He knows what to expect now. The heat in his hands, the steam, the melting. His whole body lights up, from both the transference and Jade's hands wandering his skin, and then he's sinking.
Jade reaches between them and cups Noel roughly through his joggers, shocking a gasp from Noel's mouth. The inhale allows viscous steam to start pouring in, forcing itself down his throat and into his lungs. With effort, he narrows the stream to a trickle, but his head is already pounding.
Part of him watches the crater slowly spreading through the ice around him, while the other part just tries to breathe through the maddening friction against his length.
"You okay?" he hears Jade ask through the muffled hiss of melting ice.
Noel can't even answer, overwhelmed by sensation. He manages a weak hum, rolling his head to the side. Mentally, he opens a little wider, allowing in more steam, and the crater radiates outward, the entire surface of the lake beginning to mist into the frigid air.
Jade lets out a strangled noise. "Fuck," he curses, lips skimming Noel's jawline. "Oh fuck, fuck, fuck—god damn it—"
Dimly, Noel feels Jade fumbling down around their groins, and then a wide, hot hand closes around his length. Something rigid and velvety and scalding slides in alongside it, and the sudden pleasure nearly makes him lose his handle on the transference. He barely hangs on, keeping the transfer throttled to a manageable level, but his head is spinning and his body feels like a livewire, exposed and crackling. Jade strokes them both, his hand whipping up and down their shafts, slicked just enough with precum not to be painful, and the friction builds mercilessly in Noel's gut. Jade's other hand finds its way to Noel's hair and he feels it fist into the unruly curls, forcibly turning his head back to meet Jade's mouth in a brutal kiss.
Noel thinks he might go insane. The onslaught of sensation, both physical and mental, threatens to completely undo him. The tension in his gut mounts rapidly, pulling his muscles taut as he pants like a sprinter. Jade catches his mouth again and their teeth clack together gracelessly. Steam envelopes him on all sides as he melts down through the layers, cloying on his tongue and heavy in his lungs. Heat thunders through his veins and he can distantly hear himself whimpering. Jade is heavy and hot, pressing him down into the mattress, surrounding him, invading him, consuming him—
The pleasure crests in a painful crash, spiralling outward through Noel's limbs. His spine arches off the bed, head thrown back, fingers clawing deep furrows into the black ice. Somewhere through the tumult, he feels Jade go rigid, trembling from strain. It seems to last forever, his orgasm holding him hostage as his nerves malfunction and his head swims. He loses track of Jade, of his own body, of his own thoughts, sinking deeper into the frozen lake.
A faint warning flares somewhere inside him, his core recognizing that his corruption levels are getting too high, and he struggles against the lead in his bones, throwing out his arms to stop his descent. For a moment, nothing happens. He continues to sink, Jade's core pulling him even deeper into the frozen darkness, and Noel doesn't have the strength to stop it. Then a dull pain throbs through his wrist, reaching all the way to Noel's metaphysical body.
Like flipping a switch, the guiding stops. Noel resurfaces with a ragged gasp, blinking to clear the steam from his vision. Above him, Jade's face smears into wavering focus. His brows are knit.
"Are you okay?" he demands. "Can you hear me?"
Noel's head throbs. His entire body aches. Pain lances up and down his limbs, congealing nauseatingly in his core, and he can barely take in a full breath. "Yeah," he rasps. "Fine."
Jade's expression clears slightly in relief. "What is this?" he asks, moving Noel's own hand into his line of sight. The bruise stands out nearly black in the dim lighting. "When did this happen?"
Noel can't even begin to formulate a response to that. He tries to shake his head, to indicate it doesn't matter, but the motion sets the room spinning, and black dots eat away the edges of his vision.
"Hey—" Jade drops his arm and then there are hands framing his face. "Noel!"
The last feeble thought in Noel's tired brain is that this is the first time he's heard Jade call him by his name. Then the pain closes over him like a curtain and there's nothing but darkness.
----------
Waking up is like trying to dislodge an enormous weighted blanket covering his brain. The exhaustion presses him down, heavy and irresistible.
"—gonna be like this every time?"
A familiar voice is talking nearby. Noel tries to turn his head toward the sound but his whole body is numb and useless, trapped beneath the leaden darkness.
"This isn't…actually hurting him, is it?"
Something about the voice seems wrong, and it takes Noel's sluggish mind a moment to realize it's because it sounds anxious. Jade is never anxious.
"I've never heard of a reaction this severe." A pause. Some part of Noel's brain realizes Jade must be on the phone. "That's true, I guess. A class difference like this isn't…normal either." Another pause. Some rustling, and then the mattress dips beside Noel. "No, I was careful," Jade says snidely. "I'm not an amateur."
A shockingly gentle touch alights on Noel's wrist. He'd jolt in surprise if he was capable of moving, but he can only lie there as Jade gingerly lifts his hand from the bedspread. A distant twinge of pain radiates up his arm. "But…" Jade trails off. "No, nevermind." A pause. "I'm not telling you that." Noel can picture the scowl on Jade's face. "I only called to make sure—" Pause. "All night."
Noel feels his hand lowered back into the bedspread and then Jade's weight lifts from the bed. "Fine." Pause. "Yeah, I will." Then a moment later, Noel hears the tap of a phone on a surface. Jade must have hung up.
A long beat of silence overtakes the room. The sluggish thud of Noel's pulse fills his head. He can't know for sure that Jade is staring at him, but he imagines, through the haze, that he can feel the subtle scorch of blue eyes on his skin.
Then he's not imagining it anymore; something warm presses against his cheek. It lingers a moment before quickly retreating.
"For fuck's sake," he hears Jade mutter, followed immediately by footsteps. The gravity of Jade's presence moves away, until Noel hears the sound of a door opening and closing.
Before Noel can puzzle any of that out, the fatigue wraps long fingers around him from beneath and pulls him back down into nothingness.