-9-
Xane lingered in the doorway, the light of the lounge behind him, Spook a pale blur amid an ocean of white.How was it they were so easily able to call one another on their bullshit?The truth was, he was tetchy as hell, and all Spook’s cravings that he bottled up so damn tight came crawling out when he was wasted.Touch—fleeting, more lingering, so complicatedly nuanced, the man was clearly starved of sensation.Sensations every inch of Xane’s psyche ached to provide.Not because there was some deep connection between them, but because at his core he was a selfish git with a host of anxieties about not being wanted.
He hadn’t been wanted.He was the inkblot on his parents’ perfect lives.The constant reminder that no matter how effectively they sold the mirage of wealth, beauty, and power, the foundations of their Photoshopped marriage consisted of yard wide cracks and termite infested timbers.He hadn’t thought about them in a long while.It was this place.Their mark remained even years after their passing.
Walk away, Xane.Walk away.
Xane finally trundled back into the lounge as the wall clock chimed 4a.m., a time when everyone with half a brain was fast asleep.Eschewing the sofa, he turned off all the lights bar one and poured a drink, but left it untouched upon the table, while he paced a triangle between the sofa, window, and the point on the floor where he’d dropped his jacket.Grit scratched at the surface of his eyes.Rubbing them only made the sensation worse, but he knew he wouldn’t sleep, so what sense was there in trying?Too many thoughts were tumbling around like rocks inside his head battering the grey matter, and conjuring a seemingly never-ending cavalcade of events and images: Spook falling into his arms, the tear in his perfect lips; Steve on the green below, his hand clasped over his nose and blood running through his fingers; Dani desperately pulling at the hem of her dress so that he wouldn’t see the scars of her abusive childhood.On and on, one memory running into another.
He wrapped his arms tight around himself, but that only seemed to serve to make the memories more invasive.
Air.Maybe the whisper of the sea breeze would help blow away the shadowy threads entwining him.
Out on the balcony, the pre-dawn air rolling in off the coast still held a breath of midnight.Within moments his teeth were chattering.Still, Xane lingered.His hands wrapped tight around the icy railings as he willed the iron to ground him via some tenuous connection to the earth.
Nothing.
Down on the street, a car crawled by with the headlights dipped.Xane turned his back to the view over the marina, and gazed at his inky reflection in the full length glass doors.A frown creased his features.Here he was allowing himself to be swallowed up by events he couldn’t change, when all that truly mattered was that he’d managed to provide Spook with the shoulder he so desperately needed to lean on.
A shadowy figured padded towards him from across the room.For a moment, he thought it was Spook woken and come to find him, but as the shadow got nearer it resolved into Steve’s image.
Steve as he’d been the last time they’d both stood in this room.Steve as he’d never see him again, flesh and whole, alive and vital.
Xane blinked and the spectre dissipated.
Back inside the suite, Xane returned to the drink he’d poured.It went down in two swallows, and hit his stomach like a stick of dynamite.The obvious solution was therefore to down another slug, this one straight from the crystal-topped decanter.Suitably fuelled, he returned to the bedroom, where he stripped down to his briefs and climbed into bed.
Spook mumbled something but otherwise didn’t stir.
Xane held out his phone and snapped a selfie of them both, which he forwarded to Dani.
Xane: Arrived safely.One of us is sleeping like a baby.
He didn’t expect a reply, at least not for another couple of hours, but miraculously his phone beeped within seconds.
Dani: I remember that bed.Why does he look like he just got laid?
Xane: Please.Even I have the decency not to jump a drunken mate.
Leastways, these days he did.He couldn’t swear to that always having been the case.
Xane: We’ve only been apart a few hours, do you really still doubt my commitment to you to that extent?
Dani: I’m teasing you.Why aren’t you in dreamland along with him?
“Because I miss you,” he mouthed at the device.“I feel like I’m adrift.”
Xane: Why aren’t you?Did I wake you?
Dani: Not exactly.
Presumably that meant she was in bed but hadn’t managed to drop off yet either.
Xane: What were you doing?
Luthor: Shagging.I was delivering raptures until you interrupted.Seriously, Xane.Talk aboutcoitus interruptus.
Fingers of heat, lust, and jealousy raked across his chest, and then fisted around his cock, rendering him immediately hard.Of course.He was fool to imagine they wouldn’t be utilizing the chance to enjoy some together time as a couple.Sometimes it was easy to forget that his lovers enjoyed a relationship that existed independently of him, just as he shared intimacies with each of them independently of what they all had together.
