There was a vague note of unease in the back of Cash's brain, a high-strung adrenaline kick of feeling that projected danger, and he was trying to smother it out with physical touch. With Gallivan's hand curled around his side and the physical response Cash's body was having to him, it was easy to convince himself that the adrenaline was pleasurable, that the danger was appealing, that the offbeat kickdrum rhythm of his heart was just because of the sponsor.

And okay, he wanted Gallivan to make that sound again. Getting Gallivan to make that sound again seemed suddenly the most important thing, here — Cash could sink himself into it and forget everything else that was going on in his head. He traced his hand over Gallivan's side, under his jacket, gentle, and pressed another kiss to the base of the sponsor's jaw.

Don't think about it, this was all fine if he lost himself in it, and Gallivan was making it spectacularly easy for Cash to do just that.

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MJ made this!

Theo was more prepared for that this time, but there was still a little hum of pleasure when he did it again, and enough of a thrill to even Lestrange’s lightest touches that he could brush past every facet of this that was a bad idea until he had blocked the thought out entirely.

He took a moment to shrug off his jacket, distractedly - this less in suggestion and more because it was already fairly rumpled, and because Theo was maybe a little too warm under the collar now to need anything else to add to it. Once he’d managed that, one of his hands went back to the seeker’s shoulder, around his neck, and then moved upwards to the back of his head, his fingers drifting tentatively into Lestrange’s hair as he leant in to find his mouth again.

Theo was not sure how long they had been on the floor like this by the time a half-coherent thought flitted through his head again, though eventually he did - reluctantly - have to shift away to catch his breath, putting some space between them. Leaning back against the chair he’d been sitting on earlier, Theo waited for his pulse to slow. 

The warmth of it had been nice while it lingered - only now that they weren’t touching and his hands were merely pressed flat against the floor of the box, he was already keenly aware of the loss of it. Exchanging that for his usual self again and all the dissatisfaction rattling in him seemed a poor trade. Nevertheless, Theo turned his face outwards to the stadium for a moment: the all-engulfing dark empty silence of the place was almost so familiar it was comforting. Except there was still a stubborn flicker of nervousness lodged somewhere in his chest that ought to have dissipated by now - but it hadn’t, and although he could think of nothing to say, there was a glimmer of it in the glance he finally chanced towards Lestrange.

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The following 1 user Likes Theodore Gallivan's post:1 user Likes Theodore Gallivan's post
   Cassius Lestrange

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With Gallivan's mouth on his Cash was able to suppress the vague fluttering of panic in his chest. Instead he relied on impulse and touch and the conviction that this felt good, a conviction that was backed up by the feeling of Gallivan's fingers in his hair and by a tightness in his trousers. There was another flutter of something — a sudden absence, maybe — when Gallivan pulled away.

Cash leaned back against his own chair on the spectator box floor, catching his breath. He reached into his pocket to thumb at the crown of his pocketwatch, grounding himself in the gesture. He was here, he was safe, Lucius was not coming and — he liked kissing his employer, which was definitely bad, but.

"Was that what you wanted?" Cash asked after a minute, glancing at Gallivan. It was what Cash had wanted, he thought — the original impulse to kiss Gallivan had been born mostly out of a desire to test the tension hanging in the air between them, but if he'd actually thought about it more certainly this would have been the ideal outcome. He could feel heat rising in his face again and suspected there might be a pink flush to his cheeks — so he was being shy, which was unlike him.

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MJ made this!

“Uh, yeah, I guess,” he said in his best attempt at a casual tone, making a noise of agreement in his throat to avoid having to express it more eloquently. “That was... thanks.” Good. Nice. A successful experiment. A little more than he’d been expecting of it. Thank Merlin Theo wasn’t the only one who looked a little flushed now.

Still, if he had imagined this would just relieve the tension and somehow... get it out of his system, he had not thought this through at all, because the desire to be kissing him was there in the pit of his stomach as sure as before. And now he could identify it for what it was, which probably wouldn’t help. I wouldn’t mind doing it again sometime, Theo almost wanted to say, but that was - clearly too much, if Lestrange had only been humouring him. He scratched absently at his neck instead.

Shit. Maybe this, uh, conversation, had served to make more of a mess of things than it had cleared up. And if it got out, not only could he kiss goodbye to the Cannons, but it could almost certainly be blown up to seem far worse than it was - and however it looked in a public light, it would likely ruin Cee and Veronica and Natty and Selene socially and financially by mere association, which would also render his father’s whole nobly-sparing-them-from-scandal-and-anguish scheme pretty much pointless. He didn’t want any of that, but...

“But, um -” Theodore added, twisting the very real worry into something light and almost joking, as if loosened shoulders and a tongue-in-cheek grin alone could diminish all the danger, “maybe don’t tell anyone that.” (An easy upside, here, with how it had started: he couldn’t imagine that Lestrange would.)

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A laugh bubbled out of Cash's chest unbidden, a little hollow. "No," he said, "Definitely not." He wouldn't be telling anyone about this — maybe Angie, but she didn't count — because it would certainly ruin them both, mutually assured destruction and all that. There was other trouble here, too — in terms of his self-imposed rules, Cash was not supposed to be kissing anyone he actually got along with. It was too dangerous for the other party, too much to explain why it was dangerous, and too dangerous for Cash, besides — his head was unpleasant to poke around in by virtue of being structurally unsound, but that didn't mean Tiberius couldn't drag it out of him if he really wanted to.

But he was friends with Theodore Gallivan and they had just spent a very long time kissing, rules aside, and now he had to deal with that.

"It was good for me too," Cash said, as if that had not been made abundantly clear when they were actually in the thick of it, "For what it's worth." Or — he was hoping it had been good for Gallivan. Technically he'd just said that it was alright, and that it had been what he wanted, not that it had been good. For all Cash knew he'd just reasserted Gallivan's heterosexuality, and the little noises he'd made had simply been a physical reaction.

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MJ made this!

For all the assurances and the having a fantastic time and everything they had just done, there had still been a voice in Theo’s head warning him that Lestrange hadn’t actually been serious. So it took him reaffirming it now, this time without prompting, for it to actually sink in. “Oh, thank Christ,” Theo exclaimed, utterly artlessly, “- good, I’m glad, me too.” And if the relief was also embarrassingly visible in the way his shoulders had relaxed, presumably the sentiment I’m new at this or I have no idea what this means or I don’t know where we go from here was clear in it too, and enough excuse for that bout of awkwardness and all his second-guessing.

But, see, Lestrange had gone awkward and shy too, and - whether or not he had done this before or even did this all the time - being shy was weird for him. The seeker didn’t care if he loitered at the stadium after-hours or pulled out cigarettes in the spectator boxes or let himself into the locked sponsor’s office, so. What was his excuse now?

Theodore’s grin broadened. Okay, this could be - okay. Because if neither of them had any plans to tell anyone, there was no reason it would blow up on them. And if they had both enjoyed it, and they already saw each other regularly anyway... well, there was nothing to stop them from doing it again. Was there?

He eyed Lestrange for a moment, with a sudden disconcerting spark of confidence. Deciding to lean into it (and the feeling in his chest, and the unforeseen thrill he had found in touching him today), Theo swallowed and shifted his leg from where he sat, just far enough across to nudge the seeker with his knee - lightly, playfully, to make sure he was still looking this way. “So... maybe I’ll meet you after your next practice, and we can...?” he suggested, trailing off hopefully.

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The following 2 users Like Theodore Gallivan's post:2 users Like Theodore Gallivan's post
   Cassius Lestrange, Reuben Crouch

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Despite himself, and despite his trepidations, Cash couldn't help but grin at Gallivan's Oh, thank Christ. It would have been easier to talk himself into extricating him from this if Gallivan wasn't so cute, with his muggle turns of phrase and his serious meeting jacket and the way he'd asked Cash to kiss him again.

He smiled again at the nudge to his knee. And so when Gallivan asked about the next practice, about doing this again, Cash said, "Yeah, sure." His heartbeat sped up at the words, maybe from anticipation and maybe from that same sense of danger — this wasn't something he should be doing, because Angie was right, and because sooner or later he was just going to be apathetic again.

"I'd like that," he added, a little wry. If he ignored it, the undercurrent of anxiety, of a panic attack that could come later — maybe it would just never happen.

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The following 2 users Like Cassius Lestrange's post:2 users Like Cassius Lestrange's post
   Reuben Crouch, Theodore Gallivan

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MJ made this!

Right, but if Lestrange turned him down now Theo was very prepared to get up immediately and get the hell out of here and possibly - if he could get away with it - never interact with the Cannons’ new captain ever again.

So it was lucky, bloody lucky, he didn’t. “Alright,” he agreed instead. “Great.” He had hoped shutting his mouth after that would maybe make him seem more nonchalant about it - but all his attempts to battle the stupid little smile that kept creeping onto his face were clearly failing. He bit his lip and ducked his face to hide it, pretending to be busy fixing the collar of his shirt again. It was nothing, just the novelty of it to blame - the relief of the feeling, or the refreshingly light sensation in him now amidst the stormclouds that seemed to have settled everywhere else in him. (Though he would have to come up with a new excuse for next time, if he was justifying this reaction like that. Next time...) Christ, and he couldn’t start thinking about doing this with Lestrange again if he hadn’t even stopped feeling his hand lingering at the small of his back yet, or the way his mouth had pressed under his jaw.

Actually, he shouldn’t be thinking about this at all: he should be getting ready to go. Right. Meeting ran late, he’d tell Veronica if she asked. Reluctantly - far too slowly, like his brain was foggy, like he could sit here all night without a care and just bask in the warm feeling of this, leaning against the chair - Theo straightened up where he was sitting and glanced down at himself again, critically, as if someone would see right through him just from looking, catch him in the lie from the dishevelment or his reddened cheeks. He reached for his jacket and pulled himself to his feet, and shot Lestrange a quick grin as he stuck out a hand to pull him up too.

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The following 1 user Likes Theodore Gallivan's post:1 user Likes Theodore Gallivan's post
   Cassius Lestrange

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