Chapter Eleven
Dylan stared morosely at the bottom of his fourth pint. It was Wednesday night—a school night—and he was well on his way to being proper fucking bladdered.
He was lonely too, but that was nothing new. Even partying at The Pitt all weekend had done nothing to lift his mood, as he’d spent most of his time explaining Sam’s absence. Goddammit. It wasn’t like they’d ever been joined at the hip.
At least he’d managed to keep his dick in his pants, though. As he tracked a familiar bloke at the bar, he was struggling to decide if a period of self-imposed celibacy was worth the hassle.
Go home, dickhead. But as hard as he tried to make himself move, nothing happened, save Rhys looking round at just the wrong moment and spotting him at his solitary sulking post.
“All right, mate?”
Dylan stared at the table. “Yup. You?”
“Not bad, not bad.” Rhys dropped into the seat beside Dylan, nudging aside Dylan’s abandoned work bag. “Where’s your fella?”
“My what?”
Rhys winced. “Oooh, like that, is it? Damn. I’ll get the beers in.”
He got up again and went to the bar. Dylan absently watched him move—the roll of his broad shoulders, the swing of his trim waits. The devil in him craved the oblivion of fucking Angelo out of his system, and he knew Rhys would likely make a willing accomplice for a jaunt across town to Lovato’s’s biweekly orgy club, but pride and Sam’s voice echoing in his fuzzy head kept him quiet. “ . . . stop banging people in sex clubs and get out into the real world . . . you always end up going mad in that place when you’ve got a cob on about shit . . .”
Fuck off, Sam.
Rhys came back to the table with a couple of pints and four shots of what smelled suspiciously like Sambuca. Dylan groaned and dropped his head to the table. “Jesus. Haven’t you got work tomorrow?”
“Nope.” Rhys slid half his bounty Dylan’s way. “I’m not back on shift until Saturday, which means I’ve got all night to cheer your miserable arse up.”
He spoke without innuendo, and Dylan was grateful. It was rare that he came across playmates from the club in the outside world, and—Angelo aside—it had always been awkward. Sexual attraction and a genuine rapport weren’t the same thing, and Dylan was often left wondering why he’d fucked them in the first place.
But Rhys wasn’t like that. He was treating Dylan like they were old friends, and right now he was exactly what Dylan needed.
“So,” Rhys said when Dylan didn’t respond. “What’s going on with you and the fella? Angel, ain’t it?”
“His name is Angelo, actually. And he’s not my fella.”
“No?” Rhys cocked an eyebrow and necked a Sambuca shot. “Coulda fooled me. I had you two down as an old married couple.”
“I wish.” Dylan choked out a bitter laugh. “Shit. Did I say that out loud?”
“Sounds like you’ve got it bad, brother.”
Dylan couldn’t deny it.
Rhys clapped a rough hand on his back that was nothing like Angelo’s smooth touch. “Come on, mate. Chin up, eh? Maybe he’s just a bit screwed up and not feeling a relationship right now.”
Dylan looked up sharply. “What makes you think he’s the one that’s screwed up?”
“I didn’t say he was,” Rhys countered, his tone mild. “I’m speculating based on the piss poor information you’ve given me so far.”
Dylan maintained his glare as long as he could, but a rueful chuckle escaped him anyway.
Rhys laughed too, but then his expression sobered to the one Dylan dimly remembered from the night Angelo had collapsed outside the club. “Look, it’s none of my business, but the bloke clearly has something going on right now, and when shit like that gets real, everything else suffers. If something has gone wrong between you two, it might not have anything to do with the way you feel about each other.”
“You didn’t seem so wise when I had you bent over that couch.” Dylan sank half of his beer and considered Rhys over the rim of his glass. A vague memory of him revealing that he was a paramedic hazed through his beer-addled mind—and it was vague. That night, Dylan’s concern for Angelo had overwhelmed just about everything. “Can I ask you something?”
Rhys shrugged. “Sure. Like you say, you’ve bent me over a couch and fucked me sideways, so what else is there?”
“Lots of things, I’d imagine, but I’m not talking about the club.”
“Right,” Rhys said. “You’re talking about Angelo. What’s that got to do with me?”
“Nothing, I just—” Dylan stopped. Was he really about to betray Angelo’s confidence to someone they’d fucked about with in the club?
Rhys nudged Dylan with his elbow. “I get it, mate. Serious head on now. Ask me anything, okay? I’m good with discretion . . . comes with the job.”
“I don’t where to start.”
“Try the beginning.”
“Fucking comedian.”
Rhys grinned. “I try.”
“Try harder,” Dylan grumbled, but he took Rhys’s advice and traced his time with Angelo back to the point where he’d first realised there was a problem. And it wasn’t at the beginning—it was the night he recalled every time he looked at Rhys. Always. Everything came back to that. “Angelo’s not well,” he said eventually.
“I kind of figured,” Rhys said. “What is it? MS or something?”
“ME, actually.”
Rhys whistled through his teeth. “Man, that’s nasty. I’m not surprised he was on his arse after the railing he gave you that night.”
It was the last thing Dylan wanted to hear, but after spending the last month with Angelo, he wasn’t surprised either. “I don’t know much about it, but that isn’t even the problem—at least, it’s not the problem between us. I think it’s a communication thing . . . as in, he doesn’t communicate, and I can’t cope without some kind of constant verbal vomit . . .”
Dylan trailed off as he realised his booze-loose tongue was kind of telling the story for him.
Rhys said nothing. Just waited patiently for Dylan to go on.
“I just don’t know where I am with him, and that’s like a flashpoint for me,” Dylan said. “Bad memories, you know?”
“You got dicked on before?”
“Not really. It was my fault.”
“And you think you’ve let that fuck things up with Angelo?”
“Maybe.” Dylan dragged his finger through a puddle of beer on the table. “But he doesn’t talk to me. I mean, I get that he feels like crap all the time, I really do, but he doesn’t talk—he just fucking stares at me until I lose my shit.”
Rhys eyed Dylan and rolled himself a cigarette. “You know chronic fatigue syndrome is way more than the name suggests, don’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That it’s more than feeling a bit knackered.”
“I know that,” Dylan retorted. “I looked it up when he first told me.”
“Then you should know that he’s probably finding it hard to keep up with you. Mentally, I mean. No offence, but you talk a thousand miles an hour. Even without brain fog, it’s taking me a minute to compute what you’re saying.”
It wasn’t the first time Dylan had been accused of having a motor mouth. He pursed his lips as Rhys stepped outside for a smoke and pondered Rhys’s theory. Rhys only knew Angel, the confident top who turned Dylan inside out in the club, but somehow he knew that Angelo just wasn’t fucking well enough to deal with Dylan’s needy bullshit.
Dylan pictured Angelo’s face when he’d rattled his garage door and pulled the plug on their brief and yet-so-consuming relationship. At the time, he’d found Angelo’s expression frustratingly bland—like he just didn’t give a shit—but had he completely misread Angelo? Was it less that he didn’t care and more that Dylan was simply asking too much?
“I’m guessing I haven’t done much to cheer you up then.” Rhy
s dropped back into his seat. “You look like you’re about to off yourself.”
Dylan threw his last shot of Sambuca down his throat. “I’m not suicidal, just a wanker. I read about brain fog on the NHS website, but I didn’t consider how real it was.”
“Why would you?” Rhys said. “It’s not your reality. I only know so much about ME because my brother is a physiotherapist and talks about it all the time. It’s a hideous illness . . . kinda mysterious too. It’s different in every sufferer. My bro had one patient who hadn’t walked in two years. Another that couldn’t focus enough to use a computer anymore. It’s brutal, man.”
Dylan’s head hit the table with a dull thud. “I’m such a cunt.”
Rhys rubbed his shoulders. “I doubt it. Angelo being ill doesn’t give him a license to treat you like shit, and it might be that he’s the cunt.”
“He’s not a cunt,” Dylan slurred, but he lost the rest of his sentence to his elbow sliding off the table, and by the time he’d righted himself, the Sambuca had kicked in and coherent speech had left the party.
Rhys swayed in his seat too, apparently as rat-arsed as Dylan. “Well . . . whatever else we say about the man, he fucks like a beast.”
Dylan nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, he does.”
* * *
Working through a hangover had been the norm for Dylan a few years ago, but he liked to think he’d grown up a bit since the days of partying all weekend and heading into the office on Monday morning on barely an hour of sleep. But Thursday morning found him praying to the porcelain God and wishing he’d never been born. Dramatic? Maybe, but it didn’t feel that way on a train ride that seemed to go on for days.
In the office, he slumped at his desk and skimmed through his email. His neglected inbox was overflowing, and he had no one to blame but himself. It took till lunchtime to work through the backlog, and of course there had to be another snag in Angelo’s DRO application. Is there anything I haven’t fucked up with him?
An hour on the phone revealed that it was a clerical error in the Romford office.
“Who’s the case manager?” the woman on the phone asked. “Is it you or the advisor in Romford?”
Dylan gritted his teeth and scanned the mess of paperwork again. He couldn’t take Angelo’s case back—not now after all that had happened between them—but his conscience wouldn’t let him leave Angelo at the mercy of the Romford office. Wincing, he gave them Helen’s name and hung up just as she appeared at his desk. “I gave your name on an out-of-area DRO case,” he blurted before he could give in to the urge to hide under his desk.
“Oh?” Helen raised an eyebrow. “Any particular reason.”
Lots of reasons, but Dylan went for a painfully casual shrug. “Romford were fucking—er—messing it up, and this client needs a break. I’ll do the paperwork, I swear. You’ll just have to sign it.”
Helen was a stickler for rules, and Dylan knew that she’d insist on overseeing the case, but with the chaos he was currently residing in, that likely wasn’t a bad thing. He waited for her lecture and for her to then move on, but she perched on the edge of his desk and put a hand on his shoulder.
“What’s the matter, Dylan?”
“Hmm?”
Helen fixed him with the kind of look his dad had given him every time he’d cried over his mother’s moonlight flit. “You seem a little distracted, and it’s not like you to pass casework off. I usually have to pry it out of your hands.”
“I’m tired,” Dylan said. “I’ve not had much sleep this week.”
“Insomnia bothering you again?”
Dylan shrugged. “Maybe.”
Helen stared at him for a long moment, perhaps waiting for him to squirm and break like he had done in the past, when his problems had been limited to needing a little more kip.
But Dylan didn’t break. Not this time. He’d spilled his guts to Rhys and woken up on the couch feeling worse than ever. He didn’t have it in him to revisit the reasons why. “I’m fine, honest. I’m gonna sleep all weekend, I promise. And I will do that casework for you.”
“I’m not worried about the casework, Dylan. I’m worried about you. I know you’d never let your personal issues affect the clients, but we’ve got a hectic phase starting from tomorrow with the TC renewals. If you’re not up to it, I need to know.”
Shit. Dylan had forgotten that Tax Credit renewal season was coming up—a wonderful eight-week period that left vulnerable clients at the mercy of a woefully inadequate system. He suppressed a groan. “I’m up to it. Are we ready for the first wave of claim stoppages?”
“Are we ever? Award notices went out on Monday and I’ve drafted extra volunteer advisors for each day, but there are going to be some cases that only you and I can deal with, and that’s on top of your regular workload.”
“I know.” Of course he did. Thirty-five per cent of his cases from last year were still open, thanks to a series of criminal government fuck ups. “I can stay late tonight and prepare some gateway packs?”
“Only if you feel up to it.” Helen stood. “A few extra hours tonight won’t do us any good if we lose you on sick leave. I mean it, Dylan—it’s time for some self-care.”
She left him to it, taking Angelo’s paperwork with her. Dylan was relieved to see the back of it—Helen had forgotten more about debt regulations than he’d ever know—but guilt still scratched his insides. Dylan had failed Angelo in many ways, but he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t square away the DRO. After everything, it was the least he could do.
Dylan stayed late at the office and boarded the train home as it was getting dark. His blistering hangover had faded as the day had gone on, but his head still ached, and he was bone tired. For once, his empty bed was calling him, and he was half asleep when he stepped up to his front door a little while later and walked smack into Sam’s chest.
“Jesus!” Dylan reared back, rubbing his forehead. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Sam shrugged, and Eddie appeared behind him, her wild strawberry-blonde hair blowing in the wind. “I made him come,” she said. “We’ve got something to tell you.”
“You couldn’t have called?”
Sam snorted. “Right. Like you ever pick up the phone these days.”
More guilt lanced Dylan’s veins. Was his behaviour towards Sam and Eddie really so different to what he’d accused Angelo of? “Sorry. Shitty week. You coming in?”
Apparently they were. Dylan led them to the kitchen, avoiding the living room where they’d spent their last encounter in Dylan’s flat—naked and entwined on the couch, Dylan fucking Eddie from behind while she went to town on Sam’s cock. The recollection had excited him way back when, but he wasn’t in the mood for a trip down memory lane.
He went to the fridge and retrieved the milk, giving it a safety sniff before he risked boiling the kettle. “I’d offer you a beer, but the smell of it would probably have me puking on your shoes.”
“Hanging?”
Eddie’s gaze was concerned, but it was Sam’s stare that made Dylan squirm. He turned his back on them and filled the kettle at the sink. “I’m dying. Getting blotto on a school night is always a bad idea.”
“Must’ve been a heavy night,” Sam said. “You look traumatised.”
The word was so fitting that Dylan laughed, the sound unnaturally loud in the quiet kitchen. “Something like that. But I don’t want to talk about it.” He faced them again. “You said you had something to tell me. If you’re pregnant, I’m not playing godfather. I hate kids.”
Eddie cringed. “Pregnant? Are you serious?”
“I’ll take that as a no then.”
“And then some.” Sam slid onto a stool at the breakfast bar, looking like he’d always been there, which he pretty much had until Dylan had wimped out on that friendship too. “We’d have to see each other to get pregnant, and Eddie’s been on tour for a month.”
Fuck. Dylan dumped the kettle on its stand and
flicked the switch. “I’m sorry, I forgot. I’m such a shit friend. Dude, you should’ve called me.”
Sam rolled his eyes. Another man would’ve repeated the fact that he had called Dylan, over and over, but Sam had little patience for conversations that went in circles. He pulled Eddie close and buried his face in her hair, leaving Dylan for her to deal with.
“We’re moving,” Eddie said.
“Okay.” Dylan had expected this. Sam and Eddie had lived in Sam’s crappy studio flat while she’d finished uni, but it was far too small to accommodate them long term. “Are you going to rent in Vauxhall or try further out?”
Eddie disentangled herself from Sam, and they exchanged a glance. “Actually, we’re going to move to Warsaw with Artur. I scored a place in the Polish National Orchestra. A first chair. It’s at the back, but still.”
Dylan didn’t know jack about orchestra hierarchy, but he knew how hard Eddie had worked to reach the top of her game in London, closing out her time at Goldsmiths University as leader of their prestigious orchestra. “Wow. That’s awesome.”
“Really?” Eddie bit her lip. “You don’t have your awesome face on.”
Dylan abandoned the kettle and claimed his own stool at the counter, his legs wobbling as he sank down. “Sorry. I’m just a bit shocked. I’d figured that you’d be on the move when you graduated, but Poland? Damn.”
“It’s been a long time coming,” Sam said. “Pops wants to take that bloody urn home, and he wants to show me where he came from before he’s too frail.”
Dylan’s heart constricted. Sam’s grandparents were his family—he still mourned Sam’s wonderful grandmother—and the thought of losing his grandfather too . . . shit. He couldn’t bear it. “Artur’s okay, though, right? There’s nothing you’re not telling me?”
“He’s fine,” Sam said. “Just aware of his own mortality. But it’s more than that for me. I want to do something with my life while Eddie’s tearing the world up with her violin, and I can’t do that flipping eggs in Vauxhall.”
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