by Trinity Lee
"Nothing happened," he insisted, as Phoenix opened his eyes and smiled up at Dylan.
"I know," said Dylan. "And I'm not going to be around if and when it does, but for chrissake just be careful with each other. Gonna hit the shower. We're leaving in twenty minutes."
Caedem turned to Phoenix, a wicked look in his eyes.
"What did I tell you about Dylan and his early starts?"
Phoenix groaned and rolled over, willing the daylight to go away.
But when Dylan emerged from the shower, a towel wrapped decorously around his hips which made both Caedem and Phoenix snort with laughter as they had both seen him buck-naked so many times, Phoenix was not only out of bed and ready to go, but sitting on the side of the double bed, picking out the opening notes of one of the songs from the new album that he'd co-written with Taylor, Caedem leaning forward attentively, stopping him every so often to ask questions.
Dylan smiled at their dark heads, one curly, one shaven, bent in concentration next to each other, and sighed. He had a feeling he had just opened Pandora's Box.
"Gotta hit the road, guys. Shower if you want, but be quick."
The hire car ate up the miles, and by the afternoon Dylan was turning up a dirt track, towards the dark blue of the ocean.
Phoenix realized that he didn't even know where they were going, other than that it was in California somewhere, and he was struck by the way Dylan seemed to know the way intimately.
"You been here before?" he asked, and Dylan nodded.
"I couldn't talk about it in case you told Taylor, but there was no way I'd turn my back on Cae. I came up here whenever I could, and then when I met Sam, I realized his beach house was just up the road, so we've been hanging out a bit now and again."
Phoenix could smell the ocean now, the tang of the salt in the air.
"Didn't realize we were going to the beach," he said.
Caedem smiled.
"It's a tiny place, more of a shack than anything, but my folks got me to buy it when I got my big pay-off from Mudride, and then they put it in trust for me, so I couldn't inject it or stick it up my nose or anything else. I've sure tried their patience over the years, but I'm grateful they did this for me."
And then they pulled up outside the little beach house that was to be Phoenix's home for the next however long, and the sheer beauty of it took his breath away.
The little wooden house nestled behind a sand dune. It was painted pale blue and its little garden had prayer flags and driftwood sculptures in amongst the wild plants. The ocean crashed in the distance, and seabirds wheeled overhead.
Tears pricked the back of his eyes.
"I've never seen anything as beautiful," he said, and the contrast between it and his rented studio apartment in the grimy Idaho town made him want to cry.
"It's a very healing place," murmured Caedem, who was sprawled in the back of the wagon with the guitars. "You've come home now."
Inside was more or less one large room, with polished wood floors and a big bed that doubled up as a sofa, with colorful patchwork quilts and wall hangings.
Dylan flung himself down on a cushion on the floor, while Caedem ground coffee and Phoenix brought in all the guitars, his and Caedem's. He arranged them against the wall, and Caedem smiled to see that he didn't separate them into two separate groups, yours and mine, but left them intermingled with each other.
Dylan drank his coffee appreciatively and stood up to leave.
"Think you'll be ready in a couple of days?" he asked Caedem. "Then we can ambush Taylor, see if we can get this thing to work out."
His eyes said sorry to Phoenix for mentioning Taylor's name and breaking the spell, but Phoenix's shrug told him he was OK with it.
Caedem nodded.
"With wonderboy here to teach me, I'll be ready sooner than that."
His hand rested on Phoenix's shoulder, and as Phoenix reached up from the bed to interlace his fingers with Caedem's and leaned into him, Dylan realized that whatever events he had started, he no longer had the power to stop.
"OK, I'll call you. Gotta get back to Sam before he kicks my ass. That's been about the only good thing about you walking out, Murphy," he teased. "More time to spend with my guy."
Then he was gone, and as the hire car's engine faded into the distance, Phoenix and Caedem turned to each other.
"You're not what I expected," breathed Caedem, his palm on Phoenix's cheek, his face so close that Phoenix felt himself melt inside those dark-lashed eyes.
"And you're everything I expected," murmured Phoenix, feeling the stubble of Caedem's hair against his fingers.
Their lips met briefly, and Phoenix felt he had waited a lifetime for that half-second of perfection. And then Caedem was holding Phoenix's face in his hands, and kissing him so hungrily that Phoenix thought for a moment that he was going to come just from the kiss, as Caedem's tongue invaded his mouth and his sharp white teeth bit down on his lower lip so hard he thought he could taste blood.
Phoenix gasped for air.
"Fuck, Caedem, what's happening to me? It's like you put a spell on me."
"You're so beautiful, man," said Caedem, and Phoenix could see his eyes fill with tears. "You're so innocent or something..."
"You wouldn't say that if you knew what I was thinking," grinned Phoenix, pulling Caedem's T-shirt over his head and moving in for a long, slow kiss that was the sweetest he had ever tasted.
Caedem whimpered as Phoenix's hot breath and then his tongue invaded his ear, whispering everything he wanted to do to him. Phoenix wanted to taste every square inch of Caedem's body, and he started with his neck, licking the soft, short hair at the base of Caedem's skull, and trailing his tongue down the side of his neck, where the bluish vein throbbed.
He kissed his closed eyelids and rolled on top of him, pulling off his own T=shirt so the warm skin of their chests made contact, and he felt Caedem groan as he ground his hips into him, feeling the hardness of his huge cock rubbing against his stomach.
He yearned to reach for Caedem's throbbing shaft straightaway, but he wanted to make this last, make it something they would both remember.
He worked down Caedem's chest, lingering at his nipples, which he sucked until they became hard, and stroked the sensitive skin on the inside of his forearms, running his fingertips over the scar tissue that marred Caedem's perfection, evidence of the damage done by the needle and then the razor blade. A fierce protectiveness overcame him and he wanted to wrap the older guy in his arms for ever, stop anything else bad happening to him.
"You're mine now, baby," he whispered, raising his face from Caedem's hard abs, and the smile that greeted him in Caedem's eyes was enough to break his heart.
His own groin on fire, he slowly unbuttoned Caedem's jeans and slid them down over his hips. It was the first uncut cock he had seen up close, and its newness excited him. It throbbed as he gently closed his palm around it, and he felt a shudder of desire run through Caedem as he drew back his foreskin and rubbed around the tip with his thumb.
He lowered his face to his crotch and sucked greedily, rubbing and spreading Caedem's hard thighs. His dick felt like it was going to burst right through his jeans. He wanted to feel him spasm underneath him, see his face as he came, hear him cry out his name.
At first, he resisted when Caedem turned around underneath him, reaching for him to sixty-nine him. But Caedem was so insistent, his eyes so full of hunger, that Phoenix succumbed and he turned on his side, allowing Caedem to unzip him, and then closing his eyes and counting slowly to ten as he felt his warm hand close over his dick, aware that he was in danger of coming the minute Caedem touched him.
He felt smooth hands stroking his hips and the first touch of Caedem's tongue on him, making him melt inside.
And then Caedem sprang away from him with a wounded yelp, leaving Phoenix reaching for him in confusion.
"What is it, Cae? What'd I do?"
But Caedem was sitting there crying, his shoulders shaki
ng, as he lightly touched his fingers to the tattoo on Phoenix's hip that Phoenix could only see if he strained right around to look, and which he had near as damnit forgotten about.
And then Caedem guided Phoenix's hand to the same place on his own hip, and when Phoenix saw what was there, he felt a lump in the back of his throat, and all he could do was hold Caedem until his sobs subsided.
"Fuck Taylor," he growled. "It's like he's determined to keep us apart."
Now Caedem had drawn his attention to it, the outline of a jagged heart inked onto his hipbone lurked there like some kind of a malign warning. Taylor had branded them both with half of a heart - the left half. And both Caedem and Phoenix knew that the matching part of the heart - the right half, whose jagged edge fit perfectly with the left - was somewhere else, indelibly marked on Taylor, a reminder that their hearts belonged to him, whether they liked it or not.
"I'm so sorry," whispered Caedem. "It's you I want. Not him. It was just a shock, that's all."
Phoenix sighed and pulled him close. But Caedem broke his hold and refused to meet his eye.
"I'm sorry. I need to think. I'll be back later."
And then the door was open and he was gone, leaving Phoenix alone in the beautiful house, lonelier than he had ever been in his life.
Phoenix picked up Caedem's acoustic guitar and began to pick out the opening chords to one of the first Mudride songs he'd learned, its melancholy notes suddenly taking on new significance now he knew so much more about the guy who'd written them.
He laid his forehead on the smooth wood of the guitar and sighed. He'd thought he'd been in love with Taylor, but it was nothing compared with the intensity of his feelings for this guy whom he'd only just met. And there was nothing he could do to help him unless he could rid them both of the ghost of Taylor.
He didn't know where Caedem had gone, but when he left the house, he could see that one of the surfboards had disappeared from the lean-to, so he walked in the direction of the crashing waves, and eventually he came to the longest, wildest beach he had ever seen, and in the distance he could see a black figure riding the waves.
He sat there, the only person on the beach, watching Caedem find some kind of peace out there until he dragged his exhausted body from the waves and threw himself down beside Phoenix.
"Sorry, man. He just never loses the ability to... you know."
Phoenix took Caedem's hand in his.
"I know. But I also know that I want to give this a chance. Not just the thing with the band. That's up to you. But this - us."
"It's what I want, too. Sorry I'm such a wreck. Dylan asked me to look after you, and it's kinda been the other way round so far."
Phoenix traced the tracks on Caedem's arms.
"I hate him for doing this to you, but we should thank him for bringing us together, I guess."
And Caedem's kiss was so sweet and so full of promise that Phoenix told himself that he could wait, he didn't care how long, for everything to be right.
He sat with his head on Caedem's shoulder.
"You know, I never saw the ocean for the first time until I was twenty?"
Caedem laughed incredulously.
"Unbelievable, man. I'll teach you to surf. Once this tour's over, we got all the time in the world."
And Phoenix's heart leapt at the thought that Caedem saw him here in three or four months' time, saw them making some kind of future together.
"The tour's going to be over before it's started unless we get going with what I'm supposed to be here for," sighed Phoenix. "I'll try and keep my hands off you for a while, though it's gonna be difficult, sleeping in the same bed and all."
And Caedem smiled his sad smile and held their hands up together.
"Look, if that's not a sign that we're made for each other, I don't know what is."
Phoenix looked at their hands, spread against each other, held up to the setting sun. They were identical, each finger and thumb exactly the same length, their hands spanning exactly the same width.
"No wonder I play your songs so well," he said, marveling. "And we'd better get back to the house so you can start learning mine."
*****
When Phoenix woke the next morning, curled up in Caedem's arms, with the roar of the ocean in his ears, he smiled to himself and lay perfectly still, not wanting to break the perfection of the moment.
Sex could wait - if it had to. It was killing him, being so close to Caedem and not being able to do anything about it, but he knew there was too much at stake.
He was slowly getting used to Caedem's strict lifestyle of yoga, vegan food and surfing and, much as he secretly craved a burger or a steak, he was starting to see the point of it.
As Caedem stirred, he kissed his eyelids and then slid slowly out of his arms to make the coffee, and smiled as Caedem reached for his guitar more or less as soon as he woke, the same as Phoenix always did.
It took only a day before Caedem was playing his songs exactly the way Phoenix had written them and - he had to admit - almost better than he played them himself.
"How're you going to explain to Taylor that you can play them?" he worried. "He can't know about us. Not yet. Not until the tour's over and you've walked away from him for the last time."
But Caedem just put his lips to his forehead and held him.
"Taylor doesn't know anything about playing guitar," he murmured. "Did he question it when you turned up for audition and played my stuff?"
Phoenix thought about it.
"No," he said finally. And then, anxiously, "When do you think Dylan will call?"
As if he'd willed it to happen, Caedem's cellphone rang on the table.
Phoenix listened as Caedem went "uh" and "yes" and "OK" and then replaced the phone.
"This afternoon, at Sam's," he said thoughtfully. "He says Taylor doesn't know. He's organized the meeting on neutral territory, with Fay there as well, in case one of us freaks out."
Phoenix was glad Fay was going to be there. They'd had their differences, and he knew he was a manager's worst nightmare, walking out mid-tour the way he had done, but she was one of the only people who could handle Taylor when he was in a fury.
"You nervous, baby?" he asked Caedem.
"Yeah, course I am. This morning I woke up and I felt like using again. If you hadn't been there, I could be in the city right now, slumped in a bathroom stall somewhere with a needle in my arm."
Caedem's honesty shocked him, and more than anything, he knew he wanted to be around for ever, to protect him and stop bad stuff happening to him.
"Then don't do it," he urged. "Don't go this afternoon. I understand what you said about the money and all, but we don't need money. Dylan and Zed will be OK. Let them look after themselves."
But Caedem sat there thinking until he finally turned to Phoenix, passion burning in his eyes.
"No, it's something I've got to do for me. Even if Taylor tells me to get the hell out and he doesn't need me in the band, at least I've faced him. Until then, I can't get him out of my system, and there'll always be something keeping you and me apart.
"We've got to move forward with our lives. Phoenix, I want to be with you, and before I can do that, I need to be in the same space as Taylor and know that it's properly over between us, that he doesn't matter to me any more."
