ARGH! It's been a long, long, LONG time since I've updated, hasn't it? Don't worry; I'm not dead, and I certainly haven't lost interest in Adam/Lawrence! Actually, I'd be DEAD before that happened. XD So, I have updates! And, I promise I'll be updating more frequently than I have been for the last six or so months. So, uh... Look forward to that!

So, in this chapter, hot things occur! Well, they start to. I end on a cliffhanger, as usual. XD But, if you review, I'm sure the hotness will continue in the next chapter! :)

8. A Different Kind Of Punishment

"Hey, Lawrence, I'm back!" Adam called, more enthusiastically than he would have wanted. Both his hands full with the Chinese takeout he'd bought, Adam had been forced to put one of the bags down in order to unlock his door. Once he had, he'd stepped into his apartment, kicking the door shut behind him and looking around.

The living room looked amazing. In the short time that the young man been gone, Lawrence had swept the carpet clean until there was not a spot of dirt left, dusted the walls, which had previously been covered in an entire coat of white dust, so that they shone brighter than the floors of the Queen of England's palace, and even straightened the couches and coffee table.

Slightly dumbfounded, Adam made his way through the spotless room and into his kitchen. Just as he had suspected, Lawrence was in there, busily scrubbing the sink, which earlier had had more gunk in it than water. Upon hearing his lover's sandshoes on the newly-cleaned kitchen floor, however, Lawrence turned around, dropping the sponge he'd been using into the sink.

"Oh... Sorry, Adam. I didn't hear you come in."

Lawrence smiled and made his way awkwardly over to the photographer and took one of the bags from his arms.

"Chinese, huh?" he asked, attempting to sound casual. Adam nodded slowly.

"Uh... Yeah. Chinese."

There was a short pause, in which both men shuffled their feet slightly, not knowing what to say. Lawrence began rummaging through the bag he'd taken while Adam looked around the kitchen.

"You're doing a pretty good job," he commented at last, and Lawrence smiled. He looked up from his bag and into the younger man's eyes.

"Thanks."

Once they'd eaten their dinner, Lawrence started picking things off the table as soon as Adam put his plate back down on it. It seemed like he'd almost gotten a phobia about the order in the apartment, now that it actually was clean, even though a tiny voice in his head told him that it actually was Adam who lived there, and that that made it physically impossible for the place to stay tidy for too long.

Adam sighed and put his feet up on the table as soon as Lawrence got up.

"Ever seen 'Desperate Housewives,' Larry?" he asked teasingly as his lover went back in to the kitchen to do the dishes.

Lawrence blushed briefly as he dropped the plates in the sink and started running the water.

"You're going to need someone like that in this household," he called back.

Adam didn't answer. Lawrence just heard him getting to his feet with a sigh and walking back into his bedroom, like eating dinner had drained him of the last of his powers, and now, he couldn't even find the energy to sit on his couch and watch crappy drama shows on the TV.

If they'd had a normal relationship, Lawrence would have followed Adam into his room. He would have lifted the covers and crawled down to him, found his mouth in the darkness, searched with his hand under the sheets until he found his body.

Lawrence sighed and turned the water off. He couldn't do the dishes now. He didn't want to.

What do you want to do?

I want to go to Adam.

Then he'll punch you in the jaw, and you know that. Do something else. You don't have to do the dishes.

Thank you, kind voice in my head.

Lawrence wasn't sure how it happened. He probably just wanted something to think about besides Adam, but the next thing he knew, he was walking around in the kitchen, picking things out of the kitchen cabinets, opening packets and containers, and pouring things into bowels and pans until he stood with baking powder and cacao on his shirt and something that almost looked like the mixture of a chocolate cake in front of him.

Lawrence chuckled and started looking around for a baking tin to put the cake into the oven with. Adam may have thought that he tried to buy forgiveness with a blowjob, but a cake wasn't a very big gesture. He should be able to give him that without looking too suspicious.

Adam was lying on his back on top of his bed, seemingly absorbed in a book. Lawrence felt his cheeks flushing when he saw the younger man's bare chest seemingly staring back at him, and his shirt sitting where it had been thrown on the cheap carpet. Upon hearing the surgeon enter, Adam looked up, slowly lowering his book as he did so. He looked somewhat wary, and Lawrence found himself shuffling his feet nervously.

"What's that?" Adam asked slowly, his eyes on the small pan in his lover's hands. Lawrence swallowed and walked a few steps into the room, closing the door behind him.

"Cake batter," he said awkwardly, holding it out for the photographer to see. "I've been making a cake. This was left over."

Adam grunted in pretend disgust and went back to his book.

"Girl," he muttered, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips.

There was a short silence, in which Adam seemed to be reading and Lawrence just stood there, the pan in his hands as he waited. Finally, the young man lowered his book again, placing it on his bedside table, and examined the older man curiously.

"To be honest," he said slowly, moving so that he was propping himself up against his pillows, "I didn't even know I had the ingredients to make cakes."

Lawrence swallowed and made his way nervously over to the bed, hesitated for a moment, then sat down on it beside Adam. He set the pan down on the table, next to the book, which he could now see was The Magician's Nephew, by C.S. Lewis. Adam had marked the page he'd been up to with a leaf-shaped bookmark, which had come free with a magazine he'd bought for him not too long ago.

"Your hands look like they've been dunked in a diarrhea-filled toilet," Adam said bluntly, looking without sympathy at Lawrence's chocolate-stained hands.

Lawrence nodded, averting his gaze. Not just because the sight of a shirtless Adam so close was making more color rush to his face than he would have wanted, but also...

"And believe me, man... I know what that's like."

Lawrence looked up abruptly, stunned. Adam's face was set and serious. He could barely believe it. Neither of them could. This was the first time that the kid had spoken openly about the bathroom, let alone made a joke about it.

Later, Lawrence wasn't sure what had caused him to do what he did next. Maybe it had been the joke, even though it hadn't been so much funny as shocking, or maybe it had been because when the surgeon had looked up to smile into his lover's eyes, he'd seen, showing clearly on his bare shoulder, the scar that he had given him in that horrible, desperate hour that they were both all too familiar with.

But whatever the reason, Lawrence soon found himself with his chocolate-coated arms wrapped tightly around Adam's neck, kissing him in as many places as he could reach. Adam's body was tensed against his, as though its owner was trying to hold back his pleasure.

In a wild kind of impulse, Lawrence found himself lifting one of his hands from Adam's neck and running it slowly along his chest, leaving a long, chocolate line showing clearly against his pale skin. The next moment, the older man had his mouth to the brown patch and was sucking at it furiously, using a maddening kind of hunger that scared even him.

Adam didn't seem to know what he was doing. And neither did Lawrence. His mind had left him. All that was left there was Adam's reluctant moans. The faint and familiar taste of his skin under that of the chocolate. The blurred, lustful happiness of actually getting to gratify him that Lawrence had missed so much. And Adam's hands, which seemed to be moving without his accord, under the collar of the older man, then back down and start fumbling with the buttons of his shirt.

At this point, they were both pretty lost in their desires. Lawrence kept kissing Adam, almost violently, without ever breaking apart from him, his breathing coming in fast and hard and his hands running frantically over every part of the kid's body they could reach. The only times Lawrence let go of his lover was when he ran out of chocolate to suck at, and had to reach out to get more of the batter that stood on the nightstand so that he could put even more sticky prints on the other man's shuddering body.

But suddenly, Adam lifted his hands from where they'd been clawing at his senior's shirt and almost violently grabbed Lawrence's hair, pulling his face away from his skin.

"Lawrence..." he said, in the same shaky voice as before.

Lawrence looked at him through a fog of lust, his hands unable to stop moving over his companion's body, putting brown prints in every place they touched.

"What?" he asked, his voice a husky shadow of what it usually sounded like.

Adam bit his lip to keep from moaning when he felt Lawrence's fingertips graze over his nipples.

"I don't want to... I..."

Lawrence bent down to kiss his neck, just as lightly, just as painfully as the photographer had done to him way too many times.

"Lawrence, don't," Adam said, almost firmly, even as his hands kept moving against the older man's clothed chest. "I'm still pissed at you... I don't want to... do that..."

"You want to," Lawrence said, in a way that could either be interpreted as determined or pleading; he couldn't hear which, and he didn't care either, since he felt Adam melt beneath him. Beneath him, his hands, and his tongue that drew over his chest. "You want to, Adam."

OMG! Hotness! Yeah, to be honest, licking stuff off each other was something I'd always wanted to write about. But you think that's bad? In the next chapter, they'll be doing much worse! ^_^ Yup! A cliffhanger! God, I'm such a bitch. But, that's what you all love about me, right? Right? XD