24. Greer
Greer
In the way that Beckett becomes a habit, so does going to his house after particularly difficult shifts, usually when I’ve spent hours stealing organs from teenagers who didn’t ask to die and putting them in teenagers who desperately just want to live.
A safe space, if you will.
A place where I can avoid things, and I’ve been avoiding a lot of things, including the fact that alcohol short-circuited my brain and I brushed my mouth across his in a too-intimate gesture in a too-public space outside the confines of this room. Where I don’t have to dissect my innermost feelings about my surgical career.
A boy definitely lives here in this bedroom—but it’s lovely and beautiful. A giant wall of exposed brick stretches behind this king bed that probably cost more money than I would ever want to know. An oak dresser riddled with important things—pictures of his family, his favourite watch, and a particularly important football.
A high-pile rug that covers most of the usually cold cement floor, and floor-to-ceiling paned windows with a wonderful view of the city. You can just make out the outline of the stadium from here.
His bedding—crisp navy sheets with a matching duvet—always rumpled in exactly the best way. He doesn’t really make his bed, just sort of fluffs the endless array of pillows and pulls the duvet up haphazardly.
There are a lot of things in this room—but when I’m here, it’s just us.
We leave the rest of it at the door. Football. Surgery. Any acknowledgement of the fact that we’ve ended up here together. Again.
Rav says it’s not friendly behaviour, and I still haven’t worked up the courage to say anything to my sister, but I know what she’d think.
And it probably isn’t friendly behaviour, but my brain reminds me that I once gave away a literal piece of my body when I wasn’t sure I wanted to, and that protecting our remaining organs—our heart—is of the utmost importance if we’re to survive.
I hear the shower turn off and I glance up from my book—it was just getting good.
But watching Beckett come out of the shower isn’t an experience I particularly feel like missing. It’s a nice bonus to our friendship—the fact that he looks like someone sculpted him like Michelangelo did David .
The door to the bathroom opens, and one eyebrow kicks up when he sees me. He was in the shower when I got here, but he left the door open for me, and I crawled right into his bed. Friend-like.
Moisture hugs every carved inch of him, his skin still damp, and the black Lycra of his boxers leaves little to the imagination, clinging to each curve of thigh muscle and everything else.
“How was your day?” He runs the towel over his face, scrubbing it over his head and shaking out his hair before he tosses it into the hamper by the door.
“Oh, you know.” I open a hand and wave it around. “Just another day of playing my twisted version of Robin Hood. Stealing organs from the dead and giving them to the living.”
“Saving lives,” he corrects, and something passes behind his eyes. We’ve hovered around this topic, circled it and come close to dancing right on top of it. He knows I don’t always love my job, but he’s not quite sure why yet, and there’s this thing Beckett doesn’t even realize is beautiful—he doesn’t push. He doesn’t pry. He just meets people where they are.
“It just seems ...” I exhale, shutting the book and propping myself up against the pillows. “Wrong sometimes. To hope for an organ for someone I’m treating and trying to help when I know it means someone probably had to die to give it up.”
That sometimes, I wish someone else did die and give my dad a piece of them so I didn’t have to.
Beckett nods, blinking at me. He pulls back the covers on his side of the bed and sits there, reaching out, one thumb brushing over the fabric of my tank top, the raised skin of the scar jutting out ever so slightly. “If you could be anything, what would you be?”
“A faerie princess.” I hold up the book before chewing on my lip. “Or a human captive who finds out she’s actually part of a magical race.”
He smiles—and it’s this radiant thing. It’s not “the grin,” as it’s known. It’s not something you’d see in that stupid Gatorade commercial I still haven’t watched all the way through, or any of the press shots he’s in.
He looks at ease. Comfortable, like he’s just Beckett, unburdened by all those shackles and responsibilities that made him Beckett Davis—likeable, reliable, many-things-extraordinaire instead of a regular person.
He lies back, propping his head up with one arm. Droplets of water track down his trapezius muscles, across the swell of his shoulders, and over the jut of his biceps. “Would you like to be my prisoner?”
“Beckett doesn’t sound like the name of a brooding, morally grey fae lord who could fuck me into next week.” I shrug, waving the book around. “Sorry.”
He nods, like he’s conceding defeat. But real Beckett, like Beckett Davis, is wildly competitive, and unlike Beckett Davis, real Beckett is a bit childlike at times. He lunges forward, grabbing the book from my hands and throwing it to the floor, before rolling on top of me and pinning my hands above my head. “Beckett’s not here. I’m Baxtian, and I’m taking you down to my dungeon.”
I blink up at him, lips parted, before I burst out laughing. “Oh my god, that’s so fucking stupid.”
“But it’s close, right?” He raises his eyebrows, and some of his still-damp hair falls across his forehead.
I nod, biting on my lip before smiling at him. “It is.”
We stare at each other for a minute that seems to go on for much longer than sixty seconds—and so it goes: another night between two friends.
His fingers twitch and tense against my wrists.
Those full lips of his part, his eyes find my mouth—they trace all the curves of me. My jawline, my collarbone, the swell of my chest under my tank top.
His hips shift and mine rise to meet them.
He hardens between my legs, and all of my skin prickles and sets itself on fire.
He grins—an entirely different grin I hope he only ever makes for me.
Beckett’s eyes find my mouth and he lowers to meet it.
My lips part for his tongue. We kiss and kiss and kiss. My hands scramble across the planes of his back, the ridges and valleys of his shoulders. All of me lights up when he breaks away and one of those beautiful, wonderous hands pulls down my top and his teeth scrape my nipple.
I arch into him when that other hand grips my rib cage. His tongue still swirls, and I pant when that other hand moves to my hip, bruising it before it tugs down my shorts, scoring down the centre of me—moving up and down and soaking itself before moving in these circles that make me want to die a bit and have me saying his name over and over, like maybe it’s a prayer that the real Beckett will hear and know he’s wonderful and lovely and good.
That maybe the way he makes me say his name with something I can only describe as reverence will breathe life back into him.
And while I pray and pray and pray that I can give him oxygen, he tosses my clothes aside with that forgotten book, and my hands scramble to get rid of his underwear, too, so I can touch all of him. I do, but just for a moment, before he’s rolling a condom on, angling above me just so, and pushing into me with a groan.
We always pause here—his forehead against mine, ragged breath and his pupils blown—before he starts to move.
Tonight, he rolls his hips just twice before wrapping an arm around my shoulders and flipping over so I’m on top of him.
His hands find my waist, his eyes on me, lips parted and hair askew. We start to move at the same time and he pushes his head back into the pillow, a groan catching in his throat when I tip mine back, fingers digging into his chest.
I have these lines and these boundaries and my brain screams at me—but there’s this other small, quiet, maybe beautiful part of me that whispers something else. I think it’s my heart. It’s beating, but I think it whispers to me that maybe, I should give it to him.
That I could carve this other vital organ from my body and place it in his hands and he’d keep it safe.
On nights like these, I almost believe it.
I moan his name, I pray for him, and his hands hold me and I think they ask me to please, please, open for him.
And so it goes.