by Ally Blue
You know that’s not true. You felt him react. He knew what you were saying, he just didn’t want to deal with it.
Adrian knew he should press the issue. He should ask Greg point-blank where he saw their relationship going. Whether it was just a casual fling to him or if he saw a future for the two of them. But his silence had killed Adrian’s courage more thoroughly than anything else could have, and Adrian knew there would be no such discussion tonight.
Forcing a playful grin, Adrian leaned over and pecked Greg on the lips. “I’ll clean you up.”
“What do you—oh!” Greg squeaked when Adrian scooted down and swiped his tongue through the rapidly gelling semen. “Fuck, that tickles.”
Adrian chuckled, his morose mood lifting with the sound of Greg’s half-stifled laughter. “You big baby.” He lapped up another salty-bitter mouthful, swallowed it and licked the residue from his lips. Greg tried to squirm away. Adrian held him down with an arm across his hips. “Be still. You don’t want to go to sleep sticky, do you?”
“No. Wait, yes!” Greg clamped his hand over his mouth just in time to muffle a burst of what sounded suspiciously like giggles. The other hand attempted in vain to keep Adrian’s tongue from digging into his navel. “OhGodpleasestop, stop, you’re killing me!”
Adrian ignored Greg’s pleas and increasingly wild thrashing long enough to clean every trace of come from his belly. When he lifted his head at last, Greg gave him an indignant, red-faced glare, but allowed Adrian to roll him over and spoon against his back without an argument. He laced his fingers through Adrian’s and pulled Adrian’s arm snug around his waist.
“If you get spooge all over my back after all that, I’m gonna kill you,” Greg muttered, wriggling his butt until it sat firmly against Adrian’s groin.
Adrian smiled. “Don’t worry. Whatever was on me either dried up or got rubbed off on the sheets.”
“Good.” Turning his head, Greg pressed a soft kiss to Adrian’s lips. “Night, Adrian.”
“Good night.”
For a moment, they just lay there, staring at each other. In the muted blend of moonlight and streetlight from the window, Adrian thought he saw something he couldn’t quite name flicker in Greg’s eyes, something that made Adrian’s pulse quicken in response. Then the whatever-it-was vanished. Greg smiled, curled up in Adrian’s arms and closed his eyes. Adrian lay awake for a long time, lost in thought.
Chapter Thirteen
Greg was unusually quiet the next morning. Adrian wanted to blame the early hour—five a.m., dark and cold as the grave—but he knew that wasn’t it. The pensive expression on Greg’s face at the breakfast table spoke volumes. He was still thinking about what Adrian had said last night. Adrian knew it, deep in his bones.
If only he knew in what direction Greg’s thoughts ran.
If only he had the courage to ask.
By six, he and Greg had said their goodbyes to Adrian’s family and were on the road back to Chapel Hill. Greg sat with one leg curled beneath him, staring out the passenger side window at the headlights zooming by on the other side of the interstate while Adrian drove. Adrian frowned at the road ahead and wished he could read Greg’s mind.
Normally, silence didn’t bother Adrian. However, silence between him and Greg wasn’t normally this uncomfortable. Or maybe Adrian was the only one uncomfortable. It wasn’t like Greg was going out of his way to let Adrian know how he felt.
Get a grip. You know he gets moody sometimes. Maybe this is just one of those times.
Adrian worried his lower lip between his teeth, thinking hard. What could he say that would draw Greg into conversation without being too serious?
When it hit him, Adrian grinned. “Hey, don’t you have auditions for that other play soon?”
Greg gave him a blank look. “Other play?”
“Yeah.” Adrian glanced sideways, his confidence slipping. Had he remembered wrong? “You know, you were talking about it just the other day. The one you mentioned right after the other audition, back in November?”
Comprehension lit Greg’s eyes. “Oh, you mean Wicked.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Relieved, Adrian shot Greg a smile. “You have auditions for that one soon, right?”
“Couple of weeks.”
“Which part are you trying out for again?” Adrian’s cheeks heated. “Sorry, I know you told me already, but—”
“But your theater brain is about the same as my physics brain.” Greg grinned at him. “It’s okay. I’m trying out for Fiyero.”
The name meant nothing to Adrian. Not that he was about to let on. “Right. I remember now.” He darted a sidelong glance at Greg. At least he wasn’t staring out the window anymore. “Do you want me to come with you again?”
Greg shrugged. “You can if you want.”
He didn’t seem very enthusiastic. Adrian’s heart sank, but he nodded and forced a smile. “I’d like that, if you don’t mind.”
“Any time.” Greg slouched in his seat and planted both feet on the dash. “You know what, let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Okay, sure, if you like.” Adrian switched on his signal, moved into the left lane and hit the gas to pass a puttering old Buick. “What do you want to talk about?”
Tilting his head, Greg studied Adrian’s face. “Tell me about this research project you’ve been working on.”
Surprised, Adrian cast a wide-eyed look in Greg’s direction. “Huh?”
Greg laughed. “C’mon, Adrian. You’ve been all over this thing for weeks now, but I don’t have the first clue what it’s all about.”
Adrian straightened and flexed his fingers around the wheel. “You really want to know?”
It wasn’t that Greg never showed any interest in Adrian’s academic life. He’d asked several times how the project was coming along and always knew what was going on in Adrian’s classes. But the fact remained that upper level college physics wasn’t easy. It tended to make most people’s eyes glaze over, and Greg was no exception. Adrian didn’t blame Greg for not wanting to talk about the research project. The fact that he’d asked—no, flat-out insisted on details—shocked Adrian to his core.
“What, you think I’m stupid? You think I won’t understand what you’re talking about?”
“What? No, God, I don’t—” Adrian caught Greg’s grin and let out a long breath ending in a laugh. “Smart ass.”
Greg snickered. “You’re too easy.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Adrian slid the Toyota back into the right lane in front of a delivery truck for a local grocery store chain. “All right. Basically, what we’re doing is working on possible practical applications of quantum mechanics to interdimensional travel.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s more complicated than that, but yeah, that’s the gist of it.”
“You could really travel between dimensions?”
Adrian smiled. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
“Wow.” Greg shook his head. “Have I ever told you that you’re scary smart?”
“Not today.”
“You’re scary smart.”
Adrian pulled the “scary” face he’d taken to using whenever Greg teased him about being abnormally intelligent. Greg laughed, and some of Adrian’s tension melted away. He reached across the console and squeezed Greg’s knee. Maybe things were getting back to normal.
~ * ~
A week later, Adrian had begun to wonder if he was wrong.
He and Greg talked, teased and laughed just like always. They still held hands everywhere they went. Greg still stayed at Adrian’s place most nights. Each time they kissed, each time they made love, Adrian felt branded deep inside, just like he had the very first time.
In other words, everything was exactly as it had been before the Christmas holiday.
At least on the surface. Underneath, though, something had changed.
Adrian couldn’t put his finger on the difference, but he
knew it was there. He felt it. Something in the way Greg looked at him. Something small. Subtle. Furtive, even, caught in glimpses from the corner of his eye and gone when he tried to look at it directly. He had no idea what to make of it, and even less of an idea what—if anything—to do about it.
“It’s not that he’s distant,” he explained to Chelsea as the two of them huddled over their closed laptops in a sunny corner of Davis Library. “He isn’t, exactly. It’s just that sometimes I’ll catch him watching me with this really strange look on his face. Really intense. Like…”
Chelsea raised her eyebrows. “Go on.” She slouched in her chair, watching him with the calm curiosity that always drew the words from him with such ease.
His brow knitted. “That’s just it. He only does it when I’m not looking, and when I catch him, he stops, so I can’t pin it down. I’ve never had anyone look at me like that. It’s…” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I have to be honest, it excites me a little, but it scares me a lot, because I don’t know what it means.”
“Hm.” She tapped a fingertip against her chin. “Have you tried just asking him?”
Adrian laughed, softly so any passing librarians wouldn’t get them in trouble. “I know that seems like the obvious answer, but I can’t, Chelsea.”
“Why not?”
Yeah, Adrian. Why not? Why can’t you ask your lover—your boyfriend, the man you’ve been in a relationship with for over three months now—what’s bothering him? Why can’t you have an honest conversation with the person you should be closer to than anyone else, when you’ve always prided yourself on your honesty?
He had no answers for himself, or for his friend. He gave her a rueful half-smile. “I’m scared of what he might say.”
Chelsea’s eyes filled with sympathy, but she didn’t ask Adrian to elaborate. He was grateful for that, mostly because he couldn’t put his finger on what exactly frightened him so much, and it bothered him to admit it.
A movement caught the edge of Adrian’s vision. He glanced to his right. Theo was strolling toward them, hands in his jacket pockets, his usual half Mona Lisa, half miscreant grin on his face. He lifted a hand and waved. “Yo, Adrian!”
The Rocky impression, loud and startling in the quiet of the library, drew more than a few stares and barely stifled laughs. Adrian winced, but waved back. “Hi, Theo.”
Jogging the last few feet, Theo swooped down and planted a kiss on Chelsea’s lips. “And hello to you, my little sweet potato.”
She shook her head, brown eyes sparkling with mingled humor and affection. “You’re nuts.”
“What about ’em?” Theo cupped his groin and waggled his eyebrows at her before plopping into the empty chair on the other side of the small round table beside the window. “So, what’re you two discussing with such seriousness over here?”
Adrian shot Chelsea a look he knew she would understand. She bobbed her head in a tiny nod, and he breathed easier. He and Chelsea had become fast friends in the past few months. In that time, he’d gotten to know Theo as well. He liked Theo a lot, but he didn’t feel comfortable with anyone other than Chelsea being privy to his relationship problems.
If they even were real problems and not just figments of his imagination. Which remained to be determined.
“Nothing much.” Chelsea took Theo’s hand and wound their fingers together. “So what’s up? I thought you had your improvisational theater class right now.”
“Yeah, but Leander had an emergency, so she canceled for today.” Theo traced the bones in the back of Chelsea’s hand with his thumb as if they fascinated him. “I was thinking if you’re done studying for now, we could go get a coffee or something.” He looked up and grinned at Adrian. “You can come too, if you want. No offense or anything, man, but you look like you could use some caffeine.”
Adrian let out a grim laugh. “No offense taken. I am tired.” He glanced at his watch. Plenty of time for a cup of coffee before he was supposed to meet Greg. On the other hand, he’d been meaning to search through the library’s UNC yearbook archives ever since he learned they existed a few days ago. This would be the perfect time to do that. “Thanks, but I think I’ll have to pass. I’m meeting Greg at the dining hall at six, and I need to get some things done before then.”
“It’s cool.” Theo nudged Chelsea’s leg with his foot. “What about it, Bugaloo? Coffee?”
“Yeah, okay.” Leaning over, she pecked him on the lips, then pried his hand off hers and stuffed her laptop into her green and yellow bag. She stood and slung the bag over her shoulder. “See you later, Adrian.”
“Tell Gregorio hi,” Theo added, pushing to his feet. He wound an arm around Chelsea’s shoulders.
Adrian chuckled. “I’ll tell Greg you said hello. See you both later.”
They strolled off with their heads together, whispering. Adrian watched them with a smile on his face. They seemed like an odd match—rational, level-headed Chelsea and Theo who seemed to live in a bubble of his own personal reality—but it worked.
Kind of like Greg and me.
If they still worked.
The possibility that they might not made Adrian feel cold and sick.
Pushing the thought to the back of his mind, Adrian opened his laptop and went to the UNC library website. A quick search took him to a free digital archive of UNC yearbooks dating back to the late eighteen hundreds. He found the nineteen-oh-five yearbook, downloaded a copy and settled down to search through the document for any students with the first name of Cassius.
It seemed like such an obvious piece of research, he could’ve kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner. Adrian blamed overwork and fatigue, since it hadn’t even occurred to him to search Lyndon Groome’s fellow students for the mysterious Cassius until halfway through Christmas Break. As soon as he and Greg returned from Mobile, Adrian had made a trip to the registrar’s office to try and find out if any students with the first name Cassius had attended UNC in nineteen-oh-five. He’d learned that student records weren’t available to the public, but an acquaintance on work-study there had told him about the online yearbook archives. Adrian had made up his mind to search the nineteen-oh-five yearbook at the first opportunity. If Cassius had been a student here, hopefully Adrian would be able to learn more about him, which might eventually lead to information useful to solving the mystery of Lyndon’s death. If Cassius hadn’t attended UNC, well, that knowledge could be helpful in its own right.
Cassius turned out to be a surprisingly popular name at Chapel Hill in that particular year. Adrian eventually found eleven students with that name—five seniors, two juniors, and four freshmen. Not one of them matched the picture in his head, however. He also discovered a faculty member among the ranks of the Cassiuses—Dr. Hilliard, a professor of divinity. That one gave Adrian a moment’s serious thought, remembering the vivid mental picture of the cross on the wall over Lyndon’s lover’s bed. But Dr. Hilliard, though young and dark-haired in the old photo, proved on closer study to have dark eyes, not light. He also possessed a crooked, angular jaw and a nose that looked to have been broken at some point. Definitely not the man whose image still haunted Adrian’s dreams.
With a deep sigh, Adrian stretched his arms over his head and arched his back against the chair’s cushions. Vertebrae cracked, loud as a gunshot in the quiet. A girl with two pencils pinning her hair up glared at him over the tops of her glasses from a nearby table. He gave her his best cold stare until she colored and dropped her gaze to the book open on the table in front of her.
Turning his attention back to his laptop, Adrian studied the neat rows of faded black and white pictures without seeing them. He wasn’t certain what to do now. Sure, it was good to know that Cassius apparently hadn’t been a student here. But it left Adrian very neatly at a dead end. If Cassius hadn’t been a UNC student, who was he? And if Adrian couldn’t follow the one lead he had in Lyndon’s case, then where was he to go from here?
He shook his head. “I have
no fucking idea.”
The two-pencil girl let out an annoyed huff. “Can you please keep it down over there? Some of us are trying to study.”
Several scathing retorts flashed through Adrian’s mind. He dismissed them as childish and ultimately beneath him. He gave the girl a tight smile. “I was just leaving.”
“Good.” She bent over her book again.
Closing his laptop, Adrian slid it into his bag and stood, his bag over his shoulder. A swift twist of his thought sent the girl’s pencils clattering to the floor. She dove after them with a squeak. He grinned as he walked to the stairs.
Outside, the unseasonable warmth of the afternoon had begun to fade into the hard cold of a normal January evening. Adrian squinted against the setting sun and considered what to do now. Searching the yearbook hadn’t taken as long as he’d been afraid it might. He still had over an hour before he was supposed to meet Greg.
You could go to the castle, his inner voice whispered. Talk to Lyndon. You haven’t talked to him since before Christmas. Maybe you can learn something new from him by now. Besides, don’t you miss him?
Adrian almost laughed out loud. Miss him? A ghost?
The idea was ridiculous.
But it’s true.
Adrian frowned at a crack in the sidewalk at his feet. Could it be true? Could he really have gotten so attached to Groome Castle’s resident spirit that he actually missed talking to him? Even after he’d started a relationship with Greg?
He thought about it. And realized he did.
This time, Adrian didn’t try to hold back his laughter, in spite of the strange looks it earned him from the people passing by. Somewhere along the way, he’d developed a friendship with a man who’d been dead for over one hundred years. It was either laugh at himself or go crazy, and he’d balanced on the precipice of mental breakdown enough for one lifetime.
At least his early desire to be Lyndon’s lover had vanished when he started seeing Greg. He didn’t think he could handle being at the center of a romantic triangle in which one party wasn’t even alive.