As if he was trying to pretend that they didn’t mean anything to either of them.
“Glad to hear you still think I’m going to die,” added Elliot, which cleared up a lot.
“I won’t lie, it’s a possibility,” conceded Anthony. “But I’m trying not to think about it too hard.”
“Uh-huh,” muttered Elliot.
“I do want your last kiss to be a good one,” Anthony added.
“Oh. That makes it loads better,” said Elliot.
“So, was it?”
Elliot paused. “Was what?”
“The kiss. Good. For you.”
Elliot started typing again—if hitting the keypad with every stroke counted as typing. “Oh, sure. It was great. Best kiss ever.”
Anthony frowned. “If you didn’t like it—”
Elliot’s head banged against the panel; it made a beeping protest. “I don’t like when you kiss me because you think the moment calls for it.”
“The moment did call for it,” said Anthony. “The Kraken didn’t kill us, that was worthy of a kiss. You had already done the work to neutralize the serums—I think a kiss is a very suitable reward for your foresight.”
Elliot snorted a laugh. “You seriously think your kisses are so good they’re a reward? Your ego is so fucking over-inflated, you can see it from space. It rivals the Great Wall of China! It could stop up the Suez Canal! There are fucking Tumblr memes about your ego. Your ego is so big that the very implication that I’m being sarcastic when I say your kiss was the best kiss ever is making you completely crazy.”
Anthony’s jaw hurt, he clenched it so tightly. “So it wasn’t the best kiss.”
Elliot banged his head against the glass doors of the fridge twice before he glared at Anthony again. “Does it even matter? It’s painfully obvious that the only reason you kissed me is because you think I’m going to die before this mission is up! I don’t want pity kisses. Even if they’re from you. If that’s the only reason you’re kissing me—don’t bother.”
Anthony nodded thoughtfully. “Then why did you kiss back?”
Elliot gaped. “I didn’t kiss back!”
“You did for the first kiss.”
“That’s... completely beside the point.” Elliot turned back to the panel. “I have to finish neutralizing these serums.”
Anthony stepped up beside him, close enough to feel Elliot’s shudder. “You wanted that kiss,” he said, pitching his voice low. To his surprise, Elliot shuddered again. “I think you wanted the second one, too, until you started to think about it. You should stop it.”
“Kissing you?” said Elliot, not looking up at him. Not typing, either, Anthony noted.
Honestly, Elliot was far too intelligent to be this wrong about something.
“Thinking.” Anthony cupped Elliot’s chin and turned his head so Elliot was looking at him again. “Kissing you right now serves no function. There’s no reason to remain quiet. There’s no celebration at hand. We aren’t in immediate mortal danger.”
Elliot licked his lips. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you should know. There is absolutely no purpose to kissing you. So if you must think about something, perhaps think about why I might be doing it anyway.”
Their third kiss was wet and sloppy—but there was no doubt in Anthony’s mind that Elliot wanted it as much as he did. Their teeth scratched together and Anthony almost knocked off Elliot’s glasses. When they stumbled, Elliot let out a little cry of pain, probably because Anthony had rammed him into one of the door handles of the cooling unit.
Which was fine, because Elliot accidentally stepped on Anthony’s foot in response, which was definitely going to leave a mark on his shoes. Hopefully it would buff out, but in the meantime, it’d be an annoying footnote to his appearance upon his escape.
Our escape, he told himself firmly, even as he re-centered his kiss over Elliot’s mouth and not his chin, and tried to salvage the kiss into something worthy of the moment.
Elliot broke away. “Quit thinking, asshole.”
“I’m not the one thinking,” protested Anthony.
“Yes, you are, I can tell. Just... kiss me.”
“It has to be good.”
Elliot looked at him. “Why?”
“Because...” Anthony was at a loss. “Because if it’s the last kiss, I want to remember it as being perfect.”
Elliot pulled himself up so that his face was even with Anthony’s. “You asshole. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”
“Yes, it does,” muttered Anthony, straining against Elliot’s hold.
“No, it—” started Elliot, before he sighed an extremely exasperated sigh. As if Anthony was the one aggravating him. “You’re not the only one who wants to remember this kiss, okay?”
Elliot’s mouth landed on Anthony’s lips—not centered, but not far off. It was still sloppy, and still wet; his tongue scraped along Anthony’s teeth and his fingers were pulling Anthony’s collar so that it dug into his neck.
But Elliot’s mouth was warm and wicked and he pushed Anthony against the glass doors, his thigh pressed up against Anthony’s thickening cock.
It was a terrible, fantastic, completely unskilled sort of kiss. Anthony fell into it, anyway.
Elliot was breathing hard when he pulled away again. His eyes were a little unfocused, too. “So. Crappy kiss?”
“The crappiest,” said Anthony, feeling unfocused himself.
“That’s what I thought. So, here’s the plan. I’m going to finish neutralizing these serums, and you’re going to download every file you can find on their system. We’re going to get our butts to the hangar and find the plane heading for Bulgaria. And we’re going to spend the entire flight working on our kissing and no one dies. Got it?”
“Got it,” said Anthony, because as plans went, it was as good as any. At least, it aligned with Anthony’s priorities.
Also, because an assertive Elliot was really, really hot.
“Good.” Elliot leaned against Anthony one more time for one more brief, too-hard kiss, before pushing Anthony away. “Make it snappy.”
“Right.” Anthony’s knees, surprisingly, continued to keep him upright, much to Anthony’s surprise. He pulled his shirt sleeves back down again, wondering why Elliot smirked, and set to work. “The flight is scheduled to leave in twenty-five minutes. Can you be done in fifteen?”
“Easily. Even if they’re not completely neutralized, they probably won’t be viable. That’s something.”
Anthony nodded, swiping to add as many files to the download as he could. Financial reports, ordering forms, lists of birthdays of essential employees. Things he would have skimmed before.
But now... Who knows what’s useful? Elliot can determine that later.
His finger slipped, opening a file. Anthony cursed, knowing he was wasting precious seconds opening...
A letter?
It had the official O’Leary letterhead, dated about six months previously. There were the typical opening salvos, salutations, and so on that Anthony knew were references to previous communications.