Page 201 of The Locker Room
the hotel bed quilt under his head.
Chris wrapped his hand around Xander"s clenched hands, and
brought them up to his mouth to kiss softly.
The Locker Room 173
“Xander? You okay?”
Xander let out a shuddering sigh. “Obviously not,” he muttered.
“Obviously I"m a big stinking baby who can"t even have sex right.”
Chris grunted and shifted in his arms and said, “Get off the covers,
genius, I"m freezing my ass off and my balls are shrinking.”
Xander laughed and passed his hand across his eyes while he was
complying with the orders. “Your balls could stand a good shrink—you
really are hung like a fucking goat, you know that?”
“Yeah, whatever.” Chris rolled to his side and burrowed under the
covers, holding the quilt back for Xander to crawl into bed with him.
Xander did, and the feeling of their long, muscled, hairy man legs
twining under the coverlet was enough to make him sigh, releasing that
last bit of tension that he didn"t know was still riding between his
shoulder blades.
As their bodies stopped shivering in reaction, Xander got a good
look at Chris"s big brown eyes, and saw that they were rimmed with red,
and leaking at the corners too. He tried to smile in sympathy, but he
couldn"t. Instead he just caught the steady little trickle down the side of
Chris"s nose with his finger and tried to wipe it off.
“Don"t cry, baby,” he said hoarsely, knowing he was one to talk.
“I"m here.”
They clung to each other under the covers for a long time after that.
They talked, quietly, about stupid things—Clifford"s wife (“Don"t
spill the potpourri for Chrissakes! Dammit, Edwards, that shit covers up
your man-stink, leave it in the fucking bowl!”),and about the dogs
(“Max is still loyal, man, but I think you"re going to have to bring a
