10

Dinner at his Mom's was a weekly, or twice-weekly event. It saved on money, since they weren't expected to bring anything. Often Eric attended, and together all three of them generally had a good time. His Mom and Eric were close, having formed a bond when Neil went to New York, and Neil marvelled that Eric sometimes felt as much like a brother as he did a friend. After lazy dinners and creative desserts, they often sat in front of the television, flicking through channels or watching VHS, commenting on the men they'd do. Neil noticed that his taste was similar to his Mom's, and once he saw this, he couldn't unsee it. Eric's taste in men seemed to veer all over the place, though he didn't see the point in facial hair.

Neil and Eric would drive home from those dinners and continue the conversation. On those nights, Neil often felt good, like he'd done the right thing in coming back to Hutchinson – if anyone could ever truly say that – to his friends and his family, and he felt ashamed that he liked homeliness now, and simplicity. Some small part of him wanted the showy lights of New York and clients who would pay more money. That part of him remained too small to overturn the goodness of those nights.

When Eric wasn't there, it felt like old times. His Mom told him freely and often that she loved him, and he responded in awkward smiles and half shrugs. He slipped into silence often, which his Mom didn't find unusual, but these days he wondered. Did she not notice how he'd been as a kid? Not bad exactly, but stealing her Playboys and stealing them back again when she'd realised that he had them? Brian had talked to him about how it was important to realise your parents weren't perfect, and Neil had scoffed initially, because who thought their parents were perfect? But then, as time passed, he came to see that for all of her love, his Mom also kind of didn't look for the darkness in anyone. She wanted everyone to be alright. She wanted to fix the wounded with her love. So she doled out 'I love you, baby,' to Eric and Wendy and her son, and brought out some food, or changed the subject, and for the longest time Neil had thought that was fine. Not perfect, but fine.

Now he didn't know. Brian was making him soft, he knew that much, but he liked Brian too much to stop seeing him and his gentle words worked their way into him with a determined insistence. He turned sentences over days and weeks later. He thought about everything he heard from the kid. Even Wendy didn't get his undivided attention in quite the same way. At least, not with the same stuff.

It was a Thursday night when he started having a different conversation with his Mom. A new type of conversation, a way of talking they weren't used to. He'd swallowed the last bite of a peach and cornflake pie, surprisingly good, and leaned back in his chair and looked down at the red and white pattern on the tablecloth. He traced it with a finger. It was plastic and rough under his skin. Easy to wipe down in case of messes. The kind of tablecloth you'd have if there were kids in the house. He wondered if he should buy her a nicer one now that he was older and had moved out, but then figured she probably didn't want to wash a cloth one in the washing machine if it got dirty. Easier to wipe down plastic.

'Mom,' he said, 'there's a lot of things you don't know about me.'

She was in the middle of raising a forkful of pie to her mouth and put it down on her plate. It made a small clink! Neil picked at the hem of the tablecloth now. He had no idea what he was doing.

'I know, honey,' she said, finally. She sighed. 'I know.'

'A lot of bad things,' he ventured.

She picked up the fork, chewed on the morsel of pie reflectively, as though she needed something to do. Neil saw everything reflected clearly on her face. Years of reading Coach, years of reading clients, and he could tell what most people were feeling. He saw confusion and even fear. When she looked up at him after swallowing, there was a haunted look in the shadows under her eyes and the pull of her mouth and he thought, what do you know? What could you possibly know?

And then it hit him. Does she know? Did she know and not do anything? How could that even be possible? A crack split down the middle of him, but he didn't express it except in the way he shifted in his chair.

'I know about your...the way you used to get your money,' she says, finally. 'I didn't know at first, but there were rumours and baby, you have to know, I don't judge you at all. I'm just glad you're home now and working this other job.'

Neil's face showed no expression, but he reeled on the inside. He had never thought of his job as a 'bad thing.' Even Brian, who had called it a 'coping mechanism,' and a 'symptom' and 'understandable,' had never called it a bad thing. He supposed she'd find out eventually, but it was surprising to hear it like this. That this was the bad thing she assumed he was talking about.

How had she found out? Some client talking in passing about some young kid they'd had? A concerned and malicious mother taking her aside and saying, 'do you know what my husband did to your son?' He didn't want to know.

Suddenly he didn't want her to know about any of the rest of it either. The idea was horrifying. He didn't want to see the look on her face when she found out, he didn't want to field her reaction at all. She was still looking at him, expectant.

'I'm sorry,' he said, awkwardly. He hadn't wanted his alternate line of employment to hurt her, and he saw in the way her body was less easy that it had.

She watched him, evaluating if he meant it. Finally she shrugged in a gesture he used all the time.

'We all do things we regret,' she offered him a weak smile, and cleared the table. They returned to their regular dinner rituals after that and didn't chance across more serious subjects again.

That Saturday, Brian came over with microwave popcorn, blocks of chocolate, a bottle of vodka and a handful of obscure, b-grade alien-based horror films he'd managed to source. Eric and Brian seemed to have a competition where they found the most ridiculous horrors they possibly could, and they were getting quite good at it now. They even sent away for specific catalogues and special-ordered when they had to. For something that had started out as a hobby, it was becoming a serious fixation for both of them.

But Neil wasn't opposed when there was vodka involved.

They would have had the VHS night whether Neil was there or not, but sometimes he hung around watching their easy banter and talk of directors and even scriptwriters and felt like he had nothing to add to the conversation. He minded, not enough to ruin their fun, but enough that it scratched away inside of him. He said 'so long' when he left for his work shift, and felt a twinge when he thought of the fun they would have without him.

Work was uneventful for a Saturday night. There were the regular rushes and he was left with the job of closing the store, reconciling and counting out the tills, but it went easy enough and he got out on time. He wanted the longest shower it was possible to have. When he was coated in so much grease, he wanted to use steel wool on his face, for all that it would graze and shred.

He walked through the door and immediately heard the sound of drunken giggling from Brian and the hiccoughing end of what had been hysterical laughter from Eric. He wasn't in the mood to deal with either of them and walked straight to the bathroom. The others stopped laughing straight away and then he heard Eric say, 'you don't want to talk to him until he's clean! I'd be grumpy if I could start an oil factory with my body as well.'

Brian was giggling at that again as Neil closed the door behind him and started stripping off his clothes. He refused to believe that the giggling was either adorable, cute or attractive. It was the opposite of manly, it wasn't his type.

The jet of water he stepped under was so hot that he hissed and let it fall on the less sensitive parts of his body before he was willing to brave his head and neck. It felt good to wash the shift off him and he scrubbed at his hair and wondered what other jobs he could possibly get that didn't involve so much goddamned oil. Maybe another fast food place that didn't do so much frying, like a Subway chain.

Forty-five minutes later he stepped out, got dressed and ambled back into the lounge where Eric was dozing and Brian was watching the hallway for him, a serious expression on his face.

'I spoil the mood?' Neil said, only half-joking.

'Nah,' Brian said, eyes sparkling with vodka-light and clasping his knees to his body with pale hands. He got up, like he wanted to come forward, but he stood there instead while the TV offered them screams and shrieks and the stereotypical eerie whistles that often accompanied aliens on TV.

'He's out,' Neil looked at Eric with a shake of his head, 'must've had a long day.'

Brian nodded.

'He had some tests today. We were celebrating that they were over.'

Neil thought that maybe he should ask them more about how their studying was going at college. He forgot to involve himself in that side of their lives, because it made him feel stupid and pointless.

'I want,' Brian looked off to the side, 'I want to talk to you about something.'

'Here we go,' Neil said, rolling his eyes. Something serious, no doubt. Brian didn't say anything, and Neil turned around and walked back to his room, and heard the shuffle-step of Brian following him a moment later. Once there he turned on his light and Brian shut the door behind him.

Neil stood and Brian sat down awkwardly on the bed.

'I've been doing a lot of thinking, about h-him. I'm going to...' he trailed off and his whole body locked into a hunch. Neil bit the inside of this life and waited, slack and still radiating heat from the shower.

'Christ,' Neil said as he realised what Brian was trying to say. 'Fuckin', you're going to let your Mom find him, aren't you?'

'If she...can. He might be dead,' Brian said, sounding pained and hopeful all at once. Neil looked down at the floor and felt black and red feelings coursing through him. The idea of Coach older, wrinkled, dead. In his mind, Coach hadn't aged a bit. The perfect parent, he thought, swallowing the taste of grease out of the back of throat, even though he'd brushed his teeth thoroughly.

'If he's not dead?'

'I want to, I h-have to tell him, tell him he did the wrong thing. Or, something, I don't know. I have to do something. I don't know what I'd say.'

'Probably nothing, because you'll pass out, and bleed, and fuck knows what else. Look at you now, just thinking about it,' Neil poked the truth at him so he didn't have to look at his own and Brian rubbed hands on his upper arms like he was trying to warm himself up, and then he flinched away from his own touch and looked miserable and still instead.

'Stop it,' Brian said, and Neil shook his head even though he wasn't looking at him.

'Will that give you what you want? Seeing him? Collapsing? Showing him what he did to you?'

'It won't, it won't be like that. It won't. I hardly pass out at all these days. I have less nosebleeds.'

'You don't think,' Neil said, his voice careless and not at all reflecting what he was feeling inside, 'that you could go twenty fuckin' years without seeing him and not freak out when you do? Jesus. Tell me how well you reacted the time you saw him at that Hallowe'en house after those couple of years without seeing him. Go on.'

Brian hissed in his throat and edged up the bed, away from Neil, looking firmly in the opposite direction.

'I don't want anything to do with it,' Neil added, for good measure, because he didn't. At least, he told himself that, though it didn't seem very convincing even when he shouted it in his own head. It occurred to him that no one at work had any idea about this, any idea about the bullshit he went through, the fucked up, dumb shit he had to think about.

'Well, maybe I don't want you to have anything to do with it,' Brian said, belligerent and hurt all at the same time. Neil grit his teeth and walked to his window, where he pulled back the curtains and looked out to the quiet street beyond. He wanted to put his fist through the glass and stopped himself by pressing it into the wall instead.

Brian stood and Neil didn't face him, he could feel his own heart beating a gallop inside his chest and all the way up in the back of his throat. He felt the way he often felt after a nightmare, and he wanted to just claw it out of him and throw it onto the floor, where he was sure it would land a wet, bloody mess.

'I'm just telling you, because it's the polite thing to do,' Brian said, his voice flat now, and Neil waited for him to say anything else and then it became obvious that Brian was waiting for him to say something. Stubbornly, Neil remained silent.

'I'm going to bed. In the spare room. I drank too much. I can't drive home,' Brian said, and he walked out, closing the door again behind him.

Neil sat down on his bed. The space where Brian had sat was not yet warm, but he still felt the indentation. He wanted to follow Brian into the spare room and say a hundred things. Are you fuckin' nuts? I don't want you to do that to yourself! What could you get out of it that's so different to what you have now? Why? You're just caving to your Mom's pressure, who wouldn't? And he wanted to say more besides. It rattled around in his head and he rubbed at his eyes until he realised that besides all of that he was really damned tired.

He kicked his blankets aside, removed his shirt and burrowed facedown into the cool material, pushing his face into the pillow.

He thought after a conversation like that he'd have problems falling asleep, but he had drifted off in under five minutes, exhaustion claiming him.

Brighton Beach. A 'loud nightmare,' but Neil didn't know that at the time, caught in that bathroom, in that frightening moment between locking the door with that pathetic latch and the john unlocking it. How his heart had hammered. The artificial light had scoured out all hope of release and left him only with animal desperation and the sour, unrelenting taste of regret.

In his dream, everything was amplified, and the memory ran into heightened textural awareness. Everything was worse. And he was shouting and even screaming in a way that he couldn't remember doing at the time, and he was determined that this time, if he was loud enough, if he was just loud enough, one of the other fucks in the neighbouring apartments would call someone, do something, because he was going to die, god, he was going to die, he was going to-

He woke up dry retching, and hunched over himself in the blankets. His hands ached from fisting his pillow and he unclenched them with a pained groan. He was shaking. He was cold. Too cold. A sound came out of his open mouth and it sounded like 'fu-uh-' but could have been anything.

And then he sensed the presence in the room and turned too fast. It made him dizzy, orienting to his new surroundings, his brain hanging onto what he'd left behind in the dreamscape.

'What?' He managed, an honest question, nothing derisive or sarcastic in it.

Brian was standing there, close to the bed, knees touching the mattress. He looked shocked. Struck dumb. His eyes were too wide and his mouth was open. Neil wanted to ask him if he was okay but his body reminded him with a jagged determined mind of its own that the nightmare was not yet gone and he turned back to the pillow and pushed his forehead into it and wondered how much sleep he'd gotten, how loud he'd been, when the stupid fucking things would stop.

'E-Eric gave me these,' Brian said, holding open his hand. Two, unused yellow earplugs.

Neil winced. The nightmare had gone on long enough to wake both of them. Long enough for Eric to get a second pair of earplugs and give them to Brian. Long enough that Brian had not used them, and decided to stand there instead, until he woke up.

'Fuck off,' he said into the pillow, eloquent as ever.

'That summer, you said,' Brian whispered, and Neil shook his head.

'What summer?'

'You said it happened to you that summer, all of that summer.'

Neil pushed himself shakily into a sitting position, kneeling on sore legs, feeling stripped by the artificial lights which remind him, even now, of that bathroom, Christ, he was going to be sick thinking about it all night now. Christ. The hand he passed through his hair was shaking so hard that it felt like a seizure instead.

'It wasn't about that,' Neil managed, and then thought, is that me? Is that my voice? Fuck. 'Not that summer.'

'Uh,' Brian said, that sound he made when he was thinking or confused or scared. That conversational place-marker that sounded stupid.

Neil made to get up, he was not sure why, but he lurched forward. He hated, hated, that Brian has seen him like this. It was the last thing he wanted him to see. He has one leg swung over the side of the bed when Brian mobilised into action. He stepped forward and pushed him back on the shoulders.

'I think you should lie down,' Brian said, and Neil felt kitten-weak and upset and resisted at first and then went because he didn't know how he'd be able to stand anyway.

To his surprise, Brian kept gently pushing him until he was lying down alongside Neil, in the bed.

'Do you want some water?' Brian said, and Neil shook his head, and then shook it again, and then a third time. He didn't know what he wanted. He didn't think he could swallow water. He didn't feel capable of most of the basic motor functions.

'Turn out the light,' he managed, and Brian's eyes widened, and then he got out of the bed briefly and turned off the overhead bulb. The room was plunged into night-lit darkness and he sighed in relief. It was a broken, long sound and he hated himself for all of it, and that Brian was here, fucking Brian, seeing all of it.

But when Brian crawled into bed again and lay alongside him, glasses clinking softly on the bedside table, Neil realised that he didn't want him to leave. He leaned back into him, not enough to touch, but enough to feel the warmth of the other boy radiating into him.

'The last time,' Brian said, 'your nightmare, it was about the last time, before you came back.'

'Fuck,' Neil said, and he pushed his face into the pillow until his other shoulder came around and he was nearly facedown. He was still shaking, and he was aware of a dull pain in his head, in his body, lancing up his spine. The sensory portion of the memory had lingered and it stamped him with despair.

Later, he would have sworn that he didn't flinch when Brian put a firm arm around him. He was surprised to feel him inch closer, until his forehead was touching the back of Neil's shoulder.

'Eric said the nightmares were bad,' Brian said, full of words in the space of Neil's silence. 'But seeing it is worse. So, y'know, uh, I couldn't just leave you like that. If you need me to go away...'

Neil shook his head against the pillow and was rewarded with a warm arm squeeze and Brian pressing himself closer and pulling the blankets up around them. Neil, for some reason, suddenly found himself wanting to cry, and he shuddered against the weight of refusing.

'I'd just as soon stay anyway,' Brian said, his voice hushed in the darkness.

'I didn't want to die,' Neil said, turning his head just enough that Brian could understand him.

'You didn't die,' Brian said, confused. 'You're here.'

'No. Idiot. I didn't know, before that night, that I didn't want to die. Before then I took all kinds of dumb fuckin' risks. You don't even...you don't know. I didn't know until then that I wanted to not fuckin' die, and then it was like it was too late. Like I realised too late. And he would've, I just don't know why he didn't...' Neil trailed off, surprised to find himself talking so much, full of words. 'Me not dying had nothing to do with me not wanting to die. I had nothing to do with it.'

'I would never have properly found out what happened to me,' Brian said.

'Mom would've cried buckets,' Neil said, feeling his body begin to settle into the warmth of Brian's embrace. It felt like a food that he didn't know he wanted until he got it. And now that Brian was there he didn't want him to leave. He figured that the only reason Brian wasn't freaking out lying next to someone was because he was the one calling all the shots, and because it was one hundred per cent completely non-sexual.

'I'm glad you didn't die,' Brian said and Neil shook his head because it seemed wrong, that that should be true.

Brian didn't push, but the hand that was curled around Neil's upper arm came up and trailed through his hair instead. It was light and sure, and Neil stared out into the darkness hoping Brian wouldn't stop, and he didn't.

'S'nice,' he managed a couple of minutes later, and Brian murmured agreement, nothing more than a pleased syllable.

Neil couldn't think of anything else to say, so instead he pushed his body back into Brian's and aligned himself more neatly, and then threw his arm across what remained of the bed. Brian was warm and solid behind him, the fleece of his pyjamas pressing into his naked back, and bare feet pressing against his own bare feet.

They lay awake in silence for a while longer. Neil thought Brian would fall asleep first, but to his surprise, his eyelids got heavy as Brian kept moving his fingers around his scalp, and his shaking subsided into a bone deep tiredness.

He surfaced from sleep entwined in warmth, though he felt the chill of morning on the bare areas of his skin. During the night, he and Brian had turned and faced each other, somehow wrapped themselves around each other, so that arms tangled, and their calves were interlocked. He could feel Brian's sleep-filled exhales pushing against his cheek, for Neil had his head in the pillows and Brian was half on top of it, squashing his cheekbone with the roughness of stubble. That was something of a novelty, since it seemed like Brian would have to wait a few days to grow any sort of facial hair.

He felt the remnants of the nightmare inside of him, but he could push it down and far away. It felt more of a conscious choice, that morning, to sleepily push himself against Brian more and close his eyes, smelling the faint hint of deodorant and shampoo, expensive conditioner and morning breath.

And of course, he was hard. He smiled to himself, at that. It was partly morning wood, but it was a great deal Brian's influence too, and waking up so close to someone else. He thought it was actually just nice to lay there without doing something about it.

Brian mumbled something that didn't sound like any language he knew, and then pushed himself into Neil, and at that moment, Neil realised that Brian was hard too.

'Good morning,' Neil mumbled, more to the boner he felt against him than anything else. He pushed back, lazily, enjoying the mild not-enough friction.

'Uh, g-good morning yourself,' Brian said, voice lower than usual and already ragged. Neil expected that this would be the moment he pulled away, didn't want to continue, but instead Brian hesitated, and then pushed against him once more.

'This okay?' he asked Neil, who nodded as much as he could with Brian's face turning into his and keeping it pressed against the pillow.

Neil made a noise of agreement and slowly they found a rhythm. Brian was more aggressive than Neil, disarmed by sleep and want. And Neil rode out the sensations, wondering at the fact that he could have such a bad nightmare followed by a morning of this. And Brian, against him, breathing already uneven and heavy, biting down sounds, as though he didn't want Eric to know what was happening.

'Eric sleeps in,' Neil said, 'he's got those earplugs in. He's not gonna hear a damn thing. You can be as noisy as you like.'

Brian gusted a laugh against his face and then grasped Neil's wrist. Neil's eyebrows shot up when he felt his hand being tugged down into the cramped space between them. He grinned when Brian pulled his wrist into his own pyjamas, down into the heat, where his own hungry fingers curled against a hard length.

'Like this?' Neil said, starting up a slow, compelling rhythm that made Brian's voice stop and his breathing hitch. He groaned in the tones of someone who hadn't yet found his way to his normal speaking voice. It was deeper, broken, and he pushed into Neil's hand. His own free arm started roving, trailing up Neil's back and then pushing into his hair.

'You sure you okay?' Brian managed, in between the moments when he was pushing back and forth himself.

'Yeah.'

They continued like that for a little while, and then Neil decided he wanted to try something with Brian that would make them both happy, ideally. He removed his hand, made a soothing sound when Brian protested and reached over them to pull lube out of his drawer. And then it was an awkward matter of pulling pyjamas off and pressing skin and against skin, which took time but – Neil thought – was worth it. Brian was paleness and blonde chest hair, and Neil was lean, olive and wiry. At the sensation of Neil pressing against him, length to length, Brian's eyes went wide and his hands flailed until they settled on his ribs.

'Easy,' Neil said, 'this okay?'

'Y-yeah,' Brian said, though he sounded uncertain.

'I have an idea.'

Neil shifted them slowly until Brian was on top, Brian's legs between his legs, dicks not quite angled right, so that Brian could call the shots. He pulled the blankets over them to hide the morning chill, and then wished – in that moment – that he could kiss Brian thoroughly but that was against the rules. A constant reminder of the damages that stood between them.

He waited and expected Brian to stop, surprised at how much he wouldn't mind if this happened. But Brian braced himself on his forearms and shifted up, putting lube on his hand with uncharacteristic boldness and slipping it down between them. Neil experienced the coldness of it as a shock, the courage of Brian as a surprise, and felt, himself, that he didn't know if he was ready for something that Brian was pushing ahead with.

'How is this okay?' Neil asked, as Brian shifted again and then brought their crotches together. Brian's head dropped at the sensation, and Neil kept thinking; this is happening, how is this happening?

'Dunno,' Brian managed, 's'been a good morning so far.'

Neil opened his mouth to say something, and Brian drove forward, bringing the both of them together in a way that forced exhales from the both of them. And then he picked up the gist of it quickly, moving with strength and pushing them both together. Neil watched as Brian's eyes opened and then squeezed shut from the sensations, the way his mouth fell open slightly.

'It's just falling,' Brian gasped, to no one in particular, 'that's all it is. Just falling.'

'And you'll fall on top of me anyway,' Neil managed, breathless and hard and feeling movement and texture and heat and skin, wanting this more than anything. He pushed the nightmare further and further away, and pretended that it didn't still lurk there in the background. He was more than his nightmares, surely.

'And you'll catch me,' Brian said, a statement more than anything. Neil laughed, drew his knees up and braced Brian's hips and then thrust upwards. Brian dropped his head into Neil's shoulder and groaned, fingers curling into the sheets on either side of Neil's head. And Neil thought; this is hot, fuck, this is hot.

Neil expected Brian to shy away before they went too far, before they came, but instead Brian seemed utterly driven towards that end point, and they both moved fast and rhythmic against each other until Neil was grabbing at Brian's shoulders and Brian was unable to lift his head anymore and his arms were shaking.

There was only one hesitation, that Neil sensed. A moment when Brian's entire body locked up, where he seemed to freeze, and Neil could tell the difference between frozen-I'm-going-to-come, and frozen-fuck-I-can't-do-this. He was just about to open his mouth and say 'we can stop' and 'it's okay,' but Brian made a decision without his input and it was all over quickly after that.

Neil came first, swallowing words down and hissing through clenched teeth instead. Brian came with a bout of violent shaking, still unused to the intensity of sensation. Instead of collapsing on top of him, he pushed himself sideways and lay facing Neil, one arm thrown against the come on Neil's chest, and his leg hooking over both of Neil's like this was something they did all the time. Like they were together. Like their relationship had never been difficult and neither one of them was plagued with nightmares or horrible truths.

'I liked that,' Brian admitted, on an embarrassed laugh; as though he had anything to be embarrassed about after they'd both come all over each other.

'Who wouldn't?' Neil said, but he felt that strange blankness again, creeping closer. He didn't want to freak Brian out with it, but it didn't seem to be something he could control or stop either.

'Mm. You okay?' Brian asked again, and Neil turned sideways, using his sheets to rub at himself briefly, making a face when he realised he'd have to do the washing.

'It's weird,' Neil admitted and Brian's arm, where it touched him, tensed.

'What is?'

Neil thought about it. He turned the question over in his mind, listening to Brian's breathing calm down and feeling the hammering of his heart. What was weird about it? And then he realised with a start what it actually was.

'Y'know,' he said, 'that this is probably only the second time I've ever blown my load with someone, without their being money involved?'

'Wh-what?' Brian said in disbelief. 'What about boyfriends?'

'What boyfriends? What was the point in having boyfriends when I could fuckin' get laid or blown or whatever, and get paid for it? It's weird to do it like this and know you're not gonna pay me, and I'm not gonna pay you. Like we're, I dunno, boring people.'

'You're not boring,' Brian asserted and then shook his head. 'I guess for you it all started with the five dollar game,' he added, and Neil frowned and then tried to pull away a little bit. Brian bringing that up now, like it was easy, and it was never that easy. But Brian followed the motion and pressed even closer, and Neil realised after a beat that he maybe needed the contact.

'I guess I started early,' Neil said, after a while.

'Is it bad? Is it bad doing it, without getting paid?'

'Nah, it's just…' Neil sighed, snuggled deeper into the blankets and shaking his head at himself. 'How am I the one weirder about this than you are?'

'You really don't know?' Brian said, like it was obvious.

Neil grimaced and then yawned. It turned out he was sleepy after all. To his surprise, he fell asleep, and Brian didn't seem that desperate for an answer to his question because he followed soon after; both of them retangling their limbs, and drifting back into soft warmth.

Author's Note - As always, I am not above batting my thin, bedraggled eyelashes for reviews! :)