Heated Beat 01 - My Mate Jack (MM) (11 page)

Jack muttered something. Will leaned closer. “What’s that? You’ve got a headache?”

“No….” Jack moved one of his arms a fraction. “Migraine.”

Migraine. It took Will a moment to process; then he remembered one of his housemates, Lila, got migraines every month with her period. Spent two days curled up in her bed crying. One time it had been so bad Suki had called an ambulance. Shit. Since when did Jack get migraines?

Will sat on the edge of the bed and wrestled Jack’s arms away from his face. Dazed, bloodshot eyes greeted him. Jack looked awful, pale and drawn, his body rigid with pain. “What do you need? What can I do?”

“Drugs. I’ve got some pills from the doctor in my wallet.”

Will got up and searched out Jack’s discarded jeans. He tried not to wonder what Jack was wearing on his bottom half and retrieved Jack’s wallet. He found a foil strip of pills in one of the credit card slots. “How many do you need?”

“Two.”

Will popped two pills out and fetched some water. Jack struggled to sit up. Will helped him and held the glass to his lips while he drank. After, it felt natural to wipe the spilled water from Jack’s chin with the pad of his thumb.

Jack lay down again, his eyes clenched shut, in much the same position as before, hunched up in a ball, like he could squeeze the pain out of himself.

Will hovered, still holding Jack by his tensed-up shoulder. “Do you need anything else?”

Jack shifted. “No. Just….”

“What?” Will released Jack’s shoulder from his death grip and rubbed his fingermarks away. “What do you need, mate?”

“Keep doing that thing with your fingers. It helps.”

W
ILL
SPENT
an uncomfortable afternoon wedged between Jack and the wall. His back stiffened and his fingers ached, but he kept rubbing Jack’s shoulders long after he felt the tension in Jack’s muscles fade. Will didn’t go back to sleep, but it was hours before Jack stirred. Will passed the time researching migraines and the name of Jack’s pills on his laptop and, later, when he was sure Jack was fast asleep, watching footage of the festival on BBC2.

Jack woke around six. Will could tell straight away he felt better, though he remained pale and drawn.

Will removed his hand from Jack’s shoulder and leaned back to give Jack space to move, space that Jack quickly filled by rolling face-first into Will’s chest. Will braved a tentative arm around him. “Back with me, mate?”

Jack nodded and hummed his answer, and made no move to disentangle himself from Will’s loose embrace. “What time is it?”

“Six. Hard to tell in here, isn’t it? Window’s so bloody small.”

Jack grunted. “Was big enough to do my head in this morning.”

Will glanced at the tiny window Jack had covered with his T-shirt and remembered what he’d read on the Net while Jack had been sleeping. “Was the light making your migraine worse?”

“How do you know about that?”

“You told me. Why do you think I’m in bed with you? You scared the crap out of me.”

Jack blinked, like he wasn’t entirely with it. “I don’t remember that. I black out with them sometimes.”

“Sometimes? This has happened before?” It seemed a stupid question, given the hard-core painkillers Jack had in his wallet, but Will needed to hear it from Jack.

“I had my first one six months ago. Since then, I’ve had about one a week, sometimes two. The doctors think it’s the lights in the clubs, and the heat.”

Will tightened his hold on Jack with little thought. “But we didn’t go to a club. We were outside all night.”

Jack shrugged. “I know. It’s part of the reason I came. Figured I’d get away with it. Then they put some strobe lights on, remember? At the end? I felt kinda weird after that, but it didn’t trigger the pain until we came back here.”

“One a week? Fuck.” Will shook his head and remembered Jack’s dazed expression now, the way he’d shut down and passed out that morning. It was behavior he’d seen in Jack before, many times, but now he wondered if he’d missed something. “Are they always that bad?”

Jack huffed a soft puff of warm air into Will’s chest. “I’ve had them much worse than that. One of my housemates found me passed out in the shower a few months ago. I don’t remember it at all.”

“That’s not right, Jack.” Will fought the urge to squeeze Jack tighter than he already was. “Isn’t there anything you can do? Maybe you shouldn’t play in the clubs anymore.”

“It’s not that easy. I’m locked into my XS contract for another two years. Even if they’d let me leave Ibiza, they’d only send me somewhere else just the same. I’ve tried to take more outdoor gigs and spend more time in the studio, but I’m fucked at the moment, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“What about your management?” Surely they didn’t want Jack in such a mess after each gig? “What are they doing to help you?”

Jack shrugged. “Haven’t told them. They’d probably release me from my contract, but I can’t let that happen. If I fuck things up with them, I’ve got nothing.”

Jack’s misery was plain to see. It hurt Will’s chest. He hugged Jack and absently kissed his hair, then he froze, mortified, but Jack didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps he wasn’t as recovered as he seemed.

That’s right. He’s ill and you’re molesting him. Nice.

Will pulled his face from Jack’s hair. “I did some reading while you were asleep. All the medical sites say you should take it easy. You don’t have to be anywhere until tomorrow, do you?”

Jack shook his head.

“Good.” Will rolled Jack gently onto his back and slid out of bed. “Stay there. I’ll get you some tea.”

Will left Jack and headed for the kitchen, searching for something… anything, to help Jack feel better. On his student budget that meant fish fingers, oven chips, and baked beans. He put the oven on, made tea, and took a mug back downstairs. Jack was in the bathroom. Will left his mug on the desk and returned to the kitchen.

Jack appeared just as Will was dumping their nursery supper on a couple of chipped plates. He looked like he’d showered again. “Did I throw up last night?”

“At the festival, or here?”

“Here.” Jack started to scowl, then thought better of it. “I remember the festival.”

Lucky him. Will had drunk so much the only thing he could recall with any clarity was the dizzying rush of dancing under the stars with Jack. “I don’t know if you puked before I came down. Why? Do you feel sick now?”

Jack shrugged. “Not really. Bloody starving, too. How did you know I wanted a chip butty?”

“Because you’re not as flash as you think you are.” Will retrieved some clean cutlery from the draining board. When he looked back, Jack was sitting at the tiny kitchen table, watching, his expression unreadable.

They shared a quiet dinner. Jack inhaled his food, then nursed his second cup of tea. Will finished up and ditched the plates in a sink of hot water.

“Do you want me to wash up?”

Will glanced at Jack. “Nah, you’re all right. I’ll do it tomorrow. Give me something to do when you’re gone. It’s boring around here on my own.”

“When do your mates get back?”

“Three weeks.” Will came back to the table and leaned on his chair. He didn’t feel like sitting down again.

“Must be weird being by yourself when you’re used to all those birds running riot.”

“It is.” Will peered into Jack’s mug. It was half-full. “Don’t drink that yet. You need to take another dose of your pills.”

“What are you? My mother?”

Will rolled his eyes. “What do you want to do tonight? I’ve got the first series of
Red Dwarf
on DVD. We can watch it on my computer if you’re up to it.”

Jack’s expression brightened.
Red Dwarf
was his favorite TV program ever. “Sounds good to me.”

They shuffled downstairs and settled on Will’s bed again. Despite the balmy weekend, the heat and humidity had dropped during the day, and though it wasn’t cold, the night was gray and bleak, and Will’s basement room felt close and comforting. Like the real world and the strain of a blurred friendship didn’t exist.

Jack sat with his back to the wall, but as the daylight faded, so did he. It wasn’t long before he slumped down, leaning on Will, and dozed off.

W
ILL
WOKE
in the dark to a warm body curved around him, lips at his neck and a hard cock digging into his back. Will moaned and let his body respond before his brain caught up.

He rolled his hips back and tilted his neck to give those lazy, devilish lips better access. The heated mass behind him responded in earnest—tongue, teeth, and blunt nails. Fuck, those blunt nails. Will wriggled and groaned again, needing, craving more, until a sleep-thick, mumbled moan brought him to his senses.

Shit. Will jerked forward, his upper body flying off the bed. He saved himself with his hand, but his strangled curse was enough to wake Jack.

“Wha…? Will? What the fuck are you doing down there?”

“What do you think?” Will scrambled out of bed—somehow they’d ended up
in
the bloody thing, snuggled up like an old married couple—and put as much distance between him and Jack as possible in the tiny, dark room.

Jack squinted at him. “Did I kick you or something?”

“Or something.” It came out as a growl, and the fiery depth of Will’s anger surprised him. He’d shared a bed with Jack more times than he could remember, kissed him, touched him, fucked him, so why did this feel like the end of the fucking world?

Jack stretched and lay back, like a cat in the sun. Something inside Will snapped. He yanked the duvet off the bed and shoved Jack, hard. “Are you bloody serious? You’re in my bed with your hands all over me and you’re just gonna go back to sleep like nothing happened? Fuck you, Jack. I’m sick of this shit.”

Jack blinked. “What—”

“Don’t give me that crap. You sack me off at Christmas to bang some other bloke, all the while telling me how straight you are, then you turn up here, saying cryptic shit and messing with my head, and then you do this? Fuck you.” Will took a breath and tried to quell his anger. Failed. “Listen, I don’t know what the fuck’s going on with you, but you don’t get to walk in and out of my life like you give a shit when it’s clear you don’t. It’s not fair, Jack. It’s not fucking fair.”

Will fled upstairs without waiting for Jack to respond, and when he woke from a fitful, restless sleep on the nasty Ikea couch, Jack was gone, leaving nothing but an empty packet of painkillers to show he’d been there at all.

S
EPTEMBER
11

08:34 a.m.

Jack:
So… we haven’t talked for ages and I don’t really know what to say, but it’s Monday morning and I’m drinking alone. Reckon I’ve got nothing to lose.

Um, so… I’m sorry, I s’pose? It’s taken me this long to figure it out, but I’m guessing I felt you up in my sleep, and you didn’t like it. Shit. I really am fucking sorry, mate. Wish I could excuse it, or even explain it, but I can’t. It’s just… fuck, I don’t know. Lately, I feel like I don’t bloody know anything. And that’s not even true, ’cause it’s not a recent thing. I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to say it: Having sex with you fucked with my head. And I’ve spent the last two years trying to figure out if it’s the worst thing in the world or the best thing that ever happened to me.

I still don’t know. I mean, I know it’s not the worst thing in the world. How can it be when being with you makes me so happy? But I don’t know what it means, for me, for you… I don’t have a bloody clue. All I know is I came home to see you and ballsed it up, and for that, I really am sorry.

09: 38 a.m.

Will:
What the fuck??? You’re telling me this now?

11:34 a.m.

Will:
Okay, so I read your e-mail back when I wasn’t half asleep, and I still don’t get what you’re trying to say.

Jack, we’ve been mates our whole lives. I know things have been… weird since we left home, but I don’t know what that means any more than you do. I’ve thought about it a lot… more than I want to admit, but all it boils down to is I kissed you and slept with you because I wanted to. You did because you felt sorry for me and you wanted a quick bang before you went to Ibiza.

It’s taken me a while to figure that out. All this time I thought it didn’t mean anything, but it does, even if it means something different for each of us. I’m gay. You’re not. Yeah, you did grope me, but I liked it, so I’m not sure what I got the arse about.

Guess you’re not the only one who’s fucking confused.

10:45 p.m.

Jack:
Don’t give me that. You know your own mind. Always have.

September 12

01:48 a.m.

Will:
Do I? And does it matter? Jack, YOU’RE STRAIGHT.

08:12 a.m.

Jack:
Am I?