Ben folded his arms, shifty and defensive, which wasn’t something he often did. He’d just come out of the ensuite of the guest room. ‘What does it look like?Pyjamas.’
‘Why does everyone think to state the patently obvious to me all the time?’
‘Because you ask dumb questions?’
‘Thenwhyare you wearing pyjamas, Benjamin. Is that a better question?’
‘Because we’re in Tim’s house. It seemed…polite. Here. These are yours.’
Aleksey glanced down at the folded offering. Privately, he thought Ben was incredibly sexy in his tartan bottoms and buttoned jacket. He was so used to Ben coming to bed naked that seeing him this way immediately led him to picture the slow reveal now possible.
Once more, Ben appeared more like a model who had just stepped out of the pages of a men’s fashion magazine featuring the latest range of gentlemen’s bedtime attire, than he did a man just going to sleep.
Aleksey stretched across the bed and pulled him closer.
‘If we need to get up in the night, go downstairs, see the dogs, whatever. You can’t wander around someone else’s house naked, or just in your boxers. It’s…rude.’
Aleksey lay back with a sigh.
‘And we’re going to start wearing them on Mol Mol’s sleepover nights, too. Just in case she comes to find us in the middle of the night.’
‘Hopefully she would fall in the pool before she reached us.’
Ben straddled him. That was better.
Aleksey fingered the soft yellow chequered cotton. ‘This is now between me and my favourite organic, ethically sourced covering.’
‘Huh?’
‘Your skin. It’s organic, it covers you, and if I ever flay you it would be entirely ethical because—ah! Don’t twist them. Please.’
‘This is what you get for still being naked.’
‘I thought I was going to get something nice. That’s what you implied earlier…’
Ben just shook his head then tipped off to lie beside him, head propped on his hand. ‘Do not reach for those cigarettes. You can’t smoke in Tim’s house either.’
‘Yes, speaking of that…Tim’s house…you said you were going to reward—’
‘Without telling me? You just decided to give my friends this house and you didn’t tell me first? Or ask me what I thought?’
‘I could see in your expression tonight, Ben, what you thought, so don’t try to pretend anything else, and I didn’t tell you because…’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘As I keep trying to explain to you, you are just a baby and would—ow! Stop…because you might have guzzled the deeds? Ah—that hurts… Because you would worry about the moron, that is why. You would worry and fret about him and say I was making a decision for both of them, and that their relationship was none of my business and now they were forced togeth—’
‘Sounds to me like you’ve been worrying about them more than me.’ Ben turned onto his back, his head on folded arms.
Aleksey sighed and turned on his side, propping himself up. ‘Do you remember you asked me a while ago if I thought Tim loved him?’
‘Yeah, you did that deflection thing I seem to recall, and didn’t answer.’
‘Well, as always, Ben, you are the clever one. I deflected because I didn’t know—it wasn’t something I ever gave much thought to. Love. In general. But then I did, and it occurred to me that the only love that means anything is that which is freely given. I will never forget that you sliced the rope—that you refused to save yourself.’
‘You’ll never forget that because I fell on your leg.’
‘Well, yes, there is that. But that one moment turned my whole life around. Everything I have now, and intend to have for a very long time, is because you chose freely to love me when, perhaps, that love was least deserved. I thought I’d try the same experiment with your obnoxious friend.’
‘He has seemed a bit…down recently. Have you noticed that?’
‘I’m not sure what the signs would be.’
