by Willa Okati
He stopped. What the…?
Nick’s eyebrows drew together when he frowned. “Okay, that’s a look I haven’t seen before. I didn’t really hurt you, did I?”
“Shut up,” Barrett said, the command almost absent. He pressed Nick down into the bed rather than pull him up, and leaned across the expanse of Nick’s bare back. Nick’s untamable hair tried to slither down in rogue random curls that Barrett pushed out of the way with an impatient noise. “Lie still. You’ve got something back here. You didn’t go into the woods, did you? Looks like a tick.”
“What?” Nick peeked up at Barrett, clearly baffled and showing it. “Not as far as I know, unless you count landscaping around the coliseum. A tick, really? Thought I felt something bite me earlier.” He tried to feel around his neck. “I was going to tell you, but then I forgot.”
“So if you get Lyme disease, we can blame your libido? Stop poking at it and let me get a clear look.” He cleared the hair away from Nick’s nape.
Not a tick, no. The diffuse light from the fire helped his eyes adjust. Not an insect at all. More like a…bruise? Strangely shaped bruise, and a stranger place for one. He couldn’t imagine what Nick might have run up against that’d make such a mark, almost patterned, almost like a—
Barrett stopped. His hand slipped away, falling nerveless to the sheets. Oh, God. Fuck me. It’s a soulmark. A fucking soulmark.
Chapter Three
“What, now?” Nick sat upright. The sheet Barrett had draped across him fell over his thigh but left his groin exposed. He touched the back of his neck. “No, seriously. Say that again.”
No light of humor showed in Barrett’s dark eyes. He looked…flat. Almost like a stranger. “You heard me,” he said, sounding equally empty. “There’s a soulmark starting on your—”
“The hell there is,” Nick protested. He bent his head and ran his fingers up and down, fast, scraping the back of his neck. “I don’t feel anything.”
“Because you’re going too damn fast.” Barrett took his hand and stilled it over a spot just between vertebrae. “Here. It’s barely bigger than a dime.”
“I still don’t feel it,” Nick said. Soulmarks were raised like brands—enough to let the bearer distinguish its pattern by feel. He couldn’t locate anything but smooth skin and tangled hair that kept slithering over his questing fingers. “I don’t feel anything.”
Barrett made a frustrated sound and let go of Nick’s hand. “It’s still coming through, but you’re touching it. Your forefinger’s right on the center.” He brushed the back of Nick’s hand. “It’s pale. The color of weak tea.”
Barely begun, then, if it had begun, and Nick wasn’t buying it. “The hell you say,” he grumbled as he kicked at the sheets. They tangled around his calves when he tried to slide his legs over the edge of the bed, and would have tripped him up—he wasn’t in a careful state of mind—if Barrett hadn’t given them a sharp yank to set him free. “This is Abram thinking he’s funny.”
“Abram what?” Barrett followed in Nick’s footsteps, hard at his heels. “What does Abram have to do with anything?”
Nick waved irritably. “I made the mistake of napping in his presence last night. He probably thought it’d be funny to draw on the back of my neck. He’s always doodling.”
“It doesn’t look like ink to me,” Barrett said, tight and taut. “It looks like a—”
“It isn’t.” Nick stepped over the threshold to the cottage’s small bathroom and hit the light switch with his elbow. Ow. The strong, clean light from the fixtures made him squint and his eyes watered. He flipped his hair forward, over one shoulder, but then he really couldn’t see.
Barrett nudged his way past and plucked up a leather hair tie from the towel rack. “Don’t ask me how this got there, I don’t know, but here. You’re not explaining yourself as well as you think you are. Why would Abram do that? As far as he knows, you and I are mated.” He held up his arm, showing off the paler strip of skin on his bare wrist where he’d normally wear his cuff. “Doesn’t he?”
“Yes. I think so? I mean, I thought so, I…” Nick shook his head, frustrated. He couldn’t get the leather tie seated. Shaky hands made him drop the thing. “Fuck!”
“For God’s sake, stop.” Barrett crouched to pick up the tie and came up standing behind Nick. “Bend your head forward. Let me do it.” He pulled too hard, securing a bunch of Nick’s hair in a ponytail, but Nick wasn’t complaining. He twisted to the side as soon as he possibly could, craning about for a look in the mirror. “I don’t see—” he started, then stopped.
Because he did see, now. Milky pale tea color, a ripple of pigment half the size of his fingertip. It could be a bruise. Or a bite. When Nick rubbed at it, nothing happened. Not even when he scratched at it with his thumbnail, as if he could get the mark to peel off.
Soulmark.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath.
“I told you,” Barrett said. He’d gone pale with the shock. Nick couldn’t blame him. “When did this happen?”
“I don’t know.” Nick tugged the hair tie loose—he’d give himself a hell of a headache with all the weight pulling on his scalp—and shook his hair free before starting over and making a looser ponytail. He could see Barrett didn’t believe him. “It’s the truth, I swear.”
“Right.” The bathroom wasn’t at all large, but Barrett kept as far back as he could, arms crossed and face shuttered. “Tell me what happened this weekend. Start to finish.”
“There isn’t much to tell.” Nick flipped open the lid to the laundry hamper and pawed through its contents. He didn’t know why, or didn’t want to know why, but standing naked in the cold bathroom had started to make his skin crawl. A pair of Barrett’s pajama pants presented themselves. Definitely Barrett’s. He didn’t know anyone else who willingly wore virulent green and blazingly yellow plaid to sleep in. Too long in the leg for Nick, but they’d do. He did up the drawstring before he broke and had to speak again. The words wouldn’t be kept back. Well. One word. “Ivan.”
Nakedness didn’t seem to bother Barrett. “What about Ivan?”
“It has to have been Ivan, somehow,” Nick said. He refused to touch the back of his neck, even though the rising soulmark stung and prickled, demanding to be soothed. “Did you know he was mated? That he’s had a soulmate for years?”
“Ivan?” Barrett dropped his stony façade for half a second. Just long enough for Nick to get a peek beneath the surface and wish he hadn’t. “No, he doesn’t. He’s been single for as long as I’ve known him.”
“He does, though.” Nick jerked the drawstring of the pajama pants in a hard knot. “I think his mate’s named Robbie. I could be wrong. I didn’t really get a chance to talk to him before he and Ivan disappeared for the night.”
“You mean…he found his mate, last night?” Barrett asked, with the slow hesitation of someone sorting through puzzle pieces that didn’t match. “But that’s a good thing. Isn’t it?”
“Not ‘found him’ as in ‘found him for the first time’.” Nick leaned against the sink. He twisted the spigot and started to wash his hands to give them something to do. To keep himself from worrying and scratching at the soulmark, which stung like nettle rash by then. He rolled his shoulders to try to ease the needling pressure. “That happened years ago. Not sure how many. A long time. Abram said they were ‘barely legal’ then. They split up and hadn’t seen each other since then.”
“What?” Barrett sat slowly on the porcelain edge of the tub.
The strangest thought, a reminder that they’d kept meaning to replace the old bath with something big enough for two, flashed through Nick’s mind. He kept it to himself.
Barrett shook his head. “I don’t get it. If they were soulmates, they couldn’t live apart. It’d drive them crazy. It’d hurt.” He paused. “Wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, well.” Nick rubbed his face hard. Too hard, over his closed eyes. White flashes and spangles of color crackled across the insid
es of his eyelids. He shrugged harder, trying to soothe the itch. “Guess all those jokes about Ivan being a little unbalanced were more right than we’d figured. Damn this thing, I—”
Barrett stopped Nick from scratching his nape. “Quit that,” he said. Cool fingertips brushed the raw skin, the relief enough to make Nick’s shoulders sag. “You’ll hurt yourself if you’re not careful.”
He left his hand there. Nick pressed his lips together, at a loss—what could he say, and how could he say it?—but not willing to move, or to let go. Or to think about what this meant beyond the impossibility of it all.
He could have stayed there for hours if the doorbell hadn’t pealed as loud as a gong in his ears.
Daniel. I’d forgotten. Damn!
“Stay there.” Barrett put a hand on Nick’s shoulder to underline the point and stop him moving. He wasn’t nervous by nature, but he flinched as if he’d been shot. Barrett sympathized with his jumpiness. He couldn’t wrap his head around any of this and it wasn’t even happening to him.
A minor note of panic sounded as an echo to that thought. He had no rising soulmark. His skin was as bare and smooth as ever, while Nick’s…
Stop. Barrett pushed the pulse of alarm aside before he could take a close enough look to read the fine print between its lines. Deal with it later.
If Nick had heard his order, Barrett couldn’t tell. He’d clapped a hand to the back of his neck when the bell rang. Barrett couldn’t tell if he knew what he’d done, either. “Hell,” he said. “That’ll be Daniel. We forgot about him, didn’t we?”
Rhetorical questions didn’t need answering, but no matter how jangled his nerves, Barrett didn’t have it in him to be the kind of bastard who wouldn’t give a reply. “We did. He won’t mind waiting.” Barrett pursed his lips. “He wouldn’t mind coming back, either, if you…”
“What?” Nick scratched lightly at the developing soulmark, made a sour face, and held his hands out in front of him.
Barrett could almost see him thinking—could watch the illumination and dread chasing themselves around and around in half-drunken circles.
“No,” Nick said at last, touching his mouth. “No. Better not. Wouldn’t be fair to him.”
“And we’d have to explain why. Or lie,” Barrett said.
Nick didn’t back down. “Or that. I don’t know how convincing I could be. Do you?”
“Not very at all.” Barrett pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ah, hell.” Logic dictated he make their excuses and send Daniel packing. The more illogical side of him, the one that couldn’t bear this steel-wool tension a second longer, snatched at a reprieve. “Are you sure?”
“Sure enough. Just…get dressed first?”
Barrett rolled his eyes. “No, I’m planning on opening the door stark naked. Idiot.” He tweaked a lock of Nick’s hair, the way he always did when he had a point to make. The way he always had done. The smallest little gesture of affection. Should have been the most natural thing in the world.
It really, really wasn’t. He could tell Nick didn’t think so, either.
Call him a coward, call him a weakling—Barrett couldn’t face the wary unease in Nick’s face another second longer. He turned his back, calling over his shoulder, “Put some clean clothes on yourself, too, would you? I’ll stall him.”
“Barrett.” Nick touched the back of Barrett’s neck.
Barrett stopped, nearly between steps, and only managed not to fall thanks to catching the doorframe with his shoulder. He licked his lips. “Yeah?”
The tickling sensation of Nick riffling through the short-cut tips of his hair at the nape of his neck drew goosebumps to Barrett’s skin. So gentle. No, not gentle. Cautious. Uncertain. “You don’t have one,” he said.
“No,” Barrett said, not looking back. “I don’t.”
“For a second there, I’d hoped.” Nick’s laugh was a ragged and unkind thing. No surprise. Matching soulmarks always—as far as Barrett knew—sparked to life at the same time. “Stupid of me.”
“Don’t think about it right now. Or if you can’t put it out of your mind, then don’t talk about it in front of Daniel.” Barrett nearly didn’t recognize the sound of himself. He’d never been so stern, so remote, in his life.
As if he hadn’t heard, Nick didn’t stop carding the short ends of Barrett’s hair. “What are we supposed to do now?” he asked, quiet as a deer picking its way through a fog bank.
Barrett wished he had any kind of answer to give. He didn’t. He shook his head and stepped away from Nick’s touch, toward the patient knocking at their door.
* * * *
Nick resettled the band around his hair as he dodged into the kitchen. It went to show how much this had rattled Barrett, too, he thought. Barrett had gone to the front door almost blindly, when he knew as well as Nick that Daniel never came in the front. He’d used the back door since the day they’d met.
As a last-minute impulse, Nick plucked a rubber band from the junk drawer by the door and wound it around his wrist. Negative reinforcement worked for smokers and nail-biters, or at least he’d always heard as much.
Daniel looked a million miles away, more distracted than usual. He held a pair of heavy work gloves draped across one arm almost like a baby, and blinked at Nick as if waking up from a long winter’s nap. “I wondered if you were still here.”
“Sorry?”
“I tried calling,” Daniel said, visibly drifting away again then just as visibly snapping himself back to the present. “No one answered.”
Nick hadn’t heard the phone ring. Then again, he doubted he’d have heard an elephant charging through one wall of their cottage and out the other side again when he and Barrett had been in bed together, much less after. “Got caught up in a few things,” he said, the understatement slapping him in the ears. “Barrett! Back door.”
“Damn it,” Barrett grumbled, doing a U-turn from the front. Almost made Nick laugh. Silly old creature. He perked up as he approached. “Are those my work gloves? Thanks. I didn’t realize I’d left them.”
“Hmm? Oh. This. Yes. I thought I’d bring them back before I forgot, too.” Daniel pushed the gloves at Nick. Nick caught them without fumbling, but only barely. He frowned. There was distraction, and there was cause for worry. Daniel came awfully close to crossing the line.
He must have realized it. He grimaced at Nick. “I’d tried to call to tell you I’d better cancel for tonight. Figured you weren’t at home anyway and I’d leave these on the doorstep.”
“Come on, we wouldn’t forget you,” Barrett protested, resting a casual arm on Nick’s shoulder as he used to. Habit? Maybe. He tilted his head and gestured at Daniel with his free hand. “Everything okay? You’re acting a little…”
Daniel grimaced as he waved the concern aside. “Don’t worry about me. Some unexpected news tonight, that’s all. It’ll be fine.”
Yeah? Join the club. Nick pressed slightly harder against Barrett, soaking up his warmth. “You don’t exactly look fine.”
Daniel rubbed the back of his neck, absently but roughly. “Something happened that… I’m not sure what it means. I will, though.”
Barrett nudged Nick in the ribs. Nick knew what he meant without Barrett needing to say it— ease off.
Good advice, but Nick never had been head of the class at following orders. Especially not when it came to someone he cared about, in whatever fashion. Even with their world turned topsy-turvy, the notion of sending Daniel off all by his lonesome chafed. “You’re still welcome to eat with us. We wouldn’t mind having you. Honest.”
“No? I’d mind being had,” Daniel said, giving Nick one of his more unreadable looks. “Let this one go, Nick.”
“All right, all right,” Nick said, stung. He raised his hands, palms out. “Suit yourself.”
God help him, he’d meant for that to be it. Nick would swear it on a stack of Bibles. End of conversation. His lips moved without his permission, though, and he blurted, “Daniel. Do you have
a soulmate?”
Barrett winced.
Daniel raised his head, the movement sharp, brittle, and stiff. “Excuse me?”
“Shit.” Nick covered his face in a vain effort to stave off an embarrassed rush of heat in his cheeks. “I didn’t mean any offense—”
Daniel didn’t seem distant now. More like he could take a bite out of Nick and a strip off his hide to boot. “Don’t ever ask that again,” he said. “Enjoy your evening together.”
Nick thumped his head against the door when he swung it closed. He could feel the piercing weight of Barrett’s stare slicing through him. “Don’t ask. I don’t know why I did that. Aside from being a moron.”
“As if that’s news.” Barrett snorted quietly. He ran the tip of his tongue flicker-quick across his lips and didn’t stop staring at Nick. Seemed almost as if he couldn’t stop. “Did you realize you’d parted your hair right above the mark?”
Had he? Nick felt quickly. He had. Damn it. “And?”
“It’s gotten darker, I think.” Barrett guided Nick’s head down and sifted through his hair.
Nick breathed out slowly. No need to ask. He knew what Barrett would see. He could feel it, in a strange way. More so than before. Darker indeed. Tea with three drops of cream instead of four, but plain enough to the focused eye. He knew it even before Barrett breathed, “Shit,” and let his hair fall back in place.
And that was it, for Nick. The last straw. The final fucking sliver that broke the camel’s back. Enough. He reached without looking and managed, just, to bump his knuckles against Barrett’s wrist. From there, he wrapped his fingers around the fine bones and held on like a bracelet. “Don’t go.”
Barrett would have—at any other time—mirrored Nick’s movement. Laced their fingers together. Whether by instinct, reflex, or habit, Nick’s fingers twitched at the sense memory. “Do I have a choice? We can’t shut our eyes and ignore it, Nick.”
