Dream: A Skins Novel

by Leigh, Garrett

  “We started in the club with my arse in the air.” Dylan opened the door to his living room. “And you’ve been on my mind ever since. Ain’t we romantic?”

  “Fuck that shit. Who wants to be romantic?” Angelo stuck his head in the living room. As promised, the couch was the same as the one at Dylan’s father’s house, and the urge to flop down on it was strong, but Dylan wasn’t ready to crash yet, and Angelo would be awake when he was if it killed him. “You don’t spend much time in here.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because it’s tidy.”

  “Fair point. And you’re right. Any evening I’m at home, I tend to flit from one room to another. I’m easily distracted, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “I hadn’t noticed because I don’t think it’s true. You have much better focus than me⁠—you must have, to deal with all that bullshit DRO paperwork. I reckon you’re just crap at relaxing.”

  “Says you.” Dylan tugged Angelo away from the living room. “You were working 24/7 at the deli.”

  “Not quite. And look where it got me⁠—on a geriatric ward with a mask strapped to my face.”

  Dylan’s fingers tightened around Angelo’s. “I hate thinking about that.”

  “So don’t.” Angelo tapped Dylan’s temple. “Stop thinking at all. What’s in there?”

  Dylan followed Angelo’s gaze to the last door before the bedroom and bathroom. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Yup. It’s empty. Look.” Dylan opened the door to what was indeed an empty room⁠—a beautiful empty room with the same wood floors as the rest of the flat and an original window from the old Railstore. In daylight, it would’ve bathed the room in natural light. Right now, Angelo could see the stars, and it took him back to the happy-clappy pain clinic he’d spent all afternoon at.

  “Have you got a lamp?”

  “What?”

  “A lamp,” Angelo repeated.

  “There’s one behind you. Why?”

  Dylan broke off with a shiver. Angelo rubbed his arms and kissed his forehead again and then looked around for the lamp. “I want to show you what I did today. Go and put your pyjamas on.”

  “My pyjamas?”

  “Or sweats. Whatever.”

  “You’re weird.”

  But Dylan sloped off to the bedroom anyway while Angelo unplugged the lamp and carried it into the empty room. With it plugged in and emitting exactly the glow he’d been after, he searched out the wireless speaker from the kitchen and set that up in the spare room too.

  Dylan came back as he was linking his phone to the speaker. “Temple of the Dog?”

  “Chris Cornell was my jam when I first realised I liked blokes as much as girls. I had a thing for his hair.”

  “Bit young for nineties grunge, aren’t you?”

  “Never too young for something you like, mate.”

  Dylan sat on the floor beside Angelo and tilted his head to one side. His eyes were still bright with stress, his limbs tight, his hands clenched, but his characteristic shrewdness was back. “You’re different.”

  “Different to what?”

  “To how you’ve mostly been since I met you.”

  “You’re going to have to explain, because that doesn’t make much sense.” Angelo set his phone aside and widened his legs to a straddle, leaning forward and testing his tired muscles. “But first, I want you to help me with something.”

  “You’re asking for help?”

  “Yup. I’ve spent all day relearning how to relax my muscles, and I’m worried I’ll forget it by morning. If I show you, it might stick in my mind.”

  If Dylan saw through Angelo’s breeze-block-lined attempt at subtly, it didn’t show. He nodded absently and mirrored Angelo’s pose, legs spread wide, his elegant feet naturally pointed. Caught young enough, perhaps he’d have made a hell of a dancer. He certainly had rhythm.

  Angelo leaned forward, flattening his chest to the floor, and reached for Dylan’s hands. “Breathe in deep and let it go as you stretch out.”

  “Does this count?” Dylan leaned down a fraction. “Because that’s about all I’ve got. I don’t bend like you do.”

  “How d’you know if you haven’t tried?”

  Dylan winced as Angelo gently pulled him lower. “Sadist.”

  “You usually like that side of me.”

  “Yeah, well. Maybe I’m in the mood for something more gentle.”

  But he didn’t complain as Angelo coached him through the simple series of stretches. The routine was low impact⁠—an easy ask for a healthy body, but though Angelo’s flexibility had survived the ravages of ME, he couldn’t hold his arms and legs up for long.

  Dylan had less reach but far more stamina. Angelo stood beside him, guiding him, and coaxed him to hold the stretches as long as possible. “Breathe,” he whispered. “Longer on the exhale and your body will relax by itself.”

  It took a while for the calm forced on Dylan’s body to filter through to the rest of him, but Angelo sensed the moment it had. Dylan’s shoulders dropped, his eyes fluttered closed, and his death grip on Angelo’s hands loosened.

  He sucked in the first deep breath that didn’t catch in his chest and let it go with a low moan. “Oh God.”

  Angelo rubbed his back, sliding his hands under Dylan’s softly worn T-shirt, losing himself in the smooth skin he found beneath. He wanted to pull Dylan into his arms and bury his face in his neck, sink his teeth into the tender flesh there. Maybe even ease Dylan’s sweatpants over his slim hips and then his own, and when they were both naked, chase away the shadows likely still lingering in Dylan’s eyes.

  But he didn’t move, save his hand still rubbing soothing circles into Dylan’s back. Even if he’d had the energy to jump Dylan, it was the wrong thing to do. Dylan needed a friend, and Angelo was too in love with him to be anything else right now. “Do you want to go to bed?”

  Dylan opened his eyes, and as Angelo had feared, the crazed horror had faded, but the disquiet remained. “Bed?”

  “Yeah. It’s late and you’re exhausted.”

  “So are you.”

  “Actually, I feel pretty good.”

  Another faint and yet wonderful smile brightened Dylan’s tired face. “Really? That’s awesome. I thought physiotherapy would make you worse to start with.”

  Angelo shrugged. “Yes and no. I am tired, but I don’t feel like I’m going to die when I close my eyes. My legs hurt, but I trust them to hold me up. Little steps, I guess.”

  Dylan nodded slowly. “You’ve mellowed. That’s what’s different about you.”

  “If you say so.” Angelo reached out to brush Dylan’s hair off his forehead, but his hand lingered of its own accord, drawn to its natural place cupping Dylan’s cheek.

  Dylan turned to face him and leaned into the touch. Then he twisted his hands in Angelo’s T-shirt and yanked him close, kissing him with a ferocity that belied the Zen-like glow of the room but fit with the grungy beat and mournful vocals filtering out of the music system.

  Despite his best intentions, Angelo was gone. He held Dylan tight against him and kissed him back, fighting Dylan for dominance until he’d backed him into the doorframe.

  Dylan gasped and kissed Angelo harder, but the impact lanced Angelo’s treacherous body with just enough pain to bring him to his senses.

  He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead to Dylan’s, panting. “We need to go to bed.”

  Dylan’s grip on Angelo held firm. “Not necessarily.”

  Angelo laughed but shook his head. “No. Really. We do. I want you so much, but not like this⁠—not when your brain is in bits and I’m too tired to think clearly for both of us.”

  “I’m okay, Ang⁠—⁠”

  Angelo covered Dylan’s mouth with his hands. “You’re too good at making yourself okay for other people, and I don’t want you to do that for me. You need to let me take care of you for a while. Will you let me do that . . . please?”

&nb
sp; For a long moment, Angelo feared that Dylan would refuse. And that he’d let him, and they’d fall into each other for all the wrong reasons.

  Then Dylan took Angelo’s hand from his mouth and kissed his knuckles. “Only you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dylan woke to rare November sunshine streaming through his bedroom windows. The daylight startled him⁠—it had been a while since he’d last slept past dawn, and at this time of year, most mornings were dreary and wet. Rubbing his face, he rolled over, chasing the warmth of the body beside him and fully expecting to find Angelo asleep.

  Wide brown eyes startled him for a second time. “You’re awake.”

  Angelo blinked. “So are you.”

  Any response Dylan may have made caught in his throat. Angelo was always gorgeous, but right now he was beautiful⁠—he was everything⁠—and Dylan couldn’t look away. Couldn’t resist the invisible magnet that drew them together. He reached out and touched Angelo’s face, scratching the dark stubble on his jaw, rubbing his thumb over the shadows beneath his eyes. He hasn’t slept.

  Guilt burned in Dylan’s gut. Last night was a conflicting blur of numbness and razor-sharp anxiety, but he remembered the gentle way Angelo had coaxed him through those stretches, even though it was clear that his own body had given up the ghost for the day. And then how he’d led Dylan to bed, laid him down, and held his hand, talking about anything and nothing until Dylan had somehow fallen asleep. “Angelo⁠—⁠”

  But there was nothing he could say. Could only feel. Could only touch. Could only lose himself in Angelo with the kind of kiss they should’ve been sharing from the start. Dylan’s heart thundered as Angelo kissed him back with his whole body, shoving the sheet aside until skin found skin and pressing them so tight together they both gasped. The first night they’d been together at the club flashed through Dylan’s brain. Angelo had been dominant then, but so much had happened since; their dynamic had shifted a hundred times and never settled in the same place twice.

  Right now was no different. Dylan shoved Angelo in the chest and toppled him backwards, and Angelo fell without struggle, splaying out on the bed, his arms wide, like he knew what Dylan wanted before it had solidified in Dylan’s own mind.

  Dylan crawled over him, covering Angelo with his body. Just their underwear separated them, and as he kissed down Angelo’s torso, pausing at every rip of his abs, he made short work of stripping them both. Angelo’s cock seemed to find its own way into his mouth, but Dylan didn’t linger there for long. Couldn’t, because the primal craving heating his blood was fast taking over.

  He pulled Angelo down the bed so their faces were level. Angelo’s eyes were hooded and bloodshot, but the fire in them matched Dylan’s. “I know what you want,” he whispered.

  “You always do.” Dylan hooked a cautious arm under one of Angelo’s knees, raising it and bringing it slowly to Angelo’s chest. “I don’t know if it’s something you want too, though.”

  “Try it and see.”

  “Are you sure?”

  In answer, Angelo shifted onto his side and pulled Dylan behind him. “I pictured this the first time we fucked. Like I knew this moment would come. Don’t be too gentle. I need to feel you.”

  It was all Dylan needed to hear. The unseasonal sunshine had faded, but it didn’t matter. They had enough warmth and light of their own. He lubed up and rolled a condom on and then pressed inside Angelo so slowly that he almost busted right then, ending this dream before it had truly begun.

  But Angelo’s ragged groan grounded him, perhaps the way Angelo always had, whether either of them knew it or not. Angelo felt incredible wrapped around his dick, hotter and tighter than anyone before him . . . men, women, and everything in between; all faces Dylan couldn’t remember now. Didn’t want to. Didn’t care to. Because there was no one in the world for him but Angelo. Body, heart, whatever. They’d shared a playground, and now they shared a soul.

  Dylan fucked Angelo long and deep, heeding every subtle signal and cue Angelo gave, every gasp and whispered moan, until it seemed like they’d been this way forever⁠—limbs entwined, torsos sliding together with shared sweat, their lips fused like they’d never been apart.

  But then something changed. The air shifted, and everything was suddenly hotter. Angelo rose up on his knees, his chest to the mattress, and pushed back on Dylan. “Harder.”

  As if Dylan could refuse. As if he wanted to. He gripped Angelo’s hips and banged him harder, faster, the only sound in the room the slap of their flesh and their guttural cries. He was so close that his shaking thighs barely held him up, and he yelled as Angelo tightened around him. Angelo’s hands curled into fists and he cried out, arching his back and coming with a shudder that pushed Dylan over the edge.

  He shot inside Angelo, his dick pulsing so hard an irrational fear that it would explode sent him tumbling to the side, an intelligible noise that was halfway between a laugh and shout bursting out of him. His chest heaved, lungs burning, and his vision blurred, but his mind was clearer than it had been in a long time.

  Clear enough to eventually pull himself together and wrap his arms around Angelo’s shaking form. “You okay?”

  Angelo was breathing too hard to answer. Dylan withdrew fast and rolled him over. Anxiety clawed its way up from the depths they’d chased it to, but when he found Angelo’s eyes, they were bright and laughing, despite his obvious discomfort. “Give me . . . a minute. I’m fine, honest.”

  He wasn’t fine, but they’d both learned the tough way that he rarely would be. Dylan cleaned up as best he could and then retrieved the duvet from where it had been kicked to the floor. He got back into bed and laid his hand on Angelo’s chest, absorbing the tremors as they racked Angelo’s body. “Shit. Did I hurt you?”

  “As if you could.”

  Dylan bit his tongue and settled for ghosting his hands over Angelo’s twitching muscles, swallowing a sigh of relief when Angelo’s breathing evened out sometime later. Fucking him like that had been incredible, but seeing Angelo in pain would never stop tearing him apart.

  “Stop fretting,” Angelo mumbled. “I’m fine.”

  “I know you are, babe. Rest, it’s okay.”

  Whether Angelo heard him or not, Dylan couldn’t tell, as he was pretty much asleep a moment later. Dylan watched over him for a while, tracing patterns on his glorious skin, and counting his heartbeats, but then his phone buzzed too incessantly for him to ignore, and he reluctantly snuck out of bed to deal with it.

  In the kitchen, Helen’s name flashed up on the screen, and Dylan’s heart juddered as he realised that he hadn’t given last night’s events a second thought since his lips had touched Angelo’s. He answered the call. “Helen?”

  “It’s me,” she said. “I’ve been calling you all morning. You had me worried when you didn’t answer.”

  “Sorry.” Dylan moved automatically to the kettle and flicked it on. “I was asleep.”

  “Really?”

  “That so hard to believe?”

  “Recently? Yes, actually, it is. You didn’t go out last night, did you? The paramedics told you to rest.”

  “And I did. I slept till⁠—⁠” Dylan checked the time and calculated roughly how long he and Angelo had been fucking. “Shit. I slept till nine. I haven’t done that in years.” He spoke to himself as much as Helen as his mind drifted back to the crazy twenty-four hours that had brought him to this point. She was halfway through a sentence when he realised that she was speaking again. “Sorry. What?”

  “The client from yesterday,” Helen said. “You were right: he wasn’t one of ours. Romford had his family’s case on file, but they’d archived it by mistake. The tax credit sanctions were from last year, and no one had done an assessment to see if they could afford the repayment plan.”

  “Romford.” Dylan abandoned the kettle and sat heavily on a stool. “Why is that office a permanent pain in my arse?”

  “I’m actually more worried about your leg. The par
amedics said you were in for a nasty bruise.”

  Dylan’s gaze flickered to the shin that had taken the impact of the raging man’s steel-capped boot. He’d been so wrapped up in Angelo since he’d woken up that he hadn’t thought about it. Looking down, the blackish bruise seemed rather small as he recalled the pain he’d endured at the time, but he welcomed the faint throb now. Without it, it would be too easy to pretend that yesterday hadn’t happened. “My leg is fine. I don’t think he wanted to hurt me.”

  “I think you’re right,” Helen agreed. “But the fact remains that he did. He brought a machete into the office and threatened you with it⁠—even if he didn’t say the words. The police will want a statement from you at the very least, so you might want to draft something while it’s fresh in your mind.”

  The only thing fresh in Dylan’s mind right then was the tight heat of Angelo clamped around his dick, but he knew his hyperactive mind well enough to know that even Angelo couldn’t distract him from yesterday’s events forever. “Is the man okay? He went down like a sack of shit when they tasered him.”

  “The hospital released him into police custody this morning, but that’s all I know. I just wish there was something we could do to help his family. If he goes to prison, they’ll be without his income too.”

  Dylan concurred and then, after agreeing to take a week off work, hung up on Helen with a heavy heart. Yesterday had been so pointless in so many ways it was tough to swallow, and despite Helen’s best intentions, they both knew there was absolutely nothing they could do to make that right.

  He returned to bed, craving the comfort of Angelo’s skin on his. To his surprise, Angelo was awake, lying flat on his back and staring at the ceiling. Dylan recounted Helen’s call to him, and Angelo absorbed it with little comment.

  Then he sighed and coaxed Dylan into his arms. “You didn’t even know this guy. None of this is your fault.”

  “I know that. It just all got so messy when it didn’t need to.”

  “Doesn’t everything?”

  Dylan kissed Angelo’s chest. Then he sat up slightly and wove his fingers into Angelo’s hair. “How are you doing? You didn’t get much sleep.”