Lucio points out a narrow door down the hall, grabbing Azarias’s sleeve and dragging him toward it without pause. They gracelessly crowd into what turns out to be a cramped and dusty closet, full of cleaning supplies. Once the door is closed behind them, Lucio hastily wedges a mop handle up against it. It’s a questionable defense at best, but it seems to hold for now.
“Ugh. Servants, so messy. Here, I’ll make some room for us—”
Lucio starts shuffling about to try to free up some space, bumping into a precariously stacked pile of crates with his shoulder.
“Oops—”
Azarias’s warning is in vain as the crates begin to tip, but he hurriedly reaches around Lucio to brace an arm against the boxes, carefully pushing them back into place. When they’ve steadied, he lets out a sigh before pinning Lucio with a narrow glare.
“We’ll be discovered if we make too much noise,” he whispers sharply. Lucio at least has the decency to look embarrassed and apologetic as he casts his gaze downward to avoid Azarias’s scowl.
“Right…” he mumbles quietly.
Azarias’s face softens, closing his eyes as he lets out another quiet breath and lowers his head against Lucio’s shoulder. After a moment of steady breathing, he can practically hear the shit-eating grin pulling at the blond’s lips.
“This is cozy,” he remarks. You know, I don’t hear anybody out in the hall. So long as we’re stuck in here…”
Lucio’s lips brush the shell of his ear, warm breath ghosting over his skin. There’s a faint shiver that rolls down Azarias’s spine, but he’s not about to let this cocksure maniac get away with hitting on him in a stuffy old broom closet. Two can play at this game, after all. He slips his hands under Lucio’s jacket, his fingers brushing along his ribs. Lucio immediately tries to recoil with a badly disguised giggle that bubbles up in his throat.
“H-hey, that tickles!” He squirms and twists, but there’s no room inside the tiny closet.
“Hold still and it won’t tickle,” Azarias advises, lightly digging my fingers into the faint grooves in his skin. There’s a smirk tugging at his lips, but Lucio can’t see it at their current angle.
“Easy for you to say,” he pouts, but he stops squirming long enough for Azarias to land a featherlight kiss on his cheek.
He lets it linger, lips grazing along the line of his jaw until they press against the patch of skin just under his ear. Lucio shudders out a sigh, thoroughly distracted.
“So, you were saying?”
“Hm…? What?”
It’s clear he’s fully lost the plot of his earlier complaints. That’s for the better, Azarias thinks, though he does have to bury his face in Lucio’s shoulder to muffle his laughter. This man is so predictable...and distractible. He supposes that’s just part of his charm, infuriating though it can be.
“So long as we’re stuck in here…?” Azarias hints.
“Oh! Right.” It doesn’t take much to restore the original intent inside that one-track mind of Lucio’s. He grins devilishly. “As long as we’re stuck in here… Kinda warm, with two people crammed in this tiny little broom closet.” He loosens a few buttons on his jacket. “And...you know, it’d be a shame to get all sweaty in these very nice clothes, buuuut there’s an easy fix for that.”
And with Azarias still half in his arms, he starts trying to shrug out of his jacket, but with so little space, his elbow hits a broom handle with a soft but distinct clatter. Azarias hisses quietly through his teeth, the sound all but deafening in the relative quiet inside the closet.
“Careful!” he warns.
“Damn it! Stupid broom… Now, where was I?”
Lucio doesn’t let it discourage him in this slightest. He shifts his hips—a maddeningly compromising motion considering Azarias is pressed flush against him—and leans back, trying to make enough room for himself to wiggle out of his ornate jacket. At this point Azarias has resorted to clutching at the wall and shelves behind Lucio to ground himself, eyes closed in an effort to concentrate on anything but the way Lucio moves against him, all the while seemingly completely unaware of what he’s doing. The reason for that becomes painfully obvious when he stops shifting around entirely, and Azarias blinks open his eyes.
“Uhhh, Azarias?” Lucio questions uncertainly, drawing the sorcerer’s gaze to the way he’s nearly got himself wrapped up in his own jacket, hitched halfway up his chest with the unbuttoned labels all askew in his abandoned efforts. Azarias stares at him.
“Yes?” he offers helpfully, arching a brow. A bright flush creeps up Lucio’s neck and ears, eyes askance.
“A little...a little help here?” Azarias can’t help but think he almost sounds pitiful. Almost. He pretends to consider the request for a moment, fingers caressing Lucio’s jaw idly in thought. The Count shivers, eyes flicking back to Azarias’s with a glimmer of heat.
“...Say please,” Azarias says.
“Please!” Lucio acquiesces without hesitation. Azarias lifts his brow again.
“Well. You made that easy for me.”
Hand still cupped around his jaw, he can feel the way Lucio swallows, his whole body leaning unconsciously forward as if drawn toward Azarias by some sort of magnetism.
“Pretty please?” he says instead, gaze half-lidded this time and lips parted in a stifled urge to smirk, from the looks of it. Azarias chuckles, trailing his fingers down to his collar. Soft, smooth fabric slides against Lucio’s throat as he carefully loosens the next button on his jacket.
“Better?” he asks.
“Yeah, but you could keep going,” Lucio points out, a grin stretching across his face uninhibited now. “I certainly won’t stop you.”
A few buttons later, Azarias slips his hands under the loose fabric. Only a thin silken shirt separates his fingers from the flushed pale skin beneath. Lucio presses his lips together with a pleased hum, chest arching into the touch.
“Mmm… Yeah, this is much more comfortable—”
He’s cut off by the sound of footsteps echoing in the hallway outside, growing louder by the moment. Azarias hastily presses a firm hand over Lucio’s mouth, straining his ears.
“Shh! Someone’s—”
This time, it’s Lucio that causes the interruption. Azarias feels his breath quicken against his fingers. If anything, the threat of discovery only seems to excite him more. He catches a dark fingertip between his teeth and bites down lightly. Before Azarias has the chance to scold him, Lucio’s lips are on him, muffling his startled gasp. He moans softly into the kiss, and before Azarias knows it, Lucio is undoing his costume with surprising dexterity. Gloved hands slide over the bare skin of his back once he pulls down the zipper, touching every inch of the sorcerer that he can reach.
“Lucio—”
“Shh, right?”
Well, shit. Lucio’s got him there. Azarias tilts back his head with an airy sigh, all but inviting Lucio’s lips against his throat. He shudders at the sensation, fingers curling into the fabric of Lucio’s jacket around his arms. Somehow he manages to slide down the vest around Azarias’s chest, translucent sleeves pooling around his wrists and revealing the thin black corset underneath.
“Oh my. What do we have here?” Lucio muses, plucking at the laces holding the thing together. “How did you manage to slip this on while we were changing?”
“Maybe if you hadn’t been so invested in your cape, you might have noticed,” Azarias retorts. Lucio breathes a laugh against his collarbone, finally peeling the corset from his torso.
“Maybe so,” he concedes, and that’s the last of that.
The footsteps outside have long since faded away, but the two of them are none the wiser to anything beyond this steamy supply closet that’s growing hotter by the second. Lucio bends Azarias backward at an angle to start trailing kisses down his chest, none too shy about nipping playfully at his nipples. The sorcerer has to bite his lip to choke back a startled noise. The position leaves much to be desired, but he can’t deny the inherent eroticism of contorting themselves around each other in such a small space just for the pleasure of touching one another.
And apparently no more than that. Distant yelling draws them both back to attention, heads lifting to stare silently into each other’s eyes for several breathless beats before the sound fades away again. They relax simultaneously, but it’s clear this little dalliance of theirs can’t continue. Lucio regretfully pulls away, but he still finds it in himself to smirk as he begins fitting Azarias’s corset back into place.
“I know what you’re gonna say,” he begins as if reading the sorcerer’s mind. “‘We could’ve been caught’, but we weren’t, and that, dear Azarias, is half the fun~”
Azarias stifles a chuckle. Reluctantly, he starts rebuttoning Lucio’s jacket.
“Still, we shouldn’t linger here forever. And we can’t wander around with our costumes half-open,” he says pointedly. Lucio feigns a pout.
“Aww. That’s a shame.”
It takes a few moments to put their clothes back in order, and Azarias is pretty sure a few buttons are missing.
“Alright. Let’s get going.”
“I…” Lucio hesitates. Azarias glances at him curiously. “...To be honest, I don’t really wanna leave.” He blinks.
“What?”
“Don’t get me wrong, Azarias. I know I can’t stay in the Palace. I doubt Valdemar has anything good up their sleeve.”
He pulls off his mask, turning it over and over in his hands as he looks down at it.
“But the Masquerade was my birthday party, you know? Even when I was all ghosty...I just wanted another one, more than anything else. I love everything about the Masquerade! The people, the crowds, the attention...but now I have to run from my own party? This is the second worst birthday ever.”
Azarias presses his lips together, offering Lucio a soft smile as he lifts a hand to cup his cheek, thumb brushing just under his eye as if to wipe away the sad look on his face.
“We can party later, to celebrate your dramatic and harrowing escape,” he says. That brings a bit of light back to Lucio’s eyes, his expression brightening considerably.
“That...that’s a great idea! Why didn’t I think of that? You’re the best, Azarias ~” he coos, dipping forward to plant a kiss on the other’s cheek.
Azarias chuckles softly in spite of their situation and reaches for Lucio’s mask to gently fit it back into place, smoothing his hair aside.
“I know.”