The urge to be flippant was strong, but Brix’s eyes held Calum hostage, rendering him mute, and leaving him devoid of anything except a silent head shake.
Brix leaned closer and pressed their foreheads together, his lips just a hairsbreadth away. “Well, they should’ve, ’cause you are—”
Calum’s mouth found Brix’s in a soft, cider-flavoured kiss, a brush of lips that took him by surprise as much as it seemed to Brix, whose hands flew to Calum’s face, though he didn’t pull back. Their lips met again and again, the kiss growing in intensity with a subtle burn that stole Calum’s breath, prickled his skin, and quickened his pulse.
Then Brix drew back, his eyes wide. “I . . .”
“Me too,” Calum said. “I don’t know how that happened.”
“Same as it did last time, I’d imagine.”
Calum’s heart skipped a beat. “You remember that?”
“Course I do. I fell over my own feet outside Koko’s. You caught me, and I threw myself at you in return. Made a right arse of myself if I recall.”
Brix’s grimace was so comical that the heady tension between them faded a little. The desperate, artless snog they’d shared on a damp Camden evening so many years ago had been seared on Calum’s soul until he’d met Rob. Calum scrubbed a hand over his face. “You weren’t the arse that night. I was so hammered I nearly dropped you.”
“Fun, though, wasn’t it?” Brix’s frown morphed into a rueful grin. “I thought about it a lot after.”
“Me too. It was a crazy night.”
Brix hummed, then seemed to notice his hands were still gripping Calum’s face. He let them drop, leaving Calum mourning the loss of his touch, craving the rush of Brix’s warm palms against his scruffy cheeks. “I’m fucking wankered.”
The abrupt change of subject stung briefly before Calum realised Brix’s sentiment was mutual. “Think I am too. Either that, or your walls are moving.”
“You’ve got the scrumpy spins.” Brix got up unsteadily and wobbled to the kitchen. He returned with a bottle of water. “Drink all of this before you go to sleep. Have a banana when you wake up. You’ll puke otherwise.”
Brix flopped back on the couch, throwing an arm over his eyes. Calum waited for him to resurface, but it didn’t happen. Brix’s breathing evened out and his arm slackened, slipping off his face, to reveal that he had, in fact, passed out cold.
For a long moment, Calum was mesmerised—Brix was as enchanting in sleep as he was awake—but his own need to lie down caught up with him fast. He considered sliding to the floor and letting the scrumpy mould his bones to the hardwood boards. The stairs seemed like too much effort, and besides, Dennis would be on his bed by now, curled up slap bang in the middle of the duvet, settled in for the night, not waking until Zelda came in just before dawn to slap Calum in the face for her breakfast.
But common sense kicked in, slowly filtering though the swirling cider haze. Sleeping on the floor was never as good an idea as it seemed. How many times had he woken up stiff as a board on the shop floor back in Paddington after Rob went walkabout with his flat keys?
Fuck that.
Calum got up, steadying himself on the arm of the couch. A nearby chair gave home to a stack of cosy blankets. He snagged one and clumsily draped it over Brix, resisting the urge to stoop and brush their lips together one more time.
Instead he settled for tracing a fingertip over the ink on Brix’s forearm and squeezing his hand. “Thanks for everything, mate. Good night.”
Gentle bites to Brix’s cheek brought him slowly to consciousness. He raised a hand to bat the biter away, but a low, grumbling hiss warned him off. His body was heavy, his mind thick with the beginnings of a blistering hangover, but as he opened his eyes to darkness, it didn’t feel like morning yet. It couldn’t be. Even Porthkennack wasn’t this black at dawn.
He turned his attention to what had woken him in the first place: the sharp, warm bundle of feline attitude on his chest. Zelda stared, sphinx-like, back at him, her needle claws digging an insistent rhythm into his flesh. She wanted him up, but why? It wasn’t time for her breakfast yet. Besides, she’d abandoned her early morning wake-up calls in recent days, perhaps deciding to sleep a little longer now winter was coming.
Zelda leapt from Brix’s chest to the back of the couch, revealing that he’d never made it to his bed anyway. Brix winced and sat up, holding his throbbing head as he took in the scattered detritus of a night on the scrumpy. Jesus. Whose fucking idea was that?
But, as he thought it, he knew the blame lay with him. And why not, eh? As if getting arseholed wasn’t a stupid enough idea on its own?
Brix staggered to his feet, using the sofa for balance. Zelda’s reasons for waking him were her own, but the fact remained that it was twat o’clock in the morning and he was downstairs in his clothes—down to his boots—which meant he had shit to do before he could go back to sleep.
He stumbled upstairs, for once not pausing to see if Calum was in his bed, and went straight to his bedside table and the washbag of distant guilt and self-loathing that kept him alive. The fat red pill stuck in his throat, but he forced it down, kicked off his boots, and collapsed on his bed, hoping Dennis would come and sit on his back to keep him warm until he could move again to find the duvet.
Fucking bellend.
It was light when he woke again, tucked up in bed, his boots on the floor beside him, and no delinquent cats to be seen. Brix rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was truly awake, but the blaring alarm from his phone a split second later put paid to the idea that it was all a dream.
He scrabbled around, searching for his phone. It took far too long for him to realise it was in the pocket of the jeans he was still wearing. Idiot. He silenced it, noting the time: 8:30 a.m. Fuck’s sake. He was due in Truro at ten, the place that always seemed to be dragging him from his bed.
With considerable effort, Brix hauled himself upright. Nausea followed him, then a blinding headache, and a dull pain in his stomach that would be his constant companion for the rest of the week. And it was only Monday. Great.
