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“What? Who?”
Tim’s lips parted a little, and he replied quizzically, “Ben?”
“Yes? What about him?”
“What I was just saying. The holiday?”
It wasn’t just him, was it? Wouldn’t anyone want to strangle the life out of such an intolerable—his hands twitched of their own accord, began to rise—
The door crashed open and Squeezy sauntered in. “What’s up?”
Tim held up his hands in a helpless gesture. “I’m not sure, he’s...” Nikolas narrowed his eyes. He was fairly certain Tim had been about to continue, “…being weirder than usual.”
He decided to switch his oddly failing interrogation skills to the moronically annoying one. “I was just telling Tim about our holiday. It’s a very nice location. I was wondering if he’d been there. Perhaps you have?”
Squeezy smirked and went to put the kettle on.
Nikolas wasn’t sure what to make of that response, so he feigned some interest in Tim’s sample board for a moment, rubbing some of the tiny fabric squares between his fingers. Dismayed, he found himself actually admiring one, and heard Tim sigh with reverence, “Oh, yes, it’s traditional Florentine brocade, all hand-woven. Isn’t it simply…gorgeous?”
Nikolas snatched his hand away whilst at the same time logging the design house name. The armchairs and settees in the main living areas in the glass house could do with some freshening up. He trailed after Squeezy to the caravan they had installed at the rear of the old cottage whilst the renovations were ongoing. Squeezy was making three mugs of tea and handed one to him as he came in. He was still grinning. It was utterly intolerable.
Pretending an interest in the view that he didn’t feel, Nikolas tried another tack when Tim joined them. Genius, if he did say so himself. “I am considering taking Molly with us. What do you think? Would she like it?”
Squeezy just continued to gurn at him. Nikolas wasn’t too sanguine about attempting to strangle his training partner, given his knowledge of Squeezy’s abilities, but he hadn’t put his sniper skills to use for a very long time. It was nice to keep up with old hobbies.
Tim seemed offended at the question and glared at his boyfriend. “So Ben told you? Where they’re going?”
Squeezy’s expression of comical amusement didn’t falter. “You’re missing the point, my little fuzzy fuck buddy. Ben hasn’t told Comrade Mudak here. Won't tell him either.”
“Don’t call me—”
Squeezy dodged a perceived assault and continued gleefully, “And he’s desperately and pathetically trying to wheedle it out of anyone and everyone who—”
Nikolas stormed off so didn’t hear the rest of this.
He had run out of options now.
If Ben hadn’t told his best friends where they were going, then he hadn’t told anyone.
Trust was all very well, but Nikolas had lain awake for many hours the previous night after Ben had fallen asleep, worrying about what constituted, in Ben Rider-Mikkelsen’s strange mind, a good holiday. For the first awful hour, he’d envisaged a motorcycle track and Ben thinking it would be nice if he learnt to ride so they could race together, bikes tipping over, knees on the tarmac. Nikolas had once been following behind some motorcycle outriders in Tajikistan when they had hit a wire that had been strung across the road to, as Nikolas had always assumed, kill him. He’d been in a Zil limousine, so no harm done to him whatsoever, except some splash on his immaculate shoes when he’d got out to examine the bits and pieces. Literally. The first rider had been caught at neck height, and the sudden and bizarre sight of his headless torso still riding the bike for a moment had made his partner sit up straighter, hence allowing the cable to cut him in more evenly sized pieces. Through his waist, in fact.
Nikolas had never forgotten this incident, perhaps not surprisingly, and he couldn't sit on the back of a motorcycle without expecting at any moment to explode into similarly grim lumps. You never saw it coming…that was the thing…he preferred to know what was about to kill him. Have a fighting chance.
Once Nikolas had reminded himself, however, that Ben knew he explicitly didn’t like motorbikes, if not the real reason for this, he’d realised this wasn’t likely to be what Ben had chosen for them.
It wasn’t what Ben liked to do that really worried Nikolas, of course. It was what Ben didn’t enjoy that was the real fear—and that was what had occupied the next few hours. Nikolas had catalogued all the things he preferred and which were not likely to be on the itinerary: art galleries, museums, churches, books, architecture, archaeology (just not vine-covered ruins), lectures, arthouse films—in retaliation forHuman Centipede 2, he’d insisted Ben sit throughAndrei Rublev, and thus he had enjoyed two hundred and five minutes of exquisite pleasure watching Ben Rider-Mikkelsen discover the true definition of a sadist—fine wine, opera, and classical music.
If you ruled out all of this, what was left?
Perhaps Ben had just plumped for a resort where he, Ben, could go to the gym for most of the day, andhecould at least read in peace for once.
A luxury resort in the sun—minus any psychotic coastguards, and absolutely no mud, naturally.
Nikolas had finished the long night of worry concluding that this was the most likely outcome of Ben’s holiday research.
But the tiny voice of anxiety still nagged him that if this was the case, why did anything have to be kept a secret?
And the worst thing of all was that whatever Ben had booked, he would have to go along with it and pretend that he liked it. That’s just the way they were together—the way he was.
