old starfighter fanfic

Disability

	Cain unlocked the door to the 12th floor apartment and stepped in. Almost immediately, he could hear the soft padding sound of feet running across carpet, coming closer. Within moments, there he was, right in front of him. Abel, smiling at him. At first Cain returned the gesture with a crooked smile of his own, until he got another look at the other man and frowned. Abel’s smile fell.
	“Didn’t I tell you to be dressed by the time I got home?” Cain scolded. Abel, dressed still in his pajamas – a tank top and sweat pants-, pouted and crossed his arms defiantly.
	“Dammit Abel! When I tell you to do something, I normally have a pretty damn good reason for it, and I expect you to do it!” Cain said angrily, nearly shouting, as he removed his company jacket and roughly hung it on the coat peg by the door. Abel continued to pout in defiance. “And I can tell by your body language that you didn’t just forget this time, you chose not to listen.” Abel bit his lip and didn’t meet Cain’s eyes any more. Silent, as always.
	The black-haired man sighed in irritation as he put on a black blazer. “Like I said,” he continued, “I had a pretty good reason. My exact words were that you should be dressed nice and be ready to go.” Abel looked back at Cain’s face, eyes widening as it was finally dawning on him what those instructions entailed. Cain smiled smugly.
Finishing Abel’s revelation, Cain went on, “I got a big bonus at work from that job I did last week. I thought that maybe we could eat somewhere fancy.” The very moment Cain finished that sentence, Abel’s face brightened right back up, giving a bit of a boost to the taller man’s ego. Then, the blond ran off, stumbling a bit in his haste, to the bedroom. Cain snorted and waited. He had already changed at work into some nicer clothes, including a blazer and a loosely done skinny tie.
Within mere minutes, Abel was dressed and ready to go, choosing to wear a nice white turtleneck. He ran back to where Cain stood, excitement written clear across his face. Though Cain was a much nicer man than he had been when he was still a Fighter, it was still rare for him to treat Abel to something nice like a dinner.
“Ready to go?” Cain asked, raising an eyebrow. The blond nodded his head vigorously, and said a few quiet, unintelligible syllables. “Well, aren’t you excited.” Cain said with a smirk, causing Abel to blush in embarrassment. He clammed up, causing Cain to regret that comment.
“C’mon, let’s get going, or we’ll be late for the reservation that I set up.” He muttered, opening the door and striding out. Abel hurried after him silently.
‘Why did I have to go and make a stupid comment like that?’ Cain thought to himself angrily as he locked the apartment door, ‘Like he’s not self-conscious enough about his speech, I always have to go be stupid and make it worse. This is why he doesn’t even try to talk most of the time…’
The two of them waited, silently, in the elevator, Abel looking down at his patent leather shoes. Cain dared to take a glance at his face and saw the pain that resided there, that the smaller man usually hid inside, and that pain of guilt hit the black-haired man again, though for a different, older reason. ‘It’s not like it’s his fault. Not like he can help it, or anything. If it’s anyone’s fault he can’t talk most of the time, it’s mine.’
Cain’s thought process continued as he beat himself up inside. ‘It’s my fault he’s disabled.’
~
It was just another mission, just another chance for me to blow shit up and kill fuckers and look like a total badass. Abel and I were doing pretty well, as always. When he wasn’t disobeying me and saving other ships, we never had a problem. We almost never got hit by enemy fire. After so many missions though, our success rate was starting to get to my head. I really was one of the best, if not the best, but cockiness can really damage performance if you let it out of hand.
And that’s exactly what happened. I got the idea to try and do something stupid to look really epic, and ignore the concept of just killing everything on site and avoiding getting shot. I told Abel my plan after spotting the perfect target.
“Abel! See those three ships flying in formation? Let’s see if I can’t take ‘em all down at once! Tail ‘em!” I said, a grin on my determined face. Abel, of course, had more sense than I did.
“Are you nuts? They’re not shooting at anyone and just keep flying by over and over... It’s probably a trap!” He said, not following my order and remaining on the route he already set for our ship.
I growled. “Do what I fucking tell you!” I yelled. I could almost sense him flinch on the other side of the cockpit. “If you don’t do what I say, I will make you regret it so much when we’re done with this mission, Abel, I swear-“
“Fine! Fine!” He interrupted, not wanting to hear about how I was going to torment him this time. I heard him let out a shuddering sigh. “I’ll follow those ships…”
The Reliant turned around to follow the course of the enemy formation. I lined up the targeting system with the ships in just the right way to allow me to take all three of them in a single spray of fire. All I needed was them to turn again, and…
“Whoa!” Abel shouted, and it threw me off. I cursed at him, but he ignored me. I opened my mouth to shout at him again when suddenly he made us swerve to one side. For the first time since he threw off my aim, I glanced at my screen… A fourth ship had appeared out of nowhere!
“Shit!” I cursed again as it flew straight at us. Their navigator was good. I soon learned their fighter was good, too. Abel bobbed and weaved, as the ship pursued us. It opened fire, but Abel deftly avoided the shots. At least until the first three ships cut us off.
Abel had been right, it was a trap. They were herding us, picking off isolated ships, tricking them into hopeless ambushes. The fourth ship opened fire, one of the first opponents we had that predicted Abel’s movement. There was a mechanical popping sound as our ship was damaged, and Abel cried out.
I fired on one of the ships before me, and was pleased when it exploded. I was about to take out the one next to it when the Reliant suddenly swerved and it was no longer in my point of view. “Dammit, Abel!”
“Aaaugh!” Was the response I got. Then I felt the Reliant shake, and realized we were being fired upon again by the fourth ship. More loud sounds pained my ears. Then I noticed pretty much none of the damage was happening on my side of the ship. That’s when their strategy truly dawned on me; after they herded us, and others like us, they disabled our ships’ mobility by taking out our navigators.
Sparks flew, a voice warned us our shields were failing, Abel was trying desperately to get us out of there, but we kept getting cut off.
“Ahhh!! Cain, HELP!!” He pleaded. But then there was a high pitched keening sound, followed by a small explosion from behind me. Abel screamed, there were pops, a thudding sound, and suddenly I couldn’t hear Abel anymore.
“Abel!” I shouted, and received no reply. The fire from the enemy ships ceased, as did our ship’s movement. Abel was out, maybe dead. Beads of sweat ran down my face as I panted, eyes darting from the controls to the screen. I shouted for help over the radio. Luckily, the Reliant’s engines were still fine. Abel had told me how to activate the autopilot from the fighter controls, so I mashed them until the mechanical voice told me autopilot was active.
As soon as the Reliant started to move, the others began to fire on me again, aiming for me this time. The ship rocked, and I fired madly, taking out a few during the escape. With some strange streak of luck, our now dying ship managed to rush away, back to the starbase, and the remaining ship decided not to pursue without backup.
In minutes, we docked. During that time, I never heard Abel’s voice over the sounds of our ship, even after I shouted his name and ordered him to answer me. When the ship landed and shut down, I threw off my restraints…
~
Cain and Abel sat across from each other at the small table that had been reserved. It was a more romantic setting than Cain had intended, and made him feel awkward and out of place. He wasn’t really the ‘romantic’ type. Abel, however, seemed to be enjoying himself. He was smiling almost nonstop as they ate their appetizer, and that at least made Cain’s guilt go away for the time being. It only ceased for a few minutes, when Abel had a hard time remembering how to hold a fork- it was like his hand wouldn’t obey his orders, and he got frustrated. Cain helped him out, of course, and the cheery mood resumed.
By the time their main course arrived, three cheese ravioli for Abel and some kind of pasta bowl for Cain, they were already well into a one-sided conversation; Cain talking on and on about something, and Abel nodding, smiling, and listening intently. Cain had long since gotten used to having to make an entire conversation by himself. Normally, he’d prattle on about jobs he’d done through work, things his friends and he did, what his cousins were up to… And Abel would respond as best he could. His facial expressions and body language almost completely made up for his lack of vocal response (besides a gasp or an ‘Ooh!’ or ‘Ah!’). Cain often wondered what was going on in Abel’s head, what sort of things he wanted to say, but couldn’t.
Cain used to hate the sound of Abel’s voice. Back then, the only time he ever heard Abel’s voice outside of sex or a mission, he was nagging or complaining, or whining, or back-talking. Cain hated the back-talking the most. He thought it was his right to order his navigator around. Not anymore, he realized far too late.
After the incident, besides learning to hold a conversation by himself, Cain also learned to miss the sound of his partner’s voice. The thing that used to cause him the most annoyance, he came to want to hear so much. It was rare to hear Abel’s voice. Normally it was an accident, Abel slipping for a moment, trying to say something, only to fail and embarrass himself again. But even then, Cain was just glad he was saying something, at least.
There were times when Abel could talk. Really talk. The doctors had said something about the way certain parts of the brain fired signals more during strong emotion. Cain didn’t understand all that jargon, but the gist of it was, Abel’s brain would temporarily work properly when he was feeling strong emotions, or similar. So far, Cain had found two ways to get Abel to remember how to talk; one was getting him extremely pissed off. Cain liked him talking, even if he was yelling at him, but he didn’t like the stress it caused the both of them.
The other way was through orgasm. Well, not exactly through it, but in the moments after it. They had discovered one day, on accident after a good ‘roll in the hay’, that Abel was emotional enough after orgasm to talk. They found that out when Abel complained that Cain still hadn’t learned to stop biting. From then on, every time they had sex, the afterglow was filled with Abel talking on and on, until his mastery of their language would slowly fade and he’d be left quiet again. Sometimes he’d fall asleep before he’d forget, saving himself the pain until morning.
But they hadn’t found any other way to help him talk again. At least, not yet. So, Cain continued through a mouthful of pasta about the job he’d done that got him the bonus that was paying for their meal. All the while, Abel was ‘ooh’ing and ‘ah’ing at just the right moments while he slowly ate his ravioli.
~
Even before I threw open the cockpit door, I could see some of the ground crew rushing to help, some of them having already been waiting at our docking spot after I had done all that shouting over the radio. The first thing I did when I was out was try to force open the door to Abel’s side, yelling his name, threatening what I would do to him if he didn’t respond. I didn’t even know why I was suddenly so freaked out to lose him. Some of the medics and technicians climbed atop the reliant to help, and together we pulled open the hatch, which was seriously damaged, almost caved in.
I went in to grab Abel and yank him out, but instead I was the one who was yanked. I was being pulled off the ship by a couple of the medics. I shouted and threatened, telling them I had to get my navigator, too busy yelling to hear that they would take care of him, and they had to check me out.
I eventually calmed down enough to stop struggling and climb down willingly from the reliant, where they wheeled a stretcher to me. A second was right behind it, for Abel. They had me sit on mine as they quickly looked me over. At most, I had scrapes and abrasions, but nothing too serious. As they wrapped some of the bleeding scrapes on my arms, I watched as the others pulled Abel from the wreckage that was formerly the navigator end of the Reliant.
My breath hitched for a moment when I saw, for the first time, the state he was in. His hair, that used to be platinum blond, was matted with dark red blood. The blood was running down his face, over his torso, he was just covered with it and still bleeding profusely. The wound on his head, I could barely making it out from the distance I was at, and when they brought him closer, I could hardly see him among the crowd of medics around him as they put him on the stretcher. They didn’t even wait to rush him to the hospital ward, doing what they could on the way to stop the bleeding.
The whole time I watched this, I was silent, just breathing. I had stopped yelling when I saw the extent of his injury. When I could no longer see his gurney and medical crew, I spared another glance at the Reliant. From what I could see, and what the technicians had already discovered and were pointing out to others, it seemed that the orb he used to steer the ship had exploded or shattered or something. Either way, it’s remains were not where it was supposed to be. Much of it was stuck in Abel’s seat, in the windshield, and where Abel’s head used to be.
It must have been the stress of all the fire upon that single area of the ship- the plot designed to take out the navigator- that took out the orb. It was a clever trap. A trap I fell for, that Abel saw through. I didn’t listen to him, though. It was all my fault. And for probably the first time in my life, I felt guilt.
~
Eventually, dinner was done and dessert came. Abel had ordered an ice cream topped apple turnover, and Cain ordered some kind of double-chocolate brownie cake. They ate in silence, Cain temporarily out of things to say. Not that it was awkward. They were used to the silence between them, by now.
At one point, Abel looked over to eye the other man’s dessert hungrily. Cain caught the glance and raised an eyebrow.
“What, you want a bite?” Cain asked incredulously, almost irritated. Abel nodded, and the black-haired man sighed. Annoyed, he groaned, “If you wanted the chocolaty crap, you should’ve ordered it in the first place!”
Abel shrugged, a small smile on his face. You could almost hear him saying ‘Oh well’ in a defiant tone. Cain glared for a minute, before sighing again.
“Fine, have your bite.” He said and the blond eagerly reached across the table with his fork, cutting himself a piece, and devouring it quickly. It was evident by his face that he regretted ordering the apple turnover and ice cream. But he wasn’t the greedy type, so he settled for just that one chocolate bite and kept at his own dessert.
“So…” The black-haired man began as they were almost done with their dessert, “What did you think? About the whole dinner thing, I mean?”
Abel glanced over at him, ice cream and apple in his mouth. He swallowed, wiped his mouth, and gave Cain his answer: A wide smile. Then he opened his mouth to say something, and Cain subconsciously held his breath.
“Ffarmmph…” He stopped after the first muddled syllable, and Cain silently let out the breath he’d held. Abel looked down at his plate, poking his dessert, a look on his face that was a cross between self-disappointment and concentration. He opened his mouth to talk again, but was interrupted by a quiet, stern ‘Hey.’ He looked up at the man across from him.
“I know,” Cain said, his brow furrowed, but with an odd, half smile on his face, “And you’re welcome, Abby.”
Despite the sentiment, Abel frowned and pouted. “Kerm..!” He let loose a short, irritated syllable. Cain laughed at his reaction.
“Yeah, yeah,” He said, “I get it. You hate it when I call you that.” He snickered.
The blond huffed and settled down, taking an extra large bite from his dessert.
As they had eaten their meal, Cain had been vaguely aware of their surroundings, and the people that sat near them. The closest people were a mother and her pre-teen daughter, sitting at a table a little more than a yard away from them, on Cain’s left, Abel’s right.
Cain was also angrily aware of the uneasy glances the girl kept taking at the blond across from him. Now and then he’d shoot her a scowl when Abel wasn’t looking, but she never caught notice. ‘What does she think she’s staring at…’ He’d think threateningly.
And then, inevitably, it happened. It was bound to. It was the reason he and Abel hardly went anywhere public. The girl leaned over the table towards her mother, and said in a whispered-but-not-really-quiet voice, “What’s wrong with that blonde guy over there? He keeps making weird sounds and never talks…”
Abel froze and bristled, eyes widened slightly, fork hovering over one of the last bites of his turnover. Cain frowned. The mother glanced over at their table, at Abel, and replied in an equally quiet-but-not-quiet-enough voice, “Sweetie, he’s probably mentally retarded. It’s not his fault. Don’t be so rude.”
Abel was still frozen in his seat, except for a slight shivering in the fork-holding hand. Cain was silently fuming, watching Abel, knowing he was practically dying inside, how much those comments were hurting him. Even though this happened just about every time Abel went out in public, it always hurt the blond, possibly more and more each time.
“Oohhh…” The girl said, nodding, “So, he’s a retard or something? That makes sense, then. I didn’t know people like that were allowed in public restaurants, though…” The ever-so-slightly ‘watch your mouth’ face the girl’s mother made at her did nothing to assuage the fury that came to Cain at that last comment. He slammed his hands on the table, stood suddenly, and stormed those three or four feet to the other table, slamming his hands on that one too. Abel stood as well, staring wide-eyed in shock at the black-haired man’s sudden actions. A few other people in the restaurant stopped what they were doing to watch the display.
“Shut the fuck up!” Cain shouted, causing anyone who hadn’t already noticed to look over at the scene. The girl and her mother looked up, a mixture of shock, confusion, and fright in their faces. “The fuck do you know, calling him a fucking retard?! You don’t know shit!”
Aside from Cain’s yelling, the restaurant was dead silent. A few servers had stopped in their tracks, and people were peeking out of the kitchen. His raving continued, the volume only increasing with his rising rage, “He’s a fucking genius, smarter than a little shit like you could ever wish to be, and you call him a fucking retard, just ‘cause he has a speech impediment?!”
The girl looked terrified; her mother looked both frightened and deeply ashamed. Abel’s face was beginning to turn red, and he was shaking.
“He’s a veteran for the goddamn Alliance! He got a fucking purple heart, because he got hurt fighting for other people who can’t do it themselves, and you call him a fucking retard?! He-“
At that moment, Abel was suddenly at Cain’s side, with a tight grip on his arm. “C-Cain!” he hissed through his teeth, “W-We’re going h-home. N-Now!”
The other man stared incredulously at Abel for a minute, breathing quickly. He huffed, shot another glare at the two females, and quickly turned to storm out of the restaurant. Abel was left alone with the woman and the girl. He sighed, and looked at the both of them morosely.
“I’m v-very sorry about that… He’s just... over protective. He sometimes has a fit w-when someone will s-say things l-like that about m-me...” He said, stuttering some of his words. The girl nodded, trembling.
“I-I’m sorry too… for what we said… We didn’t know…” The mother stuttered. Abel didn’t seem to acknowledge the apology. He simply checked to make sure Cain had already paid the bill (he had), and walked out as well, with a multitude of eyes watching him go. He uttered a few more apologies to people he passed on his way out.
~
It was a few days before I was allowed to see Abel in the hospital ward. During that time, the higher-ups had put me on stand-by. Made sense, seeing as how neither my ship, nor my navigator was in working order.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went in to see him, but I didn’t expect my own reaction at all. I found myself shocked at the physical state he was in. One of his arms was all wrapped up, in a sling. The other had some bandages on it as well, and so did his legs. His face was, somehow, completely unharmed. That, or the injuries to his face had been minor enough to be healed completely with some of the technology they had there. Nothing they could do about that one scar, of course. I was shocked at his head, though, even knowing that that was where the worst of his injuries was. They had to shave the left side of his head to get to the wound to treat it properly, and to keep his hair from getting in the healing wound. It was a huge gash, swollen, and it looked like his head might have, at one point, been even a little bit caved in on that side.
It actually seemed a hell of a lot better, though. At least, that’s what they told me when I asked. The most serious part of the wound was not the gash, as it looked. It had been the blunt-force trauma that they took care of first. However, they said, it was pretty severe. Severe enough to maybe cause permanent brain damage.
“What do you mean, ‘brain damage’?!” I asked angrily. It made the medics nervous, but they continued to explain as best they could. A part of his brain had actually been injured. The force to his head had actually broken his skull, and made a nasty bruise on a certain part of his brain. They said it was lucky it was a part that wouldn’t affect him too much, if he did suffer permanent brain damage.
I dared to ask what they meant by too much. Apparently, the biggest affect it’d have on him would be speech. Most of the time, he would be unable to turn the words in his mind into speech out his mouth. Another issue would be muscle-memory, where he’d forget simple things like how to control his digits. And the last they told me would be random, temporary amnesia. He may suddenly forget where he is, or what he’s doing, only to remember a few minutes later. They said he was lucky because he’d still have his mind, his personality and his intelligence. I decided not to punch the guy who used the word ‘lucky’ to describe it.
Abel remained in a coma for quite a while, and I repeatedly came by for updates on his condition. Every day, his wounds were a little more healed, thanks to the high-tech devices they used, which emitted some kind of beam that slowly, but much, much more quickly than the natural way, healed his injuries. But even when he no longer had bandages, and not even a scar remained where the gash in his head had been, and the left side of his head was covered in platinum blond peach fuzz, he didn’t wake up. They told me there was a ten percent chance he would never wake up. I really did punch someone that day. I got reprimanded, and nothing more.
I remained on stand-by, even after the reliant was repaired. It was probably because they weren’t sure if my navigator would be alright to go back on duty or not. Then one day, while I was boring a hole into the ceiling from one of the beds in our room, a voice came up on the com-device on the wall. Abel was awake.
I hurried as quickly as I could to the ward, trying not to seem too concerned about the recovery of my navigator. When I got in, there he was. Sitting up, legs hanging over the edge of his bed, the medics asking him questions and examining him. It made my gut wrench to hear his replies. Every time he tried to talk, the only things he wound up saying were gibberish. He quickly grew upset, and the medics explained his condition to him. They also mentioned that his condition was, in fact, repairable. However, it was an insanely expensive brain surgery, which neither the military nor most insurance companies could cover. I later learned that his family would've easily been able to cover the costs, but he was apparently no longer on good terms with them. He started to cry, and I just stared. One of the others noticed me and cleared his throat. Abel turned to look at me, tears in his eyes and on his cheeks. He just glared at me, and turned away. At that, I just turned and left.
I didn’t visit him again for a day or two. And before the thought occurred to me to go visit again, I was told that he was going to be staying in our room again, for a little longer. I dared to ask what they meant by a ‘little longer’. I should have guessed- he was being discharged. His hand-eye coordination had gone to shit with his new disability, he was now far too forgetful, he couldn’t talk- and communication was essential for a navigator.
When he came to our room, he simply walked to his bed and sat on the edge awkwardly. I was across from him, sitting on the edge of my own bed, staring at him. For the first time, I realized how small he was. How frail he was. And he seemed even smaller and frailer now. Fragile. I only just realized how truly fragile my partner had been, and how much I had taken him for granted. How much I bossed him around, threatened him, demeaned and humiliated him, treated him like a toy, just something that I could fuck when I wanted and tease when I was bored, something to just drive my Reliant while I did the ‘real’ work.
For the first time in my entire life I realized just how wrong I had been. For the first time, I felt guilty, even ashamed. I made this other, fragile man’s life a misery, turned his dream of being a navigator into a living nightmare, and then I robbed him of that dream, his speech, his control of his own hands and memories.
For the first time in my life, I apologized to someone. It took a couple days, awkward days. But one morning, while we simply sat in boredom, him trying to read a book, but unable to concentrate. After an hour of staring at him, telling myself to do it, I opened my mouth. It felt dry. When I spoke, my voice was almost a whisper.
“ ‘m sorry.” I muttered uselessly. This obviously took him by surprise, and he stared at me with wide eyes, mouth open slightly. Then he started to cry again, quietly. He said something, but not even he could understand what it was that actually came out of his mouth.
“I mean it. I’m sorry.” I added, a little louder. He nodded, sniffling and whimpering, rubbing his eyes as he tried to calm himself down.
“I’ll make it up to you.” I said. He stared at me with his wet eyes, a confused frown on his face, a look that said without words ‘How so?’ “I don’t know how,” I continued, “But when I figure out how, I will. I swear, Abel.”
I could tell he didn’t believe me. I didn’t blame him. With the kind of person I had been, I wouldn’t either. I had been looking at myself since the last mission, and I no longer liked what I saw. I finally saw what I was- an incredibly unlikeable monster of a human being. Just another low-life fighter.
After a long, quiet week. Abel was finally called away to be discharged honorably, and awarded a medal or two, including a purple heart for his injury. I was called away as well, to meet with my own superiors, including Commander Bering. I was told that, thanks to my spectacular service (I guess they don’t factor personality in), and because of the loss of my navigator (and probably because they’d have a lot of trouble finding another navigator like him, that matched my skills so perfectly) I was being allowed to be discharged early. It caught me by surprise. It wasn’t just shore leave. I was being allowed to permanently go home (unless I decided to re-enlist later). An idea came into my head, and I accepted their offer.
~
The trip back to the apartment was full of angry silence, and both Cain and Abel were steaming mad. When they finally walked through the door, Cain locking it behind him, Abel walked quickly to the bedroom to change, walking with a huff without a second look to the other man.
“Oh, come on!” Cain yelled, following after the blond. He was thoroughly ignored. “You gotta be kidding me, Abel. Are you seriously pissed off at me for that? For defending you? Well excuse me for not wanting to let people talk about you like that when we can both clearly hear them!”
Abel sighed in irritation, and the black-haired man growled in response. Abel changed into his pajamas, a mint-green tank top and light grey sweats, as Cain fumed on the edge of their bed. He was just done removing his shoes and tossing them into a corner when Abel finally turned to face him. Abel was also holding out one of the pillows from the bed and pointing at the door. Cain growled again.
“Like hell am I sleeping on the fucking couch for defending you!” He shouted, knocking the pillow out of the smaller man’s hand. Abel crossed his arms and glared defiantly. “I don’t get why you’re so fucking mad at me! You heard what she said, why is it so wrong for me to not stand by and let them say that sort of shit?!”
Abel rolled his eyes and walked to the desk in the corner of the room. There was a pen and a pad of paper there, there always was, and he took them and wrote quickly. He ripped out the paper he wrote on and handed it to Cain. What he wrote was ‘It’s not that you defended me, I like that, it’s that you had to go have a fit and embarrass me like that in public.’
After reading it, Cain sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Calm now, he put the paper down on the desk and asked quietly, “Was the manager coming up behind me to kick us out?”
Abel nodded. Cain sighed again. “Fuck. Okay, I get it now.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and removed the loose tie, which had become even looser since they left the apartment earlier in the evening, and continued, “I lost my temper, and made a scene, and now we’ll probably not be allowed back in there again until they forget what we look like.”
Abel nodded quietly, his face softening, no longer looking angry. Cain grimaced, “You know I’m sorry, now, right?”
Abel nodded a third time, leaning against the wall across from the taller man. Cain thought quietly for a moment, before speaking up again. “So, am I still sleeping on the couch?”
He looked up at Abel hopefully. The blond rolled his eyes, half-smiled, and shook his head. Cain was pleased, and replied with a crooked half-smile of his own. Then Abel stood straight, no longer leaning on the wall, and walked the short distance between them. Unexpectedly, he surprised Cain and suddenly put his hands on the larger man’s shoulders, shoving him down onto the bed. Then the blond climbed atop him, straddling him, an odd smile on his pale, round face. Cain stared wide-eyed for a moment, shocked by Abel’s behavior, then grinned. He liked where this was going.
Abel fumbled with the button and zipper of Cain’s pants, while the black-haired man began loosening his tie and unbuttoning his shirt. When he noticed the smaller man was struggling still with unfastening the pants, having difficulty controlling his digits again, Cain shoved Abel’s hands out of the way and did it himself, yanking his pants off in the process. Soon, the blond’s sweatpants and underwear were long gone, as were Cain’s boxers and half of his shirt.
Cain propped himself up on one elbow, his other hand resting on Abel’s hip. He looked the smaller man over, a somewhat smug smile on his face. Abel flushed, causing his cheeks (face and butt) and ears to redden. It never ceased to turn on and amaze Cain how virgin Abel still seemed most of the time, even after they’ve been doing this for these last few years.