10. Orion
Orion
My throat is on fire and my head is pounding so hard I can feel the pressure behind my eyes.
I can’t tell if I’m hot or cold, and something really bad is happening in my joints.
Every bone in my body has been hollowed out.
My arms and legs are bruised on the inside.
My marrow is boiling, burning me from the inside out.
I don’t know what time it is, but it’s dark in my room, and there’s a hiss coming from the stupid steam machine Jordan insisted on putting near my bed. I’ve thrown my covers off and my entire body is shaking. I was hot a second ago, but now I’m freezing.
I roll onto my back, trying to find a blanket or something to pull over myself, but I start coughing and spluttering from the action. I roll back onto my side and do my best to suffocate the repulsive sounds of sickness coming from me.
I’m not quick enough because my door flies open, casting a long wedge of light into my room. Jordan’s silhouette appears in the doorway. He strides purposefully toward me, armed with his little temperature gun.
I try to tell him I’m fine, but the words take such a long time to get from my mind to my mouth that, by the time they do, the thermometer is beeping and flashing red less than an inch from my face.
“A hundred and two,” says Jordan, sounding the opposite of happy.
He hands me a glass of water and watches with both hands on his hips until I take the meds on my bedside table.
“I’m not sick. I’m just tired,” I explain.
“Yeah,” he says, pulling my covers back and getting into bed next to me, “and I’m Santa.”
“What are you doing?”
He scoots down, kicking his legs a couple of times to make himself comfortable, and nestles his head into the pillow. “I’m taking care of you, Orion. What do you think I’m doing?”
I’d like to argue, but the thing is, he looks so good like this.
So handsome and so nice. His face is all squished into the pillow and his curls are fanned out around him.
He’s so close to me I can feel it in my lips.
In the palms of my hands. In the little pulse beating in my dick, despite the ache in my bones.
My eyelids are heavy. So heavy, but I don’t want to close them because I like what I see so much.
I like him so much.
I like him so, so fucking much.
I like him so much that like is the wrong word to describe how I feel about him.
I like him in a way that cracks me open, chipping little pieces of me away day after day.
A way that feels like life when he’s looking at me, and a cold, dark night when he isn’t.
A way that took root before I knew what it was.
Before I could stop it. Before I knew what it would do to my heart to like him this much.
I like him in a way that breaks me over and over again. A way I can’t stop no matter how much I try. A way I’m not even close to getting over.
I like him in a way that isn’t like at all.
I know I should look away, but he’s so handsome.
So hot and sexy. He looks all warm and sleepy, curled up in my bed.
So warm and sleepy and gorgeous that it takes everything I have not to reach out and touch his face.
I think if I could do that, just stroke his face once, the terrible ache I’ve carried with me for years would subside.
If I could touch him once. If I could just run my fingers through his hair, down his temple, and over his cheekbone, I might be able to survive wanting him this much for the next five or six years.
If I did it, if I stroked his face, I think I’d probably pause at the soft, fleshy part of his cheek. I’d probably backtrack a little when I got to his stubble. Maybe I’d use the backs of my fingers on the upstroke, and my fingertips on the downstroke.
I’d memorize every inch of his skin. I bet it’s soft, especially on the apple of his cheek. I bet it’s smooth and velvety there. I bet it’s heaven to touch him like that.
I wrap my arms around myself and squeeze, trying desperately to quash the longing that’s been part of me for so long that I can’t really remember a time when it wasn’t.
I try to look away, but I’m on my side, facing him, and he’s facing me, so it’s hard to avoid him.
He’s inches from me, so close that if I moved my head a little, I could rest my forehead against his and breathe him in.
I could inhale the air he’s exhaling. Fill my lungs with tiny particles that have been inside him.
I could hold my breath and keep the air that’s been inside Jordan in my body until I pass out.
Obviously, I’m not going to do that.
It would be weird, not to mention gross because there’s a small chance I might have a slight cold, and me breathing all over him is the last thing he needs. In fact, he shouldn’t be anywhere near me right now.
“I’ll be fine, Jordan. I’ve taken the meds. Go back to your room.”
“Orion.” His eyes narrow and his lips form a straight line. “I’m not going anywhere.”
It’s the longest night ever. I drift in and out of sleep, but it’s a horrible, disturbed kind of sleep.
The kind that feels like being dunked underwater and held down.
I come up for air now and again, gasp for breath, and then sink back into the black again.
The room sways when I open my eyes, and the bed spins when I close them.
Everything aches, and my heart beats for the man in my bed.
The pain in my body is nothing compared to the pain of being this close to Jordan and not being able to touch him. My skin quivers with longing. Goosebumps erupt but are quickly eviscerated by the heat running through my veins. Sweat pours down my back and then turns to chills that rattle my teeth.
Above all that, through it, under and over it, a singular ache stands out above all the rest. A hunger that pangs deep. A yearning. A wanting for something so simple that even wild animals need it.
To be touched.
To be held.
To be caught as I hurtle through space and be anchored by another human being.
I’ve been touch-starved before. Lots of times.
It’s nothing new. In some ways, it’s pretty much a baseline, a go-to feeling for me.
For years, I’ve craved Jordan’s touch and have forced the need down.
I’m used to the dull throb of being on my own in my body.
The emptiness of being close to him, but not close enough.
The aloneness, the singular solitude of watching his hands move and not land on me.
The intense loneliness of wanting someone who doesn’t want me.
Tonight, in this swirly, sickly night that won’t fucking end, the glaring lack of pressure on my skin feels other. The nonexistence of the weight of Jordan’s hand on my shoulder physically hurts me. The absence of it is so glaring tonight, so painful, I could scream from it.
I feel it everywhere. All over my body. Nerves that aren’t being stimulated. Synapses that aren’t firing. Endless reams of skin that aren’t being touched.
I’d take anything right now. Anything at all. Even the lightest, most accidental of touches would do. He wouldn’t need to mean it for it to help. Turning in his sleep and nudging a foot or a knee against mine would be enough.
His breath in my hair would tide me over.
My head on his chest with his arms around me.
His lips stamped anywhere, anywhere on my body.
His lips would be heaven, but I know that’s asking for too much, so I’d settle for his hand on my shoulder or my arm. A light touch, as a friend, would be fine.
I’m used to the feeling. The craving, the yearning for the physical comfort only Jordan can give me, but it’s never been like this. It’s never so bad that I can feel the lack of his touch like something has been surgically removed from me. Something that should be part of me has been cut from me.
I lie as still as I can and tremble in pain until I can’t tell the difference between the ache for Jordan’s touch and the ache the fever is branding into me.
I don’t even need him to touch me anymore. I could touch him, and that would be enough. I don’t mean touch him sexually. I’d never do that. I mean, I could touch the tip of my finger against his while he sleeps. So lightly that he wouldn’t even know I’d done it.
Obviously, I can’t do that either. It’s creepy as hell, and it’s not right to think like that, so I resist the urge with everything I have.
I resist for hours.
For lifetimes lived alone in the dark.
At last, Jordan rolls over with a soft sigh and mumbles something in his sleep. He’s a little farther away from me than he was, and I hate that, but the space it’s bought gives me something.
It’s not much, but I’ll take it.
I reach out and put my hand on the sheet where he lay seconds ago. It’s warm. It’s warm from his body. I’m not touching him, but I’m touching something he’s touched. For me, that has to be enough.