by Robyn Elliot
“So what were you doing? Talking about the weather? Discussing the ancient enmity between your two nations? Making your own unique contribution to world peace with your mouth full?”
“He’s not like that!” Stef said, and turned away from his brother. “Try and find him, would you?” he asked Annelise.
She got up, and kissed him on the brow. “'Course I will, babe.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Annelise took the elevator down two floors, and emerged into the large waiting area where Danny had been the night before. Her eyes scanned the room, half not expecting to see him. Then, her heart lurched in her chest. He was sitting apart, staring out of the window, his hand supporting his chin. He was white as a sheet, looked utterly exhausted and lost. Danny turned as he heard footfalls. Annelise looked down at him; at his hollowed out cheekbones, his eyes bleated and reddened, the tip of his nose slightly rosy from the hourly welling of tears.
He held his breath. “Is he okay?”
“He is, honey.”
Instantly, Danny leaned forward, cradling his head in his hands, his shoulders heaving. “Oh, thank God!”
Annelise sat next to him, and stroked his back. She could feel the heave of Danny’s emotions, and pretended to not see him wiping at his face beneath the curls of his hair. Speaking of which, looked very fetching and dramatic, all rolling waves and soft sheen. Absently, Annelise thought he should have been a girl, with hair like that. But then…Stef wouldn’t have fallen in love with him.
Because they were in love.
She could see that. She’d seen it yesterday, a great big white pachyderm marching about the kitchen, saying 'look at me! Right now!' She’d seen it in the way Stef’s eyes had moved over Danny, and she could see it now, as Danny raised his head, gave her a nervous, winsome smile.
“Someone’s been asking for you.” Danny stared at her. “Don’t look so surprised; come on.”
Once in the elevator, Danny seemed to get nervous again. And he looked utterly exhausted.
“Danny, you poor thing, you look shattered; why don’t you come back with me, for a shower and some breakfast?” Annelise smiled her winning smile at him. The dark circles beneath Danny’s eyes just made him look very young, and very vulnerable. On anyone else, they’d have looked ghastly.
“Is Guillaume with him?”
“Ah, about Guillaume, he was just frightened; he didn’t mean what he said.”
“I know, Annelise; I completely understand. Besides, we,” Danny hesitated, his face coloring again, “well, we weren’t doing, you know, that.”
Annelise did her best to suppress her laugh. Several hours ago she’d been wondering if she would ever laugh again, when the hospital had telephoned. But seeing Danny now, a mess of anxiety and courage and love, well, she couldn’t resist.
“Guillaume gets queasy sometimes, where Stef’s love life is concerned. Stef winds him up deliberately.”
“Oh,” Danny murmured, feeling a little deflated from the surge of jealousy that threatened to knock him further off kilter. The elevator binged at floor 2, the doors whooshed open and Danny followed her down the pristine corridor.
She led him to a room where the door was half ajar, and Danny entered, his eyes widening as he saw Stef lying against the pillows, white as a ghost. His beard looked almost black next to the pallor of his skin, and his head was turned to the right, muttering something to Guillaume.
Guillaume nodded to Danny, and Stef followed Guillaume's gaze.
Danny stood at the side of the bed, looking down at Stef, a mixture of relief and guilt and doubtless a thousand other emotions blazing across his ski slope cheekbones.
“Well,” Guillaume ventured, glancing at Annelise, who was jerking her head at the door. He took his cue. “We’ll give you a few minutes alone.” Guillaume, suddenly awkward, cleared his throat. He leaned down and kissed Stef on both cheeks again, Danny wishing he could do that. As he passed him, Guillaume squeezed Danny’s arm reassuringly, giving Danny a warm smile.
Relief flooded Danny all over again. The big brother didn’t want to lay him out, then.
The door shut, and Danny remained where he was, looking at Stef so intently, as if to convince himself it was Stef, it was really Stef, and he was going to be okay. Stef lifted his hand, and Danny took it. That was all they needed. Danny sat down, dragged the chair close to the bed, still holding Stef’s hand.
“Hi,” Stef said softly, his voice low, slightly tremulous.
“Hi back,” Danny smiled, and before he realized what he was doing, he raised Stef’s hand to his lips and tenderly kissed each finger. Stephane closed his eyes for a moment, blowing out his cheeks. “Are you trying to take advantage of me in my delicate state, Mr. Hastings?”
Danny rewarded him with another shy smile. “That would make me a very bad boy, if I was,” and Danny couldn’t believe it was him saying that. The Stef effect.
Stef’s eyes flickered with warmth. “I cannot wait for my rehab,” and despite feeling weak, exhausted, bruised to fuck, Stef winked at him. Danny felt the color rise through his neck to his cheeks. He decided to try and steer the conversation to safer waters.
“How are you feeling, Stef?”
Stef grimaced, and tried to shift into a more comfortable position in the bed. “Sore,” he complained, and winced again. “Danny?”
Danny half hovered off the chair, wanting to help Stef, not knowing how to. “Hmm?”
“I’m sorry,” Stef murmured, making Danny flop down onto the chair again.
“For what?”
Stef’s eyes moved over Danny’s face. He saw the weariness there, the gaunt hollows of his face, little fine lines of worry etched around his eyes.
“Scaring you.”
Danny sighed, and stroked Stef’s hand gently. “We’d already agreed you do that, anyway; besides, you’re a hero.”
“Hardly. Crazy, perhaps, dashing, and without a shadow of a doubt, irresistible. But hero? Non!”
Oh, Stef, Danny was thinking, Stef, Stef, Stef...
“Is everything a joke with you?” Danny asked.
Stef yawned, shaking his head. “No. Some things I take seriously.” He gave Danny a measured look, behind the dark lens of anesthesia.
The thought occurred to Danny. “That’s the drugs talking.”
“Hey, I’m a sick man, Danny.”
Danny wrinkled his long, refined nose. “You’re so right.”
They both stared at each other, then laughed. Making Stef wince again.
“Stef, you need to rest; I... I could,” Danny hesitated, as Stef’s eyelids grew heavy, and for a moment, Danny was convinced Stef had fallen asleep.
Stef opened one eye. “Yes. Come back later, Danny...please.”
“Okay,” and Danny wanted to hang suspended from the ceiling with happiness.
Danny got up from the chair, hovered uncertainly. He wanted to kiss Stef, just press a gentle peck on his brow. Go for broke, he was thinking, the Frenchman can’t exactly argue.
“Instead of thinking about it, Danny, why don’t you just do it?”
Tentatively, scared in case he hurt him, Danny leaned over and aimed for Stef’s brow.
“Ah-ah,” Stef whispered.
Slowly, Danny leaned in and despite the cloy of antiseptic, he’d never inhaled a sweeter aroma. His lips brushed Stef’s, soft and tender like a butterfly grazing a flower.
Stef gently nipped at Danny’s lower lip, making Danny gasp with the jolt of pleasure and arousal.
“You’re supposed to be ill,” Danny murmured, but didn’t move his mouth, sensuously brushing it again over Stef’s.
“I am. You got your revenge, babe.”
Danny pulled back a little. “Oh yes, the little matter of you pretending to be my boyfriend,” but he was concentrating on Stef’s lips. Kissable beyond imagining.
That mouth was curving into a wicked smile. “And now?” There was silence. Stef filled it. “I should warn you that me lying in thi
s bed, Mr. Hastings, won’t protect you forever from my advances.”
Stef closed his eyes, mission accomplished. For now. Even the pain was bearable considering the most beautiful guy he had ever seen was standing next to his bed, threatening to either run off shrieking or throw himself onto Stef and declare undying love.
Speaking of which…but Stef found himself becoming so drowsy he was drifting downwards into sleep, whether he wanted to or not.
There was a tap on the door, and Danny turned, almost grateful for the distraction. Annelise and Guillaume crept back in warily.
“A nurse is heading this way with painkillers; is he…” Guillaume answered his own question as he went to stand at the bottom of the bed, shaking his head, “well, he sleeps. London’s safe for a while.”
“You coming back with us, Danny? You’re welcome to.” Annelise put her hand against the small of Danny’s back, and he thought it the most touching, kind little gesture. Including him, in the family embrace of Clermont.
Danny offered a brief, wintry smile, declining her offer, saying he’d be coming back later that afternoon.
Danny knew he was undone. Irrevocably, hopelessly and pretty much permanently in love.
Chapter Five
Stephane kept glancing at wall clock.
“Why do you keep doing that?” Elisabeth asked him, a half knowing smile ghosting her rich mouth. The same mouth that Stef had inherited, along with just about everything else of his glamorous mother. Apart from papa, Jean-Claude's, fiery temper.
Stef shrugged like a teenager, and resumed eating the late lunch Elisabeth had brought him. The anesthesia wearing off and a solid seven-hour sleep to sweeten him, Stef had indulged himself unabashed.
“Don’t eat so quickly, Stephane, that can’t be good for you after surgery!” as Elisabeth brushed a crumb, possibly imaginary, from the side of Stef’s mouth. He rolled his eyes.
“Maman!” he muttered under his breath, and swallowed the rest of the cheese, licking his fingers appreciatively.
Elisabeth loosened the fine silk scarf she had been wearing. It was as elegant as she was. Stef lay back on the pillows, and gave her one of his most charmingly boyish smiles.
“Do you want anything else, darling?”
“No thank you,” Stef wiped his mouth with the napkin she gave him, “I need to leave room for the rest of the bucket loads of food you’ve brought. I won’t be in here that long, you know. I’m not a prisoner in a Gulag.”
“Well, yes, Stephane, I am aware of that,” Elisabeth fixed him with one of her cool looks, “but allow me to indulge my beautiful son who scared the hell out of me…not for the first time, may I add.”
“Are you suggesting I’m the troublesome child of your brood?”
“Oh, not a suggestion, Stephane...never a suggestion!”
They smiled at each other, looking remarkably alike. Stef had inherited his beautiful eyes, and lazy, languid charm from his mother, along with her grace and confidence. Elisabeth adored him, unquestioningly, but he was indeed the most mercurial of her children. There was Guillaume. Dependable, commonsensical Guillaume; Delphine, yes, flighty, but she was the youngest, only 22 and definitely the adored baby of her big brothers. Stephane. He had always been a charming and loving son, but reckless sometimes in his manner with people, occasionally hurtful, and at odds with his father for too long now.
“Papa is thinking of you,” Elisabeth said, tidying up the bed, trying to fluff already significantly fluffed pillows.
Stef watched her intently, until their eyes met. “Thinking…not that bloody boy again!” Stef remarked sourly.
“Papa loves you very much; it’s just he has certain ideas about things, and it wouldn’t hurt, Stephane, for you to recognize such now and then instead of always trying to antagonize him.”
“Sorry for getting stabbed, tell him!”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
They held each other’s intense blue-gray gaze for a few challenging moments. “Has Guillaume let Madeleine know?” Elisabeth asked.
Stef grimaced at her. “No, Maman! Why would he?” he asked, his voice defensive.
“I would think that was obvious, Stephane.”
“Look, he hasn’t, and that’s that. Now leave it, Maman.”
With that, Stef glanced up at the clock again. Elisabeth followed his gaze. She relented slightly, resting her hand over his.
“I know, by the way.”
Stef shifted his eyes back to his mother. “What? Every thought I’m thinking?” A wicked glint sparkled about him. “I really, really hope not!” Elisabeth wouldn’t be deterred. Besides, she was hugely intrigued. Not that she believed what Guillaume and Annelise had told her. Not for a minute. The world might end tomorrow, or the château’s roof in the main annex might stop leaking, or zombies might start walking faster in films, but Stef…smitten? That was an impossibility too far. “He’s coming to see you shortly; I know that much. Can’t wait to see him, if you looking at the clock every few seconds is anything to judge by.”
Elisabeth’s face crinkled into her warm smile. She couldn’t wait to see this paragon, this god like personage who had got her bold-as-you-like son all hot and bothered. Guillaume had been maddeningly cryptic when Elisabeth had asked him for more details. Name, rank, serial number was just the start of Guillaume's lengthy interrogation.
But he withstood Marshal Petain with high courage, and Annelise had joined in on the lips sealed policy.
Stef pulled another teenager face. “What’s Guillaume told you?” he sighed.
“Nothing,” Elisabeth laughed, “that’s the trouble! Oh, except his name, Daniel. A lovely name,” she purred, looking askance at her son.
She watched him flush ever so slightly across his cheekbones. True, some color had returned to Stef’s face, but that was definitely a rise in temperature going on.
“Danny,” Stef said, clearing his throat, feeling oddly self-conscious, as if his feelings were openly on display. He pushed himself further up against the pillows, wincing with the soreness, rather than the pain, he was now feeling. He’d also lifted the bedclothes earlier, and seen they’d shaved off every single one of his pubes and his lower abdomen hair. The first thing Stef had thought, as he had looked down on his curiously smooth balls and somewhat bare cock, was Danny seeing him like that.
“Danny? Hmm, I see.”
Stef rolled his eyes again. “See what, Maman? He’s a friend, yes?”
Elisabeth patted his hand, raised it to her lips and kissed it. It was a nicely done thing, all mummy-ish and sweet. Unlike when Danny had done it, and the only thing that had stood between Stef’s cock ripping apart the bed clothes with his erection was a dose of anesthesia.
“Boyfriend?” Elisabeth asked, raising her brows slightly in enquiry. Her clipped English accent suddenly reminded Stef of another clipped English accent, which was slightly disconcerting.
“I don’t know,” Stef prevaricated. Unusual for him. Elisabeth coolly raised her eyebrows again.
“Guillaume and Annelise seem to think so.”
Boyfriend. The geeky guy? The pale faced, sweet natured guy. Danny, his boyfriend? Suddenly, Stef felt a curious kind of fear rise up in his throat, that, and the excitement thinking of Danny always created in him now.
“It must be true, then,” Stef muttered darkly.
“Why are you being so sheepish? He is or he isn’t? Oh God!” Elisabeth’s eyes fluttered closed for a few seconds, “we’re not talking another Antoine, are we, Stephane? Is that why Guillaume and Annelise won’t tell me anything about Daniel?”
“Danny, Maman, Danny.”
“Sorry, darling…Danny, then.”
They fell into an uncomfortable silence. Elisabeth watched her impossibly handsome son glance again at the clock. After a few moments, Stef relented. “He’s nothing like Antoine, let me put your mind at rest on that.” Elisabeth sighed with evident relief. No, Antoine, force of nature that he was, would not be
good for Stephane at the minute, nor any half Brazilian-French model prototype either.
“I know you like extremely good looking men, darling; sometimes, you know, it might help to delve a little deeper than that.”
Stef rolled his eyes. Again. His mother had that effect on him. Delve deeper. And why? Guys like Antoine, and all the rest, were great for delving into. And the deeper the better. But Danny? Stef swallowed hard, and asked Elisabeth to pour him a glass of water. Distraction technique. It wouldn’t be great, for all she was understanding and tolerant, Stef knew, to see him with an erection. He’d just tipped over the edge of imagining doing with Danny all the things he’d done with Antoine. Only better. Yeh, better, and sweeter, and sexier.
Ah God, thought Stef hopelessly, and he pulled his knees up, even though his sutured wound throbbed its protest. The throbbing down below was causing a major ‘don’t get hard in front of Maman’ malfunction.
Elisabeth passed Stef the water, which he drank greedily. He kept glancing at her over the glass rim, but to his relief she got up and began putting the discarded lunch things into her bag.
“I’m sorry, Stephane; I hadn’t meant to pry. I suppose I will meet him soon enough...if you want me to, of course.”
Stef smiled at his mother, behind the barricade of his knees. This was getting very problematic, Stef realized. Just thinking of Danny wasn't for his sutures…
“Well, he said he'd be here later.”
Elisabeth’s eyes danced with mischief. The same glint that Stef had inherited from her.
“A clue?” she asked teasingly, “the teeniest, tiniest clue? Is he good looking? I imagine he is, knowing your preferences.”
Good looking, Stef thought, smiling vaguely at his mother, trying to head her off at the pass. Try beautiful, Maman. Try heart stoppingly, achingly, gut wrenchingly beautiful…
“He’s…different looking,” Stef conceded, and immediately realized it had been the wrong thing to say. Elisabeth, already restless with curiosity, was doubly intrigued.
“Different?”, she paused, wrinkling her brow, then looking back at Stef, “...different from the others?”