It all happens a bit too fast for his mind to keep up with it. One moment, he's wiping the screen of his camera, rubbing away the grime accumulating from his new hideout - a tiny, moss covered shack in the middle of a field, it is, and it's disgusting. The cramped, corrugated box is sinking into the ground with age and defeat. But it would do for now.

Anyway. The next moment, the camera had fallen to the floor; he was slammed up against the wall, the cold, ridged metal of the walls pressed up to his face. He's not wearing his mask. The entire structure wobbles alarmingly.

"Thought you said I wouldn't find you, huh?"

The accusation is aggressive - gloating, even - and he can feel another body rammed up against his. Between the two, his arms are twisted painfully up across his back, in some bizarre 'x' shape. The hood is ripped down, strands of hair caught in the iron grip.

"I didn't hear you," Alex hisses, spinning him around. His head bounces off the wall with a sickening cracking sound, the unexpected twist in stance leaving him swaying. "I didn't know it was possible for someone to be so bad at this game."

Seth raises an eyebrow, as if to question the phrasing of the statement. Game?

"Hide and seek," Alex explains. An almost-laugh leaks through. He sounds slightly hysterical. "Tell me where they are. Tell me!"

He shakes Seth so violently that fragments of lichen start to crumble from the roof. Seth's seeing tiny stars by this point, drifting about his vision, and when the shaking stops his head lolls. Looking up at his assailant once more, he says nothing: you still haven't found them. It's an impossibility for him not to laugh, really, so he does. It's taunting, and dark, and victorious.

Bring on the punches, Alex, he thinks. It doesn't even matter anymore. Bring. Them. On.

"Shut up. Shut up!" Alex screeches. "You think everything's so funny—"

Then Seth's laughing into a kiss, and he can't say it's the last thing he was expecting, but it certainly wasn't the first. Alex seems to have interrupted himself. He digs his fingertips into Seth's upper arms.

Seth responds to this by biting down on Alex's bottom lip, hard. Alex groans into his mouth as their teeth clash together; this is possibly the single worst kiss of Seth's life, and that's saying something. But he's not going to stop this, not now. He's suddenly very, very aware of the lack of space between them. It's becoming a battle - neither of them want to give up on the other, but they both want the other to give up. Seth thinks he's got the advantage by being the first to grind his hips up, creating a delicious friction and making him shudder. Alex presses against him forcefully, repeating the action over and over, and as much as Seth would love for this to continue, he simply can't allow himself to give in to Alex's advance. That would be letting him win.

In one, stuttered, struggling motion, he discards the pair of gloves. Alex inhales sharply as Seth's cold fingers make their way under his shirt, running over his chest and whispering down his back. Alex's own hands find their way down to Seth's belt loops, and he's pulled agonizingly closer, their hipbones clashing. The stinging ache is wonderful.

Seth needs to up his game. The shack is less than three metres across, and in one, two, three, four steps, the two easily reach the other wall, bumping noses as the force of the collision kicks in. Alex's hands find their way inside of his jeans, thumbs brushing over the sensitive indents where his skin stretches over bone. The way his hips buck is involuntary; the effect it has on both men is like an electric shock.

It's unclear who wins. Seth is the last to attack - scraping his nails down the entire stretch of Alex's back, which elicits a very satisfying whine - but he's the first to come undone, shaking and moaning as Alex's tongue sweeps across the roof of his mouth. The other man follows shortly after, breaking their kiss to gasp and swear.

Seth thinks his knees are about to buckle. He's suddenly very aware of his weight, and could have happily stayed leaning against the man he'd trapped between him and the wall. But Alex seems to have other ideas, and Seth finds himself sprawled across the floor.

Alex stands over him, unfazed. "You don't know where they are. You're useless to me."

With a look of disgust and a brush down of his clothes, he exits the shack. Leaving Seth to damp jeans, grazed palms, and a slightly scratched camera.

Maybe that means he wins by default.