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The evening had been quiet. It had been still. It had been one of peacefulness perfect for sorting through his thoughts. Maxim had been doing just that, sunk deep in his armchair before the burning low fire, Veerle busy working through the evidence for yet another case in the next room. What had been a warm and foggy evening casting its faint luminescence through the window panes had turned to shadow. The street was dark and quiet below, the stars stolen by smog and the streetlamps flickering feebly through the dense nighttime mist. Maxim hadn’t noticed until Veerle had entered to point it out. Both the shift in the heavens and also the fact that he’d neglected to move once during it. And, as per usual, the detective had swiftly surmised why.
Veerle liked to call it moping, brooding, or a cheap imitation of Byronic angst if he was feeling particularly wordy. Maxim preferred the term introspecting. It was a vital part of managing his thoughts, choosing what to keep, and rooting out all the emotions and memories that would be better boxed away. His friend didn’t exactly share the sentiment.
Maxim huffed in annoyance, batting away Veerle’s hand as he presented his cigarette to him. “Truly Veerle, I am fine, I have no need for such vices.”
“Mm yes, fine, which is why you’ve been sitting here in silence for over an hour. Trust me, it helps sharpen your thoughts, or empty your mind of them, depending on the day. At least it does for me.” Veerle waved it around, smoke trailing in silken sheets after his hand, its faint glow gilding his thin fingers. A bright point in the dim drawing room, one his gaze haplessly followed. “Having one smoke won’t kill you, Maxim.”
“I have no wish to start the habit—”
His voice died with a choked cough as Veerle, seemingly ignoring him, stepped up to the armchair he was reclined in, and with his free hand caught his chin. A strangled questioning sound slipped from his lips as his head was tilted up, throat bared and eyes directed heavenward to his friend. He blinked at him, the red blooming on his cheeks thankfully invisible in the dark. Veerle raised his cigarette to his lips, a low coal red in its glow, their soft curve gilt with firelight. The rolled paper was blindingly stark where it hung in their gallows embrace. Maxim's flat expression twitched.
He hadn’t known it was possible to be jealous of an object. That he could envy being burned and breathed.
“What are you doing?” he asked, as Veerle sank beneath his cloud of smoke, eyes fluttering and hazy as he half settled on Maxim’s knee.
Veerle’s thumb brushed rough over his chin, the uncut nail scraping the line of his lower lip. Hot and harsh despite its ghostly pressure. The cigarette fell from his lips, its smouldering carcass limp between his fingers. Rather than answer, he leaned forward. His weight shifted over his thigh, pressing in on his hip, an arm snaking around his shoulders and leaving a trail of cigarette ash over his dress shirt. His chin was pressed upward once more, the thumb below his lips guiding them to part. If he wasn't so tired, so distracted, so desperate for a break from his mind, he may have pushed Veerle back. Or maybe he wouldn’t have. Maybe he was making excuses for himself.
“Breath in for me,” he whispered, smoke slipping out with his words, coiling across his tongue as he spoke, staining the air with an acridity that wasn’t him, but was maybe the closest thing Maxim would ever taste to it.
Obediently, he breathed in, and Veerle breathed out. His eyes closed so as not to see the man before him, and to accentuate the touch of air and ash that caressed the corner of his mouth. The phantom heat of his friend so close. Close enough to let his nose gently bump his own, close enough that Maxim could pretend it wasn’t just Veerle’s breath on his lips. That it wasn’t just smoke curling along his tongue. He suppressed a cough as it singed his throat, travelling like grit through his lungs, bitterness staining his sense of taste. But warm. Warm from fire. From Veerle. Second hand and sweeter for it.
Maxim leaned forward no more than a fraction of a centimetre. It was all he needed to feel the faintest brush of Veerle’s lips, but he dared not go further.
He breathed out, and in, and let the smoke stain his lungs and the shadow of a smile he could almost but not quite feel across his friend’s lips settle. With a gradual sluggishness, like crawling from a soft cradle in the early hours, he cracked open his eyes. With a languid desperation like a lover reaching for their partner to keep them from leaving, he slid his hand beneath Veerle’s coat. His dress shirt was warm beneath his fingers, the dip of his spine a perfect hollow for his thumb to lay, the curve of his back shaped neatly to that of his splayed fingers. Smoke coiled grey and white and shimmering in the faint light, like the spray of waves against a cliff or veils of misty rain, but born of burning. It eddied with their breaths, its haze obscuring the expression on Veerle’s face.
Maxim could only hope it hid the one he wore as well.
“See? That wasn’t so bad. Still alive.” He grinned, wide enough to be visible, teeth bloodied by the red light of his dying cigarette.
His hand slipped from Maxim's chin, nails light but cutting as they slid down his throat, hand hot enough to burn a hole in his shirt and scar his skin where it then pressed to his chest. Without conscious choice he tightened his hold in turn, his free hand touching light over Veerle's knee, sliding up to settle over his leg. The fabric of his slacks was rough to touch, the dip of his flesh far softer as he pressed his fingers into it. Smoke caught in Veerle’s lashes as his eyelids fluttered, the stinging air making their gold shine.
Maxim shrugged, and spoke with a voice made more of grit than intelligible sound. “I still don’t see the appeal.”
“Oh, I don’t believe that for a second,” Veerle whispered, brow raised as he looked Maxim in the eyes, the smoke offering him no shield nor mercy. “Look at you, relaxing already.”
Relaxed he must have been, for his tongue to be so loose and thoughts so risqué. He supposed he could blame the beating of his heart and rush of his blood, so burning and brazen, for that.
“It isn’t the smoke I find appealing… It never has been.”
Veerle tilted his head, the earthen and amber brown of his eyes clear through the fading haze. A frown settled on his face, and he withdrew the arm around Maxim’s shoulder to raise his cigarette to his lips. Barely there, flickering feeble and desperate in his oblivious hold. Maxim wanted to push it away, and his chest tightened with the knowledge that it wasn’t for the sake of his health. Embarrassment or want, maybe both, twisted in his gut. Foolish was his longing. Foolish was the want to be used. To be the addiction and salvation. The one burning in his hold and choking him of air.
He reminded himself of the insects pinned to the walls of his study. In their safe glass cases, eyes empty but no doubt dreaming of light even after death. Ready to throw themself into the fire they so craved no matter the personal cost. Perhaps it was why he was so fond of them. Perhaps he hadn’t learned his lesson, and he’d traded the fire of war for another more subtle but no less consuming. Nothing but a mindless moth flitting from one martyr’s pyre to another.
“I know… I just don’t get what is,” Veerle sighed, looking away into the shadows, slumping easily into Maxim’s chest as he gently tugged him in.
His head thunked against his shoulder, hair falling dark and liquid over the sharp cut of his cheekbones, shot through with wisps of the same smoke grey in the air. Maxim sighed, nearly rolling his eyes at his friend, who had a mind that burned so brilliantly that he too often blinded himself. He slid the crumbling cigarette from his grasp, Veerle not fighting him, and cast it aside. His fingers, now empty, knotted weakly into his shirt. Maxim made no move to stop him, instead hitching his legs up to properly sit on his lap, trying not to think about trailing his hand further up his thigh and showing Veerle a different way to empty his mind.
“Don’t let it worry you then,” he said, voice hoarse for reasons beyond the smoke as he failed in his endeavour, Veerle’s breath against his neck and weight atop him sending a simmering sensation through his skin and into the molten thrum of his veins. He gritted his teeth, and did his best to shift them both to a less damning position. “It has no worth or relevance.”
Veerle huffed, lips twitching against Maxim’s collar as he smiled. Small and somewhat involuntary if its swift smothering was to go by. “Ah, my friend, that is where you are mistaken. It’s always worth knowing you better. You just like to make it difficult.”
“I thought you liked a challenge?” Though the detective couldn’t see it, Maxim knew he'd be able to hear the raised brow in his tone.
He chuckled, coughing with the quiet sound, and nuzzled even closer. Maxim swallowed, heat spreading up his neck and meeting with that which already stained his cheeks.
“I do,” Veerle whispered, melting ever further into Maxim’s hold, “I can never seem to resist them.”