Seriously?
Nervously, Jayne looked over his shoulder. Caleb, who was just as tall as Everett, unintentionally blocked his view of the main street. There was no telling who was coming or going.
No telling who was on their way.
Jayne’s thoughts spun. His pulse sped up. The beat of his heart throbbed beneath his jaw and pounded in his head like a fucking jackhammer on steroids. Was the concept really so hard to understand? Take the irresistible eye-candy out of the club as quickly as possible and deliver him straight to bed. Point A to Point B. There was no slow-down-to-a-crawl-and-reflect-the-deeper-meanings-of-the-mission midway checkpoint, and there sure as hell wasn’t supposed to be a boss fight along the way, but if these two doofuses kept delaying him, there was no telling how difficult their quest would become. Jayne thought he’d hit the jackpot finding two big, burly, slightly lunkheaded men to escort him somewhere—anywhere—that wasn’t Circuit Rush, but apparently, he’d placed his chips on the wrong table. He’d have been better off begging the hot bartender who’d fixed his drink to let him hop behind the bar under the guise of sucking his dick. At least there, he would have been hidden. If he got found out here, there wasn’t a lot in the alley to hide behind—the rusty dumpster they’d just passed wasn’t going to save him from shit, and the sad cardboard box a few feet away wouldn’t even have been big enough to hide Mr. Big’s sausagey erection.
Fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck.
“Can we go?” Jayne pressed, doing his best not to sound like he was minutes away from a complete meltdown. Something in Jayne’s peripheral vision moved, and he glanced at it only to wish he hadn’t. The world blurred out of focus and wobbled like reality itself was about to topple over, and it took Jayne several seconds and a few hard blinks before he pulled himself back together enough to make sense of his surroundings. By then, whatever he’d seen was gone. “Like, quickly?”
“We’re going,” Everett promised. For what it was worth, he sounded sweet. Jayne didn’t dare look at him—he kept his eyes where they’d found focus, worried that if he looked elsewhere, reality actually would fold in on itself.
Panic hitched and tightened in Jayne’s throat, accompanied quickly by anger so potent, his shoulders trembled. What the fuck was wrong with him? He’d only had half a drink before realizing he needed to leave. It shouldn’t have been enough to get him tipsy, let alone drunk enough that he couldn’t goddamn see.
Was it stress? It had to be. There was no other reasonable explanation.
Stress, Jayne decided, needed to get over itself and leave him the fuck alone. If Caleb and Everett were planning to wax philosophical in the alley outside the club on this fine Friday night, Jayne was going to need all his wits about him. If they wouldn’t save him, he was going to have to save himself.
“Just… let’s slow down a second so we can plan what we’re gonna do,” Everett continued. Slow was the opposite of what they needed—Jayne had never wanted to sucker punch someone more. “The street we’re walking away from is Wabash, and at this time of night, it’s crawling with taxis. We could be in a car in five minutes flat. If we keep going the way you want to go, we’re gonna end up on… uh…”
“Washington,” Caleb said.
“Washington, right.”
Against Jayne’s better judgment, he closed his eyes and carefully redirected his attention in Everett’s direction. When he was sure he was facing Everett head-on, he opened his eyes again. Reality didn’t wobble this time around, but Jayne’s eyes took longer than they should have to distinguish Everett’s shape from the background behind him. It was like trying to find the hidden 3D image in a stereogram. Jayne squinted, then held a hand to his forehead and let a pained sigh escape through his nostrils. Whatever Everett was doing, he needed to stop. It wasn’t funny to toy with the fabric of space-time. It wasn’t funny at all.
What a weird thing to think.Jayne squinted at Everett.Maybe I am drunk as fuck. Was that bartender a wizard? Or some kind of party-Jesus, turning my mixer into wine? Or, I guess, vodka. I’d have tasted the wine…
“Washington doesn’t have anything on it,” Everett said. At last, Jayne had picked him out from against the backdrop, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get Everett to stop looking fuzzy. He came to a stop and squinted harder. “I mean, I think there’s a bank and a few regular businesses down there, but that’s not where any of the taxis are going to be. If you want us to take you home, we’re going to want to head in the opposite direction.”
No.
Even as Everett blurred in and out of focus, Jayne knew it wasn’t a good idea. There were too many people, and it was too predictable. He shook his head vehemently. “I’m not a goddamn mermaid.”
Silence.
Everett stared at him, and after a pause, said, “What?”
“I mean…” Jayne clenched both fists, but his fingers were strangely unresponsive and thick, and his skin felt far too thin. Unhappy with how his hands felt, and worried that Everett or Caleb might see his swollen fingers and judge him, Jayne crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his hands into his armpits. “I mean—I… I mean…” What did he mean? Jayne struggled to remember. The thoughts in his head were hard to come by, and they seldom made sense when he did manage to zero in on one of them. Giving in and going with what Everett suggested was beginning to feel like a good idea. If Jayne listened and obeyed, he wouldn’t have to worry about making sense or being coherent. It would be easier. So much easier.
But then…
Jayne bit down on his bottom lip hard enough to taste blood.
If he went with whatever they said, there was no telling what would happen to him. He hadn’t warned them about the danger. They knewnothing.The only person who could keep him safe was himself. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t give up the fight. “I mean, I don’t want to go where the people are.”
“You don’t have to talk to any of them,” Everett said carefully. He glanced over Jayne’s shoulder, and it took Jayne a second to realize that he was likely looking at Caleb. Fog, thick and heavy, rolled across Jayne’s mind and obscured his thoughts. Little details—things he should have been able to remember—were lost in the haze.
Why were they stopped again?
Jayne took a small step forward and almost lost his balance. If it hadn’t been for Everett, who grabbed him by the shoulders, he would have fallen on his face. It should have been cause for alarm, but the part of Jayne’s mind responsible for panic had been so obscured by fog that Jayne wasn’t sure it could even breathe. Maybe it wasn’t fog after all—maybe it was seawater. It poured into the folds of his brain—what were they called again?—and seeped into his gray matter, saturating him from the inside. The only dry part left was the one telling him that Everett’s hands were nice to touch and were strong enough to keep him safe. With a mewl, Jayne let Everett support his weight. If his hands felt that nice, his chest had to feel even better, right?
“I don’t get it,” Caleb said uneasily as Everett helped Jayne find his balance. “We can call an Uber if you feel like taxis are too sketch. That’s fine. Everett and I are decent guys, you know. If this is some fetish thing, and you’re hoping we’re going to pin you to the wall behind the dumpster and fuck you hard and rough while you pretend like you’re too drunk to tell us no, you’re gonna have to tell us. Don’t get me wrong, that’s hot asfuck,and we’d be more than willing to do it, but we’re not going to do something like that without you giving us the all-clear. So… uh… I know that’s probably a boner-killer, if you’re into spontaneous, rough sex, but… why don’t we use a codeword?”
“What?” Jayne squeezed his eyelids shut, hoping that if he put enough pressure on them, he might be able to wring the water from his mind. He’d heard everything Caleb had said, but by the time Caleb had finished speaking, Jayne had lost track of what the conversation was about. “Codeword?”
“I think we might be beyond codewords, Caleb,” Everett said. Someone put a hand on Jayne’s shoulder, but the world had gone back to looking like a stereogram, and Jayne was too tired to try to figure out who it was. “He’s fading fast. I think he’s—”
