Resonating hunger

[500 Themes: 147]

The day had been bad enough already before it started to rain.

It didn't help that Barnaby was exhausted – absolutely and completely exhausted, worn to the bones and struggling not to show it as Kotetsu tossed a newly arrested culprit into the back of a police car. It didn't help that they hadn't had a chance for lunch – and he hadn't had a chance for breakfast.

Perhaps there was some merit in Kotetsu's chiding him about eating properly after all.

What also didn't help was the fact they were in a veritable middle of nowhere, insofar as Sternbild went; a dingy, dilapidated downtown, full of crumbling buildings and the gloominess of muddy puddles that began to pool even higher courtesy of the torrential downpour.

It would be some time before Saitou came along to rescue them.

"Let's get inside somewhere," Barnaby irritably muttered, and without waiting for a response, stalked his way into the nearest broken down building. Immediately, his hands lifted, prying off his helmet, and with a shake of his head, sent water droplets flying from his bangs that had managed to become soaked in the brief moments he had been without a visor.

The building wasn't much better, considering the broken down state it was in. Water crept through cracks in the half-collapsed ceiling, dripping languidly down the walls and Barnaby twitched whenever an errant droplet would fall onto his hair. He could only imagine what his curls looked like in that moment.

"Hey, Bunny – "

"What?" he snapped, the nickname – while normally sort of despicably pleasant to his ears – grating on his nerves in a million different ways in that moment.

Fortunately, Kotetsu seemed unfazed.

At some point, the older man had followed him and removed his own helmet – at some point, he had gotten closer. Even with the bulk of their suits, Barnaby could feel the Kotetsu's warmth, a radiating strength and heat that burned away the chill and damp of the ceaseless rain.

Barnaby swallowed – hard, dry, slow, especially when one of Kotetsu's broad hands reached out, cupped the back of his head, and drew him forward for a kiss.

He couldn't breathe.

What was he annoyed about again?

His world narrowed to Kotetsu, as simple as that. Warm, slightly chapped lips, the rough brush of the man's beard against his own jaw as Kotetsu all but nuzzled him between kisses – the soft scrape of teeth against a full lower lip, the drag of Kotetsu's tongue to follow before it wriggled his way into his mouth and left Barnaby groaning, low and soft, and reaching out to grasp for a handful of Kotetsu's hair in kind.

Kotetsu burned everything bad away.

Barnaby suddenly, acutely wished they were not here, in some condemned building, in their suits and waiting to be picked up. He wished they were home – his home, Kotetsu's home, wherever was easiest, so he could let Kotetsu kiss him until he was a puddle of melted limbs, all the way down to his bones. With every slide of Kotetsu's tongue, with every nip of his teeth and with every hot, gasping breath shared between them, Barnaby wanted that. He wanted to feel Kotetsu's hands everywhere else other than that slightly rough grab on his hair, the dig of his fingers against his scalp, the tug on blond curls that made him hiss just so, made his toes curl and made his pulse jump in anticipation.

"Please." It was an incoherent little murmur, breathed between kisses, and Kotetsu laughed – laughed at him, and Barnaby couldn't even care in that moment.

"You know we have to wait."

"What I know and what I want are different things."

Kotetsu just smiled, the infuriating old man, and Barnaby resigned himself to waiting.

For Kotetsu, he could do that – for only Kotetsu.