"...if you're acting like that because you're just using me to experiment with your sexuality, then... we might as well end it..."

300 stares uncomprehending at his partner. In the party's dim atmospheric lighting it's hard to make sense of 250's expression, not to mention the fact that the American has a hand obscuring the majority of his face. And 300 is a face-reader, not a mind-reader. Or voice-reader. "What?" he says, his mind refusing to process 250's tone.

The hand drops, and 250's face is blank, tired, finished - a blackboard that's been wiped clean. He doesn't look at 300 as he turns his back, as he balls his fists at his sides. "I'm too old and too much of a family man to let myself be used like that for a bit of fun." 250 stuffs his hands into his pockets. "But at least you got it out of your system. You tried it and now you know you prefer women."

And 300 only stares at the back of 250's head, his brain whirring along uselessly, unable to process what exactly is happening in the few moments he has to affect its course. All he can think is that he doesn't like the word "it." He understands that, from a logical standpoint, 250's "it" is likely referring to the word "sexuality." But to his grammatically-attuned ears, this "it" is referring back to 250's previous "it" of "end it," which he understands to refer to their relationship. And all he can think is that he hasn't quite gotten that "it" out of his system yet.

Of course, he only realizes that these are, for once, thoughts he should be vocalizing when 250 is already walking away, his shoulders hunched and hands jammed in his pockets. "Good for you," 250 says, an expression that should be a toss over the shoulder but in this moment is a letter of resignation. "You can keep up your image as a ladies' man..."

Meanwhile, 300 only stares at the sad curve of 250's back, his mind an utter blank. It is always in these moments when he is required to be himself that he fumbles. Plant him on a barstool in front of a woman, and he'll rattle off a series of lines that would have a solid percentage of them swooning. Dump him tied up on the floor in front of Niels, and he'll recite the entire script of their Mad Libs encounters, complete with plausible filled-in answers. These things have a system. There is a stable path they follow.

But right now, 250 is walking away from him, unprecedented. There has been no time to prepare or practice in the mirror. 300 has only his voice and the tiny lead-lined box he likes to cram his emotions into, and in these moments of crisis neither of them is ever particularly accessible to him. And worse yet, as he feels around in the darkness for the box, searching for something, anything to say, all that he stumbles upon is a dim, guilty sense that 250 might be right.

"What are you doing out here?" the woman says, and her tone is immediately familiar to him, the instant recognition a shameful comfort even as he stares at 250's shrinking silhouette against the streetlights. "If it's because you think the party is boring we could go somewhere else..."

What with the tiny lead box, 300 never quite knows what he's feeling in any given moment. It is only well after all is said and done that he is able to recognize whatever his non-reaction should have been. And right now, as he paws around blindly for the box, all that returns is that faint sense of guilt, that radioactive uncertainty ekeing out of some crack at the seam. Had he really just been wasting 250's time?

With that hamster wheel that 300 sometimes calls a brain spinning as fast as he can make it turn, all he can churn out is one simple fact:

He could find out. Right now.

""What do you say? Your place or mine?" the woman says, and 300 finally glances back in her direction, not quite looking at her.

"Yours. I don't have a place to stay for the night," he replies, either forgetting that he does, in fact, have an apartment or subconsciously choosing not to bring her there, where for some reason he still thinks he might find 250 waiting.

-NIELS & GANG-

Her apartment is nice, comparable to his in size if not in finishes. As 300 hangs his coat on the hall tree positioned opposite her front door, he gets the sense that, like him, she doesn't quite "live" in her place. The furniture is high-end and uncomfortable-looking. The coffee table is peppered with magazines and a decorative serving tray, all skewed at precise, deliberate angles. The kitchen counters are spotless, the small appliances noticeably unplugged and unused. It reminds him of one of those model homes, enticing and empty, redolent with false promise and plastic fruit.

When he turns around, she has reclined on the couch, one smooth leg exposed by that sinfully high slit in her dress. She has somehow managed to make taking off earrings look sexual - the sly way she bites her bottom lip, or the predatory glint in her eyes, or how she shifts as she lays the jewelry on the serving tray so that her breasts push together just so. And for reasons he can't quite fathom yet, 300 only stares as she reclines back on the couch, offering herself up for the taking.

"Well?" she smiles.

Following his script, 300 smirks involuntarily and sidles over to the couch. He eases down in the open space by her high-heeled feet. And the couch is as uncomfortable as it looked.

Smirking, she catches his tie and pulls him over.

When they kiss, it is as natural as anything 300 has experience in, which is to say that it is an engineered sort of pseudo-natural with nothing innate or instinctive about it. He understands, in a purely intellectual sense, what he is required to do, and as with anything else, he performs well with practice.

Allowing muscle memory to take over, he turns his thoughts inward, searching in the dark for the lead-lined box. What he finds is a whole lot of nothing - an undue amount of nothing, in fact; an unprecedented excess of non-reaction. He has never before experienced such a total lack of interest in a sexual encounter. Even the faint guilt has dissipated.

Experimentally, 300 slides one strap of her dress off her shoulder and palms her breast. And it is a marvelous breast in his hand.

But from the box, there is nothing, because that is all it is - because that is all she is. A pair of breasts, enticing and empty.

He allows things to progress on their own, or rather, allows her to progress things and his body to autopilot, as he considers this new development. Typically, when presented with a pair of breasts, he has some reaction: interest, entertainment, arousal. But here he is with an excellent pair of breasts, totally indifferent. And it occurs to 300 that he is not so much indifferent to the breasts as he is to their owner.

This is not unusual, of course. It is beyond mundane; in fact, it is the general drift of his responses (or rather, non-responses) to people. Not so long ago, he would have made absolutely no note of it at all. It's just that lately he's been having sex with someone he hospitalized several men for, and this pales in comparison.

And, hovering subconsciously near the lead-lined box, which has begun seeping a lonely sort of ache for said someone, 300 realizes that the moment when Gyldensted shot 250 was what put the crack in the damned thing to begin with.

300 snaps back to his body to find himself half-undressed and pinned underneath an extremely naked woman. Sitting up, he pushes her off him, breasts and all, his expression flat. "I'm sorry," he tells her, though he isn't. "This was a mistake."

She gapes at him as he stands, swiftly buttoning his shirt and waistcoat. He grabs his jacket off the hall tree and swings it about to get his arms in. "What?" she demands from the couch.

He pauses at her door as he stuffs his tie in his pocket. "I have someone I need to get home to."

-NIELS & GANG-

The clock glows 02:09 AM. Standing naked at the bedroom door, 300 stares at the sad curve of 250's back beneath the covers. The lead-lined box keeps leaking that lonely ache, and he has to remind himself that this is a good thing, an essential thing, if he wants to be able to prove he's not a waste of 250's time. So he thinks about suit-shopping and football and dance lessons and confused bar fights culminating in short-lived arrests. He thinks about holding 250's hand in the hospital, waiting for him to wake up.

He thinks about how comfortable and lived-in the furniture is here in comparison to his empty high-end apartment.

No, he's not quite done with "it" just yet. Taking a deep breath, he steps forward and slides into the bed.

What is it with me and characters who have all these feels? XD

In actuality, the concept of the lead-lined box is something I've used to describe my own disconnect from my emotions. When I started reading Niels, I quickly began to sympathize with 300 because I could tell he had much the same problem. I always relate to those characters.

The hardest thing about this fic was choosing to write it in the third person. Typically I choose first person for introspective writing, but I've read a fic where 300 narrated his life like a noir detective, and with that stuck in my head I knew I'd never pull off the mood I was trying to achieve. So I chose to narrate in a way that reflected 300's state of mind - namely, in an oddly disconnected third-person voice.

Also, I apologize to anyone who was expecting 250x300 sexytimes from the summary warning. Hetero boob-grabbing is what you get instead.

Let me know what you think and, as always, thanks for reading.