Chapter Nine
“Laurie? Are you home, love?”
Laurie
grabbed the bag. He shoved it into the back of the drawer and
pushed the gun in behind it. He closed the wardrobe door and stood
up straight, seizing one moment to run his hands through his hair
and wipe his eyes on the sleeve of his shirt. “Yes!” he called out
brightly, finding a smile to match his voice. “How come you're back
at this hour? Did they let all the prisoners go?”
“Nope. They all learned English and didn't need me any more.
And you? Did the theatre burn down from your talent
already?”
“Sarcastic,” Laurie said approvingly, jogging down the short
flight of stairs into the living room. He could seldom get Sasha to
tease him, and saw it as a sign of health when he could. In the
kitchen, Sasha was shrugging out of his jacket, the lovely
slate-grey one that couldn't be further from the water-stained
parka in the bag; hanging it carefully over the back of the chair.
“They don't need me this afternoon. Sir Ralf's rehearsing some new
stunt doubles for the fights.”
“Not for yours, surely.”
“Hell, no. The day when I can’t duel and talk at the same time
is the day I hand back my Equity card.” Any other time, he'd have
run straight through to hug Sasha in delight at the unexpected
meeting. Now he pushed a couple of DVDs back into their cases,
trying to give the impression of having been home all morning.
Allowing his sinuses a moment to subside... “Seriously, are you
okay? Why are you home?”
“They sent me.” In the periphery of his vision, Sasha subsided
wearily onto a kitchen chair. “I'm really embarrassed. I just
couldn't do it any more.”
Laurie
dropped the DVD. “Do what?” He strode through to the kitchen.
“What's the matter? Oh, God, Sash, you look awful.”
“You too.” Sasha intercepted him, getting up to meet his
embrace. “Your face is wet. Have you been crying?”
“Never mind me. Does your head hurt?”
“Yes, like a scroafa. I was half asleep in the
interviews. God knows what I've done—translated someone's defence
wrong and sent them down for life, I should think. The aide I was
working with took me off the roster, sent me home sick.”
Laurie
stroked his hair. Beneath his palm he could almost feel the flaring
pain that sometimes brought his poor lad down after a few sleepless
nights. “They didn't just shove you out onto a Tube, I
hope.”
“No. No, they were good to me—got me an car and brought me
back.” Sasha inhaled, looking past Laurie's shoulder. The pan on
the hob was bubbling, sending clouds of rancid musk into the air.
“Wow. So you had a few hours to yourself, and you decided to...
learn a new recipe?”
“Something like that. Not quite.”
“Right. Because—well, you know how I think you're the
handsomest, most talented man in London...”
“Mm-hm.”
“And I'd die for you tomorrow...”
Laurie
managed to hide a flinch. “Of course.”
“But I want it to be for
you, not because of you.
Sweetheart, do whatever you want in your spare time, but for the
love of God, please don't cook.”
“It's not food. It's darozha.”
Sasha
raised quizzical eyes to him. “I thought I could smell goat.
Darozha—where the hell did you get that?”
“Go curl up in bed and I'll tell you all about it. I don't
suppose you know how long it takes to boil, do you?”
“Not long, I don't think. Mama Luna always used to whip it up
fairly fast.”
They
both went still. They talked about everything, Laurie and Sasha,
but their conversations had so far stopped short of the old lady's
name. Distractedly Laurie traced the lines of pain around Sasha's
eyes. “Good,” he said after a long moment. “That means you can have
it now.”
***
Sasha
lay on his side, the duvet's cover cool on his skin. It was such a
relief not to be on his feet any more that for a while he couldn't
think about anything else. It was moments like these when his
newfound status in the world came home to him with dazzling
intensity. He had a bed where he could lie down, a pillow to rest
his pounding skull. Four inviolable walls. When he'd fallen ill on
the streets, he'd had to crawl into the darkest corner of the
cardboard-box city beneath Hungerford bridge and pray that Len or
one of the others wouldn't pick his pockets while he
slept.
He had
all these things, and on top of them he had his unfathomable,
extraordinary lover—a man with his name in lights outside the West
End theatres, who would still take the time to seek out an obscure
gypsy cure-all because Sasha had happened to mention the stuff a
few nights before. The bedroom door swung open, and Sasha sat up.
His head was thumping so hard that he could barely see, but there
was no way he could do less than smile and open his arms for such a
phenomenon. “You're the best. You're so damn good to
me.”
Laurie
set the bowl down on the bedside table. “Say that after you've
tried my brew, if you can still speak.” He grabbed Sasha hard,
lifted him until bones in his spine crackled, then eased him back
onto the pillows. “I'm so sorry you don't feel well.”
“It's nothing. Just a headache. Come on, then—tell me where on
earth Sir Ralf's new Romeo managed to find darozha.”
Laurie
smiled. “Impressed, are you? It wasn’t easy. Mind, if I'd wanted
crack, all I'd have had to do is ask the wardrobe guy.” He settled
on the edge of the bed, avoiding Sasha's gaze while he shifted a
spoon around in the vile-smelling liquid. “Will you believe I
tracked down Gunari?”
“What?” Sasha felt the walls lurch slightly around him.
“Gunari... From Birchwood?”
“Yep. I'd take some credit for detective work if he didn't have
a website. He's running a booming restaurant trade over in
Streatham. Authentic Romani food with free bulldog attack thrown
in. Boho-chic flat over the shop which he lets out to dim-witted
gaje, and he lives in a caravan out the back, the lord of his own
domain.”
“I can't believe you found him. How is he?”
“Fine, from what I could see. Hasn't changed a bit.”
“And he still has Zaga with him?”
“Friendly as ever, and minus her chain. So, seeing as I got my
arms and legs chewed off to obtain this delicacy...”
“I should take it. Yes.” For all the stuff smelled repulsive,
Sasha wanted it. His need was of the right sort, the potion shaping
itself already to counter his pain, if Mama Luna's tales of it were
true. And she had never lied to him. It was as if she were reaching
a comforting hand to him out of the past.
He shook himself. No-one could want a touch more comforting
than Laurie's. He was caressing Sasha's face, his own still pale
and marked by some recent grief. “Before I do, though, and while
I'm still making sense—you have
been crying, love. What's wrong?”
“Oh, you know. Just stress, stupid stuff like that. I know I'm
a natural-born genius and all, but... it's not easy sometimes.
Trotting it all out on stage the way I do.”
“Of course it's not.” Sasha took his hand, turned it and kissed
the palm. “I'm sorry it's been tough for you.”
“Most of the time it's not. In fact mostly it's so easy I feel
like I'm cheating somehow, so maybe I deserve a bit of anguish from
time to time. Anyway, hush up and drink your goat's-piss Horlicks
while it's hot.”
Sasha
obeyed. Laurie held the bowl to his lips—being given it this way
was important too—and the slimy mass slipped down his throat like
something still alive. He grabbed Laurie's wrist until his gag
reflex was under control, then subsided onto the pillows. Perhaps
he'd been wrong. Darozha only worked when it was needed, and he
wasn't feeling any different yet. “Why didn't you tell
me?”
Laurie
paled still further. “Tell you what? About... About my parking
fine? The scratch on the car?”
“No. That you were going to find Gunari. I'd have come with
you. I'd have liked to see him again. Will you get into bed with
me, Loz? Take all your clothes off first so I can feel your
skin.”
“Loz, eh?”
“Mm. It's what I call you in my head sometimes. Your gypsy
name. I don't think this stuff's working. I want you to fuck me off
to sleep.”
“Right.” Laurie straightened the pillows, took the bowl out of
Sasha's slackening grip. “Yes, clearly it's having no effect on you
at all.”
He
watched him safely through the transition. He'd been going to open
a window but found he didn't need to: the darozha, having done its
work, was only a trace of leaves in the bowl, scentless and
innocuous. “Better?”
“The pain's gone. I'm not scared any more.”
“It took drugs and gypsy magic to make you admit you were in
the first place. Anything else I should ask while you're at my
mercy?”
“Please don't.” Sasha smiled at him sleepily, held out a
languid hand. “Just come here and do as you’re told.”
That was
out of the question, of course. Laurie stripped to the skin as he’d
been asked, turned back the duvet and got in, but when Sasha
writhed against him, firm backside warm and inviting, only wrapped
him in his arms. For once in his life he felt no desire for more.
He wished he were made out of Kevlar or bulletproof steel. He
wished they were both five thousand miles away. “Sash. What would
you say if I told you we were leaving here for a while?”
“I'd say...” Sasha rubbed his brow on Laurie's arm and
chuckled. “I'd say you wanted to dodge that parking fine I saw on
my way in. Why? Are we going to see Aunt Elise in the
Languedoc?”
“Maybe. Maybe not exactly that.”
“Can't, love. Not at the moment. Got an important case
on.”
“Okay. Forget it for now.”
“Forget what?”
Laurie
leaned over him to see if he was serious. The darozha could make it
sweetly impossible to knit one strained second to the next. The
whole weave would gently fall apart. He ran a hand down Sasha's
side, inside the hollow of his hip. It was just a caress but his
fingertips brushed hard, excited flesh. “Hm. I don't recall the
stuff having that effect on me.”
“It did the morning after.”
Laurie
smiled into the dark hair, tears prickling. Every second of that
first exchange, the first time Sasha had taken him that way, was
burned into his mind. The scents of the little caravan, Zaga
barking and rattling her chain...
“I know you won't fuck me, not when I'm like this. Thank you
for not. But touch me. Please.”
Laurie
took hold of his shaft. Sasha groaned and thrust up, seeking the
grip. Quickly Laurie began the strokes that would release him, the
short simple beat. He kissed Sasha's ear and the side of his neck,
all the time listening, keeping an eye on the door. He was on the
wrong side of the bed. He'd have to vault Sasha's body to defend
him now, to reach the hidden gun. His mind raced over the scene. He
knew how it could be done. He choreographed it, measuring the
stage, the moves he'd have to make...
“Laurie! Where are you?”
He
snapped back guiltily into his skin. Sasha was staring at him, eyes
wild and lost. “I'm here, ves'tacha. Right here.” He wrapped a
firmer clasp round Sasha's cock, rubbing him fiercely from balls to
tip. Sasha went rigid in his arms, climax taking him with brutal
force. His seed shot over Laurie's hand and he struggled onto his
front, thrusting into the gentle vice that stayed strong and warm
for him even when he was wet and soft and finished, tumbling at
last into sleep.
Laurie
didn't move. His hand was trapped under Sasha's hips. He might have
been able to withdraw it without disturbing him, but he didn't want
to try. He erased Stefan and the Makarov from his mind with his
usual actor's trick, temporary but effective, and focussed all his
attention where it should be. Where it should have been for every
second of their loving. He was shaken, horrified. He had slipped
away, and Sasha had felt it and known. Laurie brushed his lips over
the sleep-smoothed brow, the fine-skinned faraway profile, its
mouth slightly open as if on a half-finished thought. “Beloved,” he
whispered. Clouds in his mind parted. Of course Sash would have
liked to come with him to find Gunari. Laurie's instinct to sever
him from that old life had cut too deep. Not all of Sasha's days on
the streets had been hell. He'd found a community, made good
friends: people who understood him and his ordeal so much better
than Laurie ever could, who had lived it all with him while Laurie
had been sighing out his poor little rich kid dreams in the safety
of his father's house.
He
closed his eyes. It was too late for these thoughts. Laurie had
done all he could to defend his lover, but it had been external,
bricks and mortar and rent. Sasha's seed was cooling on his hand.
Sasha's interior—that firelit wilderness sometimes burningly open
to him, more often veiled in darkness—remained an unknown to him.
Perhaps it always would.
Very
well. Laurie was good at externals. He would see what half a world
of them would do, an ocean and a continent's breadth. The decision
made, he gave way to a sudden tug of sleep. He was meant to be
keeping the watch, but he was so damn tired. Sasha moaned and
rolled onto his back, and Laurie climbed over him so that they were
both on their own established sides of the bed. He held him tight.
Yes, the externals, even if all he could give was his own flesh and
bone, one last barricade. He could lie between Sasha and the
door.