Vision Quest (6 page)

Blaze's grip softened, and he eased the pressure on Arik's arm. "We good?"

Arik nodded, frowning in disgust at the resulting squish of liquid litter under his cheek. He rose when Blaze released him, and reached for the paper towel dispenser. Instead of stepping away however, Blaze put his arms around Arik's waist and just stood there while Arik mumbled and scrubbed his face.

He waited until Arik balled up the paper towel and punched it through the swing top of the wall mount garbage. "Now. Do you want to talk about what happened at mini golf?"

Arik snorted. "Nope."

"How about why you think it did?"

"I think that's pretty obvious." Arik turned to face him, forcing Blaze to take a step back. It was a short-lived moment of space. As soon as Arik settled his ass against the counter, doing his best to ignore the slow seep of water transferring from the surface to his slacks, Blaze moved forward again.

"Look," Blaze reached up and began to fiddle at adjusting Arik's shirt: collar, shoulders, smoothing fabric and fall. "I don't know what's going on any more than you do. I am not responsible for what you've seen, and I can't tell you what to do about it. What I do know, is what I've already told you—I'm here for you. Of course, if you want to tell me to fuck the hell off and get out of your life, I can't stop you. I
won't
stop you. So you tell me. With the limited information that we have about each other, with this..." Blaze paused, drew his hand up Arik's chest and rested all five fingertips on the side of Arik's neck.

Instantly a charge lifted the fine hairs on Arik's skin into goose bumps. His eyelids fell. Everything from hips to lips wanted to surge closer to Blaze's body.

"... this attraction," Blaze continued. "Tell me how I can help you. What do you need? Should I just stumble along like a puppy and wave my tail when you look over?"

Arik couldn't stop the grin. "You do have a smoking hot tail."

Blaze smiled. "And then there's that. I mean, if it's just a comfort thing you're looking for, that's fine, too."

Arik stopped resisting the urge to put his arms around Blaze's waist. He lowered his chin and looked at Blaze until he drew Blaze's gaze up. "Nice sentiment. But it makes no fucking sense, Blaze. Why? Under what circumstance would a good-looking guy offer servitude to someone whom he barely knows, for tasks he has no understanding of, for pretty much open-ended, undefined purposes?" Arik shook his head. "Nobody is that nice. What's in it for you?"

He watched something fall in Blaze's expression. But whether it was something as impenetrable as a wall, or as easily brushed aside as a curtain, Arik had the feeling only time would tell. And that was a disconcerting thought. Because if Blaze had demons of his own that he was battling, just exactly how much of Blaze was there left for the man to give?

Arik startled himself with the question. Was that what he wanted? Was that what his head was thinking? Less than twenty-four hours after Arik had met the man, was he really actually asking himself if Blaze was going to be around for the long haul? Arik shook his head and gritted his teeth. No wonder he couldn't get anyone interested in a date. Christ. He might just as well start looking to build his cat collection now. Apparently he was going to be a very lonely, very pathetic old man.

"You're not going to answer that are you?" Arik asked.

Blaze tapped his shoulder. "Trust me, Arik." He stepped away, held out his hand, and Arik took it. "At this point in time that's the last thing you want me to do."

The drive back to the hotel and convention center was taking longer than the drive to the putt-putt course. Or, at least, it seemed that way. The silence in the car was deafening, traffic was heavier, the stereo was off, and neither man had enough interest to hit buttons and find a decent station on satellite radio, too lost were they in their own thoughts.

Hand-in-hand, they'd left the sports bar, and Blaze had secretly flipped off the waitress when she'd appeared horrified at two men showing such affection after walking out of a bathroom together. He'd almost joked to Arik about how the woman had been so worried about their lack of hygiene, but one look at Arik's face silenced Blaze.

"Nobody is that nice."

Dear spirits, save him, Blaze prayed, shifting in the driver's seat. Because the bitch of the matter was that Arik was right. Blaze wasn't that nice. He was definitely here for his health, though, as the consequences of ignoring a Quest were dire, indeed. And he was here for Arik, because that's what Blaze did on Quests. He showed up at the right place, right time, to the right person, and did... Whatever was required. It wasn't always nice. It was never easy. Sometimes what Blaze had to do tried to kill him, one way or the other, but he had no choice in the matter, and he certainly, most assuredly, and tragically ... was not with Arik because Blaze had been kind-hearted or loving or ... nice.

Blaze took the exit for the hotel, easing into traffic with exaggerated caution. He had no allowance to be driving the rental, for one, and on top of that, he had no license. He'd not brought that up to Arik, just yet. Nor had Blaze thought it was the right time to disclose to Arik that Blaze had no photo ID, no social security number, no Facebook page, and no cell phone. Arik seemed the rule-abiding and giving sort, and Blaze wasn't sure how he'd take the information. Besides, Blaze usually answered, "Despite the odds," or "Barely" or "On the grace of good people" when asked the inevitable, "How the hell do you survive?"

But Blaze worried if Arik asked the question, Blaze would be a tad too truthful:
"I don't know, and I'm tired.
"

When Blaze pulled the car into a spot in the garage and shoved the gearshift into park, the silence ceased to be deafening and became positively oppressive. Blaze turned off the engine, and he slowly slid the key from the ignition. When Arik still didn't say anything after another long moment, Blaze sighed.

"Look, I can—" Blaze began.

"All right, here's what I propose," Arik said, too loudly for the confinement of the car.

"Okay?" Blaze studied Arik. The ashen coloring had retreated, leaving Arik his usual creamy olive tan. His brow was furrowed, his hair messy from wind and stress tugs at its roots, and he was all-over rumpled and damp. He licked his upper lip. Blaze bit his own.

Arik took a breath. "Stay," he said, and the air rushed from his lungs, his words riding the tide. "Come up and just stay. The room's booked on the company dime, so that's covered, and I'd like to at least buy you dinner after what I did in the... Well. Just after what I did."

Blaze wisely chose that moment not to tell Arik that he'd bought Blaze coffee already, today. That might clue Arik in too soon on how Blaze really did survive so off the grid, and Blaze still didn't know how long he was going to be with this particular Quest. "... And?" Blaze asked.

"And?"

"Seemed like you were going to say more, is all."

Arik nodded. "I'll... I'll tell you what happened at the mini golf course, if!" He held up a finger, the condition hanging between them. "Afterward, you tell me more about you and why you're here. For me."

Blaze pretended to mull it over. He knew he had to agree, because it was the way to stay close to Arik, and until he figured out what the devil he was doing with Arik, Blaze would take every chance he got to be as near as possible. It got complicated when the target resisted or didn't give Blaze a clear way into their lives, and Blaze had to hang out in shrubs or tree houses or shadows, trying to find a way into the target's good graces.

But then, Arik didn't know what he was asking. Blaze knew that to be true, even if Arik would argue the point. Despite it being a day and age wherein the supernatural and the strange were practically in every TV show, movie, and book, when confronted with
actual
strangeness, people panicked. It was less because of the strangeness in question, or so Blaze thought, and more because dancing with the unknown made people realize their reality really was as fragile as they feared it to be. It was hard enough to cope with the daily grind, with jobs and kids; parents who nagged and relationships that didn't work. Interject the weird into any one of those equations, and circumstances grew exponentially more challenging and terrifying. Blaze had seen it time and time... and time... again. People didn't want to meet and to know the real Santa Claus. They just wanted the legend and rational explanations for the presents under the tree.

"Blaze?" Arik asked.

"Yes." Blaze gave Arik a deliberate smile. "Of course I'll stay, and I'll tell you what I can."

Arik's eyes drifted back and forth between each of Blaze's. "Why do I think you're not saying something about wishes and being careful what you ask the genie to give you?"

Blaze snorted. "Because you heard me without me having to waste the breath."

"Point." Arik sighed, let his gaze linger on Blaze for one more moment, and then got out of the car. Blaze followed suit, getting his bag and locking the doors. He dropped the keys into Arik's outstretched palm, and Arik shoved the keys into a pocket. Arik's fingers brushed Blaze's while they waited for the pedestrian light to change, and the sparks flew all over again. Blaze pulled his hand away, jaywalking at a trot. His heart was hammering, his breath coming faster, and you would think he'd been the one who'd had some sort of nightmare vision related to a poor kid getting tortured and shoved into a barrel.

In truth, Blaze hadn't given Craig much thought. There'd been no time. Blaze had been and still was too concerned with Arik. And even on the drive and now, on the walk, Blaze's thoughts didn't drift to the horrors the innocent man had endured. No, they drifted to a time and place and people long ago. To a conversation ... to many conversations ...

To sitting on a wooden plank next to a fire outside a home that was half tent and half shack. Blaze could still smell the smoke, feel the way the heat fought off the chill of the air, and see how the orange and red and yellow swirled together. Like they were playing, laughing ... inviting. Fire had been Blaze's skill since practically birth. His hair had been kissed by it, a thing rarer than rare; held, at least in his family, as a blessing but also a marking. Someone whose destiny was greater than toil and marriage and brats and slow death. The elders never told him to get his hands away from flame. They never chastised him for cradling red-hot stones like little girls would cuddle dolls. Heat didn't hurt him. Fire was his only friend.

And that night, and many nights, it'd been his comfort while his parents howled in the tent behind him. Whatever his mother and his father did with one another that constituted coupling, it must have been utterly magnificent. They both would wail with it, screech and curse in twin tongues of bliss.

Blaze had been scared by it in the beginning, when he'd been too small to comprehend how body parts were complementary to one another. And it'd been his Granmamere who'd sat next to Blaze and the fire, who'd held him and comforted him, and answered him when Blaze had asked why his parents sounded like banshees in the night.

"Two mystics making love feel more than most."

The elevator dinged, and Arik cocked a brow at Blaze, who'd been standing in the lobby, unmoving and forcing Arik to hold the doors.

"Sorry," Blaze said, shaking himself out of the memories. Not a good idea, this mixing his own melancholy with a Quest. The Quest was about the target, not Blaze. Never Blaze. He couldn't think of himself, couldn't focus for an instant on anything but the Quest. He couldn't get involved, invested, committed ... Nothing lasted. It wasn't meant to be that way, and Blaze had long given up hope that ...

No. Stop it.
Blaze marched behind Arik, letting Arik go on ahead and key open the hotel room door. Blaze thought of goats, of Arik's terrified cry, of bad beer and arm-breaking holds. He stepped into the air conditioned comfort of the suite, which was far nicer than the one Blaze had bought with some of the last of his stolen cash. He dropped his bag near the door, threw the metal lock and the deadbolt, and barely had the chance to take a step before Arik was on him. Pushing, slamming, and Blaze's back hit the wall, his feet spreading wide for balance, and Arik laced their fingers together, pushing both of Blaze's hands up and next to Blaze's head. Instantly, the current sang, and Blaze arched with it, managing to transform his cry into a grunt. He shut his eyes, and one hand clung to Arik's while the other feebly tried to get out of the grip.

"Did it ... did you feel this last night?" Arik whispered, his breath blowing hotly over Blaze's lips.

Of course he had, but the tingles had been smaller, gentler, less insistent. More a novelty than a real distraction; something easily writ off as excitement or an unexplained chill. Though, still, Arik's mouth and Arik's hands and Arik's cock sliding inside him ... It'd been better than it had any right to be. It'd been good enough that Blaze had almost come without a stroke to his dick in the gain, but, again, Blaze had thought that to be a sign that he'd been too long without pleasure.

"Did you?" Arik asked again, and his mouth was almost on Blaze's skin, almost kissing Blaze's jawline, nearly teasing Blaze's neck.

"Yeah," Blaze turned his head, bore his throat, and earned the reward: a press of lips, a gentle suck, a long drag of teeth lightly scraping his skin. "Wasn't ... it was ... I ..." Blaze growled at himself. "It wasn't this strong."

"I feel it, too, now, but it's ... like prickles when your foot goes to sleep?" Arik spoke quietly, tightened both his hands on Blaze's. He dropped kisses along the tendon of Blaze's neck. "That how you feel?"

Blaze had to open his eyes and look at one of the points where they were joined to make sure they weren't being surrounded by some sort of electrical storm cloud hell bent on making Blaze try out electro-stimulation play by hook or by crook. He was already hard beneath his jeans, trying not to pant, trying to hold still and not give away exactly how much he did, in fact, feel. "Not exactly," Blaze said.