Nero blanched and shook his head. “Fuck no. Could murder a cuppa, though. Want one?”
“I’ll get it.” Lenny started to get up.
Nero beat him to it and pushed him back down. “Stay. I want to sit with you before you go back downstairs.”
As if Lenny could argue with that. Nero left the room, weaving slightly, and Lenny lay back on the bed, enjoying the cool breeze that filtered through the open windows. He’d thought the flat above Pippa’s a little gloomy when Cass had first brought him here, but he enjoyed the relative tranquillity now, craved it, even, and with Nero for company, it felt like home.
Nero returned with tea and a banana for Lenny. “Don’t tell me you’ve eaten,” he said. “Cass never gets the brekkie started on time.”
Lenny accepted the banana and made short work of it. Forty-eight hours without Nero forcing food on him had left him quickly slipping back into his old habits of binging on Haribo, and his body reacted instantly to the hit of vitamins and energy, while Nero yawned. Lenny sat up and leaned back on the headboard, opening his arms. “Come on. I’ve got a few hours. Take a nap.”
Nero looked briefly like he might protest, but then folded his long body back into bed without another word. He curled against Lenny and laid his head in Lenny’s lap. For a long while he lay very still, eyes open and unseeing, apparently mesmerised by Lenny’s fingers combing gently through his hair, but eventually his breathing evened out and he fell asleep.
The hours passed in a flash. Cursing his commitment to Cass downstairs, Lenny carefully disentangled himself, wincing as Nero groaned and rolled over. Leaving was gut-wrenching, but Lenny knew Nero would rather suffer alone than have the kitchen neglected. Bloody workaholic. Though Lenny was starting to feel like one himself as he made his way back to Cass, half a mind on the unfinished painting outside in the shed. He’d promised Jake he’d get it done fast, but with Nero’s shift to cover, he was already a day behind, and there was no way he was letting Nero sleep alone while he pulled an all-nighter. Urban Soul had saved his life, but Nero had saved his heart. The painting could wait . . . right?
It turned out not to matter. Lunchtime service was quiet by Pippa’s standards, and at tea time, Cass informed Lenny that between them, they’d somehow managed to prep enough food for the whole day and then some.
“Go on. Piss off,” Cass said. “I’ll be all right even if I get slammed. Got nothing to do except grill some shit.”
“You sure?” Lenny hovered. Nero could handle the grill on his own any night of the week, but Nero was the exception to just about every rule, and his ability to man the grill, run the pass, and supervise the entire kitchen single-handed was nothing short of inhuman. “I can—”
“Go,” Cass insisted. “Seriously. Nero’s never had a sick day in his life, and I’ll feel less guilty about that if I know you’re with him. You make him smile, kid. Now fuck off, before I get all emo and shit.”
Lenny left Cass to the order pad he’d been glaring at for the past hour, went to the staff room, and tried not to think about that blowjob in the cubicle as he changed and dumped his chef whites in the laundry bin. Tried and failed, because it was an image that would be on his mind forever, or at least until next time.
Next time. The notion was sobering, because with Nero apparently on the mend, the elephant in the room was hard to ignore. They needed to talk, not fuck, and until that happened, no one would be blowing anyone.
Lenny let himself into the flat with a heavy heart, and went straight to the bedroom, but Nero wasn’t there. A quick search turned up empty rooms, and a note written in Nero’s beautiful handwriting, directing him to the shed where Lenny had intended to end up all along once he’d checked Nero was still in the land of the living.
He found Nero in the yard, his legs poking out from beneath the dilapidated old minibus. Lenny kicked his feet gently. “You’d better be sleeping under there.”
Nero chuckled, throaty and low, and wriggled gracefully out from beneath the minibus. “Stop glaring at me. You look like a psychotic chicken.”
“Chicken?”
“Mother hen, whatever. I’m okay, I promise. Just got bored. I ain’t used to kicking around the flat on my own anymore.”
The backhanded compliment almost made up for being compared to angry poultry, but Lenny knew he couldn’t take credit for Nero’s grin. He’d noticed during the all-nighters they’d pulled in Vauxhall that tinkering with the bus took Nero to his happy place. “I’m glad you feel better. I was worried about you.”
“I know, and I was kinda relieved.”
“Eh?”
Nero shrugged. “You told me you loved me. I thought I’d dreamed it.”
“And my charming bedside manner changed that?”
“No, but it did remind me that I love you too.”
Lenny blinked. “You do?”
“You didn’t know?”
It wasn’t the most romantic declaration, but Lenny couldn’t help the shit-eating smile that split his face. “How would I know? You aren’t much of a talker, remember?”
“So? Who needs words? Come here . . .” Nero beckoned Lenny to lie down beside him and peer under the bus. “See this?”
Lenny studied that mass of metal and wire. “What exactly am I looking at?”
