Nikolas held him off.Ben shook his head and twitched his shoulder in a tiny shrug.“Just that.Sorry.”
Nikolas huffed and lay back.“Typical,” was his only comment.
Ben laughed, slid further forward and took Nikolas inside.Nikolas knew Ben was extremely sore because he winced and complained, but he did it anyway until he was settled and filled.Nikolas folded his arms beneath his head.They looked at one another, not speaking until Ben murmured once more, “Surreal.”He reached forward and placed his fingertips to the inside of Nikolas’s arm, and when Nikolas frowned in incomprehension, he just smiled.“Cool.I remember that as well.”
After a moment, his buoyant spirit seemed to desert him and he pulled off Nikolas and lowered himself gingerly to lie alongside.Nikolas let Ben take his own time to speak.This Ben was the same Ben in all essential ways, and he would talk eventually.Ben always did; he wasn’t the bottling-up kind.Which was just as well, he reflected wryly; a relationship really only had room for one of those.
“Will this be enough for you?If I don’t get my memories back?I don’t know what I’m missing, so it’s not so bad for me.But what about you?If I stay like this?”
“You’ve remembered such essential things perhaps I’ll be satisfied.”
Ben rolled onto his side and propped his head up on one hand.“Are you always like this?”
“What?Beautiful, intell—”
“Stop it.It’s like…fucking someone wearing body armour.”
“Intriguing.Have you ever done—?”
The hand clamped over his mouth prevented him finishing that question.He took his gaze from the tor and fixed it on Ben.Ben raised his brows; the “are you going to stop pissing around” message in them clear.Nikolas nodded and Ben removed his hand.“It’s like you’re one of those ninja warriors—I ask you something but you see a weapon being thrown at you and you deflect it allhah ya hah.”He made suitable small chopping motions.
“Hah ya hah?”
“Fucking hell!There you go again!Do you do this with me all the time?Seriously?”
Nikolas sighed and rummaged in the sheets for his cigarettes.
Ben snatched the lighter away.“And then you light up to avoid talking.”
Nikolas frowned and snatched his lighter back—lighting up, just as Ben had predicted.“You’re more annoying now than before and that’s saying something.”
“That’s more like it.What else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Yep.Ask me a question you bloody well know the answer to so you can gain some time to think up more excuses and deflections.”
“I’m not—”
“Go on.Answer my question.”
“Which one!You’ve been bombarding—no, seriously, I’m not trying to—no!”He almost bit his cigarette in two, trying to stop the tickling.He couldn’t believe it.Of all the things Ben could have recalled, he’d remembered this–thathehated to be tickled.He wondered if he elbowed Ben Rider in the head he might forget some more things!They struggled for a while, but with a lit cigarette Nikolas quickly had the upper hand.No one wants one of those pressed to delicate places, and once Ben got Nikolas wasn’t joking—that he was more than willing to press it to him—he surrendered and lay chuckling quietly, watching the play of light on the colours of the tor.
“This house is absolutelyincredible.Iloveit.”
Nikolas lay alongside him, cigarette happily being smoked and smoke being shared with Ben.“I know.It’s yours.”
Ben was very quiet for a long time, wreathed in smoke.“Mine?”
“Uh-huh.I live in your house, not the other way around.”
“How can this be mine?I only earn thirty thousand a year…I suppose that’s gone up a bit now?Inflation in ten years?”
“I gave the house to you.I had it built and gave it to you.”
Ben jerked his head over.
Nikolas wondered if he’d said too much too soon on top of all the other things he knew Ben was having to compute.He should have been more cautious, more aware of Ben’s fragility.
