Chapter Twenty- Eight • Out of the Bag • Damien
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Satoshi is super fucking ugly when he’s smitten.
Well—okay, he might not be. Because Wren is smiling blissfully at him as he props his elbow up on the back of her chair, in the little diner we’ve stopped at to get dinner before the show.
He’s got one of her curls wrapped around his finger, and he keeps pressing it to his lips when he listens to her talk.
Wren is beautiful, sure. Though she doesn’t hold a light to Lillith’s beauty. I guess I just don’t know when they got close enough to each other to start making goo-goo eyes and speaking in warm, hushed tones.
I guess I have been spending a lot of my free time away from them. It’s possible that I’ve missed integral character development moments while focused on texting and calling Lillith. And thinking about her. And jerking off to the photo she sent me of herself in her full-length mirror.
Pathetic is the word that comes to mind when I think about it. Maybe I shouldn’t be dogging on Satoshi so much for how smitten he is when I’m just as bad, or possibly worse.
She’s not even showing any real nudity in the photo she sent me a day ago.
I open the photo app on my phone as subtly as I can manage in the middle of a diner.
I bite down on the inside of my lower lip to keep myself from showing the tells of my arousal on my face, because every time I look at this damned photo I get hard.
Lillith sits on the edge of her bed, her pale bed sheet held to the front of her body like she’s a boudoir model.
It’s golden hour in the photo, and the warm sunshine streaming through the windows cast a silhouette against the sheet from behind.
Whatever she obscures with the sheet reveals itself with that shadow.
The soft peak of her nipple, the gentle slope and supple fold of her middle where it meets her wide hips.
She hides her face behind her phone, perched to take the photo of the mirror, her nails sharp as needles and painted a new design.
Hunger stirs insistently in my groin. God, I want to fuck her pretty little mouth until she chokes on it. I want to make her cry before soothing her. I want to—
I’m so focused that I don’t notice Oren leaning over me from behind. Not until he lets out a low whistle. “Well, hello,” he growls next to my ear.
I slap my phone face down on the table. “Fuckhead,” I grumble.
“Did you... ever tell her about—”
“Yes. And yes, she was interested. But not until her birthday.”
“Lillith’s birthday?” Wren asks, somehow wrestling her attention away from Satoshi. “It’s coming up, you know.”
“Is it?” Oren says as he plops down in the seat next to me. I watch him shift his hips a little bit and hold myself back from glaring at him. I know a boner adjustment when I see it.
“When?” I ask.
“Tsk, tsk, Damien. You don’t know your girlfriend’s birthday?”
“It hasn’t come up between the—” I almost let the visits to The Buried City fly out of my mouth like an idiot.
“All the mind-blowing sex?” Oren supplies.
“Exactly,” I say, taking the out.
Wren smiles knowingly at me before rolling her eyes. “Right at the end of Gemini season. June twentieth.”
“Right around Litha, then?” Oren says.
Wren’s brows lift before she smiles. “Right you are,” she says. “Do you follow the sabbats?”
“I try to be aware of them,” Oren says. “But hmmm—Lillith never gave me Gemini vibes before.”
“Oh my god, don’t listen to that pop astrology bullshit. First of all, Gemini is just her sun placement. She has the cutest little Libra Moon, and she’s a Pisces rising,” she says.
All of the men at the table nod like they understand what she’s talking about, but I’m two thousand percent certain that none of them do. Except for Oren, maybe.
She looks over all of us with a withering stare until Roxie slides into the booth and lets out a dramatic sigh. “The only one who knows any Astrology here is Oren, babe. Explain it like they’re five.”
“You fucking narc,” Satoshi grumbles.
Wren lets out an exasperated groan and the entire meal winds up being overtaken with a crash course in astrology, including Roxie, Oren and Wren making all of us give them our birth times.
Somehow, Fletcher wriggles out of this interrogation, fleeing to the van, citing the need to check on some equipment or some shit.
I try to escape the invasion of privacy by informing Wren that I don’t know my birth time, but she’s completely unbothered.
“Bitch, I know how to do a chart rectification. You’re not getting off that easily.”
Roxie and Wren read everyone at the table to filth, and by the time our plates are empty of food I’m wondering if I need to start seeing my therapist two times a month instead of just once.
Oren is locked in and filling his online shopping cart with books about everything from pop astrology to something called ‘Draconic astrology’ (sounds like a furry thing), and Satoshi is looking increasingly nervous as Wren stares at his birth chart with eyes so focused I’m worried she’s about to diagnose him with chronic idiocy disease.
I heave out a breath and Roxie catches my eye. “Hey, we should check on Fletch and make sure he didn’t get kidnapped by the cutie patootie traffickers,” they say.
I snort a laugh and nod. “Yeah you’re right,” I say standing up and leaving Oren to supervise Satoshi and Wren. Those crazy kids.
When we make it outside, Fletcher is sitting at the back of the van with his legs dangling off the back bumper.
He’s smoking out of a little round-bent pipe that I always forget he keeps on him.
The smell of tobacco drifts warm and almost sweet on the air as he puffs it out, and I recognize this little time out for exactly what it is.
Fletch only smokes his pipe when he’s feeling lonely. Every single time I’ve teased him for it, it’s never been satisfying. Because he always looks so damned sad, and he always complains of being homesick—of missing his ‘mam’.
“You doing alright, man?” I ask as we near, squeezing his shoulder and giving him a brotherly little jostle.
“Fine,” he says, his accent giving the response a bit of edge. “Just fine.”
“Sounds like bullshit,” Roxie says as they sit next to them in the back of the van.
Fletcher glares at them. “Of course I’m not fucking fine. The man I’ve been pining over for the last five years is infatuated with my best mate’s girl. How do you think it feels?”
“Awe. I’m your best mate?” I ask, genuinely touched, sitting on his other side.
He lets out a low growl as he clamps his teeth down on the pipe and starts puffing again. “At this rate I’m going to be out of the tobacco I got from home in a couple weeks,” he mutters. “Then I’m really going to be properly fucked.”
“We’ll get you more, man. I promise,” I say, kissing his temple and wrapping an arm around his shoulder.
“Yeah,” Roxie agrees, wrapping their arm around his back and leaning their head on his shoulder above my arm. “And for what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s infatuated. I don’t think he really does that, you know?”
Fletcher sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I know. I know. You’re right. I’m sorry.” He exhales another stream of smoke through his nose. “I’m being a fucking prick, aren’t I?”
“Mmm—no, I would say that honor goes to him,” I say. “I mean—he knows how you feel, Fletcher. You know that. He just can’t return it. But it’d be nice if he didn’t actively talk about fucking other people in front of you.”
Fletcher’s frown deepens and he puffs out an obnoxiously perfect ring of smoke like it’s nothing before blowing the rest of the stream through the center of that perfect ring in a narrow column.
“Yeah. It’d be real fucking nice if that stopped.
Hopefully, after you guys rail Lillith together, he’ll have it out of his system for a week or two, and I can get some fuckin’ peace to actually focus on—you know—actually fucking working on music. ”
“Yeah, well—I’ll do my best, buddy,” I say.
“... had to go and fall for a man incapable of love,” Fletcher says.
“Fletch, have... you ever actually talked to him about what being Aromantic is like? It’s not that he’s incapable of love. He just doesn’t feel romantic attraction. Platonic and sexual attraction is still there, you know,” Roxie says.
“I’ve tried. I’ve tried to tell him that I’ll take anything he’s willing to give me, but...” Fletcher smears his hand down his face. “It doesn’t matter. We have a show tonight. I need to get my head in the game.”
“Yeah,” I say. “We’ll put a pin in it for now. Not like there’s anything we can immediately do.”
“Yeah, just shove the feelings down and keep pretending they aren’t there,” Roxie deadpans. “That’s definitely healthy and productive.”
“Hey,” I say, flicking the cartilage piercing I just gave them. “Don’t be an ass.”
“Ow, you fucking twat waffle!” Roxie gripes, covering their ear. “I can’t believe you did that!”
“Can’t you?” Fletch asks with a trill of genuine laughter. “Man’s a sadist.”
“Ew. Okay. I’m done,” they say, leaving the two of us as they claim their perch at the front seat of the van.
I hear Satoshi and Oren bickering as they come out of the diner and follow the sound to find them heading toward the van.
Wren studies her phone screen with Satoshi’s arm lazily draped over her shoulders.
I wonder if she’s finding anything about Satoshi that she can’t live with, because that would be fucking great, honestly.
Let Satoshi be the brokenhearted one for once. And then I can clown on him for it.
“You gonna be alright, man?” I ask Fletch under my breath.
“Yeah,” he says, eyes on Oren. “S’not anything new, you know?”
I kiss his temple again and give him a lingering side-hug. “Rooting for you man,” I say.
He smiles weakly and nods, leaving my embrace. “Thanks. Let’s get a move on before Oren asks stupid questions.”
We all pile into the van and make the drive over to the venue. I text Lillith on the way.
I’ve learned that I’m a Pisces Sun, a Leo Moon and a Gemini Rising. So do with that information what you will.