“Only with you.”
Dylan smiled and rolled onto his back, gently coaxing Angelo close enough to lay his head on Dylan’s chest. With the lights low and the duvet tucked around them, Angelo finally relaxed. Dylan carded his fingers through his hair and hummed an old Iron Maiden song, and Angelo fell asleep.
* * *
It was nearly dawn when Dylan eased Angelo off him and slipped out of bed. All night, he’d laid with Angelo and listened to him breathe, all the while itching to grab his phone and google the ever-loving shit out of whatever was making Angelo flinch in his sleep. At six a.m. he could wait no more.
In the kitchen, he boiled the kettle for more tea that no one would drink and logged into his MacBook. The NHS page on CFS/ME came up at the top of the search and he clicked on the link. A list of symptoms for myalgic encephalomyelitis came up: Extreme exhaustion, muscle and joint pain, brain fog—confusion, memory issues, slow thinking—and blurred vision. Migraines, depression, and crippling viral symptoms. Any combination was possible, including all at once, and the list of treatments was woefully short, both in content and success.
Dylan swallowed thickly. Angelo’s life was hard enough, but with this? Jesus. It was a wonder the man was still standing—but he isn’t standing, is he? Dylan took a deep breath and clicked on another link, and another, and another, but none made him feel any better. Angelo’s condition was brutal and cruel, and even if he recovered from this relapse, another would never be far away. This can’t be it. But the more Dylan searched, the more disheartened he became, and he gave up in the end and returned to bed.
Angelo hadn’t moved, and he didn’t stir as Dylan slipped back under the covers. Dylan pulled the duvet up around him and held his hand. I’m sorry this has happened to you. But what now? For all the research Dylan had done on Angelo’s symptoms, he’d forgotten to look up what he could do to help.
Common sense told him to let Angelo rest for as long as possible, feed him, and keep him hydrated. Comfort him and do whatever he could to make his life easier. But would Angelo let him? Dylan would have to wait for him to wake up before he knew that.
Which didn’t happen until midmorning. Dylan was considering breakfast when he felt Angelo’s gaze on him. He turned his head and met Angelo’s weary stare. “All right?”
Angelo blinked slowly. “I think so.”
That he hadn’t moved a muscle was telling. Dylan cupped his chin, stroking his cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Do you need some painkillers? I’ve got some paracetamol floating around somewhere?”
“Allergic. Makes me sick as a dog.”
“Ibuprofen?”
“Nah. I can’t do NSAIDs anymore. Gave myself a fucking ulcer with them last year.”
“That sounds horrible.”
Angelo winced. “It wasn’t pretty, but it was my own fault. I knew I was taking too much, and to be honest, it was the wake-up call I needed, even if it did bankrupt me—” Angelo broke off with a yawn. “Shit, sorry. I should probably go.”
“Do you have to be somewhere?”
“No.”
“Then stay,” Dylan said.
“That an order?”
Dylan hadn’t meant it to be, but if his unintentional firmness made Angelo smile even a tiny bit, he’d roll with it. “Yes. I’m going to make some breakfast, and bring it in, and the only place you’re going is the bathroom . . . if you need to, uh, I can help you if—”
Angelo’s scowl cut him dead. “Dude, I can hold my own dick.”
Fair enough. Dylan slid out of bed. “Whatever. There’s plenty of towels and a spare toothbrush in the cabinet. Help yourself to anything you need, okay? I’ll be back with bacon butties.”
He left Angelo alone for a while and busied himself in the kitchen. Grilling bacon and buttering bread didn’t take all that long, but he took his time, giving Angelo some privacy, though he kept a sharp ear out when the shower turned on. Angelo had barely been able to walk the night before, and Dylan had practically carried him home. The thought of him falling was terrifying, and Dylan’s hands shook as he poured yet more tea. How did this happen so fast? Angelo had seemed fine all night—his devilish grip on Dylan’s sweaty body as strong as ever. Unless Angelo was the world’s best actor, it didn’t make any sense. Armed with bacon, he put the question to Angelo when he returned to the bedroom.
Angelo shrugged. “Sometimes it creeps up on me and I can manage it, but it hit me like a train yesterday. I was fine in the club, but it’s been a long week, you know? Maybe I should’ve just watched.”
He broke a tiny piece off the doorstep sandwich Dylan passed him and chewed slowly, water from the shower still glistening on his flawless back. How does he look so fucking edible right now? Dylan had no idea, and unbidden, his brain took him back to the club, to watching Angelo get blown by Rhys—his fat cock sliding past Rhys’s full lips, his clenched fists and snatched breaths.
Stop it.
With a herculean effort, Dylan pushed the club aside and sat next to Angelo on the edge of the bed. “Is the ME why you had to retire from dancing?”
“Yeah. You can’t dance if you can’t stand up.”
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked, I’m just . . . I don’t know, curious, I guess? I knew I was missing something when you came to the office in Stratford.”
Angelo coughed and set his half-eaten sandwich on the bedside table. “That was a good day, believe it or not.”
Dylan swallowed the last bite of his own breakfast and with it, another barrage of questions. The desperate need to know as much about Angelo as possible was burning him up in all the wrong ways, but he’d pushed enough. Angelo was wrecked, and he owed Dylan nothing. “It’s pissing down outside. I was planning on staying in bed with Peaky Blinders. You game?”
“You want me to be? I’m not good company when I’m like this.”
“Then sleep.” Dylan slipped his empty plate beneath Angelo’s and claimed a mug of tea that he was definitely going to drink this time. “It’s a big bed, mate. Plenty of room for two.”
Perhaps Angelo would’ve taken more persuading if he hadn’t been so clearly dead on his feet, but it didn’t seem to matter as they huddled up together again. Dylan flicked Netflix on the TV, but neither of them looked at it and instead faced each other.
“I got diagnosed in New York,” Angelo whispered. “I had a tiny surgery on my knee in the summer break, but the anaesthetic never went away. It was like it had latched onto my bones and wouldn’t let go. We were gearing up for a huge run of Swan Lake and I kept falling over. My balance was so fucked that they thought I had a brain tumour. Sometimes, I wish I had.”
It was the most he’d ever said at once. Dylan absorbed every word but could only think of one of his own. “Why?”
“Because my health insurance would’ve covered that, and I might have been able to salvage something of my life.”
“Shit.” Dylan whistled. “You didn’t have cover?”
“For cancer, MS, narcolepsy, epilepsy, and everything else they tested me for, but not ME. It cost me thousands of dollars to get a diagnosis, and when I couldn’t afford to see any more doctors, I started on the painkillers and energy drinks to keep me upright. It was supposed to be a short-term plan while I saved up to get treatment, but it didn’t work out like that.”
“The ulcer?”
“And the rest. Even without it, I was a mess. It got so bad that I couldn’t roll over in bed. I slept for, like, a month before I got evicted from my apartment, and by then my contract at the ballet company had been terminated.”
“They sacked you?”
“Of course they did. They were never going to pay me for hibernating.”
“Don’t make light of it. They should’ve looked after you.”
Angelo sighed. “I had a benefits package with my contract, but ME was excluded. Like I said, if I’d had MS or something else, it might’ve been different.”
“That’s awful.” Dylan
felt sick. “And then you had to come home to your family’s mess?”
“Uh huh. I was here for a few months before my dad died. And you know the rest.”
“They don’t, though, do they?”
“What?”
“Your family. They can’t know or they wouldn’t let you work yourself into the ground.” Dylan didn’t need Angelo’s silence to confirm it. He reached for the tea he’d brought for Angelo. “Sit up a bit. You need to drink something.”
Angelo didn’t protest as he propped himself up on his elbow, and Dylan held the mug to his lips until most of the tea was gone. “I never told anyone except my bosses at the company. I never got round to making many friends over there, and there was other shit to worry about when I came home.”
“I get that,” Dylan said. “But you can’t live like this. That deli is going to kill you if you keep working the way you are. What does your doctor over here think?”
“Dunno. I haven’t been.”
“You haven’t seen a doctor in the UK?”
“What’s the point? Doctors can’t help me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Don’t I? My bank balance says different.”
Dylan let it go—for now. The bitterness had gone from Angelo’s voice, and he’d revealed more in the last ten minutes than he had in the whole time they’d known each other. Besides, he was fading fast, his face so weary that Dylan’s soul wept for him. An invisible magnet drew him close to Angelo—so close that their noses touched, and then before he could comprehend the bloom of warmth in his belly, his lips found Angelo’s in a sweet kiss.
It wasn’t the kind of kiss he’d imagined when he’d thought of seeing Angelo again after their club encounters. The heat was there, but it was tempered by worry and exhaustion and a flurry of other emotions that Dylan couldn’t quite decipher. Angelo kissed him back, moving his lips like a softly whispered dream, and it seemed like a lifetime had passed before the need to breathe forced Dylan to pull away.
His hands found Angelo’s face like they had so many times since he’d brought him home, and Angelo stared at him with watery eyes. “Sleep,” Dylan said quietly. “I’ll be here when you wake up, I promise.”
Chapter Eight
Angelo accepted Dylan’s outstretched hand and stepped carefully out of the shower. “Thank you.”
Dylan scowled, only the thin layer of scruff on his jaw stopping him looking like a stroppy teenager. “I still think you should call in sick.”
“Call who?”
“I don’t know . . . your mum?”
“My mum is sixty-eight and can barely see the labels on the milk bottles. Closing the place is better than leaving her to open up by herself.”
“So close the place.”
Angelo didn’t answer. If Dylan didn’t know by now why he couldn’t close the deli, then the last month meant nothing. Losing a day’s takings would mean he couldn’t pay his suppliers, and then he’d have to live with pushing them into a financial hole too. Fuck that. His own mess was enough.
Dylan wrapped a towel around Angelo. “I know you can’t stay home. I’m just worried about you.”
“I’m—”
Dylan tapped his fingers against Angelo’s mouth. “Don’t tell me you’re fine. Silence is better than bullshit.”
Angelo pursed his lips, swallowing the denial that would’ve likely earned him far worse than a boyish scowl. The twenty-four hours he’d spent with Dylan was mostly a blur, but the memory of Dylan pretty much carrying him home from the club was already haunting him. He dried his face and braved a glance at his reflection in the mirror and then looked back at Dylan. Big mistake. Angelo had slept the whole of Sunday away, waking late in the evening to Dylan feeding him soup and imploring him to stay another night. It had seemed like a good idea at the time—more than that—but now Dylan looked as tired as him, and the guilt was almost enough to put Angelo back on his arse.
Almost, because he had a deli to open, and apparently Dylan was coming with him.
“Don’t you have your own job to go to?” Angelo asked at the front door. “’Cause you aren’t exactly dressed for a day of foaming milk.”
“Are you taking the piss out of my office get up?”
As if. Dylan was wearing tight grey trousers and a fitted black shirt that seemed as though it had been made to have his compact body poured into it. Even through the fog of a lingering relapse, Angelo wanted to jump him. “You look awesome.”
“Right.”
“It’s true.” Angelo was dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing Saturday. Dylan had washed them, but he still felt like a tramp. “Anyway, I’ve got to go, so if you really are coming with me, you can tell me your dastardly plan on the way.”
Turned out there wasn’t much to Dylan’s plan. He had to be in Stratford by nine and so could only stay an hour to help Angelo in the deli. And that was more than enough. Dylan’s unobtrusive way of taking care of Angelo had kept him sane when he’d been flat on his back, but Angelo couldn’t live with disrupting Dylan’s life more than he already had.
“Are you going to be all right?” Dylan asked.
Angelo looked up from the bread he was arranging on the shelves. “Yeah.”
“Sure?” Dylan took his apron off and came to Angelo’s side. “You don’t look well.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t be a dick.”
“I can’t change who I am, mate.”
Dylan grinned. “Uh-huh. Good job I like your dick, but seriously. Call me if you need me, okay? I’m not that far away.”
Being even a foot from Dylan felt like a fate worse than a slow death, but they both knew that Angelo wouldn’t make that call. “I’ll be fine. I have to be. But I’ll miss you, if that makes you feel any better.”
“It does.” Dylan stepped impossibly closer. “But it doesn’t make it any easier to leave you.”
Angelo dropped the focaccia he was holding as Dylan stole another one of those kisses that stopped the world turning. Their lips brushed and then fused together, soothing the residual aches in Angelo’s battered body. The roof could’ve fallen in while Dylan caressed Angelo’s tongue with velvet strokes.
But it was over too soon. “I’ll find you later?” Dylan asked.
Angelo nodded. “I’d like that, though I’ll probably fall asleep on you again.”
“I’m not complaining,” Dylan said. “It’s not like you snore and drool.”
“No?”
Dylan shook his head. “Nope. You didn’t move a muscle. If it wasn’t for your chest moving, I’d have thought you were dead.”
They were morbid words to part on, but Angelo’s first customers arrived for their coffee fix, and Dylan had a train to catch. He pecked Angelo’s cheek, and then he was gone, leaving Angelo to face the day alone—a scenario that wasn’t unusual but suddenly seemed harder than ever.
He struggled through the morning rush and then locked the doors for ten minutes just before the lunchtime. His head was pounding, and his legs were like lead, but the cloud of despair that usually came with the worst ME symptoms was noticeably absent.
Angelo forced a banana down while he fiddled with his phone, poaching the Wi-Fi from the bank across the road. A WhatsApp message popped up with a photo attached. The sight of Dylan lounging at his desk, pulling a stupid face, warmed him from the inside out. Over the weekend, they’d shown each other so many sides of themselves, but this was the Dylan that Angelo craved most—not the power bottom who drove Angelo fucking insane in the club, but the sunny, down-to-earth dude with the perpetual smile. The man who stole Angelo’s breath with his gentle kisses and eased him to sleep with soothing hands. I miss him already. Was that even possible? The ache in Angelo’s heart said yes.
The rest of the day passed in a dizzying blur of coffee and scorched cheese. Angelo was scraping the panini presses down when his body gave up the ghost. In the past, he’d have forced himself to keep going
, but it wasn’t in him today. He braced himself on the counter and bowed his head. Prickly heat crept through his joints and tingled his skin, but conversely, he was cold. A shiver passed through him. Damn, I need to sit down. But before he could move, sinuous arms wound around his waist from behind, and warm lips grazed the back of his neck. Dylan.
Angelo’s legs trembled, but for once it wasn’t fatigue claiming his balance. Dylan’s touch brought him back to life, and he leaned back into Dylan’s embrace, melting against him. “You’re here.”
“I am,” Dylan murmured. “I locked the doors too. Did you forget?”
“Maybe I left them open for you.”
Dylan chuckled. “Maybe, but I’ve locked them now, so how about we clean this place up, then go get some dinner?”
“You’re obsessed with food.”
“I’m obsessed with you.”
Dylan’s voice had tied Angelo in knots from the start, but combined with Dylan’s hands snaking under his flour-dusted T-shirt, never more than it was right now. He gripped Dylan’s hands and squeezed them. “I’m up for dinner. But you’re not cleaning this place. You’ve done enough for me today.”
He braced himself for a row, but Dylan merely kissed Angelo’s cheek and then perched on a counter stool, apparently engrossed in his phone while Angelo finished closing the deli down.
“I just need to mop,” Angelo said. “Then I’m done.”
“Okay.”
Dylan didn’t look up, and so Angelo mopped around him and chucked every other stool up on the tables. When he was done, he swiped Dylan’s phone from the counter and then braved making a grab for Dylan too. Dylan felt heavier than he had in the club, and Angelo’s muscles screamed in protest, but he barely felt the pain as Dylan’s whoop of laughter rang out.
“Put me down!”
“Nope.” Angelo carried Dylan carefully across the wet floor and into the kitchen where he deposited him on the counter. “I didn’t want you to slip,” he said in the face of Dylan’s mock outrage.
“Right.” Dylan smoothed his hair. “So you went caveman on me? I’ll remember that.”
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