With any luck, that or something like it was the train of thought behind Reynolds’s surprised hesitation.
“Hey! Hey!” Hill spluttered his objections as he tried to pry the tentacle off his arm. “Don’t. What the hell? Davy. Davy! That’smybody.”
Davy gave Hill an absent-minded pat on the shoulder to reassure him and squeezed Reynolds’s knee.
“Kidding,” he said, and lightly touched Reynolds’s forehead with his tentacle. It stroked across, slightly through, the skin and made Reynolds shiver. He leaned into it, like he knew what was about to happen on some level. “I mean, if you did, I’d do anything for you…but it would be stupid.”
Reynolds had started to agree—or that’s what the shape of his mouth looked like—when Davy flicked Reynolds's brain. The static jolt of pain dug into his molars this time, a throb that spread through his jaw. Meanwhile, Reynolds’s jaw snapped shut, the click of his teeth painfully loud.
…Hill’s mouth moving, all lips and tongue, and he wanted him. Want want want want. The brief thought that it wouldn’t bebadfor his career as he looked at Hill’s cautiously hopeful face and the sour ‘No’ that scratched out of him. Shame—he wanted to fuck him, crawl into him, up him—but it was Fraser’s fault he couldn’t, that he hadn’t,and he’d remember that.
The stream of consciousness felt the same, but different. Davy tried to hang on to more this time, enough to get an idea of what had happened. It spilled through his fingers like sand. Once it was gone, the only impression it left was that the memory had…cramped up?
Reynolds leaned in for a kiss, his lips parted.
It could have sealed the deal, and Davy had done worse for less, but… Davy’s breath misted around his lips, a chill that pinched at his mouth, and there was a sharp crack from somewhere. He glanced at Hill. The expression on the other man’s face was a mixture of disgust and unhappiness. It made Davy feel weird in his gut, like he needed a bath or something.
“Sorry,” he said as he pulled away before he could taste more than Reynolds’s breath. He shook his head and scrambled to his feet. “That was inappropriate. I don’t think my taste for whiskey is quite acquired enough. I shouldn’t have said that or done that.”
Reynolds stared at him, frozen on the way to a kiss with his lips still parted. He blinked and then scrambled to his feet.
“No,” he said as he reached out to grab Davy’s arm. His fingers dug into the bicep a little too hard, and the nerve under his eye had more of a pulse than a tic now. “I should have. I’ve not been able to think of anything but you. All day it’s just been—”
He stopped and pressed the knuckles of his free hand to his forehead.
“It’s been you. I can’t stop thinking of you and…” He trailed off as his face took on a grayish cast and his mouth twisted. He took a gulp of air, muttered, “I have to…I’ve got to…”
He staggered off toward the toilet as the side effects hit. Davy watched him go and then wrinkled his nose as the sound of retching filled the apartment.
“You were right,” he said to Hill as he turned to go. A tug of his tentacle got the other man up onto his feet and dragged him along behind. “I didnotwant to be kissing him when that hit.”
Hill made an annoyed sound and shook Davy’s tentacle off.
“How about you don’t kiss anyone while you’re in my body?” he said. “For a start. And what was that? What can’t he stop thinking about?”
Davy let them out into the hall and closed the door behind him before he answered.
“OK, but hear me out before you get all self-righteous,” he warned Hill. “I didn’t know that sticking a tentacle in his brain would fuck him up.”
Chapter Thirteen
Dec, 23rd 6.30pm
The dead could getheadaches.
That was good to know.
Hill stood in the middle of his apartment and rubbed the heel of his hand against his forehead. It didn’t help. The breathing exercises he usually did weren’t cutting the mustard either. Thefamiliarity of it was a comfort, but without the physical pressure on his lungs, it just didn’t have the same impact.
“So, you think that…interfering…with John’s brain—”
“John?” Davy said dubiously. “Who’s John?”
He knew the answer to that. It was clear from context. He was just being difficult to try and dodge responsibility.
It was probably the same reason he’d stripped down to fitted black boxers the minute the door had closed behind them. His shed clothes were left on the floor behind him where they’d dropped. But if he thought that was going to distract Hill, he was wrong.
Hill hesitated mid-righteous denial as Davy padded past him on his way into the kitchen. Bruises stippled his ribs and the small of his back. Others stained the smooth gray surface of the tentacles that dragged tiredly along behind Davy. The bruises shifted shape as Davy stretched and muscles moved under his skin. Or when the tentacles contracted or stretched out. Hill’s mouth went dry as the thought of kissing them better flitted through his mind.
