Jamie said nothing for a long moment, then he blew out a shaky breath and uncurled his legs from beneath him, revealing leanly muscled calves that were encased in charcoal-grey skinny jeans. On his feet were the kind of battered high-tops that Marc had spent the eighties avoiding.
The plane bounced. Jamie inhaled again and fixed Marc with a waspish stare. “You’d better not be bloody shitting me.”
He had a London accent. Marc couldn’t say why that cheered him, but it did. “It’s true. Google it when you get home.”
“IfI get home.”
“You will.” Marc reluctantly let his hand slide from Jamie’s shoulder. “In fact, if this turbulence doesn’t pass in ten minutes, I’ll give you my car.”
“That’s reckless.”
“Not really. My car’s a heap of shit, but it won’t come to that.”
On cue, the shuddering of the aircraft eased and a collective sigh of relief echoed in the cramped cabin. Marc cocked an eyebrow at Jamie, who finally let loose the dark scowl Marc had expected. “Guess I’ll buy my own car, then.”
“Beats flying if you hate it so much.”
Jamie shrugged and disentangled his fingers from Marc’s without seeming to care that they’d been holding hands for a solid five minutes. “I don’t hate it. I’ve just not done it a lot. This is only my third flight ever.”
“Three isn’t so bad.”
“My second was this morning when I flew in from LA.”
LA?Maybe Jamie was a showbiz kid. He was certainly pretty enough. “When was your first?”
“A year ago, but I don’t remember it.”
Jamie tapped his fingers in a strange rhythm. Marc raised an eyebrow—there was a story there, Marc could taste it—but Jamie turned his face to the window and the dark sky beyond, effectively ending the conversation, and Marc let him be. They were strangers, after all. What right did he have to the secrets behind Jamie’s stormy gaze?
With the plane now calm, Marc went back to managing the pain in his leg, which returned full force without Jamie’s distress to distract him.“But that’s always your problem, ain’t it? You faff around in everyone else’s shit and never look after yourself.”
“Piss off, Nat.”
Marc silenced the old friend who didn’t seem to understand irony and rubbed his thigh, trying to ease the cramp that was building in response to the burning sensation below his knee. Another dose of morphine would’ve done the trick, but that wasn’t going to happen unless he wrote himself a prescription at Heathrow, and he was too eager to get home to piss around at the airport pharmacy.Nah, fuck that.He pulled his hat back down his face and fought the pain with nature’s best weapon.
* * *
He woke sometime later to the cabin lights coming on in preparation for landing. The cabin smelled of stale microwaved food, and he was glad he’d missed the in-flight meal. He started to straighten up, but a warm weight on his shoulder got in his way.What the fuck?But even as confusion danced through his sleep-addled brain, he already knew it was Jamie, and the sight of the tousled dark head lolled against him came as little surprise.
Which should’ve been a surprise in itself, but it wasn’t.
Jamie appeared unaffected by the quiet buzz of activity around them as passengers and crew made ready for landing. Marc considered leaving him to sleep, but the fear in Jamie earlier haunted him.Fuck it. He should see this.
For the third time in as many hours, Marc gently shook Jamie back to awareness. “We’re landing.”
“Oh.” Jamie sat up and glanced at the window. “I don’t like that bit.”
Marc noted Jamie was tapping his fingers again. “You should try it in a cargo plane sometime,” he said. “This shit is easy.”
Jamie said nothing. Marc considered another round of shaking him, but with Jamie upright and conscious, it seemed a little overboard. Instead, he settled for science, hoping that he didn’t sound too much like a geeky plane spotter.
“Put it this way,” he said. “We’re on a jumbo, so it’s going to be noisy because it’s a big plane and the airflow comes up over the top, but it’s actually one of the safest planes to land. Sit back and enjoy it. I’ll tell you if there’s something to worry about.”
“Will you?”
“Yes, but you’ll know anyway. The best way to tell if there’s a problem on a commercial flight is to check out the flight attendants. Look at them now—do they seem worried to you?”
Jamie cast a glance behind them to where the crew were buckled in their seats. Marc didn’t have to follow his gaze to know that they’d be huddled up chatting without a care in world, like people who flew dozens of times a month with no drama usually did.