teo backwards off the older man's now-curled knees, the grip on his belt and some residual strength in his own knees keeps him on his perch in the meantime. Residual strength. Nerve and muscle seem to have attenuated their focus elsewhere for the moment; a visceral twitch that promises — or threatens — eventually to find a throbbing ache. Until then, he's staring kind of looser-jawed at the shape of Felix's mouth talking about something irrelevant. It isn't really an appropriate time to be discussing little girls, probably. If Teo had any idea what 'appropriate' entailed, he probably wouldn't be—

Here. At all. "You find out about Colette?" His eyes scale the distance to Felix's. He sniffs once through his nose, fits his hands on the older man's shoulders. Thumbs in clavicles, fingertips curled down, skimming skin down, out, gentle as long as he's focusing on that.

Felix puts his hands just above the end of Teo's ribs, and is unable to keep from smirking. Not entirely - his lips pull into that wry shape, lopsided. It's flattering to have that sort of effect on someone, especially someone that much younger than you. He arches his brows. "What about Colette?" he wonders, tone mild, as he drops one hand to the point of Teo's hip, and idly starts shoving down the waist of his jeans.

"What she can do." A vague phrase, granted, but there are fewer interpretations for it in this world compared to the one they had lived in pre-Bomb. Teo had maintained, once, that it was her secret to share rather than his. He doesn't have a lot of his own. Not really. Business plans, work locations, some of the general background knowledge that comes with being pro-Evolved and under the legal radar or else being shot at with military missiles, arguably non-metaphorical. His nails grate on the back of Felix's shoulders, automatic, purchase against the drag of fabric down his hip. No protest.

He shivers, not able to help that, either, for all that his voice remains cool. The disconnect between tone, expression, and action can be remarkable at times. "I have some idea of her capabilities," he says, tone offhand, even as he leans his cheek against Teo's throat, before biting lightly at the muscle where neck and shoulder join. Always very careful with anything that might be painful, that almost feline delicacy.

No protest. Nor underwear, for that matter. In other mediums, there might be real art in employing negative space instead of decorative content, but Teo's just lazy, honestly. His jeans wedge to a stop at the point where his legs split due to physical constraints and a lack of elasticity. "Good." He might even still be referring to Colette: though he fails to compartmentalize his physical presentation in as many parts as Felix apparently can, being a Federal cyborg or whatever, he's still capable of sticking to a subject. Felix finds his neck encircled, smothered briefly in tattooed arms, a mouth and nose on his ear, more inhale than contact, a brief press of palms down the older man's shoulder-blades.

The next moment, Teo lets go. Falls backward, with about as much grace and aplomb as a panda tumbling down a hillock. His back hits the mattress, one knee drawn up, bracing the flat of a cold foot on Felix's chest, a parody of objection in acquiescence. His pants are in the way.