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RP here baybee

Seb watches him frantically apologizing and shakes his head, placing a hand on Dev's shoulder.

"It's okay. You didn't do anything wrong. You've been nothing but nice to me. I'm the one who's... Weird." He laughs weakly. He realizes the drug is probably the reason he can feel his heart pounding in his ears and it's hard to catch his breath, but he doesn't say that, because he doesn't want Devero to feel any worse about offering it to him.

He sighs and lies down on the ground, feet still dangling off the edge, looking up at the stars. He'd never seen stars until he was twelve, when he became a spy, and he still finds them amazing. Looking at them makes him feel immediately calmer, like a reminder there's a much bigger world out there for him.

Lying down seems like an excellent idea, and as soon as he sees Seb do it, Devero joins him. He shifts a little as he flops back, so that he lands nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with the other man.

"You're not weird," he says after they've looked at the stars for a few quiet moments. "I'm the one who's the wiggie weirdo, remember?"

Seb laughs a little, looks at Dev.

"You seem fine to me."

He looks back up at the sky, letting silence stretch out for a while.

"Do you ever feel like... Everyone else knows how to be a real person, and you're just pretending to be one... And hoping they don't notice that you have no idea how to do it?"

Probably not. Devero seems like a natural. But the question is half-rhetorical anyway.

This time when Devero laughs, it's a softer, more contained sound. Still overloud, comparatively speaking, but not nearly as loud as his booming laughter from before. "Any time I walk into somewhere crowded and busy," he admits wryly. "Especially if it's somewhere I haven't been before."

Sebastian looks at him again, for longer this time, considering this. His adaptive tech must have a difficult time picking up on just once voice in a crowd, feeding him a bunch of word soup.

"That makes sense."

Seb feels like that all the time, but especially on spy missions, and especially when he's high on this herb, apparently.

"I hate crowded places too, but ironically, it's mostly because they're too loud." He smiles wryly in return.

Feeling the weight of Sebastian's gaze on him, Devero lays his head over to look back. His smile returns, just from being close and sharing this empty hilltop (and, admittedly, still pretty warm and floaty from the herb).

"Does it get overwhelming?" he asks. "Having to hear everything, when you're stuck in a crowded place?"

Tox nods.

"Hearing everything, seeing everything, people bumping into you, trying to stay out of the way..." He lists these things like grievances. "It makes me feel ill sometimes. Other people don't seem to mind as much, I don't know." He shrugs. It's partly his heightened senses that make everything overwhelming, but he can't imagine liking crowds without them, either.

Devero's immediate instinct is to offer Seb solutions. Has he tried an Interface visor that can dampen or filter out stimuli, or taken advantage of the sensory rooms that most busy public places have tucked into out of the way corners? He goes as far as pushing up on an elbow preparatory to launching into it--

And only then remembers that this is Outsider territory. They don't use Interfaces out here, and he suspects that they're not hiding decompression rooms for folks with sensory disorders in their buildings' broom closets.

Letting himself back down again, Devero sighs. "That sounds rough," is what he says instead. "It's hard having different thresholds from most other people."

Seb looks up with interest at what Devero is going to say, but then he seems to change his mind.

"Yeah. It has benefits, though." He shrugs. Mostly ones he can't talk about much.

"Like... Right now, there's crickets all around. They sound nice. And the stars are pretty."

He looks at Devero again.

"Is it rude to ask if you've always been deaf?"

"The stars are pretty." Even if he can't hear the crickets, at least there's that.

"No, it's not," he answers readily, "and yes, I have. I was born this way."

"Wow..." So he has no idea what crickets sound like at all. Even if Seb explained it, he wonders if it would make any sense.

"All that fancy tech, and they haven't figured out a way for you to hear?"

If that's rude, then at least it's in character.

"I mean, they have," Devero says, shrugging against the dirt. "There are Implants available that could probably make me hearing, at least to a certain extent. But I declined them."

That's curious. He looks at Devero.

"Why?"

"Because they didn't seem worth the effort," he says, looking up at the stars as he explains. "The implantation surgery is the easy part. Once the new hardware's installed, your brain has to actually learn how to hear, and apparently that hurts like hell. For months. No thanks."

Tox thinks of his own augment. Having his arm amputated and replaced by a magically-powered bionic one, and having to heal and re-learn how to use his own arm. It hurt, it was incredibly difficult, and the end result wasn't really that much better than his old arm. In some ways, worse.

"I understand."

Devero looks over at him, a bit...surprised, perhaps? "Thank you," he says with a little smile. "I appreciate that."

He can imagine not everyone understands. Most people would find it a no-brainer that having hearing would be something Devero wants badly enough to make all that worth it. But as aforementioned, Seb knows senses are a blessing and a curse. He can relate to sounds being painful, and it sounds like hell for that to happen for months.

He smiles back at Devero and rolls on his side to face him. For a moment, he just looks at the other man, taking him in. His body feels warm, like it's buzzing with a strange energy, his blood flowing differently. It's making him feel sort of oddly aroused, or maybe it's Devero doing that. Either way, he's trying to ignore it.

"Can you teach me another word?"

A moment after Seb, Devero rolls to his side as well. He can feel the other man's eyes on him, feels warm himself, feels seen in a way that he never would have expected an outsider could see him.

"Sure," he says, and flicks the translation off for a second to demonstrate a motion of the fingers of one hand from his mouth to extended fingers of the other. He feels dizzy, giddy, reckless-- knows it's the herb, damn him, but that doesn't stop him from repeating the motion, his expression open and inviting and hopeful.

Sebastian examines Devero, curious and open, both wanting to learn and wondering what word came first to Dev's mind. He mirrors the movement, fingers from mouth to other hand. Maybe it's speaking, or...

"What's that?"

Devero takes a deep breath, squaring his shoulders (as much as he can, laying on his side in the dirt like this), and shoots his shot: "Kiss. It means kiss. Kiss me, maybe?"

Sebastian's stomach does a flip, and he looks dumbfounded, mouth falling agape. Then he averts his gaze, too scared to look into Dev's eyes again.

"You... You want...?"

It takes him a moment to process this. It's hard to imagine anyone wanting to kiss him, just for the sake of kissing and not as a means to an end of reproduction. There are so many rules against this, so many warnings, so much shame piled on through propaganda. He should feel ashamed for even considering it, but right now, out on the edge of some surface town with nothing around them but an expanse of stars, under the influence of something that's making him feel strangely nice, with a stranger whose laugh is infectious and who makes him feel human and seen and cared for, somehow the shame isn't present whatsoever.

He is, however, extremely nervous. Terrified. He still isn't able to meet Devero's gaze, but his hand reaches out for his arm.

He wants it.

"Okay."

Devero waits, watching hopefully in the dim light but not pressing Seb at all. He knows there's a chance he's misread the warmth in the air between them-- knows also that even if he hasn't misread it, that it might not be acceptable around here, or something Seb has an issue with personally, or--

But then Seb reaches out for him, and says okay, and Devero smiles brilliantly at him. "Okay!" he repeats, then covers Seb's hand with his own. He gives it a tug, inviting him closer. "Come here."

Seb has to glance shyly at that smile, and it only further endears him... Puppy dog.

His breath hitches with that tug, and he moves in closer. His arm slides further over Dev's shoulder. There's less than an inch between their bodies now, but Sebastian doesn't get close enough for them to come flush with each other, as though there's some invisible mental barrier between them that he won't let himself cross. Their faces come close, and he's suddenly struggling to catch his breath, overwhelmed by Devero's scent, the warmth of his body so close, how big and muscular he is, how handsome. The desire he has to touch and be touched is immense, but so is his fear, his father's voice in his head insisting that this is forbidden. He feels feverishly desperate, and yet, he cannot bring himself to kiss him.

Again Devero waits, giving him a moment even as he enjoys the increased proximity. He likes the way Seb fits in his arms, likes the disparity in their sizes-- not as a power thing, but just because he appreciates how they complement.

Close as they are, of course, he can't miss the nerves Seb is showing, the way his breathing seems to be getting choppy. He strokes his big hand down Seb's side, then up his back, smiling and steady. He wants to reassure him that this is okay, that they're alone here and safe, but this close together he can't easily sign. So he just tilts his head down to close the distance, and catches Seb's lips gently with his own.

The big hand spreads warmth and electricity through him, his body reacting immediately with more arousal. It is comforting, too, making this feel more like a romp with a friend than a stranger.

When their lips meet, when that invisible barrier has finally been crossed, his floodgates open. After the first soft chaste one, he initiates the next one, firmer, and soon deepens it with a heated fervor. His hand snakes around Dev's middle and presses on his lower back, drawing their hips together.

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