Conscious Decisions of the Heart (28 page)

Ben nodded sympathetically. “Do you want me to kill this Sebastian git?”

Tim grinned. “Excellent idea. He runs every night along the river. It should be easy. I’ve thought about it, but, hey, coward here, as you know.”

Ben glanced outside. “I promised I’d be back before dark, but I guess I could wait, do it, and then ride back.”

Tim glanced over. “We are only joking, right?”

Ben did a small regroup and said brightly, “Yeah, course. Nutter. So, boxes to move?”

Tim grinned evilly. “I’ll put them in my new Merc, yeah?
That
, he’s not getting.”

Tim’s parents lived in Bristol, so they had to make sure everything went into the car in one trip. Ben was following on his bike so they could load up every spare inch of space. They were done by two and set off. Tim’s parents were cool, but they lived in a tiny terraced house with no parking except for a council car park some half a mile away. Then it started raining. By the time they’d finished with the last box and had crammed everything into Tim’s boyhood bedroom, they couldn’t actually get in. Tim tried to act unconcerned and said he’d sleep on the couch.

“How’re you going to get to work from here?”

“I’m not due back until the end of March anyway. I’m doing a series of guest lectures at the LSC through February. I think that may’ve been the final straw for John—me being off in London for two months.”

“So, what’re you going to do until February?”

Tim didn’t seem quite so brave now. He was a thirty-year-old man who’d just realised he was back living with his parents. He looked very much alone.

§ § §

Ben was surprised Nikolas was in bed and asleep when he got home, but it was much later than he’d expected, so he slid between the covers and rehearsed his news for a while so it would sound as good as possible in the morning. When he woke, Nikolas was still sleeping, so he headed downstairs to make tea. Dubious news should always be accompanied by tea. His news didn’t sound quite so good in the bright light of day surrounded by the bags and a pile of laundry, which, he noticed, hadn’t moved since the day they’d arrived back.

§ § §

Nikolas woke feeling as though he’d been hit on the head, which, he supposed, he had. His headache had reduced to a dull thud until he sat up, when it came back—not as bad as the day before, but bad enough to put him in a foul mood immediately. He desperately wanted a cigarette. Ben’s clothes were neatly folded on the chair in the corner, so he supposed he’d come in at some time during the night. He could hear a shower running in one of the other bathrooms and guessed he was trying to be quiet and not wake him. Just because he had a headache, didn’t mean he was prepared to miss some morning fun. He stripped out of his clothes from the previous day, dropping them on the floor considerately where Ben would most easily find them for the laundry, and walked naked across the landing and into the steam-filled bathroom. He waited until the indistinct figure in the shower turned away, then slid silently in and embraced him, pressing his urgent morning wake up call deep—The scream nearly took him down. The punch wasn’t so effective, and he caught the wrist effortlessly. They stared at each other.

“Uh, hello, sorry about the scream. I’m Tim. And I’m really hoping Ben told you I’d be here and you came deliberately to…Okay, didn’t know I was here…Nice to meet you at last.” Nikolas nodded politely and backed out slowly. He then decided, given the direction of Tim’s gaze, this wasn’t the best way to go. He turned swiftly, grabbed a towel and went to find Benjamin Rider.

Ben was drinking his tea, looking through the post when Nikolas came into the kitchen, his hair wet from the shower and wearing only the towel. Ben’s face broke into a broad, very pleased grin, and he came up, embracing him and kissing him as if they’d been apart another six months instead of a few hours. Nikolas kept his eyes wide open during the kiss and didn’t kiss back. Ben got the message and eased off, lips still hovering. “Okay…I’m sorry I didn’t call when I was late?” Nikolas shook his head. “I’m sorry I didn’t wake you when I came in?” He thought harder. “Didn’t wake you
this morning
?”

“How about the fact there’s a man in my shower I’ve just fucked?” Ben’s eyes widened. Nikolas added, timed to perfection, “Just.” Ben’s eyes flicked up to the wet hair. He clenched his jaw on his laughter. Nikolas narrowed his eyes in annoyance and went to get some tea. His headache and his mood were both now equally bad.

Ben eased onto the stool alongside him. “John kicked him out. He’s got an eighteen-year-old now instead.” Nikolas didn’t even bother to fake sympathy at this news. Ben tried harder. “He’s had to move back in with his mum and dad—and sleep on the couch.” Nikolas scratched the back of his neck, entirely unconcerned. Ben persevered. “It’ll just be for a couple of days until he finds somewhere. You’re not really going for this plan at the moment, are you?”

“Oh, I liked the part about the replacement eighteen-year-old. I’m going to get dressed. God forbid I might meet a strange man whilst I was naked in my own kitchen.” Before he could move, though, he saw the envelope in Ben’s hand. His eyes widened. He knew if he said anything, tried to take it from him, Ben would be perverse and want to keep it, just as he had with the photograph of Nika. That’s just the way they were together. So he had to sit and watch Ben open it and peer inside.

“You wanna keep this?” Nikolas blinked. Ben tapped the envelope. “Christian Aid. Do you want to keep it and donate, or shall I bin it?”

Nikolas took it out of his hand. Christian Aid. Delivered by hand. Not Christian Beck. But it
had
been Christian Beck. He pulled out photos of people ploughing or smiling with jugs of water. No torture victims. He licked his lips. “I’m going back to bed for a while, maybe.”

Ben put a hand on his forehead. “You okay? You look like shit.”

“Thank you.” He indicated tetchily at the bags and laundry pile. “Perhaps you could find time in your busy schedule of adopting waifs and strays to actually do some work around here, or do I have to do everything?”

He wobbled slightly as he stood from the stool. His headache was back with a vengeance.

§ § §

As soon as he was sure Nikolas was in the bedroom, Ben nipped up the stairs into Tim’s room. Tim was sitting on the bed, apparently slightly dazed. Ben had told Tim a lot about Nikolas, of course, but always, he now realised, things about what Nikolas thought or said or did. Ben had never actually mentioned anything about how he
looked
. Tim had once asked Ben whether—as he was living with a civil servant—Nikolas wore a bowler hat. He’d clearly been picturing a thin, cerebral man, perhaps a slightly less creepy John Hurt. But now Tim looked like a man who’d been blindsided by a six-foot-four Nordic god in his shower that morning. Muscles, scars, bruises. Cheekbones. Panther eyes…accent. Ben was used to Nik, of course. But he couldn’t help but picture Tim’s reaction to him, and perhaps to the most obvious god-like attribute, which would have no doubt been raised, glistening and flushed dark on a ripped, tanned…

“Ben! Hello!”

Ben shook himself and realised Tim had been talking to him. “Sorry. Was he pissed?”

“No. Considering, he was very polite. So…
that’s
Nik?”

“Yeah. I didn’t get a chance to warn him, sorry. You want tea?”

“What I really want is to send John a picture of me in the shower with Nikolas.”

“Maturity a prerequisite of being a university professor, is it then?”

“Nope. As John rather proves. Eighteen. Fuck.”

“Come on, you’re dwelling. What do you want to do today?”

“Nikolas?”

“Yeah. Okay, actually, I do have an idea. You’ve just reminded me of someone.”

He went into the bedroom, expecting to find Nikolas reading the paper, but he was asleep with a pillow over his head. Ben frowned and sat down on the edge next to him, easing the pillow off. Nikolas jerked awake. Ben swiftly leant in and kissed him. “Sorry. I didn’t want to wake you last night to tell you.”

“Why didn’t you call and ask me first?”

“Because I asked myself what would Nik do? What was the
right
thing to do?”

“Oh, you’re good. Let me alone for a while, Ben. I want to sleep.”

“What’s wrong? Seriously, you don’t look good.”

“I’ve had a headache since we got back.”

Ben ran his hands over the healing scar on Nikolas’s head. “Maybe you should see someone, get checked out.”

“I’m fine. It’s just a headache. Go play with Tim.”

“Seriously? I can have a play date with my little friend? You’re so not funny sometimes.”

Nikolas clearly wasn’t feeling very funny. He pulled the pillow back over his head and feebly waved Ben away.

Ben went straight to the study. If Nikolas wouldn’t make an appointment to see a doctor, he’d make one for him. He stopped in the doorway, staring. There was an almost empty bottle of vodka on the desk and an ashtray completely full of cigarette butts. The computer was on with a video on perpetual loop. Two men appeared to be grooming a horse, naked. Until he got closer and saw they weren’t. He turned it off, picked up the bottle and swilled it around for a while. He was tempted to return to the bedroom and give Nikolas a headache worth complaining about. While he’d been humping boxes all day and offering charitable support to a friend in need, Nikolas had spent the day in lazy, self-indulgent debauchery. And he’d broken his promise to give up smoking.

He didn’t make the call to a doctor and left Nikolas to his own self-inflicted misery.

§ § §

Nikolas was indeed miserable. He woke feeling groggy and disorientated, unsure of the time or where he was. He pulled the pillow off his head and turned to peer at the clock. His heart froze and he felt sweat prick his skin, adrenaline flooding him. There was a woman sitting on the bedroom chair. Her hair hung over her face, long and lank, her dress soaking, her feet bare. He moved slowly away to the furthest side of the bed. She looked up with dead eyes. He whispered, “
Moder?
” but nothing audible came out. He turned very swiftly to check if the bedroom door was open for an escape, and when he turned back, she was gone. The chair was covered in Ben’s neatly folded clothes. His mouth was so dry he couldn’t wet his lips, and his heart was still pounding. He slid off the far side of the bed and backed out of the door. He went as far as the banister and pressed against it. “Ben? Benjamin?” The house was silent. He needed water, and he needed painkillers. They were both in the kitchen. He glanced at the stairs and made his way cautiously down, at any minute expecting the fish-white, drowned hand of his mother to snake out and grab his ankle. He hadn’t dreamed of his mother since she’d died. Since he’d tried to find her, to save her, swimming and shouting and swallowing seawater until they’d had to give him a sedative and put him under virtual house arrest. But then Sergei had come for them, and all had changed anyway.

The kitchen was mercifully free of his dead mother’s ghost, but sitting prominently on the counter was an almost empty vodka bottle, his, he assumed, two cigarette butts, again, his, and a note, not his, in Ben’s writing. It merely stated, “Later!” Nikolas couldn’t help quirking a smile at the implied threat, despite his pain and confusion. He picked up the vodka bottle and polished it off with a handful of painkillers. He felt better immediately. It wasn’t only cigarettes he had a long history with; he’d been drinking since he was ten as well. Sergei had quickly discovered if he wasn’t the only one drunk on his nightly visits to his little son, then things went a great deal more smoothly.

When Nikolas began to feel better, he also began to feel the effects of thirty-six hours without enjoyment of Ben’s body. He grabbed another bottle of vodka from the freezer, took his phone off the charger and went up to the office. He propped his feet up on his desk and texted:
Where r u?

Ben wrote back:
Not talking 2 u

Sorry
?

U promised!

Nikolas sighed. It was hard texting and smoking at the same time. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and texted back,
I know. I’m trying. Where r u what doing?

Match making.