“Sid.” Dante pressed his thumb harder against Sid’s heated skin. “Come on.”
Sid fought the bewildering fog as it loomed over him. He focused on Dante stroking his face. The sensation was as blazing as everything else, and yet somehow, it didn’t hurt. “Say please again.”
Dante chuckled. “Why?”
“Because I like it.”
If Dante was confused by the odd diversion, it didn’t show. He brought his other hand to Sid’s face and gripped his chin, his touch light, and yet Sid felt it everywhere that wasn’t overwhelmed by the worst kind of heat. “Will you please let me help? You don’t have to explain anything or talk about it, but I can’t leave you like this. It’s—” Dante sucked in a shaky breath. “You want me to beg or what? Cos I’ll do it.”
I don’t want that.Not about this. Sid gritted his teeth and found the mind-muscle connection in his right arm. He raised it high enough to wrap his stiff fingers around Dante’s wrist, fusing himself to the solid bone as if it could anchor him to a place where the mind-blowing kiss they’d shared was just that: a kiss.
A promise.
A beginning.
Just say it. “I’m too hot,” Sid ground out, hating the slur in his voice. “It makes my symptoms a thousand times worse and they won’t get better till I cool down, but I can’t do that until I can move without punching myself in the face.”
Nausea rolled in his belly as the effort of stringing two sentences together made his head spin. He tipped it back against the cupboards and closed his eyesagain, knowing they’d stay that way now until the sun went down or he actually died right there on the floor, whichever happened first.
Dante let go of Sid’s face and unpicked his fingers from his wrist. He lowered Sid’s arm, curving it gently to take the strain from the burning tendons. Then he was gone, and Sid waited for the click of the front door.
It never came.
Sometime later, something cool and wet pressed to Sid’s bare chest, his wrists, and the back of his neck. “Tell me if it’s too cold,” Dante murmured. “I don’t want to shock your muscles.”
Sid made a sound he’d have been embarrassed of way back when he’d first been diagnosed, but he’d endured this too many times to care. Asking for help still stuck in his throat, and probably always would, but the relief Dante was offering was worth so much more.
And the relief came fast. Dante moved methodically around Sid’s upper body, cooling his blood as if he’d swallowed an MS carer’s manual in six seconds flat. He said little, and Sid said even less, but by the time Sid could move his legs without crying, the awkwardness they started the day with had all but gone.
Sid drank water from the ice-cold glass Dante held to his lips.And I didn’t even dribble.
A small victory, but it made him smile.
Dante noticed. “You’re back?”
“I think so. How long was I gone?”
“It’s two o’clock.”
“What?” Sid scrambled his legs to get up. “Shit, I’ve got so much to do. And I’m supposed to meet Benjamin.”
Dante caught Sid mid flail and eased him back down. “Benjamin went somewhere for a meeting. He’ll be gone all afternoon. And if you tell me what you need to do in the garden, I’ll go and do it just as soon as you’re off this fucking floor.”
Sid’s tired brain took a moment to collect each nugget of information and even longer to prioritise the most important. “How do you know where Benjamin went?”
“He told me this morning when he came to ask why we missed breakfast. That’s why I came to your door in the first place. He asked me to check on you while he was gone, but I’d have come anyway, I think. I was worried about you.”
“Don’t. Please. I hate it... not just you, but with everybody.”
Dante produced a dry towel from somewhere Sid couldn’t see and rubbed it over Sid’s tingling skin, blotting the moisture from the cold cloths. “I get that—I mean, I don’t because I’m not you, but I get why you don’t like it.”
“But?”
“There isn’t a but.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“So?” Dante folded the towel into a perfect square and set it aside. “What do you want me to say? That you don’t get to decide how someone else feels about something any more than they do? Because I think you already know that.”