by Willa Okati
Yapping fit to wake the dead, Hamish plowed forward through the dried-out grass in front of his “villa,” making direct tracks for the rutted road half a kilometer away. Relative distance from traffic had made this rental even more appealing when he’d been in search of a place to den up. Normally, he never caught sight of more than a Vespa puttering past or perhaps a jogger.
Now, though…
Rick shaded his eyes and frowned. A large, dark lump lay at the edge of the dirt road, humped and huddled in a way suggesting it had once been a living creature ‑‑ if it wasn’t a sack of garbage some tourist had decided to chuck, that was; either would attract Hamish’s attention just fine.
Either way, if he didn’t drag the lout back soon there’d be hell to pay and a bath to dish out. “Hamish, you daft sod, get your arse back here,” he shouted, putting his head down and chasing the mutt. “Hamish, mind me or you’ll have no dinner, d’you hear?”
As might have been predicted, Hamish didn’t listen in the slightest. He’d stopped by the whatever-it-was and was occupied with sniffing it from stem to stern, occasionally whining.
“For fuck’s sake,” Rick huffed, finally catching up. He grabbed Hamish by the collar and pulled him back. “What the hell is it, eh? A deer or a sheep or a ‑‑ oh.” He swallowed around an abrupt lump of nausea, pulling sharply back.
Not an animal nor a sack of trash, but a man. A man dressed in a torn black undershirt, a filthy pair of dark jeans, and nothing else. The soles of his feet were nearly as dark as his clothing, raw as they could only be from miles of walking on them bare. His hair, thick and tangled, hid his face.
Only by dint of staring at him, wondering who on earth to call about a muck-up like this, did Rick notice the man was still breathing. When he did, his own air rushed out in a dizzying hurry.
“Damn, if I’d only brought my cell with me,” he grumbled, carefully going to one knee. He tucked his own fairer, finer hair, annoyingly wavy in the humid heat, behind his ears and leaned over to nudge the man’s shoulder. “Can you hear me? Are you awake in there, man?”
At first, he thought he’d get nothing for his troubles, that the man was off in comatose la-la-land, and rightly so. Rick knew he wouldn’t fancy being awake in the poor sod’s position. Then, however, the man groaned and shuddered, a ripple washing sluggishly through him.
“Lovely, you’re with me.” Rick rubbed his chin. “What’s your name? How badly are you hurt?”
The man exhaled on a ragged moan, shifting before Rick could stop him and flopping on his back. As he moved, his long hair fell away from his face. He blinked large, tea-brown eyes at Rick, his heavy eyelashes tangled and his lips pale.
And Rick recognized him right away.
“Fuck me sideways,” Rick swore, aghast. “Judas Priest on a flaming pogo stick. Adriano?”
Chapter Two
“For sweet pity’s sake. Which small god did I piss off now?” Rick scrubbed at his chin, absently noting he needed a shave, and balanced on the balls of his feet. Below him, Adriano ‑‑ and it could be no one else; he knew Adriano’s face too well to mistake him even in this miserable condition ‑‑ stared up at him with the bleary concentration of a three-day bender.
He knew that aspect of Adriano’s look quite well, too.
“Shall I ask where you came from, what happened, and how you managed to get here only to conveniently pass out in front of my home, or go ahead and chalk that one up to fate having a laugh at my expense?” Rick asked, not expecting an answer.
Adriano’s eyelids fluttered shut. He twitched his shoulders, moaning quietly.
Rick rubbed his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You might have prepared for this sort of eventuality, you know. I seem to recall warning you about what’d come of partying like there’s a countdown to Gabriel’s trump twenty-four/seven. Whores, blow, suspect booze ‑‑ like hell I didn’t ever notice the level dropping in that ‘novelty’ bottle of absinthe ‑‑”
Adriano’s lips twisted. He whimpered, bloody well whimpered, sounding exactly like Hamish if he’d gotten a burr in his paw. Suffering, that sound was, the noise of an animal in pain who didn’t understand what had happened but needed fixing right away.
Rick regarded him for a long moment before shaking his head. “Fine, but you’ll owe me large for this one, you bastard. Come on.” He prodded Adriano’s shoulder none too gently, noting ‑‑ he couldn’t not ‑‑ that while it looked as if Adriano might have lost a few stone since they’d last seen each other, he’d kept most of his muscle tone. Lucky bastard, winning big in the genetic lottery.
Of course, he hadn’t been able to complain back in the day, as along with the rest of his fallen angel’s handsomeness and fit devil’s body Rick had enjoyed the way Adriano’s cock was of a size to give a horse inadequacy issues.
“Adriano,” he called, daring to slap the man’s cheeks lightly. “Adriano, now, I know you can hear me.”
Adriano’s eyes fluttered open. He stared at Rick, seeming perplexed. No, not quite ‑‑ more as if he’d no idea who Rick was, and wasn’t that just lovely?
“Who…?” he rasped, confirming Rick’s dour suspicion. Odd, though. His breath wasn’t anywhere near Listerine fresh, but as far as he could tell, neither did it smell of whiskey, wine, or beer. Drugs, then? Right, that’d make sense. Slipped a tab of something he’d have been damn fool enough not to question and wound up bollixed six ways to Sunday, dropped on a dirt road out here in rural nowhere.
Underneath its accustomed coating of granite, Rick knew he had a heart of pure marshmallow, and despaired of its occasional bursting out to overcome his better sense. Regardless of what had passed between them, he knew he could no more leave Adriano at the edge of the road while he sensibly called Emergency Services and excised him tidily from his life. Again.
“Up you get,” he encouraged instead, carefully sliding an arm under Adriano’s broad shoulders. Adriano blinked as if baffled, but cooperated, clumsily letting Rick pull him first to a sitting position, where he remained still long enough to endure a hasty once-over for broken bones, and then up to his feet.
“Where…?” Adriano croaked, balance wavering. “Don’t know this place.”
“That’d be because you’ve never been here, dozy.” Rick didn’t dare let go of Adriano for fear that he’d topple right over. “My home’s just over there, see?” He nodded in the direction of the villa.
Adriano peered at it. “Home,” he agreed after a beat, sounding as if he didn’t believe it for a second.
Still, good enough. “Pick up your feet and walk with me,” Rick directed, tugging him forward. “A cool shower, some sleep, a pint of coffee, and you might start making sense, eh?”
Or so he hoped.
Looking down, he saw that Hamish was all but dancing in place, doggie joy evident in the rapid-fire whipping of his tail. He barked, bouncing on his forepaws.
“What are you looking at?” Rick snorted. “Onward ho, both of you. Let’s get this done.”
* * * * *
“No, you’ll not be able to stand up by yourself in the shower, will you?” Rick assessed even as he reached for the “cold” spigot and turned it. He tested it with a finger and grunted. “Cool” might be more like it, and a generous assessment at that. Still and all, that might be better. Less of a shock to Adriano’s system. “Guess you’ll just have a bath, then, won’t you?”
Adriano swayed in Rick’s grasp and blinked at him, clearly baffled. Whatever language he heard, it wasn’t either Italian or English. “Lord, I can’t be mad at you now, you poor old sop,” Rick said ruefully, patting Adriano’s shoulder. “Fine; I’ll save it up for later. D’you think you could…no, likely not; I doubt you’ve the coordination for buttons and zippers. I’m going to undress you, all right? Don’t want these tatty rags in my nice clean tub.”
“Si,” Adriano responded, cockeyed.
“Si,” Rick agreed, maneuvering Adriano around to balance him on the edge of
the vanity. “Arms up. Can you lift them? Good, good.” He wrinkled his nose as he peeled off Adriano’s sleeveless undershirt, noting again ‑‑ purely in passing, mind you ‑‑ that indeed, he might be considerably skinnier, but still had a body a man could weep over. Actually, the slimmer look suited Adriano rather well, turning him long and lean as a racing hound.
His smell didn’t precisely have the same effect on Rick. “Where have you been?” he asked, running a hasty check over Adriano’s torso in search of injury, finding some nasty bruises but nothing worse.
To his surprise, Adriano responded. Unfortunately, not with anything helpful. “I’ve been to London, signor,” he said gravely. “I’ve been to London to see the Queen.”
“Of course you have. Denims next, eh?” Rick made to snag the frayed waist of what he recognized to be thousand-euro designer jeans in a previous life, reaching for the fastenings. He’d almost got his fingers on the zipper before Adriano took an alarming sway to the left, only just catching him in time. “Steady on,” he scolded, looking at the man.
Adriano looked back, his expression hazy. “My head,” he said, slurring the words. “My head, signor. It hurts.”
“I imagine it does, with a hangover like the one you’re likely to be enjoying soon.”
“No, no.” Adriano’s face drew tight in apparent pain. “Hurts.” He reached up, fingers shaking, to grind them against his scalp.
Rick thought nothing of it until Adriano whined in frustration and drew them back and he saw that his fingertips were rusty red with both old blood and new. “Jesus mercy,” he hissed, pushing Adriano’s hand away. “Bend down for me, you tall oaf.” He combed through the tangle of Adriano’s thick, dark hair and saw it, then ‑‑ a mostly-healed, once seriously ugly gash on the side of his head.
“Sideways,” he muttered dumbly. This changed everything fast enough to dizzy him. The injury had to be at least a couple of weeks old, and a man of means such as Adriano wouldn’t have gone without proper medical care even if he had been completely wasted. He’d friends, albeit vapid ones, and family, far more practical, who saw to it ‑‑ as he well knew ‑‑ that they knew where he was as much as possible.
For Adriano to have a wound like this that had healed almost on its own, it meant he’d been on his own nearly since it had happened, with no one to rescue him or lend a hand. All of Rick’s jabs and jokes about deserving what he’d gotten dried up on his tongue.
“What happened to you?” he asked, no longer in the slightest bit of jest at all. He found his touch gentling as he pressed his palm to Adriano’s cheek. “Love, what have you gone and done to yourself?”
Adriano seemed to have forgotten about the pain. He stared quizzically at Rick. “Love?”
Rick cursed his tongue. The endearment, one he’d sworn he’d left behind him in relation to Adriano, had slipped out. “I ‑‑” he started.
Adriano interrupted him. “Love,” he repeated. “Si. Love. I have to find my love. My heart.”
“I see.” Rick resigned himself to an unpleasant answer to his next question. “Who’s your ‘heart,’ Adriano? Who should I call to come and get you?”
“Adriano?” Adriano queried. “Who is Adriano?”
Oh…damn. The blow to his head. Rick tried to remain calm. “You’re Adriano. Do you not know that?”
“Adriano,” Adriano murmured, repeating it several times. “Yes. Yes, that’s right. It is.”
“Glad we’ve got that straight.”
“Who are you?”
“Not so glad we don’t have that one right.” Rick bit at the inside of his cheek. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”
“No, signor.” Adriano looked sincerely apologetic, albeit paling with either pain or exhaustion.
Rick steadied him with an arm around his waist, the rushing of the cool water in the tub filling his ears. “You’re a fine mess, but in for a penny and all that. Adriano? Listen to me, now. Do you know of anyone I can call to come and get you? Your sister, your grandmother? A friend?”
“No.” Adriano’s chin came up with a touch of the old iron-clad stubbornness Rick remembered from days gone by. Happier times, when that look meant Rick was about to have a taste of Adriano’s dominance, the kind he’d appreciated. Whips and handcuffs weren’t out of the question when Adriano took on the aspect of a fiercely proud jaguar in that manner. “No, no friends. I only want my heart.”
“Then we’ll get him for you. Who’s your heart?” Rick persisted when Adriano didn’t answer right away. “I can’t help you, not to mention wash my hands of you, if you don’t tell me what you need. Who you need. What’s your lover’s name?”
Adriano focused directly on Rick, startlingly lucid for a handful of heartbeats. “Rick,” he replied, clear as a bell. “My lover’s name is Rick. Can you help me find him? I’ve looked for him for ages, and I don’t know where he is. Can you help me find Rick?”
Rick gaped at Adriano.
“Find Rick,” Adriano begged. “He’ll know what to do.”
And with that, Adriano gracefully passed out, leaving Rick to prop up his great weight and wonder what in the fucking hell he was supposed to do now?
Chapter Three
“D’you think you can rest comfortably now?” Rick tested the heat of Adriano’s forehead with the back of his hand. He looked considerably better after his cool bath, much more presentable with a good few layers of dirt removed, almost normal. The warmth was only natural body temperature along with some slight sunburn, he suspected, and not a fever.
He checked the makeshift bandage he’d improvised over the wound to Adriano’s scalp, well-daubed with antibacterial ointment. Cleaning that out had been a joy, hadn’t it? “And you’ll leave this alone, right?”
Adriano grumbled. He’d gotten more color in his cheeks after a good washing and consenting to a cup of weak tea, and though he’d developed enough backbone to protest anything else, he yet remained docile enough to agree to the proposition of a lie-down.
“I’ll need to hear you promise,” Rick warned him, half-smiling at the memory of better times when he’d coaxed Adriano around to agreeing to stay in Adriano’s sybaritic, opulent condominium for the night rather than hurling them both off to one God-awful club or another.
He’d often wondered, and been asked by well-meaning nosy sorts, why a quiet-living sort like him ever stayed with a rip-roaring social butterfly like Adriano, or why he’d stayed as long as he had. He couldn’t precisely tell most of them that the sex had been well worth it on his own ‑‑ not only was Adriano better-equipped than a stallion, he knew how to use it ‑‑ and wouldn’t tell anyone who didn’t already know that he was arse over tit in love with the bastard.
Love didn’t adhere to the rules of common sense, more was the pity.
Rick exhaled deeply. “Adriano. Promise me, now.”
Adriano harrumphed and turned grouchily away from Rick. “On my word,” he said moodily. “A little rest, and then you’ll help me find my lover, my heart? Help me find Rick? Do you swear, too?”
“Better than any sailor ever thought of, when I’m in the mood.”
“What?”
“Never mind, love.” Rick winced.
Adriano hummed, already seeming to drift off into a doze. “Love, yes,” he whispered. “I must find my love. My Rick will know what to do.”
“You’d be surprised,” Rick said, pulling the thin sheet he’d found up around Adriano’s shoulders. He hesitated at the last, stroking the firm angle of Adriano’s jaw, unable to stop the last wistful drops of hope. “You really don’t recognize me, then?”
He received no answer; Adriano was already asleep.
Rick had intended to bide by his side only long enough to reassure himself of the deep, even breathing that signaled true sleep before getting up off his arse and setting to work. He’d done what was right and proper by the man, cleaning him and checking him over, and now he could pass Adriano off to the proper authorities. He could contact his
family and be done with the lot.
Yet he hesitated, and try as he might to understand it, he couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t launching into action.
Instead, he found himself sitting on the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle Adriano, and stroking the sinewy length of the man’s arm all the way down to his wrist and back up again to his shoulder.
“I’ve missed you, you know,” he found himself blurting. He thought about biting his tongue, then decided there’d be no point. As bunged up as Adriano appeared to be in the head right now, he’d never make sense of it; besides, Adriano had started to emit the smallest of snores. As Rick recalled, he’d have been able to march a trumpeting elephant through the room on the blue-moon-rare occasions when Adriano was truly asleep, and he’d never so much as blink.
He’d never had a chance to say these things, not to Adriano, and he wouldn’t have voiced them to anyone else. “Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t flap my lips about them now,” he informed Adriano, unconsciously continuing to caress his firm, sun-darkened skin.
Adriano made a small, contented murmuring noise and smiled.
“Oh, you can laugh.” Rick nudged his shoulder, an exasperated, fond smile curling up the corner of his mouth. “God, but you’re as handsome as I remembered, even now, and more than once I wondered if my memory exaggerated after the fact. The sexiest man I’ve ever known, you are. Hot enough to singe me alive and charming enough to make me love every second, canny enough to make me come crawling back for more. I suppose that’s how I’ve ended up with your carcass in my bed snoring away, isn’t it?”
Hamish padded up, toenails clicking. “I’ll need to cut those soon,” Rick noted, absently reaching to pat the dog’s head. “Hamish, ah, Hamish, no.” Too late; the puppy had already gathered his limbs and hopped on the bed. Supremely self-satisfied, Hamish sniffed his way up under Adriano’s chin and flopped down, his head on Adriano’s arm and his liquid canine gaze fixed worshipfully on the sleeping man.
