Chapter Eighteen #3
“Take me with you.”
Laurie
frowned in surprise. Sasha's face was blank now, not a trace of
pleading there. It had been more of a command. Well, fair
enough—Laurie had brought him here, his sole acquaintance in a
foreign land. Where else would Sasha want to be?
Laurie
imagined him exposed to Wesley's sneers, to Bailey's drug-fuelled
antics. To the sight of Douglas Brett posing Laurie like a plastic
doll for a soft-porn portrait shot, pushing whatever robe or toga
it was a little further up his thigh. In the desert he'd be lucky
if he got to wear anything at all.
Then all
the real reasons crashed in on him. God, what a waste and a farce,
if he'd bought Sasha into this safe haven here only to lose him in
the Mojave! Miles of exposed countryside, his only defence the
studio's laughable security, which Brett himself breached for
publicity stunts whenever he felt the need. Which couldn't keep out
one soft-bodied middle-aged fan, let alone Stefan Petrica... “No,”
he said, getting to his feet. “No. What would you do out there?”
Anger sparked in him, and he let it, welcoming its rise, the
substitute it provided for strength and conviction. This was all
Sasha's damn fault anyway. Sasha would run and desert him as he had
done before, heading danger off from him, leaving him utterly
alone. This time he wouldn't come back. “I couldn't take you.
There's nothing out there, just trailers and dust.”
“All right. In that case I'd like to go back to London.”
Without another word, Sasha walked past him into the house. He left
Laurie open-mouthed: he’d never have imagined that Sasha would walk
off on a fight... But of course he wouldn’t: a few seconds later he
was back, holding out a sheaf of the printed pages that had been
scattered around him on the stairs. “Do you remember Yosiri Cuza,
the grocer? The one they were trying to deport? Turns out they were
waiting to get me out of the way. I discredited one of their
witnesses—a buddy of your father’s. Colin Pearson.” He shook the
papers at Laurie, who took a helpless step back from them. “They've
chucked Cuza out, along with his wife and kids. All the evidence I
handed in mysteriously got buried, and they let Pearson testify
after all. Let me go home, Laurie. I want to put this
right.”
A buddy of your father’s. Laurie felt
the words like a whiplash, like accusation's sting. “It wasn't my
fault,” he whispered.
Sasha's
brow creased. “What wasn't?”
Birchwood. Mama Luna. But it had been
Laurie's fault. That was unendurable, and he snapped the blame away
from himself, seeking a target. “I don't know how you can be so
damn ungrateful. I've done all this for you.”
“Laurie!”
It sounded like a call in the night, Sasha's soft enquiry to
their London flat when he wasn't sure Laurie was home. Or when
Laurie was in the grip of some new role, shape-shifting,
channelling men out of Shakespeare into their kitchen.
Who are you being this time?
Be my Laurie for me.
Laurie
couldn't. His temper was up—not the haughty rage that crushed
injustice and defended the weak but an older thing, a rough beast
that had been waiting. Sasha's fault again: his words had conjured
it. “I brought you out here to this place—look at it!—so you could
have a better life. I moved heaven and earth to get you here. And
now you want to ditch me for some bloody shopkeeper?”
“A political activist,” Sasha said faintly. His voice was calm
but he couldn't have looked more astonished if Laurie had punched
him in the face. “A good man who deserves refugee status in the UK.
But if he had been
just some shopkeeper, it wouldn't have made any difference. Don't
you understand?”
“I don't understand what it's got to do with you.” The rough
beast was Sir William. There he was, smashing down Laurie's latest
new cause across the dinner table. Volunteer stage hands wanted for
a charity Christmas show at St Martins? Time off from boarding
school for a sponsored walk in aid of... well, it didn’t matter;
Sir William didn't believe in aid. What
damn business is it of yours? Laurie had
him down pat, just like every other part he'd ever taken on. He
wanted to die. “Can't anyone else deal with it?”
“That's just it. No-one else will. Laurie, don't you
dare call me
ungrateful—when did I ever ask for any of this?”
“It's your home now. You belong here.”
“My home is with you, as long as you need me. You said you
couldn't do your job without me, so I came. But now you won't even
talk to me about it any more, and it's okay for you to piss off to
the desert for a month and leave me here!”
They
were having a row in the street. This was so far from anything
Laurie could possibly have imagined for them that he almost
laughed, almost begged both of them to break down and take off
their masks. Instead he took hold of Sasha's arm, pulled him inside
and slammed the door.
His grip
had been rough. Sasha broke away from him, eyes dark with betrayal.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? If you ever grab me like that
again...”
“I'm sorry, okay? But you're driving me crazy. I need you to
stay here.”
“Why? Look, it'll take me a week or so to sort this out, and
then I'll come back, if you still want me to. It's not like we
can't afford the flights.”
Laurie was losing. No matter what he said, Sasha would counter
it—because, as usual, he had good sense and right on his side.
Still, Laurie's father had never allowed such things to stand
between him and victory. Maybe Sir William could win this. Laurie
folded his arms. He did not meet the bright, passionate gaze
seeking his. “Don’t you mean I
can't afford them?”
Sasha
walked away. Laurie's victory was only that he walked in the right
direction—back up the stairs, not out of the front door. There was
no exit from the top floor, and as long as he didn't come back with
his rucksack, knock Laurie down and walk out, Laurie would have
gained his point. He only had to watch the stairs.
They
were scattered all over with papers. Sasha had gone up them so
quickly—stumbling as if stuck blind—that he'd knocked his laptop
over too, a device he normally treated with the utmost respect.
Laurie had got through three since they'd bought Sasha's, dropping
them, leaving them on trains. But Sash was never careless. If you
gave him something, he would try to make it last for
life.
Laurie
was half-blind too. He couldn't find a handkerchief, so he wiped
his face on his sleeve before crouching to gather up the papers.
There were a lot of them. Laurie didn't read them, figuring he'd
sinned enough for one day without violating Sasha's privacy too,
but he couldn't help taking in some of the headings. Case
histories, precedents, transcripts from other court cases where
Colin Pearson had stood witness... Sasha had managed to find and
collate all this five thousand miles from home, cut off from his
office and all his resources. Laurie was painfully proud of him. He
picked up the laptop, made sure there was no damage, and saved the
open files. Then he closed the lid, put the papers in what he
thought was the right order, and tenderly set them down. He sat
beside them on the step where Sasha had been working, and buried
his face in his hands.
***
“I need you to stay here. I can't tell you my reasons. But
please, Sasha—please.”
Sasha
sat up in the bed. He didn't know what time it was or when he'd
fallen asleep. The room was filled with the blue-purple darkness of
a Hollywood night. Scents of sagebrush drifted through it, and city
lights gleamed on its horizon. His eyes were sore, his chest still
scraping when he inhaled. From what he could tell by Laurie's
silhouette, his voice and the grief-salted scent of him, his lover
was in the same state. “You cannot,” Sasha said hoarsely, pushing
back the quilt that had been too hot but a desperately needed
refuge, “ever talk to me like that again, Laurie.”
“I know.”
“Because I won't take it. Not even from my... my fairytale
prince.”
Laurie
shivered. “You know, that’s how I always thought of you. Ever since
Clara first came up with her name for you—her secret prince, I
mean.”
“I don’t feel too princely right now.”
“Me neither. I can’t even breathe through my nose.”
Sasha
put out an arm for him. He knew he was surrendering. Every kiss he
planted on the hot, tearstained face was a white flag. This wasn’t
a solution to their conflict, just a desperate patching of wounds.
He didn’t care. He dragged aside the quilt to let Laurie in. “What
do you want?”
“Be here while I’m away. Be here when I get back.”
“All right. God almighty... I will, okay? But I meant now. What
do you need right now?”
“Oh, Sash. How can you want me?”
Your heart and your mind are closed off from me. Your body is
all I have left. Shifting beneath him,
pushing back the damp hair from his brow, Sasha almost said it, but
the unmanning tears boiled up in him again. He was glad of them:
words had done enough damage tonight. He rolled Laurie down into
the bed. They were both still fully dressed but that felt painfully
right, in keeping with the barriers between them.
Laurie
struggled over onto his front. He buried his face in the pillow and
lifted his hips when Sasha took hold of his belt, assisted in
unbreathing silence while Sasha stripped him down. Just his jeans
and his briefs round his thighs, his shirt crushed up around his
waist—enough to expose him. He shuddered. Sasha pinned him. His
tears fell hotly on the back of Laurie's neck. He jerked the
bedside drawer open and pulled out the lube.
They
fought it out quietly, mute as hunted beasts, turning the beautiful
house into a cave. Sasha went deep on his first stroke and stayed
there. Laurie pushed away his hand when he tried to reach under: he
wanted to be fucked, not caressed. To lie in the blackness behind
his own eyes. He writhed and spread himself to welcome Sasha's
short, hard thrusts.
There
was no way he would come. That was the side effect for him of
daytime drinking, of Marielle's—Bailey's—sedatives. When had he
cracked? He barely remembered, except that stumbling back into his
trailer after three hours of highly charged nothingness on the
green-screen backcloth of Stonehenge, he had felt so bloody empty.
And there the pills had been.
Sasha
was trying to take him into his arms. Laurie lay flat so that he
couldn't. Lonely nights in his Mayfair attic room, discovering how
the snitched drugs would pad the walls for him but block off his
only other escape route, the dawning pleasure of his own touch...
He couldn't drag Sasha back down with him into that world, and so
he pushed back against him, moaned, manufactured the bitten-off
cries Sasha would wring from him on orgasm's brink.
“Laurie! Sweetheart—are you there?”
Laurie
choked on bitter laughter. He knew what Sasha meant, but the
question ran so deep. He had no idea. “Yes,” he rasped, barely
audible against the pillow. “Stay here, Sasha. Promise.”
“I promise.” Sasha said it like a prayer, his lips hot silk on
Laurie's shoulder. His thrusts became rapid, then stilled into one
long surge, racked with helpless shudders. “I will.”