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The night air was cool against his flushed skin; Alastair had broken one of his few rules and gotten absolutely drunk. When he’d first walked into a life of usually bloodless vice, he’d quickly discovered it was best to be mostly sober. Otherwise, it was too easy for well-crafted plans to collapse under the weight of careless words and actions.
At first, he’d been on his way to the cramped room he was letting from an old widower with many missing teeth and a propensity for very few words. The man’s disposition didn’t matter, because he was only staying long enough to complete Sykes’s transactions and move some innocuous contraband.
Then his feet took him on a different route, his hips wobbling as he went, all of him beckoned by a new ally.
Everything was dark inside as well as outdoors, but he always had been able to see well at night and quietly found his way to the back stairs, only pausing when he’d reached the top and was in the short corridor that led to Paul’s flat. Taking a breath, he decided to proceed.
The flat was as still as the rest of the place. A faint sound of waves was still audible and someone’s congested snores came through a wall, but they enhanced the peacefulness. As though it was a bed that had been made for him, he fell onto the sofa he and Paul had occupied earlier, feeling it was the right and proper thing to do. Though his mind believed he didn’t belong here, his body was now an apostate entirely against that belief.
It had led him back.
As he closed his eyes, the sofa felt like it was dropping out from under him.
He’d be mortified to learn he wouldn’t wake until tomorrow afternoon.
“If you’d wanted to stay the night, you could have stayed. I wouldn’t make you sleep in my bed, you know,” said Paul from somewhere to his left, a laugh in his measured voice. Alastair kept his eyes shut. “Unless you wanted to.”
“What?” He might be dreaming. He might be hallucinating.
“I wouldn’t have made you sleep alongside me unless you wanted me. But I’d have let you sleep here if you’d needed to.”
“Course I did. Of course I wanted you. God,” breathed Alastair, too taxed and sleepy to filter his responses. He couldn’t recall anything past leaving The Bell, a coarser pub than The Queen Anne, then stumbling through the streets. He recognized by the voice and smells that he was in Paul’s flat, resting on something comfortable but firm and narrow. The sofa. If he concentrated, he caught distant chatter and soft clunks from the ground floor.
“Good. I want you, too. Will you open your eyes?”
“Maybe. Maybe I won’t. Don’t know if I can look at you. Did we… we didn’t do anything, did we?”
“I don’t fuck men who are as pissed as I expect you were. Don’t think anybody can consent in that state.”
Alastair was considerably less worried, then. Chuckling reluctantly, he said, eyes still shut, “On that, we agree… just… humor me. How’d you know I was drunk and not just asleep?”
“Besides the way I found you sprawled in my parlor as I came out of my bedroom, intending to start my day?”
“Yes.”
“You smelled like a distillery,” said Paul, and if Alastair wasn’t overly hopeful, there was a grin in his voice. “It’s just not as obvious, now.”
“Thank Christ. Love drinking, hate the smell.”
“Well, you could thank Christ… or all the open windows. And me. For opening them.”
“Thought it was a little cold.”
“Better the chill than the smell. And aren’t you from the north?”
“Doesn’t mean I’m fond of the cold. How’d I get here?” Alastair didn’t want to say he’d lost himself because of this very connection between them, the one that had led him to wander here, the one presently rousing smiles and gentle banter despite a thundering headache.
“As to that, I don’t entirely know.”
Sighing, Alastair opened his eyes and looked at Paul, who sat on the tufted footrest just across from him. He held a cup and wore a smile in his eyes. “I haven’t done this in years,” Alastair said, transfixed. That coy, almost non-smile, combined with the flat’s scents of beeswax, salt, and ink, made the place feel more like home than anywhere else.
“Been drunk? I’m sure you’ve been drunk before now. How old are you? At least thirty, I’d bet, and likely a few years past that, right? Though, don’t get me wrong, you look good.”
Alastair rolled his eyes and immediately wished he hadn’t. It made him dizzy. “I haven’t been that drunk in years. I don’t even remember coming here.”
“Well, you weren’t covered in blood or missing any clothes, so I assume you didn’t cause much havoc or injure yourself.”
“Does anything rattle you?”
