A/N: Okay, so I said two parts. It'll be three now! Let me know if you guessed the mystery of the double daters correctly!
"Love's a funny old thing, ain't it?" said the beauty therapist with a sigh.
Eileen listened with a fraction of patience she wasn't aware she possessed. The girl paused and all that Eileen could hear was the tacky smacking of chewing gum and the weight of her fingertips at her temples. "I mean, just earlier I saw this couple in the lobby. Two men. You know," she whispered, "Gay. And I thought, you still don't really see it all that much, do you really?"
Eileen exhaled sharply through her nose, a half-scoff.
"You're a bit tense, just relax," the beautician said, breaking into her soft 'therapy' voice.
"Some of us do," Eileen said, picking up from the therapist's wittering as she smoothed cream into her forehead, "When your husband leaves you for a fella,"
That'll shut her up, Eileen thought to herself. And after a little nervous laughter, it did.
X
Ste got bored in the sauna quickly. There was little fun to be had sitting alone in a room designed to make you uncomfortably hot. He thought about wandering to the spa to see if Brendan was almost finished, but he knew that they wouldn't let him meander in and out of the quiet treatment rooms, and checking the time, Ste realised that Brendan would still be another half hour. He could think of plenty of ways to while away the morning, without having a load of gunk on his face and he reckoned, if Brendan had only asked, Ste could have given the massaging a pretty good go.
They'd had a late, lazy morning of it. Breakfast in bed – the room service kind, like every other year before it, besides the first – trays of the stuff spread over the bed. It was midday by the time they'd stopped having sex. Ste was tender and then hypocritically sulking when he learned Brendan had booked himself in for some spa sessions, alone.
Ste headed to the pool to cool off. After considering the use of the Jacuzzi, he decided that it was another activity he didn't fancy doing alone, particularly after some very vivid memories of a night time dip in a Jacuzzi in Portugal. It wouldn't live up to that experience. Ste settled on swimming a few lengths, with his eye firmly on the clock.
A little while later, when the lifeguard had disappeared out of sight, Ste took the opportunity to break one of the heavily-signposted rules on the wall. With a cheeky yelp of excitement, Ste tucked his legs up and from the top of the diving board, bombed into the deep end.
It was only when his head dipped above the water that he heard a woman's shriek. From the back of her, he saw that he'd absolutely drenched her and the magazines bundled under her arm, as she'd clearly walked past the pool at the wrong moment.
And when she turned around, fury hard in her expression, Ste's face fell.
Eileen Brady.
X
Brendan's face was tingling. It smelt of lemon and tea and he wondered, if he had a tongue long enough to lick his cheek, whether he tasted like a bottle of Lipton. He'd ask Steven to try it out, even though the closest Steven had probably got to iced lemon tea was a bottle of flat Fanta. He stood at the desk at the front of the spa, drumming his fingers impatiently, waiting to clear his bill and buy a couple of products to sneak back to the hotel room without Steven mocking him for it. The woman behind the desk was on the phone and talked the speed of a snail, prompting Brendan to glare at her, between picking up various pots and tubs of moisturiser displayed on the counter.
He barely blinked at the extortionate price she asked for.
"D'you want it put on your room, sir?" she asked, a sighing-would-rather-be-anywhere-else tone.
He flashed his credit card at her. "Put it in one of those plain bags, will ya? Can't have the old ball and chain finding out the price tag on all this."
She gave a cold smile and once the transaction all went through, handed him the stocked bag and disappeared to avoid having to converse any longer.
It was only when Brendan went careering round that he was almost knocked over by miraculously avoiding the path of the man behind him. And when they avoided clashing the man smiled.
"Well if it isn't Brendan Brady!"
Michael Donovan.
X
He'd fetched her a towel and was now standing, arms tucked tight around him, dripping dangerously close to her bag, as she sat on the edge of one of the poolside loungers.
"Look, I'm really sorry," he said for the fifth time. Eileen made him feel like a kid at school.
Her jaw clicked to the side. "Can you not read?" she said, her head nodding towards the pool signs Ste had ignored.
"Of course I can read, I just didn't think," Ste said.
"No, of course you didn't," Eileen said, placing down the towel and attempting to salvage her magazines.
"I can go get a hairdryer or something, you know, dry the pages."
Eileen looked at him like he was speaking jibberish. "Save yourself the bother," she said. She spent a few moments patting her hair dry with the towel. "So I take it you're not here alone?"
Ste was struck now with a sudden onset of smugness. He was of course on an incredibly dirty weekend with her ex-husband. Not like he liked to gloat, but she was pulling her usual routine of looking down on him and she deserved a little payback for being such a mardy cow.
"Brendan's here too. Obviously," he added, bordering on the rubbing-it-in stage, "We're just having a weekend together, getting away from the business. Celebrating. Three years since I came over here to surprise 'im."
Eileen couldn't resist. "Three years since you left husband number one, has it really been that long?"
Ste couldn't supress the eye roll that had been building from the moment she'd spoken. His lips tightened in anger and he grimaced. "You not managed to trap Michael into it yet?" he welcomed the glare that came next. "Thought not. Well 'ave a nice stay, Eileen. See'ya round." And with that, he turned and left, leaving her to her soggy magazines and headed for the changing rooms.
X
"I didn't have you down as the moisturising type Brendan," Michael said, a warm laugh in his throat. A throat Brendan wished he'd had his hands round. "Well, on second thoughts, maybe I did. If you know what I mean," he added in sotto.
Brendan's expression didn't mirror the humoured glow on Michael's face, he stood, hands in pockets and on a mission to stare down.
"So you here alone?" Michael continued, not sensing he should quit whilst he was ahead. "Or is your er…your life-partner – is that what you're supposed to say?"
"Well he's not my wife," Brendan said.
Michael pointed at him like he'd made the world's funniest quip. "Is he here?"
"Yes, he's here. He fidgets too much for a facial." Brendan said and then stiffening a little when he realised he'd given away a little too much detail to someone who was practically a stranger.
Not seeming to notice, Michael babbled on. "Eileen's here. Having some 'me time'. Women, you know!" he laughed again, and this time Brendan realised, he was nervous. That's what all the jittery chat was about. "Well, of course you know. You married her."
"Hmm." Brendan gave a glance to his wrist, not that he was wearing a watch, but he hoped Michael would pick up on the subtleties. "As lovely as this catch up is, and it is. I've gotta be heading back. Stash these away."
"Say Brendan, what are your dinner plans? Seeing as we're all friends, why don't we make tonight's dinner a foursome! It'd be great to have a proper catch up! What d'you say?" Michael had barely breathed before nudging Brendan and continuing, "And I'll keep your little secret about all that face muck! Eh? What do you say?"
X
Ste awoke softly to find his t-shirt pushed up, Brendan's hand flat and smoothing against his soft belly hair. In his post-Eileen altercation, boredom had struck him and he found himself wandering back to the hotel room and napping, realising how little sleep he'd had in the night. Ste opened an eye to find Brendan was laid beside him, lips and moustache nuzzling under his earlobe. Ste gave a sleepy mumble and rolled over onto his back, looking up at Brendan who was stretched out and leaning on his elbow. He smelt clean and citrusy.
"It's worked wonders," he murmured, stroking his knuckles against Brendan's cheek. "Ten years younger." A giggle rumbled in his throat.
"An afternoon nap, who's the old man?" Brendan replied, reaching to thread his fingers through Ste's chlorine fluffed hair.
"You wore me out," Ste said, limbs curling in a yawn. "Did ya have a nice time?"
Brendan flattened out on his back, with Ste soon joining him to cuddle up to his chest. "Yeah," Brendan said, wondering when was the right moment to break the news. "Did you check out the pool?"
"Yeah," Ste replied, "Bit boring really." He copied Brendan's earlier move and snuck his hand up and under Brendan's t-shirt. He was warm and hairy; it was a comfort. "But I bumped into someone…"
"Oh Jesus…" Brendan said, fingers pressed hard over his eye and rubbing down his face.
"How did you-?"
"I bumped into Michael, you know, that idiot she's with."
"What are the chances, eh?" Ste said. He gave a shrug. "Oh well, don't matter, does it?"
Ste had switched positions so his head rested on the pillow next to Brendan. He missed Brendan's brief moment of shiftiness. It still struck him as a luxury to be able to lie next to each other and talk like any other normal couple, even if they had been at it now for a number of years.
"Did you speak to her?"
Ste pulled a face. "I splashed her."
Brendan sat up sharply. "You what?"
"She were walking by and I like bombed into the pool and…well she got a soaking, but the way I look at it, it was her fault right…"
Ste jabbered on under Brendan's fixed stare until he burst into a roar of laughter, Ste's expression jumping in surprise. He took Ste's face in both his hands and kissed him on the mouth.
"You shun't kiss me for that," Ste teased. He creased up his nose.
"Just did."
Brendan looked down on Ste with a smile that made his eyes light up. "Okay," Ste conceded and tilted his chin so their lips met again.
Brendan took up position between Ste's lethargically splayed legs and was making headway into scooping his t-shirt between his palms, pushing it up under his arms and trailing mouth and nose up the centre of his body. He rolled the tip of his nose over Ste's right nipple, swapping it for his lips as Ste's fingers traced lightly over the transparent hairs on the back of his neck.
"There is one other thing," Brendan said, propped up on one arm as the other worked at unlacing Ste's tracksuit bottoms. He took a quick glance at Ste's already blushed lips and weighed up the pros and cons about the news he was about to deliver. "We're having dinner with them tonight."
Row. Make up sex.
Delivering the bad news was just like ripping off a plaster.
X
Michael didn't dare tell Eileen that they were having dinner with Brendan and Ste. He feared her reaction, he could envision objects flying in his direction, but thrown into the situation without a way out, she'd cope. She'd barely spent more than five minutes in Ste's company and considering he was a permanent part of Brendan's life and therefore their children's, it was about time they were adults about it. The fact that even the boys had commented on Ste's positive impact on Brendan's life, should have indicated to her that it was time to move past her bitterness and accept the situation, as strange as it still felt to her.
To his dismay when he met up with her later on, she was already frosty and it didn't indicate that she might come round to his way of thinking as easy as he'd hoped. She snapped at him for the teeth indentations around the skin of his fingernails ("You just can't leave things alone, can you, Michael?! It's pick pick pick.") so the rest of the afternoon was spent passively following her word.
X
Their left hands were outstretched and placed atop of each other on the edge of the bath tub. The bath might have been the size of a small room itself, like a steamed pool, rather than something you'd actually wash in. They were palm-to-back-of-hand not palm to palm, and Ste's fingers nested comfortably between the spaces of Brendan's, apart from their matching bands of metal on the third finger which made that positioning a little more awkward.
Ste lifted his leg out of the water, leaving a clear parting in the thick foamed bubbles. The hairs from his knee to his feet glistened as he wriggled his toes before dunking his leg back in the water.
"Cramp," he explained before scooting down in the tub a little and resting his head back on Brendan's shoulder. Brendan's arm in the water slid around Ste's waist to hold him there.
"What made you marry her?" Ste asked.
"You going to ask that now?" Brendan said. He sighed. It wasn't as if Ste hadn't had questions for him before, usually ones loaded with insecurity. Ones that asked him about the men before him and the feelings he'd had and the two names he knew and probably bothered him the most. And most of the time Brendan would be looking into his eyes, seconds after a climax and wonder – how could he even begin to ask or doubt? There was never anyone else. No one that mattered. And even one or two that he had wondered at the time, if they could matter, paled into nothing with Steven in his life.
And yet still, he never asked about Doug, about Noah, about any names he didn't know in between. Behind the mocking and the ridiculing jokes, he had questions too, ones of doubt and paranoia. Not for the future, but for the mistakes of the past and unearthing the regret which threatened to consume him.
"Not the reasons I wanted to marry for," Brendan said in response to Ste's reluctant shrug. "Guilt, fear, thinking it was the right thing to do. She was pregnant, she'd just lost a baby. I liked her, I felt sorry for her, I loved her like…I don't know, like a friend. If I could force that ring on my finger and just hope that it might have made me faithful, made me…" His tongue clicked in his mouth. He rested his chin against Ste's forehead so his words reverberated right through. "Truth was, I didn't even make it a week before….relapsing." He moved his head away then, rolling it the side, shame forcing distance between them. "All I could think of was that God was going to punish me for it, like with Niamh. But thankfully…Deccy was okay."
"It wasn't you," Ste said softly. He looked up at Brendan through the steam hazed space. "It wasn't your fault. Look at me,"
Brendan looked, fished his hand from the water and tracked a thumb down Ste's dewy cheek.
"Look, I'm sorry for bringing it all up again. She puts me on edge. Like she thinks she knows you better and I'm just some kid whose known you for five minutes." Ste said, the lines on his forehead making a frown. Brendan had told him to stop that on several occasions, that the lines would start sticking.
Brendan laughed a little. "You're worried Eileen knows me better than you?"
"Well you know…now that I've said it out loud I feel stupid, don't I?"
Brendan kissed the top of his head. "Never stupid, Steven."
"She was a big part of your past an'…" Ste stopped and looked up at Brendan's expression.
"You married me. Yeah okay, geddit now. Shutting up,"
"Tell me Steven, was this all some big rouse for a bit of one-on-one attention?" Brendan teased, placing both hands under the water. He brought them up and under Ste's thighs, drawing up his knees. His fingers trailed from the crook under his knees, down to where the curve of his backside met the bath base. Ste's arms spanned eagle-like and scooted down into the water so the foam lapped against his chin.
"This bath is pretty roomy." Ste's grin shot cheekily up at Brendan, whose fingers moulded around Ste's balls and toyed with them, playing a lazy rhythm on the base of his cock too.
"So when you said, let's have a bath. You meant…" he said, his voice a low rumble in Ste's ear. Ste shifted in position, sliding away from Brendan. He knelt up in the water, facing him, his cock already erect and peeking through the bubbles.
"Let's have a bath."
Brendan's gaze slicked with lust, eyes tracing every droplet of water that made silvery tracks down his bronzed skin. It had been months since they were sharing open mouth kisses in an open-top car in Monaco, but the tan still clung to Ste's body like it was made for him. And entwined, on those pristine holiday-white bed sheets in the heat, his tan against the pale and dark hair, was a heavenly sight when Brendan's eye caught the bedside mirror.
"You wanna get yourself back over, here where you belong?" Brendan said. "I ain't finished with ya,"
Ste sidled up to him, perching himself so they were groin to groin, and laid restless kisses over Brendan's wet chest hair when he reclined back. He wormed his hand between them, revelling in the way Brendan's head fell back in satisfaction when Ste took a firm grip around his cock, the water making light work of it.
"Can't suck you off in the bath," Ste said, as though he needed justification. He writhed his hips, riding his cock over the length of Brendan's, moving his hand along with the motion.
Brendan groaned, his throat spasming. "Do that again." When Brendan was asking for something, all dark and velvet vowels, Ste would never refuse him. He let out a mischievous snigger, knees squeezing around Brendan's body and gave a jagged swerve of his hips over and over. He wriggled, elbows coming to rest on Brendan's shoulders for leverage, and pressed their laps together, making waves around them.
Brendan's hands skimmed the length of Ste's body and dug his fingers into his pert arse, getting a handle on his hips to slam their groins together. Ste leaned into Brendan's mouth on his neck, tonguing wetter the dampness of the bath water on his skin and Ste pressed himself into the thick masculine comfort of his body hair. Brendan thrust a finger inside him, catching Ste with gasped surprise and an eruption of breathy laughter until he was stopped dead and thrummed by two fingers growing impatient.
Ste swam away from him then, pushing himself to the opposite end of the bath. He shot Brendan a look over his shoulder and grinned, flirty eyelashes and tongue between teeth. He was on all fours, chin rested and arms crossed over the edge of the bath. He was an invitation.
There was shift in the water, a silence and a drift of the residue bubbles as Brendan emerged like Triton, streams of water cascading from chest downwards through masses of black hair, his muscles clenching and expanding as he approached Ste.
"Hello," he murmured, kneeling up against Ste. Brendan smoothed a slippery hand up Ste's spine, moulding to its arching. His cock ached in his hand and it took all the patience he owned not to bury himself inside Ste immediately. Instead he rubbed his palm roughly over Ste's balls, watching with burnt black irises as Ste writhed against his touch.
His fingers travelled back to the crease of his arse, scoring the surface and pausing to rub, tantalising the ridge of his hole. Brendan pressed the weight of his muscled arm, one that Ste revelled in having wrapped around him, up the length of his back and hooked his hand, knuckles resting gently, on the skin where Ste's neck and shoulder met. With his free arm, Brendan reached out and squirted bath lotion from a bottle-pump onto his fingers and plunged them, without pause, inside Ste. His whole body stiffened in surprise and then relaxed. He mumbled encouraging noises into his arm, feeling Brendan ease into him.
Brendan grunted. He was struck with exhibition, curling his grip onto Ste's shoulder, saying fuck fuck fuck over and over with every pound into Ste. Possessively, he grabbed Ste's hips with both hands, drawing him against him and punctuated every thrust with an animalistic groan, water frothing between them.
"You drive me fucking crazy," Brendan cried, watching Ste's spine arch beautifully underneath him. Ste's half-scream stuck in his throat, cracking into silence. He felt his body grow slack, letting Brendan control every thud and he took his dick into his hand and jerking it furiously, wrist knocking repeatedly against the bath.
Brendan came soon after, Ste's clenching muscles pulling him in. He watched Ste's cum swirl in the bathwater around them and when he was sated, dunked his head into the water, and spat a mouthful of it over Ste, so his arse glistened wet. He gave it a teasing slap for good measure. Ste ended his bath by stretching out flat and floating on his back in the water.
"We got time for another?" he asked playfully.