Sid rolled his eyes, then regretted it as the motion sparked a headache at the base of his skull—another of his least favourite regular symptoms. “Yeah, yeah, you’ve told me that a hundred times, but I’ve never seen you do anything that isn’t nice, soit’s whatever. No, I meant sexually.”
Dante backed up, though he didn’t go far. “In what sense?”
“You said you hadn’t done much with blokes. What about women? I know, none of my business, but I’m curious.”
“Why?”
“You seem... fuck, I can’t explain it, my brain isn’t working yet. You seem, um...”
“Virginal?” Dante’s brows rose.
“No, that’s not it, we’ve talked about it already. It’s more that something surprised you last night about how you felt, and it didn’t seem to me that it was just because I’m a man.”
A deep frown creased Dante’s face as he turned inward. Sid had noticed that about him, how he scrutinised himself as much as he did everyone around him. Was it a new habit? Or one that had kept him alive? Sid’s thoughts scattered to the macabre scar on Dante’s foot. If he glanced down, he’d see it, but he respected Dante too much to gawp at a reminder of something he didn’t want to talk about.
“You did surprise me,” Dante said eventually. “I’ve never felt... that so deep inside me. Anything I did with blokes before was snatched, you know? Over so fast it was hard sometimes to believe it had really happened. And with girls—with women—I never did anything without an endgame in mind. Every girl I picked up was for a reason, none of them good, and when I was with them, I was too busy thinking about my next move to pay much attention to how anything felt.”
It was more than Sid was ready for. Perhaps more than he deserved. Dante didn’t owe him an explanation for anything, let alone a handful of sentences that flayed himself open. Because that’s how Dante looked now: flayed.
Haunted.
Sid moved with little conscious thought, closing the distance between them. He wound his arms around Dante’s waist, drawing him nearer until bare skin touched bare skin. He shivered, desire and... something else filtered through the discomfort of the early morning until his mind emptied of everything except the primal need to wipe the self-loathing off Dante’s beautiful face. “I want to show you how good it feels to be with someone just because you want to be. No strings, no ties, no expectation except whatever goes down in that moment.”
“Why?”
“Because you deserve it.”
“I don’t.”
“You do. How can you be good if you’ve never felt good? Your mum raised you wrong. I fucking hate her.”
“You want to talk about fucking and my mother right now?”
Sid pressed his lips to Dante’s throat, tasting clean water and Dante. A brush of lips turned into a gentle scrape of his teeth, and he was rewarded with Dante’s full-body shudder. “I don’t want to talk about your mum. My point is more that if you only ever saw bad people do bad things, how could you ever know any different?”
Dante slid a hand up Sid’s torso and cupped the back of his neck. “You’re the sweet one if you think I’m nothing more than a product of a shitty environment. Can I tell you a story?”
“Of course.”
Dante shifted, taking the pressure of the bulge in his jeans away from the whole world of nothing happening in Sid’s. “I joined the gang on our estate to pay for my mum’s breast cancer treatment. She told me she had six months to live if she didn’t get surgery done at a private clinic in the city.”
“Okay...” Sid braced himself. “How did that turn out for you? I’m guessing you couldn’t just leave after? And your mum’s still alive, isn’t she?”
Dante snorted out a laugh. “As far as I know. And it turned out just fine, seeing as she was never ill in the first place. She wanted the money for a boob job.”
Sid blinked. “That’s awful. When did she come clean?”
“Some time around never. She came home one day with a whole new body and told me she’d had reconstructive surgery. Luis had to convince me it was cosmetic, and even then, I didn’t believe him for months and months and months, and by then, I’d got him sucked into road life too, and there was no way back.”
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen. He was younger, in every way, not just physical years, and I knew it, so think about that when you’re telling yourself that I’m the fucking victim.”
Dante spoke without edge, but somehow it made his words hit harder. He was still holding Sid’s neck, his gaze as intense as ever, but it was unfocused now, fixed on something Sid couldn’t see.
Get him back. Sid rubbed Dante’s ribs, the motion more staccato than soothing as his joints were still waking up. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”
Dante blinked. “Hmm?”