Page 47 of Comfort Read

Kit burns white-hot, the already roiling fire of his hunger exploding into a raging inferno. He doesn’t quite tackle Sage onto the bed, but it’s close enough to a tackle to be less than dignified. Sage doesn’t seem to mind, at least; he just grins and flips Kit onto his back, crawling up to lean over him, body stretched out against his, weight balanced on one hand.

“I might be rusty,” Sage warns, though he sounds more excited than nervous. “It has been a long time. Temper your expectations. I don’t want you to be disappointed.”

“Every single thing about you is better than I thought it would be,” Kit admits, squirming with eagerness below him. “So, you know. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

The look Sage gives him is wild-eyed and wondering: desire and gratitude and something deeper than either, something that makes Kit’s heart knock against his rib cage like a trapped bird. He doesn’t respond, except to lean in and catch Kit’s mouth again. Kit closes his eyes, and gives over to pleasure entirely.

NINETEEN

Neither one of them gets a lot of rest that night. In spite of that, when Kit wakes the following morning Sage is staring at him from the next pillow, his expression soft but hardly sleepy.

“What?” Kit says around a yawn. “Was I drooling in my sleep or something? Did you come to your senses and realize you’re you and I’m⁠—”

“You’re the least pretentious person I’ve ever met,” Sage interrupts him, splaying his fingers over Kit’s mouth to shut him up. “You’re hilarious and strange and you always treat me like I’m just a person, like we’re both just people. You’ll put up with nearly anything if it helps someone else out, but God help anyone who tries to cross you when it counts. You never quit on anything that matters to you—people, places, ideas—even when you probably should, when it would be easier to let something go. And you’re brave. You’re so brave that it makes me braver, like courage is some sort of infectious disease. Who wouldn’t want someone like that?” Sage seems to consider this astounding series of statements for a moment before he nods in apparent satisfaction, dropping his hand from Kit’s mouth. “There. Now we’re even for last night. It didn’t seem fair to leave that dangling another second.”

“God, I could just kill you,” Kit says, hoping to cover the fact that he’s near tears and knowing he’s not doing a very good job. “It’s six in the morning; how can you possibly expect me to respond to that like a normal person? I wouldn’t have a decent shot at noon, not even if I drank six cups of coffee first, that’s—it’s—too nice! The nicest thing anyone has ever said to me! How am I supposed to be appropriately grateful at this hour?”

“What, do you not carry etiquette books at Sawyer’s?” The corners of Sage’s eyes are crinkling; his voice is threaded through with laughter. “Because if you’d ever consulted one of those, you’d know there’s a time-honored tradition for showing gratitude in a situation like this.”

“Flowers?” Kit guesses, too tired for full access to his own wit. “Chocolates?”

Sage grins, slow and full of intent, as he says, “Blowjob.”

Kit rolls his eyes, but his heart rate picks up just the same, and he’s reaching for Sage a moment later, tangling them together between the sheets again. When, after an hour, he’s both shown and received appropriate appreciation, Sage collapses back against the pillows and closes his eyes, visibly drifting back towards sleep. Kit, however, doesn’t have that option: For as long as he’s been alive, he’s been one of those people who can’t go back to sleep once he wakes for the day, no matter how mind-blowing the morning sex. Once he’s up, he’s up.

Poking him gently, Kit says, “Hey, before you pass out: Is it cool if I poke around the place a little? I didn’t get much chance to see it last night, with, um… you know. Everything.”

Sage grunts, already barely conscious, and waves what Kit takes to be a permissive hand.

However, he has to be certain, because: “Seriously, man, if a security guard is going to tackle me to the ground in the kitchen or whatever, I need to know about it.”

“Won’t,” Sage mumbles against the pillow. “Eleanor showed ’em all your picture. Put you on the list. The no-tackle list.”

“You actually have a no-tackle list?”

“It was a joke.” Sage groans into the pillow, then pops one eye open to glare at Kit. “Yes, you can look around. In fact, please go look around. If you don’t let me sleep, I’ll take back all the stuff I said. I’ll tell all the gossip sites you’re history’s greatest monster.”

“I’d actually be fine with that.” Cautiously, feeling like he’s getting away with something, he reaches out and smooths Sage’s mussed hair back out of his eyes, running his fingers through it a few times as Sage’s eyes flutter shut. “Printing it would make them look like idiots. So many people in history have been worse than I am. I’ve never even killed one guy, you know that? Only fish, and really their blood is on Rick’s hands.”

“Mmm,” Sage responds, before releasing a soft, definitive snore.

Feeling soft—feeling, in fact, as though someone has replaced his heart with so much melted butter—Kit sits there for several minutes, stroking his hand through Sage’s glossy dark hair. The only thing that saves him from spending the next hour like that is the abrupt recognition that he’s running on muscle memory, and that muscle memory is from petting Throgmorten. Cursing his own lack of dignity but otherwise as pleased with himself as he’s ever been in his life, he slips out from between the sheets to generate his own personal, private episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

It really is, Kit reflects as he walks around, like being in an episode of a television show. Sage has a media room that’s basically an in-house movie theater, complete with reclining leather chairs set on tiers and professional projection equipment; he has a swimming pool and a tennis court; he has, in his basement, something that takes Kit a few minutes to understand as a batting cage. This last enrages Kit for a few minutes, and he spends the next leg of his wandering muttering to himself about the evils of capitalism before it occurs to him: Sage can’t go to a public batting cage, or make use of any of the less private tennis courts or swimming pools Los Angeles has to offer. Not if he doesn’t want to be mobbed with screaming fans and potentially stalked. While this grim fact doesn’t make the evils of capitalism any better, it makes Kit feel better—about this house, about his own circumstances, about how wildly different his life has been from Sage’s in essentially every respect. The place is magnificent, but Kit wouldn’t choose it over his bookstore, the same way he wouldn’t trade a minute of his childhood in his parents’ overstuffed suburban brick house, even for the kind of money and status Sage’s been steeped in since birth.

At the far end of the house, there’s a small room with white walls that are covered in movie posters, which are framed and hung in the style of an art gallery. When Kit realizes that none of them are for Sage’s films—that they represent John and Seline’s full filmography—he’s all the more grateful for the smaller, steadier world he was raised in.

“Christ, I have to call Maggie,” he mutters to himself, making a face, and goes down to the kitchen in search of coffee.

He finds it and then some. Sage has a terrifying machine that is essentially a robot barista, which will not only produce a beverage but provide a cup for that beverage at the touch of a button. It’s like a very expensive version of something you’d find in a hospital cafeteria, and Kit makes several drinks in fascination before realizing he should probably stop. Selecting a latte for himself and a cappuccino for Sage (and leaving the ristretto, Americano, and cortado behind on the counter to apologize for making later), he returns to the bedroom.

Kit is, at worst, expecting Sage to still be sleeping. At best, he hopes there’s a chance he’ll be hailed as the Great Bringer of Caffeination and rewarded with what is, according to Sage, the most appropriate expression of gratitude available.

So it’s a nasty shock to find Sage awake, fully dressed, and sitting on the edge of the bed, staring down at his folded hands, his lips pressed together in a thin white line.

Kit wants to ask what’s wrong—no, that’s not true. Kit knows he should ask what’s wrong, but deeply, desperately does not want to. He doesn’t want to so badly that the question sticks in his throat, coming out as a cough instead of any recognizable word. It’s an act of self-preservation. Asking will give Sage an opening to tell him, and Kit knows to his bones that whatever has happened, it’s going to ruin his morning.

Sage lifts his head, and the look in his eyes is chilling enough that the bottom drops out of Kit’s stomach. Kit revises his assessment: Whatever has happened, he’s pretty sure it’s going to ruin his life.