“What do you dream about when you dream of Alle?” he asked once he was sure it would come out in a normal tone rather than a croak.
“Xane, don’t.”
“Why not? Why can’t we be honest about it? It’s just us, and you do dream about her.”
Spook pulled away, then turned about. “Of course I fucking do.” A tick fired in the side of his jaw. “There’s barely a person of my acquaintance I haven’t dreamed about at this point. She’s not special in that regard.”
But she was special, hence Spook’s need to about turn and raise his voice.
“Do you not think… that it might help if you saw her?” Xane asked, unrelenting.
“I’m not ready to see her, Xane. I wasn’t fucking ready to see you. I’m definitely not ready to see Luthor, but I guess it’s happening. Don’t you dare bring her here, and I’m deadly serious about that. If… and it’s a big if, I decide to see her, it’ll be on my terms and at my behest. I won’t have you or anyone forcing it.”
“Okay,” Xane agreed, raising his hands in surrender. He would never have invited her here without Spook’s express permission anyway. “But can I ask you something else?”
A look of wary hurt passed across the surface of Spook’s eyes, but he didn’t say no. He waited, clearly anticipating another question about Alle.
Xane leaned forward and pinched together his index finger and thumb over Spook’s chin. “Please, please, please can I shave this off?” He flashed him pretty eyes and a pleading grin.
“You don’t like my beard?” Spook countered, brows furrowing and creating a V-shaped indent.
“I detest your beard.”
“Yeah? Well, what if I like my beard?”
“You don’t.”
“I…” Spook wrinkled his nose. “Fine, if it really offends you that much?”
Xane leapt up. “You have no idea. And thank ever loving fuck.” He tore off to find the necessary equipment, returning once he’d rounded up a pair of scissors, warm water, shaving foam, and a brand-new disposable razor. There was no way the whole universe wasn’t going to thank him for this. Spook Mortensen was way too pretty to be hiding those cheekbones behind a wall of scraggly fur.
-23-
Spook
Spook woke the next morning to the sound of voices in the kitchen. He lingered in bed awhile, uneasy about the greeting, but eventually tumbled out of the room in search of coffee and to get whatever awkwardness there was over and done with. Luthor was exactly as he remembered—cargo shorts and brawny, sun-blond hair falling in swooping layers from a widow’s peak, his mismatched eyes hypnotically appealing. The big bonus was that he offered up a smile, rather than a killer glare in response to Spook’s rather feeble, “Hello.”
The last time they’d spoken hadn’t been nearly so pleasant, but then it had been mere hours after he’d begged Xane to fuck him, and their various partners hadn’t exactly been impressed with that. He wouldn’t take it back though. Xane had been exactly what he’d needed at that juncture.
Xane gave them both a wary glance from beneath his eyebrows. He was in his domestic goddess guise again, a hereto undiscovered aspect—at least to Luthor—that seemed to be amusing him no end.
“I’m going to buy you a pinny,” he declared. “You’re seriously, actually making pancakes? The man who claims he doesn’t know how to boil an egg.”
“I never claimed that. People assume. And I fancied a change from the usual choice of fry-up, fruit, or cardboard.”
“Think we’re actually out of the latter,” Spook remarked. They’d, well, he’d eaten the last of the cereal the previous night, in between bouts of “cake or death” Jenga, the rules of which were rather loose and mostly involved them yelling “cake or death” at one another, and then either stuffing their faces with cake—or cereal, when they ran out of cake—or faking dramatic death scenes. Occasionally, one of them removed a Jenga block from the pile or knocked it over in a fit of pique. He’d laughed, and he’d needed that. Too bad it wasn’t a permanent cure all.
“What are we having with the pancakes?” he asked as he watched Xane pour the first batch of mix into the pan.
“Whatever you can find.”
Spook set to removing possibles from the fridge and dumping them on the island. They still didn’t have any sort of table, or an adequate number of chairs, so it was either perch on stools, or eat picnic style on the hearth rug among the detritus of Jenga blocks and recording equipment. He found a few strawberries and a bottle of lemon juice he’d bought to clean the kettle with, and set them out along with the margarine.
“No sugar?” Luthor asked, the answer to which was not exactly. Neither he or Xane put sugar in their coffee, and neither of them did the sort of baking that required a supply.
“There are sugar cubes.” Xane gave a nod in the direction of the cupboard. “Top shelf at the back. Probably out of date.”
How out of date could a lump of sugar get? As it turned out, they were still within the best before period, but the packaging was open, and they’d set like concrete. Still, it was quite therapeutic setting to a batch of them with a rolling pin, followed by a mortar and pestle to get them into a useable form. It also gave him something to focus on while Xane and Luthor chatted about the outside world. Stuff about strikes and fluctuations in the base line interest rate and a natural disaster somewhere, followed by titbits about Luthor’s family, and the band. Ash was apparently making baby noises, and Ginny had told him to get real as they’d only been married five minutes.
