#adaptablehavok

Raven is in a dark corner, slowly accruing more and more money at the poker table. He should probably be slightly more terrified that she’s here, since he hasn’t seen her since she busted him and the others out of Nam, and Hank’s mouth had gone tight when Alex asked if she’d come back. But the alcohol is making it really… really hard to think about anything.

Fuck. Whoever said Disney World was the happiest place on Earth had obviously never been to Atlantic City.

“Hey, wanna smoke?” asks a voice in his ear, and Alex turns around. There is a familiar easy gaze raking up his body; and a familiar, comforting stench surrounds them.

“Armando?” he mumbles, after working his jaw for several minutes in an attempt to speak.

“Easy,” Armando says, as if he hadn’t been dead for the last… number of years Alex couldn’t think of at the moment. Thoughts. Trains. Nothing was clicking. “Christ, Alex, you’re gone, aren’t ya?”

Alex laughs. “Twelve,” he says, thickly. “I think.” He’s not sure if he’s talking about time or alcohol at this point.

“Come on,” Armando says. “How about we leave Raven to her game and go upstairs?”

This is all becoming very familiar. “Have we done this before?” Alex asks abruptly, halfway to the elevator.

Armando raises an eyebrow. “Maybe,” he says, in a neutral tone of voice. “In the past.”

The place that Armando takes him to is also very familiar. Alex thinks nothing of it, because Armando pulls a joint from seemingly nowhere and oh fuck yes.

“Smoke?” Armando asks again, and Alex groans out a yes, slumping into a chair so far his legs tangle up and he almost falls over.

Armando smiles at him and withdraws his lighter from his pocket. Alex does his very best to focus on the smooth metal, contrasting with the darkness of Armando’s hands, but his vision is swimming. 

He hopes it was twelve.

Someone presses something into his hand and he jolts, startled. Armando laughs, through the haze of weed smoke. “Do you need a hand?” he asks, and then holy fuck he’s kneeling in front of Alex. Brain overload commencing.

“Is the door shut?” Alex asks, and Armando’s eyes roll to the ceiling as he takes a long drag.

“C’mere,” he says, and pulls Alex forwards by the back of his neck. Alex’s mouth opens in inquisitiveness— alcohol makes him slow on the uptake it seems— and then Armando’s fitting their mouths together and that’s it, there goes the rest of Alex’s brain function, out the window, poof. He inhales on instinct and almost chokes, not expecting the smoke. Armando breaks away and laughs at him, not unkindly.

“Would you like a drag first?” he asks, and his eyes are heavy lidded, whites slowly turning pink, and if Alex could think he’d notice that his pupils are blown wide with lust. Unfortunately, Alex is focused on keeping his nerves in check because Armando has one hand on his upper thigh; his right hand holds the joint and his elbow is digging into Alex’s leg and he’s surrounded by the smell of weed and Armando and the only thing he can manage is “You were dead.”

An unreadable expression flits across Armando’s face. A shadow? Words. How do you words. “And now I’m not,” he says, and lifts the joint to his lips again. “Here.”

This time, Alex is prepared, and inhales greedily, pulling as much of the smoke into his lungs as he can and blowing the rest through his nose so he doesn’t have to break whatever this is between him and Armando. Is it a kiss? The kids these days call it shotgunning… but the smoke’s gone now.

“Less thinking,” he mumbles, breaking away. “More weed. More smoke.”

“Pushy, pushy,” Armando jokes, slowly, and Alex can feel the high kicking in as Armando takes a final drag, drops the dead joint onto a plastic tray on the side table, and leans forwards to tease Alex’s mouth open again.

This time, Alex digs his nails into the back of Armando’s neck, and inhales even as Armando runs one hand through his hair and pulls sharply on it. His brain dimly registers a note of alarm because isn’t this illegal and, like, morally wrong? 

And then Armando presses the flat of his palm to the front of Alex’s pants and it takes ever ounce of the little self-control he has left to not come right in his pants, because holy shit is Armando warm.

That’s… kind of the last thing he remembers.

When he wakes up in the morning, there’s no hangover, but there is a hazy sort of afterglow and a dark-skinned mutant wrapped around his middle. Alex looks down at Armando, furrows his eyebrows, and then notices something he hadn’t noticed before.

He’s wearing a ring.

And then he panics for all of three minutes until Armando stirs and sleepily presses a kiss to his side. “Morning, lazer-brain,” he mumbles happily, and blinks one eye open.

Alex just gazes down at him in muted shock.

“Alex,” Armando says, and sits up.

“I drank so much last night that I forgot you were alive,” Alex says. “Didn’t I?”

Armando grins. “Yes,” he replies. “And you also forgot that the last time we were in a casino, someone broke the law and married us. If what you were saying last night while I was blowing you was anything to go by.”

Alex’s cheeks color. “if it makes you feel any better,” he tries, “every time this happens, it will be like the first time.”

Armando grins and fishes around in his coat pocket. “And how was the first time?”

Alex cocks an eyebrow. “Mindblowing,” he jokes, and Armando laughs and kisses him, a quick press of lips.

“Wanna go again?” he asks, and extends his fist to show another perfectly rolled joint.

“I don’t need weed to enjoy sex with you, Darwin,” Alex mutters.

“Yeah,” Armando says. “I know. But Charles doesn’t want weed in the house anymore, what with trying to pitch the school to kids and all.”

Alex smiles. “May as well use all of it up on mindblowing sex?” he guesses.