“You mean when you stood underneath the ladder all day and heckled me?”
“I wasn’t heckling. I was telling you to be careful.”
“And I was careful. I just wanted to check that I’d, uh, wiped it enough.”
“Even number, right?”
“Don’t.”
Marc bit his tongue. Jamie had a thing about counting, though the habit wasn’t consistent enough to make much sense to Marc. Was it an OCD ritual? He couldn’t tell, but every room in the house—even the bedroom, which Jamie hadn’t had a reason to be in until now—was conspicuously free of dust. “Did you clean up in here too?”
Jamie’s half-closed eyes flashed guiltily. “I didn’t mean to. I was looking for the boxes you said were in here and I couldn’t leave it. I—I didn’t like the idea of you sleeping in it.”
“I don’t sleep in here, babe.”
Babe. The endearment fell from Marc like he said it all the time. And Jamie’s face lit up with a wry, barely there smile that blessed Marc with all the empathy he’d ever need. “You’ll sleep with me here hogging your duvet,” Jamie said. “Zac used to say I was better than a benzo for sharing a bed with... after he’d fucked me, of course, but you don’t need to do that.”
Marc cleared his throat and stilled his hands on Jamie’s chest. “You’re probably right—uh, your first point, I mean. I’m not good at sleeping in an empty room. And you make me feel pretty Zen anyway, even when you’re falling off ladders and talking about shagging, so I imagine I’ll sleep pretty well.”
Jamie’s only response was a contented hum, and Marc wondered when their spiky friendship had become so easily and wonderfully intimate. Or had it always been like this? Jamie was as predictable as a caged tiger, but despite the bleak fury that often marred his eyes, a reluctant trust often shone through. And now he was in Marc’s bed, his fingers curled around Marc’s, not seeming to care that the stump of Marc’s ruined leg was pressed against his calf.
Bemused, Marc dragged a pillow close to Jamie’s and lay down, the tension of his mammoth stint at the hospital, his own bullshit, and his worry for Jamie finally easing. Sleep claimed him quickly, sucking him into the oblivion his body had craved for weeks, ever since his postsurgery fatigue had worn off and his brain had gone back to the combat-ready status he’d likely never shift.
At some point, he sensed Jamie roll onto his side and shuffle back, like he was seeking warmth. With the duvet between them, there was little Marc could do but drape his arm over him and bury his face in hair that smelled of cigarette smoke and dusty books.
Ten
It was dark when Jamie woke, the unfamiliar room cloaked in that cold, gloomy greyness that shrouded the end of each day in wintertime. Panic fleetingly seized his chest, before the heavy arm around his waist grounded him, a reminder that his days of waking up broken and bleeding on piss-stained mattresses were behind him.
Not that Marc’s bed was anything like the grubby squats Jamie dreamed of when his imagination took him on a bullshit trip down memory lane. The sheets were fresh and clean, and the pillows smelled of new cotton. With Marc’s arm clamped around him, Jamie was like a pig in shit. The only downside was the knowledge that Marc never used his bed because he was so goddamn lonely—an emotion Jamie understood all too well.
Wincing, Jamie shifted onto his back, and clutched Marc’s arm close, like he’d drown without it. His shoulder throbbed and his ribs ached, but the pain was a dull roar compared to the previous day when it had hurt so bad he’d hardly been able stand. Jamie pictured himself tumbling from the ladder and cringedas an errant wave of hopelessness crashed over him. Fucking idiot.Maybe fighting the junk was a waste of time. At least when he was trashed he didn’t spend hours scrubbing symmetrical patterns into a shelf that had been spotless for days.
Like he’d heard the devil dancing through Jamie’s brain, Marc took a sharp breath and opened his eyes, instantly alert, like he’d never been asleep at all. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Right.”
Jamie couldn’t bear Marc’s empathy just yet. He threw the duvet back and moved as fast as his sore ribs would allow, throwing his leg over Marc’s waist and straddling him, pressing their foreheads together with enough force to make his ears ache. “You worry too much.”
“Not on purpose.” If Jamie sitting on top of him perturbed Marc, it didn’t show. “I have my own vices.”
“Yeah? Like what? Apart from fretting like an old woman.”
Marc shifted. The movement was infinitesimal, and as Jamie’s cock rose in response to Marc’s hard length digging into his back, no words were needed. Their lips met as easily as breathing, and every ounce of lingering pain in Jamie’s body faded like a setting sun. He braced himself on Marc’s strong chest, tangling his fingers in the dark hair that dusted the rounded muscle, grinding down as their sweet kiss deepened to become something Jamie couldn’t control.
It was Marc’s turn to move like a snake. He grabbed Jamie and flipped them over,carefully, before covering him with his body, weighing him down with such consuming pressure that Jamie wanted to weep. They kissed again, but not like before. No longer soft, comforting, and kind, every contact was feverish and frantic, and Jamie couldn’t tell where he ended and Marc began, whose gasps were whose, and if the desperate groans piercing the air had fallen from his own lips.
Later, Jamie wouldn’t be able to pinpoint when they’d both wound up naked again, his only lasting recollection the mind-blowing sensation of Marc’s cock rubbing against his, the long-forgotten friction wiping his mind of everything but how it felt to truly touch another man—a man hewantedto touch, and a man he wanted—needed—to put hands on him. Becausefuckhe needed Marc’s hands on him. His heated palms and gently gripping fingers. His scuffed skin and blunt nails. Jamie craved it all so hard he whimpered like a dying dog when Marc eventually pulled away. “Please... Marc, I—”
“Shh.” Marc leaned across him and opened a drawer in the bedside table. A bottle of lube landed on Jamie’s chest, and then Marc lay down beside him, and pulled Jamie on top of him once more. “Take it,” he said.
“Take what?”
Marc guided Jamie’s hand to where their cocks rubbed together, dragging breath from Jamie’s throat in stuttered gasps. “Whatever you need. Go on... don’t be shy.”
Jamie hadn’t been shy about sex since he was thirteen, but Zac aside, he couldn’t remember a time when a man had lain before him and given himself to Jamie to do with as he pleased. With johns, even pleasuring himself had been triggered by a loaded command.