Come Alive

‘Are we going to start?’ Spook asked.

Several shouts of ‘yes’ came in response.

‘“Hole”,’ someone proposed, prompting scattered laughter. It wouldn’t have been Xane’s first choice, but it was one of their bigger and most beloved hits, and it would give his voice a decent warm-up. It was a heck of a long time since he’d rested his vocal cords for this amount of time. He hoped they hadn’t got rusty.

He opened with a long wail.

Actually, that felt damned good.

Chapter 5

Luthor had been psyching himself up for this moment ever since he’d played with these guys on stage and won their approval. He’d been both itching to repeat the experience and shitting himself over the prospect. They were all first-rate musicians, and, while the sound was a little different without Elspeth here to play keyboard, the quality wasn’t lacking. Not for the first verse at any rate. After that, things got a bit wibbly. He was concentrating hard, following Ash’s lead since he was the main guitarist, but Ash’s timing was waltzing all over the place, with the knock-on effect of Luthor constantly having to adjust the tempo. By the time Xane had obliterated the chorus, he was focused so hard on keeping pace with Ash that he’d temporarily forgotten about the rest of them.

Suddenly he was two bars behind and they were all so out of synch that the only sensible thing to do was stop.

‘What the hell was that?’ Rock Giant came straight at him and slammed a fist down on top of the snare. ‘You’re supposed to keep it steady, but you were all over the place, revving it up and then tootling along for the next bar.’

‘I was following Ash.’

‘You’re not supposed to follow Ash.’

He didn’t mean that literally, but a decent drummer knew how to keep a steady beat going and how to keep time for the band, while at the same time taking cues from the guitars and the vocalist.

‘Let’s do it again,’ Spook suggested. The guy was a natural mediator, always so soft-spoken and willing to hear all sides.

Xane counted them in, but they had the same problem over again, this time before they’d even reached the chorus. And it wasn’t down to Luthor. He’d done as he’d been told and hadn’t followed Ash, but Ash wasn’t with the rest of them, so it got discordant pretty quickly.

‘It’s like fucking Willows all over again.’ Rock Giant deposited his bass on the sofa. ‘What are you playing at?’

‘Paul, leave him be.’ Xane shoved the microphone stand away with such force that it toppled. ‘This is nothing like what we went through with Willows. That wanker was out to sabotage us from the get-go. Luthor’s just getting to grips with our style.’

‘He’s incompetent.’

Luthor shook his head. He knew how to play drums, and no one was about to tell him otherwise. In any case, Rock Giant being a dick about it didn’t account for the rest of the band’s behaviour. They were experienced musicians, for fuck’s sake. There was no way they could fail to realise what was going on. They had ears.

OK, so Xane realised, hence his stand-off with Rock Giant, and the pained expression on Spook’s normally composed face suggested he knew too, which only left Ash himself. Black Halo’s lead guitarist had his head bent forward so that his hair masked his face. Only his lips were clearly visible, and they were set in an irritable moue. The definitive piece of evidence, though, was the arthritic claw-like curl of his right hand. It would seem that Ash wasn’t as healed as he’d like them all to believe.

He caught Luthor looking, and two angry black eyes glared back through the curtain of hair.

‘Maybe we should try this again tomorrow,’ Luthor suggested.

Xane muttered an affirmative, Spook too, but Rock Giant stomped his foot.

‘We do it again now. And again. Until it’s right.’

‘Paul,’ Spook warned him.

‘Let’s do this.’

Ash removed the strap from his shoulders and dropped the guitar. ‘I can’t.’

‘What? Come on. Don’t let this idiot get to you.’

‘It’s not him.’

‘Sure it is.’

‘It’s me.’ He held up his clawed hand and strained but couldn’t straighten out his fingers. ‘My hand’s fucked. I can’t play. You guys are going to have to find yourself another guitarist.’

‘The hell we are, Ash.’ Spook smacked him across the back of the head. ‘We’re here for you now, and we’ll still be here for you no matter how long it takes for you to get well. The tour’s dates have already been moved forward six months, and it’s only been three weeks since you took your little dive. Give yourself a chance to heal. I expect you just need some physio.’

Hurt flashed within Ash’s eyes. ‘Yeah, right,’ he drawled. ‘’Cause time and stupid exercises solve everything. Well, what if they don’t? Have any of you thought about that? What if I’m fucked up for good? We’re not going to be all buddies in a band together then, are we?’

‘We’ll always stick by you, Ash,’ Xane claimed cautiously.

‘Had-to-think-about-it-there-didn’t-you.’ Ash seemed to realise thirty seconds after they all did that he was slurring his words. He kicked the nearest chair hard enough to make them wince. ‘Bastard-fucking-wanking-hell.’ The stream of expletives rolled off his tongue as one giant, mashed-together ‘Fuck you!’ to the world. He aimed for the chair again, but Spook sideswiped his arm and Ash turned his rage upon the nearby sofa instead, throwing the cushions from it, pummelling the heck out of its back and tearing at anything else he could lay his hands on.

‘Ash, it’ll be all right,’ Spook tried to reassure him as he darted alongside him, clearly seeking a means of restraining his friend.

‘The-hell-it-will. Iain’s-permanently-fucked-the-shit-out-of-me. I-should-have-put-him-in-the-ground-when-I-had-the-chance-instead-of-just-busting-his-nose. Now-I’m-just-screwed … completely-fucking-screwed.’ He darted for the stairs with Spook still on his tail. Xane caught the back of Spook’s shirt, dragging him to a sudden halt.

‘Let him go. It’ll do him good to yell at the universe.’

‘You can do a lap of this island in less than five minutes. What happens when he’s done two and he still can’t deal with shit? Last thing any of us need is him taking a dip in the lake. I’m not going to interfere, if he needs to let rip. I’m just going to make sure he doesn’t do himself any additional damage.’

Xane let him go. Rock Giant followed Spook down the stairs, leaving Luthor and Xane alone.

‘Sorry,’ Luthor apologised. ‘I should have just kept my mouth shut.’

‘Maybe,’ Xane responded, still facing the stairs. He turned as Luthor emerged from behind the drumkit. ‘We ought to have realised it was too early to have him in the studio. I just … He seemed OK when I was talking to him on the way over here. Sure, he’s still a bit ashen, but the slur was gone and he seemed glad to be back in the land of the living.’

As he hadn’t heard Ash speak more than a couple of simple phrases before he’d started ranting, Luthor didn’t feel qualified to comment, but Xane clearly needed some kind of reassurance that his friend was going to be fine. ‘He only started slurring once he got upset. Maybe it’s the stress that made him relapse?’

Xane chewed the notion over, while agitating the ring piercing in his lower lip. ‘No,’ he eventually concluded. ‘He was just working really hard to make sure he pronounced everything carefully before. I should have realised. Fucking Willows! Prison’s too good for him. He deserves a battering with a baseball bat, preferably one with six-inch rusty nails hammered through it.’

‘Pounding him into snot won’t make Ash better.’

‘It’d make me feel fucking good though, like I was doing something, instead of having to just sit and watch Ash suffer.’

‘He’ll get better, Xane.’ Luthor gently laid his hand upon the other man’s shoulder.

‘Will he? He’s right, you know. We’ve no contingencies in place if he doesn’t.’

‘It’ll come right. It will. Stop worrying about it. If you all get too focused on his recovery then you’re going to make things harder for him. Expectation can be a real bugger. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t need any more pressure on him than he’s putting on himself.’

‘Yeah … yeah.’ Xane sighed. ‘You’re right.’ He brushed a hand through the front of his long hair. ‘We’ll keep clear of the studio for a few days, and then Spook and I can sit down together and talk lyrics and such. There’s no need for us all to be in here until we have some actual tracks to fine-tune.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’

He was still squeezing Xane’s shoulder, and the other man seemed to notice that. Xane looked at Luthor’s hand and then up at his face.

‘So, how were you envisaging filling the next few days?’ Luthor asked.

Xane gently brushed away his hold. ‘I need to keep Dani happy, Luthor. She got upset about earlier.’

‘Is that why I got sanctioned and sent to live in the chicken coop?’

Xane smiled at the description. ‘I don’t think so. She didn’t have anything to do with the arrangements. Spook might have stuck you out there as a tactic for maintaining the peace. He’s concerned about how our relationship is going to impact the band.’

‘Are you?’

‘I think Black Halo have bigger problems to worry about. Not just Ash.’

‘You mean the fact that Elspeth didn’t show.’

‘It’s not like her to bail without giving a specific reason. Elspeth might be a bitchy pain in the arse, but she’s not flaky. But I guess she can explain herself at my party, if she shows.’

Luthor nodded. He didn’t really want to dwell on Elspeth. Whenever he’d interacted with her, she’d been an outright cow.

‘What did Dani actually say about us?’ he asked, turning the thrust of the conversation back to their relationship.

‘She just reminded me that we’d agreed not to make out when she wasn’t around to grant her consent or witness it.’

‘Exchanging one kiss is hardly the same as making out.’

‘To her it is.’

Well, that was going to make things awkward very quickly. It was bad enough that they had to get her to green-light the possibility of them getting physical, without her ruling out even minor exchanges of affection. Luthor loved her to bits as both a friend and someone he’d like to be far more than that to, but expecting him and Xane to conduct a non-physical relationship was not only bollocks, it was setting them up to fail, and he could just imagine how she’d react to that.

‘There’s no way this is going to work.’ It was akin to her saying they could love one another, but only on Tuesdays, and if it was a full moon. ‘Maybe you haven’t realised it yet, but all that’s going to happen is we’re both going to end up frustrated.’

Actually, he was frustrated already. Having spent the last three weeks surviving on fantasies about what his reunion with this man would entail, Luthor wanted Xane in his bed with the desperation of a drunk shaking the last drop from a bottle of vodka. Xane remained the one man whose presence knotted him up in a truly delicious way, who raised his pulse and made his whole body hum with arousal. He’d had sex with other men, and plenty of women, but none of those times had felt nearly as right as either of the occasions on which he and Xane had made love.

‘We agreed to her terms, Luthor.’

‘Terms that seem to keep on changing.’

Xane touched his face, but the caress wasn’t enough to even begin to soothe his sudden irritation.

‘So you’re not up for christening one of these sofas, then?’

Xane swiftly withdrew his hand and shook his head, making the long strands of his hair sway. ‘Not funny.’

‘It wasn’t a joke. I want you, and there’s no one around right now for us to disturb, and it’s not like we can save it until we’re alone in our room because we don’t have a room. You and Dani have a room, and I have a berth in a shed that I have to share with Rock Giant, who appears to have decided I’m the new punch bag.’

‘Luthor, I’m not going to go back on my word.’

Luthor grasped the decorative belt that was looped obliquely around Xane’s hips, and jerked him forward so there was barely an inch of space between them. ‘I never asked you to. You’ve a mobile phone, don’t you? Call her. Ask her permission.’

‘That’s not such a good plan.’

‘Isn’t it?’

The man wanted him. Desire burned in the black hearts of Xane’s surprisingly contact-lens-free eyes. His muscles were tensed, but tellingly, despite his protest, Xane didn’t attempt to widen the gap between them, or dislodge Luthor’s hold on his belt.

‘Why isn’t it, Xane? You’re not going to be asking for anything she didn’t agree to, and if she feels the need to watch, then she has only to sprint across the grass and she can drink down her fill of us.’

‘Don’t press me to do this.’

The way Xane was staring at his mouth almost moved him to throw caution and promises to the wind and kiss him as if his life depended on it. Xane Geist wanted him. And being wanted by him … it was something. More than a few people had fainted over the mere possibility of catching this man’s attention.

‘You don’t want this? You’re not interested in the offer?’ He smiled. Apparently that was all it really took to capture Xane’s interest. Or maybe it was the promise of sexual intimacy that went with it. Either way, it was like catnip. Xane was suddenly raising his hands, grabbing him, holding him, tilting his head so that they were so close he could taste the other man’s breath. ‘Call her, Xane, or don’t call her. I don’t mind which, but at least acknowledge this is what you want.’

Xane licked his lips, leaving a delicious smear of moisture over them.

God, it’d be so easy just to lean in and taste him. ‘Another time. Not tonight.’

‘Right now. Let’s break the ice.’

‘Don’t,’ he pleaded, in a way that made it sound like he wanted Luthor to do the exact opposite.

Still holding on to Xane’s belt, Luthor stuck his thumb out so that it made contact with the low-slung denim clinging to Xane’s narrow hips. It was such an incredibly small movement, yet it left Xane gasping for air. He shifted, obviously uncomfortable.

Luthor didn’t need to look down to know his teasing had produced the desired effect. He knew it from the lightning flashes of pain and desire forking across Xane’s pupils.

Here was a man whose unapologetic animal magnetism entranced crowds of thousands, whose acceptance of his own sexuality and needs was so overt that it was almost contagious, and yet he was locked into a stalemate of his own creation. Horny and erect and completely willing – if there wasn’t just a small matter of his genuine love for his girlfriend, which was slamming the brakes on him doing anything.

‘Just call and ask her, Xane.’

A tiny, almost imperceptible stroke of Luthor’s finger made a line of sweat rise across Xane’s brow.

‘No. I won’t hurt her, Luthor. She’s not ready for this.’

‘I’m not trying to hurt her. I’m perfectly happy for her to join us.’

Xane’s muscles shook with tension. Luthor adjusted his stance so that his loins rubbed against Xane’s trapped erection. Xane’s hand fisted in the front of Luthor’s shirt, so that they were nose to nose, almost lip to lip, and their heated breaths mingling in the inch of space between their open mouths.

‘I understand that she’s scared, but there’s no threat to her here. We both know that, because we both want the same things. The only way the three of us are ever going to achieve happiness together is if we push beyond our comfort zones.’

‘She needs time. She’s still dealing with the idea of the two of us being together.’

‘I think she’s trying to bury her head in the sand and is hoping the problem will just go away. I guess you didn’t notice how she acted on the boat ride over. She did her level best not to look at me. And for two people who are supposed to be friends, we exchanged a shockingly poor version of a hello.’

‘Nerves,’ Xane muttered in her defence. ‘This whole situation scares the shit out of her. You don’t understand what she’s come from. How all this plays on her deepest fears. If I … we push this thing too hard, then she’ll run. I won’t risk losing her, Luthor. She means too much and it’s come too close to that once already.’

Luthor let his gaze drop to an inch right of his thumb tip. ‘So what’s the plan – suffer in silence and hope for a miracle?’

‘I don’t see any other way.’

Luthor shook his head sadly. ‘Then this is going to get fucking painful.’ He squeezed the tip of Xane’s cock, then turned and took the same way out the rest of the guys had taken. There didn’t seem much point in staying.

He made it as far as the entrance before Xane caught up with him.

‘I’ll talk to her.’

‘You should. You should definitely do that.’

‘Luthor.’ Xane spun him so that they were facing again. ‘This isn’t easy. Please don’t be a bastard about it.’

‘I’m not trying to be. I just feel as if we’ve moved backwards in the time we’ve spent apart. We’re back to her making appalled faces at me because I openly admit I want a piece of you.’

‘That’s not how it is.’

Luthor pressed his open palm against the still prominent swell of Xane’s erection, making the other man hiss. His eyes briefly closed before snapping open again.

‘It’s exactly how it is. I want to fuck you, Xane. I want to bend you over the nearest goddamned piece of furniture and fuck you until we’re both exhausted and it hurts to move. I’ve waited so damned long that it makes me half-crazy just being this near to you. I don’t want to rip your world apart, so I’ll try and hold myself in check, but at some point down the line I’m not going to care whether Dani approves or not any more.’

‘I love her,’ Xane whispered, the statement so soft it caressed Luthor’s lips as evocatively as any kiss. Luthor swallowed the sensation, along with the choking feel of gathering tears. ‘What about me?’ he wanted to ask, but didn’t. ‘Don’t you care about me?’

The questions must have been written across his face, for Xane bent forward and captured him, sliding one hand behind his neck and another around his back. The kiss shook Luthor to the core. It was over too quick, but there was a promise interwoven with the clash of their tongues. A promise of better times to come, and feelings that sat beyond the range of even the most desperate declarations of affection.

‘Give it time, Luthor. You’ll get what you want. I promise you that.’

Another kiss, that’s what he wanted, and a body to slide into bed beside. He held Xane tight, stole several more illicit kisses and got higher and higher on every one.

‘No,’ Xane insisted, eventually shoving him away. ‘We have to do this without being dicks about it.’

They stared at one another, mouths open, both breathing hard. ‘Who’s going to know if I suck your dick right here and now?’

Xane swallowed so that his Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘I will, and then she will because I’ll tell her. A promise is a promise, Luthor. We’ll have our time soon, and when it comes, I definitely won’t be turning down the offer of a blowjob.’

If only promises came with a timescale attached.

For now, he guessed the prospect of planting lip prints all over Xane’s rock-hard cock would have to sustain him.

He gave Xane’s shaft another friendly squeeze, then backed up. ‘’Night, Xane. If you change your mind in the small hours, you know where to find me.’

‘Chickensville. Let’s hope I can tell the difference between your arse and Paul’s in the dark.’

‘Maybe aim for the tackle instead.’

A warm chuckle wormed its way out of Xane’s throat. ‘Good suggestion. There’s no mistaking donkey dick.’

‘Are you implying I’m not packing much?’

‘Your dick is fucking perfect. I don’t let just anyone slide into me, you know.’

‘Wish I believed that.’

‘Believe it.’ Xane held up several fingers, and regarded him soberly. ‘I can count the times on one … two hands.’

‘Then I’ll count myself privileged.’

‘You do that.’

‘I already do.’

Chapter 6

Xane left the recording studio and wandered along the shore. The sun had finally set and he had to pick his way carefully along the unfamiliar path. It hurt like hell to walk away. Seriously, walking away from an offer of sex that he actually wanted ran counter to his natural programming. However, it was the only sensible option if he ever wanted things to work out between the three of them. And, if he was being honest, he seriously doubted Dani was ever going to agree to a genuine ménage à trois relationship. She had too many physical and emotional hangups, and any attraction she might feel towards Luthor she was doing her damnedest to bury.

In a way her lack of interest in the other man pleased him. After what he’d gone through with Elspeth and Steve, it was a relief to know his girlfriend only had eyes for him. If he was being entirely honest, he had major doubts about the idea of her and Luthor ever getting it on. Hypocritical, much, and he knew it, but justifiably. The announcement of Elspeth and Steve’s marriage still filled his mouth with a bitter taste, despite knowing there’d been no happily-ever-after because Steve was gone.

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