“We should probably get married then,” Dylan deadpanned. “Because that’s literally all I want out of life—great sex with a shit-hot cook.”
Angelo laughed. “What would your dad say about that?”
“Not much. He’s down with the queer stuff, but he’s a total prude. Actually, I think he’s more uncomfortable when I bring girls home.”
“Oh yeah?” Warmth spread through Angelo again. “Do that a lot, do you?”
“No. I haven’t brought anyone other than Sam here in years, and Dad was always a bit iffy about him because he thought us being so close stopped me meeting anyone else.”
“Thought he didn’t say much?”
Dylan opened a cupboard and retrieved a stack of artfully chipped bowls. “He has his moments—oh hey, speak of the devil.”
Angelo turned as Dylan’s father entered the kitchen. Dylan grabbed the older man’s arm and tugged him forward.
“Dad, this is my friend, Angelo. Angelo, this is my dad, Mick.”
Mick Hart was broader than Dylan—taller too—but their features were the same even down to the natural shape of their facial hair. Mick’s smile was easy, despite the gruffness he clearly wore like a second skin, and his handshake warm and firm. “Nice to meet you, son. Come take a seat. My stomach thinks its throat’s been cut.”
He preceded Angelo to the kitchen table. Lacking any better ideas, Angelo followed him and slid into a funky chair that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Camden bar. Mick poured himself a glass of wine from the bottle on the table, then offered it to Angelo.
Angelo shook his head. “I can’t drink at the moment. Antibiotics.”
“That’s a bugger,” Mick said. “Haven’t got the clap, have you?”
“Dad!” Dylan banged the bowls down on the table. “How do you find a way of asking that every time you meet one of my friends?”
Mick chuckled and swigged his wine like it was cheap lager. “You know I’m only joking, son.”
“Of course I do. It’s the only joke you have.”
Dylan huffed and stomped back to the stove. He was back a moment later with the curry, and as he’d predicted, Mick inhaled his food and disappeared again, thumping Angelo on the back and taking the wine with him.
Angelo sat back in his seat, pleasantly full from his first non-Italian meal in weeks. “That was short and sweet.”
“Always is.” Dylan picked at his food. “He likes you, though.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because he offered you his wine.”
Angelo snorted. “Bollocks. That was the most pointless interaction ever.”
“No interaction is pointless, Angelo.”
“Ain’t it?”
“Of course not.” Dylan pushed his bowl away. “People don’t have to talk to express themselves. I knew that before I met you, but somehow I forgot.”
“Is this your way of telling me that I’m a shit communicator?”
“More like it’s my way of telling you that it doesn’t matter and that there’s plenty of things that I’m shit at too. Perhaps I don’t listen enough.”
“Listening is your job.”
“Right. And I hear the same problems recycled over and over again. What are the chances that I’ve stopped paying attention?”
Angelo frowned. “Are we still talking about the same thing?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Dylan stood with a sigh and gathered the dirty bowls. “I guess I’m a bit frazzled at the moment.”
Angelo trailed Dylan to the sink with the curry pot. His legs had gone to sleep, but for once the persistent tingling didn’t bother him. “You were going to tell me about tax credit week at your work. Is that what’s stressing you out?”
“Mostly. It’s worse than January when the credit card debts kick in.”
Angelo gestured for Dylan to explain and hustled him sideways so he could get to the sink and turn the taps on.
Dylan looked as though he might protest, but after a fleeting standoff, moved aside. “Tax credits are a wage top-up the government pays to low-income households. Recipients have to renew every summer, which inevitably leads to total chaos. The system is shambolic and makes no sense even to me, and I’ve been on every craptastic training course under the sun.”
“So it takes a while for renewals to go through?”
“If they go through.” Dylan opened the dishwasher and began to stack it with the rinsed crockery Angelo passed him. “Delayed renewals don’t matter so much because claimants continue to get paid. It’s when a renewal gets lost, fucked up, or cancelled that things get shitty. People get pretty pissed off when they can’t feed their kids.”
“I’ll bet. I heard someone yelling at one of your colleagues when I came in that first time.”
“Yeah, that happens a lot at this time of year. Clients expect us to fix everything for them, but when we’re dealing with a broken system, we just can’t do it.”
Angelo washed the curry pot and set it on the draining board. “At least you’re there for them at all. Where would they go otherwise?”
Dylan shrugged. “I’m there because I get paid to be. Most of the other advisors are volunteers.”
“They pay you for a reason. And I know for a fact that you work way beyond your nine-to-five, so take that look off your face.”
“What look?”
Angelo dried his hands and stepped into Dylan’s personal space, swiping at his frown lines with his thumb. “You’re always so worried that you’re not doing enough.”
“How do you know that?”
“Dunno. But I ain’t wrong.”
Dylan didn’t deny it. Angelo let his hands travel to Dylan’s soft hair and toyed with the silky strands. They seemed to be back in that vortex where the air between them was ever shifting, tying them closer, bonding them. How was it possible that he’d lived a whole lifetime without Dylan?
No answer was forthcoming from his subconscious, or Dylan, and the moment passed. Angelo’s hands dropped to his sides, and Dylan turned away.
By the time the kitchen was cleaned down, Angelo was flagging. Eagle-eyed as ever, Dylan slipped an arm around his waist and guided him to the living room, laughing when Angelo fell face first onto the squishy couch.
But his expression sobered quickly. Angelo sat up and patted the space beside him. “What’s up?”
“Hmm? Oh, nothing.”
“Liar.”
Dylan poked his tongue out. “Am not.”
“Yeah, you are.”
Dylan sighed. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Try? Please?”
“It’s just that even though you’re tired and still recovering from the pneumonia, and I know the ME never goes away entirely, I can see how much better you are.”
“And that upsets you?”
“Yes. Because it reminds me how wrong I got it before.”
Angelo was lost. He leaned against Dylan when he finally sat down and lolled his head on his shoulder. “I don’t understand.”
“When we met at the club a few weeks after you first told me about the ME, I thought you were better, but I know now that you weren’t, that you were still struggling.”
“Oh.” Angelo could barely remember the last few weeks he’d worked at the deli and couldn’t imagine how he’d fooled Dylan into thinking he was anything close to okay. “Well, that’s my fault, isn’t it? Not yours. How would you have known any different when I was so used to keeping it all to myself?”
“I don’t know,” Dylan muttered bleakly.
Angelo sighed. That Dylan cared for him so much had proved a lifeline, but Dylan didn’t deserve to be angsting over it like this. “I’m always going to struggle. There are things I can do to feel better, but I’m never going to be like I was before.”
“Like you were on your Instagram profile?”
“Yeah, ’cause the Internet constitutes reality.” Angelo sat up and glared half-heartedly. “No, in general, not just the na
rcissism I chose to share back then. And what I actually mean is that I don’t want you to worry about things we can’t change.”
Dylan chewed his lip. “Are we going round in circles with this?”
“A bit—” Angelo broke off with a yawn that made his head spin. “But that’s my fault. I’m getting better at talking, I swear.”
Dylan smiled and coaxed Angelo to lie down again, stretched out on the magical sofa, his head in Dylan’s lap. “You’re better at it already.”
Angelo chuckled hazily as Dylan moved his fingers over his scalp. “I’ve been practising with my mum. She keeps trying to give me money. Did I tell you she gave me a phone and a debit card in her name to use for a while?”
“No, but you probably shouldn’t. The less I know about stuff like that, the better.”
“Should I make her take it back?”
“That’s not for me to say, but as we’re in my dad’s house and not my office, I’m going with no. You need to live, Angelo, not just survive.”
Survival had been all Angelo was capable of for so long that Dylan’s words took a while to sink in, and by then he was half asleep. With his head in Dylan’s lap, he listened to Dylan humming along to Kerrang! and dozed until instinct told him it was time to go home.
Dylan walked with him, his arm comforting and solid around Angelo’s waist, keeping him upright in more ways than one. They stopped at the end of the driveway and Dylan pushed him gently against the wall. “When can I see you again?”
Angelo shrugged, breathless from the walk or maybe the fact that Dylan’s lips were mere inches away. “Whenever you’re free. It’s not like I’ve got much on.”
“I’d argue that you have way too much on.” Dylan’s grin was a beacon in the gloom of their dark corner. “But it is pretty cold so I guess I can’t strip you.”
“If you wanted to strip me, you should’ve said before we left your dad’s place.”
“I was trying to be good.”
“Stop.”
Dylan laughed. “Maybe next time. I’m working late tomorrow, but I’ll call you. Maybe we can grab a drink or something?”
Angelo nodded, but fatigue had caught up with him and his head bobbed alarmingly. “Sounds good. If you’re gonna kiss me tonight, though, you’d better do it now before I’m too tired to remember it.”
“You want me to kiss you?”
“Is that a real question—”
Dylan’s lips cut him off, crashing against his with the sweet force that Angelo had been dreaming of. He pushed Angelo ever tighter to the cold brick wall and shoved his hands under Angelo’s jacket and T-shirt, his smooth, warm palms gliding over Angelo’s tingling skin, and Angelo caught fire. He fell slack in Dylan’s arms, all the while kissing Dylan back with a wild, wretched groan. Why had they wasted the night talking when they could’ve been doing this? Why were they outside in the cold, wrestling with layers of clothes, when they could’ve been rolling around on a bed—any bed—Dylan’s, his own, even a plastic-covered mattress at the club?
Angelo groaned again and fumbled desperately for any part of Dylan that he could reach, pulling him impossibly closer. Reason abandoned him, and he’d have been on his knees in a heartbeat, swallowing Dylan whole if Dylan hadn’t broken their crazed kiss.
“I should go,” Dylan said, panting.
“I don’t want you to.”
“I know.” Dylan flexed his hips pointedly, grinding their crotches together, his cock as hard as Angelo’s. “But I still should. You’re exhausted, and we’ve got all the time in the world to get back to fucking.”
Dylan was wavering, Angelo could tell, teetering on the edge of doing the right thing or giving into the fire that was making him tremble as hard as Angelo. Another grind, another kiss and he’d crumble. Theresa slept like the dead, she’d never hear Angelo leading Dylan upstairs and fucking his brains out on his childhood bed, especially if he pressed his hand over Dylan’s mouth, a club-born fantasy that could easily find a home in the real world. But . . .
Angelo closed his eyes and banged his head softly on the wall behind him. Dylan was right. If they fell into bed now, they’d crawl out right back where they’d started. They both needed more.
Besides, as active as his imagination was, the reality was that right now he’d be lucky to climb the stairs on his own, let alone with Dylan wrapped around him, and sleep was the only thing calling his name that would truly get an answer.
He kissed Dylan one last time, sweeping his tongue over Dylan’s lips, biting down hard enough to make them both groan. And then he pulled away. “You’ll call me tomorrow?”
“Yes. As soon as I’m done.”
Angelo nodded slowly. “Okay. Guess this is goodnight then.”
“Uh-huh.”
Dylan stepped aside, and Angelo forced himself away from the wall. Turning his back on Dylan was torture, and each step toward the house lanced his heart with pain, but he didn’t look back. Couldn’t. Because one more look at Dylan would’ve crumbled his resolve to dust.
Fuck. I love him.
Chapter Fourteen
Dylan scanned the notes he’d typed up for his last client of the day. To his frazzled brain, they didn’t make much sense, but he was hoping that would change when he looked them over tomorrow.
With a weary sigh, he began the slow task of shutting down the ageing PC. It hummed and rattled like a dying helicopter, signalling that it would take a while to close all the open applications, so he turned his attention to his phone. Two messages from Angelo lit up the screen and his heart skipped a beat.
A: Are you nearly finished?
A: Fuck it. I’m gonna come meet you
Joy roared in Dylan’s ears. He spoke to Angelo every day, but it had been nearly a week since they’d last seen each other. Dylan’s extended working hours meant he’d get home too late to catch Angelo awake, and God, he missed him. His fingers flew across his screen as he tapped out a reply.
D: You sure? I’ll be done in half an hour
A: Perfect. I’ll be there
Dylan set his phone down, excitement battling an irritating rush of anxiety as he fought the urge to tell Angelo to stay put and wait for him. Trust him, remember? He wouldn’t come out if he didn’t feel up to it. Angelo seemed to have good and bad spells, but he’d been working hard with his physiotherapist and testing himself a little more each day. And even when his body wouldn’t play ball, the change in his personality was startling. His smile, his laugh—even when he was tired—were both so genuine that Dylan dreamed of them every night he wasn’t lucky enough to see Angelo in person.
“You’re grinning like a maniac again.”
Dylan jumped as Helen came up behind him and dumped a stack of files on his desk. “Huh?”
Helen laughed. “The grinning, Dylan. You’ve been at it all week.”
“Have I?” Dylan cringed. “Sorry. Just in a good mood, I guess.”
“That’s not something you need to apologise for. I take it you’re sleeping better?”
“A bit. I’m freaking out less about work too. We’ve cleared most of the backlog, right?”
“Most of it,” Helen agreed. “You know what it’s like, though. We’re bound to get—”
The office door opened, cutting Helen off. Tony, the volunteer who often manned the waiting room, poked his head in. “We’ve got an overflow.”
“How many?” Helen asked.
“Three. Shall I tell them to come back tomorrow?”
Helen glanced pointedly between the three of them—one for each still waiting client—and Dylan’s heart sank. Another client meant an hour of extra work, at least . . . an hour that Angelo might not have left in him after a long day of physical therapy.
He felt like crying as he composed the message to Angelo.
D: Last minute client. Gonna be another hour at least. Go home. I’ll find you x
He didn’t have time to wait for a reply.
With
a heavy sigh, he grabbed what he needed and trudged to the waiting room to retrieve a client. Tony had already taken one, so he nodded at the stocky man holding card number two. “If you’d like to come with me?”
He led the man to the room at the end of the corridor and waved him inside. “Take a seat. I’m Dylan, one of the advisors here. Can you tell me why you’re here today?”
The man sat down and unbuttoned his coat. He reached inside and withdrew a machete. “I’m here for my fucking money, mate. How about you?”
* * *
Fear did strange things to time. And time was a strange thing when fear didn’t manifest itself the way you might have expected it to. Dylan sat on the floor of the consultation room, his back to the corner, his hands on his knees, following the instructions of his apparent hostage taker to the letter.
“Does this phone come off the table?” the man asked gruffly.
“Depends what you want to use it for.” Dylan pictured his own phone lying useless in the next room. “Do you think you could put your knife away?”
“Nope. I’m not doing anything you say until you ring those bastards up and tell them to pay my missus her money.”
“What money?”
“Her family allowance, innit? Six months she’s been without it and you cunts have done nothing about it.”
Dylan eyed the grubby machete that was still on the desk within the man’s easy reach. “Family allowance doesn’t exist anymore. Do you mean child benefit? Or tax credits, maybe?”
“I don’t bloody know what it’s called, do I? All I know is we got a bunch of letters telling us we’d had too much money, then they stopped putting our money in the bank. Six times my missus has been down here and you cunts done nothing. Now the council want to take our house. Where the fuck are my kids gonna live?”
The man spoke lowly, but the flat tone in his voice frightened Dylan more than if he’d been shouting and throwing things around. This man wasn’t hysterical—he had a plan . . . a plan that involved Dylan and a machete. “What do you want me to do?”
“Phone them up.”
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