[ for all that john starts to care, he's mercifully (unhealthily) good at bottling it up. he's pushed feelings he's had for someone for seven years so deep into the recesses of what he qualifies as "transient liaisons" that the realisation of its permanence almost destroyed him, broke him down into pieces that he barely managed to pick up off the floor before he came here, and still he tries to blame himself for letting it matter, for letting it be one sided when it was no such thing. he tells himself that he's still over-reacting, as if someone you love threatening to kill you isn't a big deal. he treats every lingering thought as a product of sexual desire, casual interest, but it's not that, not really. he desperately needs something stable, but he won't accept it. he can't. not when the closest thing he once had to stable fell apart the way it did, and proved itself to be as untrustworthy as he ever thought it to be.

he'll sweep it all under the rug until there's a lumpen mound that he can no longer cross, and at that juncture, he won't know what to do with any of the things he's been trying his hardest to ignore. he wears the denial like it's the height of fashion.

grinning a little at the pointed way in which cassidy swears, john adds a bite to the kiss, catching the young man's lip between his teeth, chuckling softly. he should have expected that, cassidy being as he is, and yet the retort still catches him just a little bit off guard. enough to amuse him. the messiness of the kiss doesn't concern him, for his concentration is in too many places at once to care, and because it remains enjoyable all the same, the obvious hunger that passes between them only sets him more into motion as he flicks his wrist slightly to twist his fingers into cassidy. he ducks under the swing of cassidy's legs, fingers not leaving him, smiling just a little smugly at the sight of the other man growing hard again. it reminds him exactly how long he's been aching to fuck him. ]

Oh, of course. [ he ducks down to take cassidy's chin between his fingers, and that soft, meaningful tone has disappeared into the wind as quickly as it arrived, replaced instead by sultry amusement. ] Only the best for a well-to-do lady such as yourself.

[ but it's still there in the way that john leans down to kiss him yet again, a different kind of need that creeps into the pressure of their mouths, though it could easily be lost in the way that he takes cassidy behind the knee and hitches his leg up. with a sideways inclination of his head, gesturing to the bedside drawer and the condoms, he murmurs, ] If you wouldn't mind doing the honours, please.