Page 46 of Refrain
“You’ve other people—”
“Irrelevant. They’re not you. They’ll never be you. Only you will ever be you, and I love that you.”
“Xane.”
Xane lifted his head so that his lips rested level with Spook’s ear. “What, am I not supposed to say that? It’s the truth. I said I’d burn the fucking world down for you, and I meant it.” He settled his head on the pillow again. “Hold on, eh? Please.” He squeezed their fingers tight. “And know that I’m here for as long as you need me. Cry, grieve, do whatever you need to do, but don’t give up, Spook. Don’t give up. I’ve got you.”
Maybe. Maybe not, but he really did like being held.
-19-
Spook
Spook woke with a groan sometime later, unbearably hot. The sticky threads of his dream bound around him, threatening to pull him back under, but he was conscious enough to resist the lure. No wonder he was overheating, he was still fully dressed, and Xane was wrapped around him like a straitjacket. He stuck a foot out from under the duvet to ease some of the discomfort, but the chill across his bare foot hardly made a difference. Worse still, he was hard as iron.
He probably ought to have given Xane a fuller picture of what was driving his insomnia. It wasn’t simply that he was strolling from one day to the next without pleasure or purpose. The issue was that when sleep did steal up on him, it inevitably led him down some dark alleys. Sometimes what awaited him there were the predictable monsters. Those he’d grown used to and could almost dismiss. It was the more recently acquired demons that were the problem. They were downright perverted and determined to strike where it hurt most. Casting aside the bonds of celibacy he’d formerly adhered to had opened the floodgates. Now, dreamtime was constantly awash with lurid sex fantasies, some so vivid it was hard to ascertain for certain that they were figments at all. More so when the person you’d just dreamed about was right there in the bed beside you.
Dream Xane hadn’t just whispered in his ear, he’d traced the lobe with lips and teeth, kissed along his jaw, and left hickies all around his throat. He’d flung him onto his back and kissed Spook until his head swam from the breathlessness of it. Then he’d risen over him, rolled a condom over Spook’s cock and guided him right into the heat of his body. It wasn’t that fierce squeeze that burned most brightly in his memory though, it was the sensation of Xane’s cock in his palm, his semen cooling against his chest.
He moved his hand to that spot, relieved to find only cotton beneath his fingertips. Still, his heart was racing.
Tentatively, he lifted Xane’s arm and wriggled out of his embrace, planting his feet down on the floor. Xane muttered something unintelligible, then sprawled on his back, still out for the count. They’d wound up on opposite sides of the bed to the night before, when they’d slept naked with a guitar between them.
Still overly heated, Spook shed his clothes, leaving them in a sweat-damp pile, then stumbled his way into the bathroom. He only tugged the switch above the mirror once the door was closed. The last thing he wanted was for the glare to wake sleeping beauty. Getting his thoughts back under control necessitated solitude.
It made sense that he’d dream of Xane, given that he was right there in his bed. The mirages had never consisted of only one person. Sometimes the scenarios were right out of his past, his lovers’ faceless apparitions, other times it was people he knew, not necessarily those he’d admired or harboured unfulfilled desires for. And then sometimes…sometimes…it was her. Those were usually the worst. The ones he’d wake feverish and shaking from, unable to banish. They’d linger like cobwebbed shrouds around him, invading his waking thoughts with images that would gut punch him until he wound up vomiting.
His dream of fucking Xane, while lurid, wasn’t nearly as distressing. More inconvenient. He glanced down, perfectly aware that he was still hard.
When he looked back up, the man who stared back from the mirror seemed older than his years. Worn down, and gaunt in a way that his overgrown beard couldn’t disguise. The circles beneath his eyes were almost purple and hollowed out spaces beneath his cheekbones robbed his expression of nuance. When he smiled, it looked like a rictus grin.
“Jeezus, you look shit!” he told that guy. It didn’t change anything. There was no spark of outrage at the insult, no desire to set time back to an earlier point and stage a do over.
He stuck a toothbrush in his mouth, and scrubbed his teeth, making himself gag in the process, and stumbled into the glass wall of the shower. For a moment, he contemplated getting in, but the noise would likely wake Xane, and he wasn’t ready to communicate. Nothing had intrinsically changed since they’d fallen asleep together. He hadn’t woken feeling restored, or with a plan. Only the same uneasy sense of disconnectedness.
For a while he sat in the base of the shower, feet pressed against the laundry bin, the obscene thrust of his cock wedged between his abs and his bent legs, mocking him, and precluding him resting his head on his bent knees. It showed no signs of flagging, leaving him with the choice of attempting to ignore it in the hopes it’d go away, or taking the bastard in hand. Whisky would help with the former, but if he drank now, he’d be right back here in a few minutes spewing it up again.
Option two it was.
At least it was quick. The work of minutes. Mind blank, he made it all about the friction. Afterwards, he cleaned himself up and stretched out the cricks that had formed in his joints. Curious how a numb butt could get him moving whereas he welcomed general numbness.
Xane remained comatose as he crept past. Years of catching forty winks on tour buses evidently made tuning out idiots crashing around in the dark easy. Conveniently, there was a new basket of logs before the fire, which he lit out of habit more than anything else. It wasn’t cold as such in the cottage, just gloomy, and there was something about an open fire that comforted even his improperly functioning heart.
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Xane about the court case, more that he needed to see it in black and white. The internet dutifully provided. Tweets and tabloid postings, alongside TikToks and more thoughtful amateur reportage and analysis.
Spooked! Black Halo guitarist kink-shamed into silence.
Wrongly accused: How Black Halo’s discredited guitarist is biting back at his attackers.
Not Guilty! Spook Mortensen, the inside story of his fight to clear his name.
Gaslit: Click here for the tragic story of Spook Mortensen’s abusive first love.
Then, there was the stuff he didn’t need to read, but nevertheless did.
Black Halo’s guitarist ruined my life! “He held me down and…” Click here to read more.
Celibate! More like a hellraising Cenobite.
