“You go first. It’s kind of entertaining.”
Neil blinked, shook out his hands, rotated his shoulders, and turned back to his own sandwich. “I’m too hungry now. Maybe later.”
Joshua nodded, grinning with a crinkle in his nose. “Yeah, maybe later.”
Neil felt a warmth in his chest, a rush of unfurling love that shook him deeply, and he reached out to grab Joshua’s hand. And they sat and the table and ate like that, fingers entwined.
Morning light peekedthrough the blinds in the window of Neil’s room. Joshua rubbed his hand up and down Neil’s sweaty back, feeling the knobs of his spine, and the sweet dip where his tailbone led down into the crack of his ass. He fingered Neil’s hole gently, pressing inside, and then pulling out to rub the pad of his finger against the puckered edge, and then pushed back in again.
“Mmph,” Neil said into his pillow.
Joshua murmured some kind of nonsense in response, in a daze from multiple rounds of sex. He didn’t know the last time he’d been this fucked out. Probably the early years of his relationship with Lee. No, not even then. They hadn’t had the stamina.
Joshua kissed Neil’s freckled shoulder and gazed at the chestnut hair that curled with sweat at the nape of Neil’s long neck. He wanted to bite along the side of it, lick into Neil’s ear, and push his cock in again, but he just couldn’t get his body to agree with him. His dick was limp and still twitching against his thigh.
Joshua jumped when the door to the bedroom jerked open. Derek barged in clutching a bag of takeout from the OK Café. Shock broke over his face as he took in the scene.
Neil yelped and rolled over fast, knocking Joshua off of him. He was surprisingly strong for being so wiry. Standing up, naked as the day is long, he barked, “What the hell?”
Derek’s eyes flew between Neil’s nakedness and Joshua under the covers, and then he dropped the bag on the carpet and shut the door.
Neil rubbed a hand over his face and cursed under his breath.
“Is he upset?” Joshua asked, getting out of bed and finding his underwear. Though it was a rhetorical question. Obviously Derek was upset.
“Hell if I know,” Neil said, though he obviously knew, too.
As Joshua dressed, he watched Neil process the situation. For once, Joshua felt a weird disconnect. Whenever Joshua looked at Neil, all of Neil’s knowledge and experience over the last two lifetimes seemed to overlie his features, making Joshua see him as much older than his body claimed. But at that moment, naked and worried, he looked every bit of twenty.
Joshua pressed a pair of underwear and some black jeans into Neil’s arms. “I know he’s not your boyfriend, but you had something going on with him. I’m sure he feels hurt.”
Neil cursed again softly and shook head, like he was trying to change or deny the situation with that movement alone.
“You should talk to him,” Joshua said. “And I should probably go back to my hotel.”
He’d checked in the day before after his plane landed, and he’d left his bags in the room, but he hadn’t made it back. He probably had messages waiting for him on his phone, and work issues to deal with, too. He definitely needed clean clothes.
Neil dropped the clothes on the bed, and hauled Joshua in close. He jolted at the sight of pure fear in Neil’s eyes. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Joshua soothed. “I’m just trying to….”
Just trying to what?He didn’t know. He was covered in come and he was unbelievably exhausted, physically sated, but he was still hungry for more of Neil. He was also terrified that this was some kind of dream, or something more sinister than that. Yet he also knew that if this was real life, then there were things to be handled—phone calls he and Neil needed to make, people who relied on them to make decisions, sign paperwork, and help them do their jobs. Some kind of sanity had to be patched together out of this madness. And the outside world was already intruding on them now. It couldn’t wait.
“You’re going.” Neil’s skin went so pale that freckles Joshua didn’t realize he had stood out.
Joshua covered his face with his hands. He needed to get his head around this.
Neil pulled Joshua’s hands away, ducking to get a look at Joshua’s face.
Joshua smiled softly, putting on his ‘big boy’ pants, and doing the right thing. “I’m just going to my hotel.” He put his hands on Neil’s shoulders, gazed into his eyes, and went on. “You’re going to talk to Derek. And then you’re going to make the calls you need to make.”
Neil swallowed and nodded.
Joshua kissed his mouth, pulled back. He ran his hand through Neil’s soft, curly hair again. He was afraid to leave, too. But he supposed he had to test it. He had to rip the Band-Aid off. They had responsibilities, and they couldn’t stay in Neil’s bed forever.
“All right?”
Neil nodded again, before glancing toward the door. They could hear loud, aggressive music coming from Derek’s room.
