He takes it and I tug him under the spray, cupping my hand over the stitched gash in his head. Holding him close as the water rains down on us, praying my equilibrium won’t betray me in a moment he needs me to be whole.
It doesn’t. It stands fast, and I help Sol get clean. Then I take him back to his room, to his bed, and lie down with him in my arms.
We stay like that for a long time. Sol sleeps on and off, I don’t. Instead, I let my thoughts run riot while I’m flat on my back. I let anger, guilt, wonder, and love roll through me, and by the time Sol wakes again, I think I understand.
“It was this, wasn’t it?” I say into the dark. “What you lost when I got hurt. It was never about sex, it wasthis.”
Sol drags his head from my chest, his hair untangled now I’ve spent all evening picking through it. “Don’t give me too much credit. I’ve wanted you to fuck me as long as I’ve been old enough to understand what it means.”
“How long is that?”
“Forever.”
“I like the sound of that.”
Sol’s brows pull together. Not a frown, but I can see he doesn’t understand what I’m saying. Or, worse, he thinks he might but he can’t believe I mean it.
I need to fix that more than I need my next breath, but a soft knock at the door breaks the moment.
Skylar, and he wants to check Sol over before he goes back to work.
I watch him intently, tracking every minute detail.
It amuses him enough to offer me the stethoscope. “Listen for yourself.”
He’s taking the piss. Obviously. But I want to hear what he’s hearing and understand it. So I listen to Sol’s heart and lungs and believe Skylar when he tells me the rasping sound is easing.
Skylar leaves, shutting the door behind him.
Sol goes back to dozing on my chest and I find myself still thinking about the guilt-laced epiphany I had before Skylar came to check Sol hasn’t developed pneumonia in the last eight hours. How Sol lost this level of comfort from me because I forgot I was capable of giving it.
It’s a tough pill to swallow. One that has me wanting to wake him up so we can have the conversation that’s been hanging over us since before the ocean nearly took him from me. But I don’t wake him. I get some sleep of my own and the next time I’m aware of how right he feels in my arms, it’s morning. It’s a new day, and I’m going to spend it with Sol.
I do spend that day with Sol, and every day after for as long as he needs to be in bed.
I’ve never seen him sleep so much.
Then one day, he wakes up and he’s done with it, and I know it’s only a matter of time before I catch him dipping his feet in the ocean.
First, though, he wants to see Oscar, and sensing he needs some space, I let him take Fiadh with him now she’s back from her jaunt to Saltkiss Bay and stay behind to reacquaint myself with the Joker. The Rebel Kings have kept the cellar in perfect order. Lines are clean, barrels tapped. But there are new beers to connect and stock sheets to check, even though I know I won’t find a single digit out of place.
They’re good people.
Especially whichever one of them saw fit to smuggle the Bosanko concertina into the flat upstairs and hang it back on the wall.
Unless it was Mal.
I should ask him. But for whatever reason, I already know I won’t. I don’t care how the concertina found its way home. Just that it did, and that Sol does too, a few hours later.
The pub is open by then. I’m fighting with a cantankerous ale pump as Sol comes up behind me and presses his face between my shoulders.
I feel the chill of winter on him, but I carry on with what I’m doing, letting him have his moment, before I give in to the need to touch him, and reach back to rub his hip. “All right?”
Sol sighs. “Yeah. Just knackered.”
And sad. I feel it in every ounce of that heavy breath. “Go rest upstairs.”
“I don’t want to go to bed, Jackie. That ceiling is driving me crazy.”