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The first time HJ undoes the buttons on his shirt in LaVonte’s line of sight, LaVonte’s heart is still beating. It stutters, and LaVonte takes a deep breath. He chokes on the smoke that weighs on the air, the whole room heavy with the smell of tobacco and whatever HJ’s cigars have been packed with.
It is a blessing they are shrouded in smoke, so LaVonte can barely make out the milk-white skin of HJ’s chest.
HJ briefly lifts his attention from the intern sitting on his haunches next to him to slap LaVonte hard across the back, and LaVonte almost falls from the couch.
“Jesus, man,” he mutters, because it gives him an excuse to catch his breath.
HJ cackles and slaps him again, but this time LaVonte braces himself. HJ turns and lifts his scepter, drawing a slow curve in the air. The gem at the end comes to rest on the intern’s temple as the boy trembles and clamps his eyes shut, fighting back tears.
HJ grins and winks at LaVonte before feinting a blow. The intern whimpers as the scepter hits the crystal table instead, hard, and shards of glass shower over him.
A stray shard nicks the skin on LaVonte’s chin, and he wipes the blood away with his handkerchief.
HJ yells at the intern to get out, and the boy runs for his life, stumbling and slipping on the broken glass. LaVonte doesn’t remember what the fool has done wrong, but he knows he will never see him again. He cannot be bothered to care.
As he turns his gaze to HJ, reaching in his pocket for some coke to kickstart the business talk, he finds he is already looking at him.
His eyes are dark, and LaVonte already knows him well enough to read the hunger in his gaze. It’s the same grin HJ wears every time he is about to close a deal that will legally rob someone blind, or right before a business rival disappears in the night. LaVonte is too arrogant to worry for himself as much as he should.
He can see the hint of muscles flexing on HJ’s chest where the shirt still lies half-open, and it makes his stomach churn, because why is he gawking at his business-partner-to-be like a queer?
HJ takes the handkerchief from his hand and dabs at LaVonte’s chin. His eyes fill with a strange shine that he refuses to acknowledge, and LaVonte's hands twitch, and he thinks foolishly of undoing just another button. Then HJ licks the handkerchief and shoves it in his own shirt, and LaVonte thinks it’s too open, he is definitely going to lose it, and it’s real fucking silk, what the hell, and has he actually just licked his blood?
He wills his hands toward HJ’s shoulders and shoves him back on the couch.
“What the fuck?”
HJ laughs, takes a drag from his cigar, actually undoes another damn button. The fabric shifts as he snickers, and what the hell is he wearing over his nipp—
LaVonte shakes his head with a groan as he gets up and walks away, glass shattering under his soles.
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“I swear, if you don’t button up that shirt, I’ll kill you, man. Not in the meeting room, come on.”
He should have expected HJ to dramatically remove the garment and let it fall to the floor.
He is so going to kill him, as soon as he can bear to look him in the eye again.
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LaVonte dies in his lap. HJ removes his shirt, and there must be a reason to do so as LaVonte is about to perish, because he swears to God he will come back and fucking murder him. His forehead rests against HJ's chest, and he feels his hand tilting his chin up, and he is still dying.
He thinks he hears HJ say he doesn’t want to get his button-up dirty, which is absolute bullshit, because HJ has definitely punched him in the face with that same shirt on, and must these really be the last words he hears before his lights go out?
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LaVonte is born again in his lap, lips locked on the skin of his wrist, the most intoxicating hunger he has ever felt washing over him. Maybe he feels HJ’s hand brush his curls out of his face as blood drips from his chin. He makes a point to smear some on HJ’s suit trousers.
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LaVonte’s heart hasn’t beaten in quite some time, and he tells himself he has gotten used to HJ’s strange relationship with physicality. They punch each other quite often, and LaVonte has gotten a few mouthfuls of the jewelled end of that ridiculous scepter.
He overlooks the city from the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, San Francisco alight with all those little electric lights, the silhouette of the bridge towering over the city.
He hears HJ’s steps behind him. Soon the curtains will drop, and LaVonte will have to stop thinking about the risks of the new business acquisition and drag himself to the coffin.
“We are going to kill them all,” HJ says, putting a hand on his shoulder. LaVonte pretends to shake it off, eyes fixed on the water rustling in the distance, but gives up soon. He grins, patting HJ’s hand with his own, and lets HJ guide him to their coffins.
Their caskets have been positioned so close to each other that the two men could extend their arms and touch each other while lying there.
Luckily, they are dead during the day, so LaVonte doesn’t have to think about it.
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“What the fuck are you doing here?”
HJ steps off the scooter, and his clothes are crumpled, and LaVonte doesn’t want to know why.
LaVonte’s elbows rest on the railing, and it’s late enough that the cars rushing by are rare. He looks at the water so he doesn’t have to look at HJ approaching, doesn’t have to tell him that he came here because he wasn’t home when he got back, and he knew HJ would always find him here.
He wants to ask him where he was, but it would mean something, and LaVonte doesn’t want it to mean anything.
So he grabs his jacket and pins him to the railing, and HJ headbutts him, and his nose cracks with a beautiful noise, and when they are done, they ride the scooter together, and LaVonte can pretend that clutching him doesn’t make him feel anything.
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There’s no need for them to be sitting so close to each other, and it makes LaVonte nervous. He is always nervous lately, because there is little to keep his mind busy with. HJ is trying to keep him sated, business proposal after business proposal, but LaVonte feels they are lacking direction. The millennium has changed, and they were supposed to be drinking this whole city dry at this point. Instead, they are fumbling in the dark with technology that LaVonte would rather not be bothered with. He preferred simpler times, with less surveillance and easier ways to murder rivals and blackmail associates.
For some reason, HJ has decided that he needs to keep LaVonte’s cheeks in his hands as he pitches his new idea, and the worst part is that it is helping him feel grounded.
He sees HJ’s hungry eyes, his unnaturally pale skin, his clavicles, because of course he is shirtless at this point of the night, while LaVonte’s tie is still perfectly tied. HJ tried to grab it a couple of times to get him to listen, and of course he was punched for that. It definitely didn’t make LaVonte feel a strange itch in his mind, nor make him so agitated he walked from their office-house to the bridge and back.
Sometimes, he hates how HJ is comfortable with touching him or being almost naked around him, as if it didn’t make HJ feel anything. It is surely not fair, because it makes LaVonte feel in a lot of ways he doesn’t understand and doesn’t like.
The fact that he is dead makes it alarmingly worse, because he cannot even blame it on the weakness of his body.
He can still enjoy a nice fuck in the privacy of a millionaire’s club with whoever is provided as much as the next man, but it’s mostly mental at this point. His dead body makes it feel a little more like a chore sometimes.
Still, he accepts the invitations of his fellow businessmen. It’s only a coincidence that he only accepts when HJ is also there—it’s inevitable, they are joined at the hip by now—and can look at his ass in the corner of his eye without anybody suspecting he is some kind of pervert.
He is dragged away from his thoughts by HJ sliding into his lap, still holding his face, and it makes LaVonte so angry, because he already knows that HJ will never close the distance.
It’s irrational, it’s insane, because LaVonte doesn’t want HJ like that. He is a man, for God’s sake. And even if LaVonte were queer, which he is not, HJ isn’t either. He would never want him, which is good, right?
His hands shake, and he has to pin them between the couch and his own back so he can’t do anything mad like place them on HJ’s hips. He cannot not look at him, and whatever crazy project he is pitching, LaVonte will need to hear again, and God, he remembers sinking his teeth into HJ's wrist all that time ago, and licking it clean on instinct, and it had felt like he had been shocked with electricity, and everything was in balance, but it can never happen again.
And maybe that’s the thought that makes him accept when HJ lies down and prepares a messy line of coke on his own chest, and it must be a particularly good selection of drugs because LaVonte feels alive again.
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They are hiding away in Estelle’s mansion to talk business. LaVonte tries to ignore the color in HJ’s cheeks, the slight warmth in his skin. LaVonte is still sour over the whole deal with Patty and his stupid dog, arms crossed and something dangerously similar to a pout. He cannot believe some college boy has had the nerve to turn him down. It drives him insane. He should eat both Patty and the dog for dinner for the disrespect.
Nobody turns him down.
From the outside come noises like the whole world is ending. He can make out the sound of a horse howling and Mitch growling and something breaking and a scream and—
He sees HJ cross his hands and lower them, and something in his brain snaps. Hell no.
He shakes his head with his most amenable smile, which is a tragedy in itself, because the HJ he knows would have never accepted his condescension.
“Not tonight, man,” he says, and HJ wraps a scarf around his neck, which is good because LaVonte was actually contemplating strangling him.
HJ steps closer, but LaVonte can see there is no heart in it. Who is this HJ who covers up when he complains and buys basil plants and doesn’t contradict people’s wild speculations on their partnership after decades of nights spent in each other’s arms, itching for more, but never daring because they were not gay?
It cannot be the same HJ from that night in San Francisco, who had smacked his hand and cackled the one time LaVonte had tried to grab him.
Maybe he must amend his previous statement.
Maybe nobody turns him down, but HJ.