Ben had crashed into Alexei’s tent in an all-out panic less than ten minutes ago, and now he was sound asleep, his body taking up half of Alexei’s single-person mattress pad, his arm curled around Alexei like it belonged there, and Alexei was pissed off and turned on and too confused and exhausted for this.
He should kick Ben out anyway. Wake him and tell him to go back to his own tent. Because, seriously, Alexei barely fit in this oneby himself.
But he didn’t.
Alexei squeezed his eyes shut. Ben’s breath continued to flush warm against his neck, more steady and rumbly now, and the pleasure it sent through Alexei’s system was deep-seated and undeniable. How Alexei longed to be the little spoon to a body like Ben’s, a solid, hardworking body made of decency and trust. Maybe he could steal one night of it. It hadn’t been his idea. He was doing nothing wrong.
Except it felt wrong. Everything about it felt wonderful and awful all at once because the weight of Ben’s arm around him felt realer than anything he’d ever felt but there was no consent in any of it. He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter against the sudden prick of tears.
Alexei focused his mind on simple things he understood.
Birds in flight.
A neatly formatted spreadsheet.
Scales on a piano.
A quiet Northwest forest full of moss.
Braiding silky blond hair—over, under, over again.
And eventually, fitfully, Alexei fell asleep.
***
When he awoke in the morning, Alexei’s first thought was that he was cold.
A beat later, he realized this was because his sleeping bag, meant to zip tightly around his head, was open and askew across his torso.
He remembered his sleeping bag was askew because Ben had tumbled into his tent last night.
He understood now that he was cold because Ben was gone.
Alexei tried to think of an appropriate word to describe his feelings toward Ben at that moment. He remembered last night, when curses had magically appeared in his brain in the shock of being surrounded by Ben Caravalho.
But all that came to his mind now wasdorkbutt, which was what Alina used to call him when they were kids and she wanted to really piss him off. Alexei was cold, and hard again, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it, and Ben was a massive dorkbutt.
As soon as he could get his dick to calm down, he was going to storm out of this tent and confront the massive dorkbutt, and tell him to—to what?
Alexei had no idea.
He scrambled into a sitting position. Ran a hand through his hair and his lengthening beard.
It was just that…Alexei wanted the fantasy of what happened last night—a comforting arm wrapped around his while he fell asleep—so badly. He had wanted that for so long, before Ben, before he came out to his parents, before he even fully accepted his identity.
And even if it had been in a messed-up way, he had gotten it last night.
And still—still—Alexei had woken up alone.
Alexei’s sexual history was this: four anonymous swipe-rights over the last two years.
He had never possessed the ability to approach an actual human being he was attracted to in real life of his own volition, even once he’d moved away from home, even during college. But two years ago, he grew fatigued with his own longing.
He viewed it as an experiment. Data collection. Alexei understood data.
When his first swipe-right led to an actual date, he was so nervous he threw up.
Each of his four dates had led to some form of sex. Some of it had been embarrassing, whenever Alexei’s inexperience had been apparent. Most of the men, though, had been kind enough.
