Chapter Nine, Part I

The View from Here

Adrian wakes slowly this time. There’s no unfamiliar room to place, no confusion about where he is. The hotel curtains are still drawn, but pale morning light finds its way around the edges, enough to see the shape of the room and Jack lying behind him beneath the sheet.

Jack’s arm is still around his waist.

Adrian stays where he is for a moment, listening to the quiet rhythm of Jack’s breathing, feeling the steady warmth of his body against his back. They’re almost exactly where they were when they fell asleep. It feels surprisingly natural.

His own body has returned to its usual morning routine too. The reaction is immediate, firm, impossible to ignore beneath his briefs. Adrian closes his eyes briefly and waits for it to settle before he has to move.

It doesn’t cooperate.

Eventually his bladder makes staying in bed impossible. He lifts Jack’s arm carefully and sits on the edge of the mattress. Behind him, Jack stirs.

Adrian reaches for his glasses on the nightstand, puts them on, and stands.

When he turns around, Jack is watching him.

The glance lasts only a second, but Adrian catches it. He catches most things. Jack’s eyes move slowly over his bare chest and stomach before settling, unmistakably, on the stretched front of his briefs.

There’s no amusement in his expression this morning. Just open, quiet appreciation.

Adrian feels the reaction before he can control it. Jack’s gaze sends another pulse of heat through him, making an already difficult situation considerably worse.

Jack’s eyes come back up to his face. “Morning,” he says, voice still rough with sleep.

Adrian looks at him properly. Jack lies half beneath the sheet, bare-chested, his dark boxers sitting low on his hips. His face is relaxed from sleep, and there’s something almost indecently inviting about the way his large body fills the narrow hotel bed.

His boxers aren’t entirely unaffected either.

Adrian’s gaze lingers.

Jack notices. Neither of them pretends otherwise.

Wanting rises in Adrian, sudden and hard to argue with. For one reckless moment he wants nothing more than to cross the small space between them, pull the sheet away, and kiss every inch of the man lying in his bed.

So he lets his eyes do what his body isn’t allowed to yet — moving slowly over Jack’s chest, down across his stomach, toward the boxers sitting low on his hips. Jack notices every second of it. The answering heat in his eyes sends another surge through Adrian.

It would be so easy to stop thinking.

But the room around them won’t disappear completely. Adrian’s uniform is hanging near the window. His suitcase is nearly packed for the flight home. Somewhere beyond the wall, a colleague might already be awake, capable of hearing every sound they make.

He holds himself still, reluctantly, and takes what the morning allows instead — every glance, every quiet shift beneath the sheet, every second Jack looks at him like he’s the only man in the room worth seeing.

In a few hours they’ll have to separate. But Jack will still be here when Adrian comes back next week. And Adrian knows now that he’ll be coming back for Jack just as surely as Jack will be waiting for him.

“I need the bathroom,” Adrian says eventually.

Jack’s mouth curves into a slow smile. “I remember.”

Adrian points a warning finger at him. “Not one word about the last time.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was admiring the view.”

Adrian feels himself flush, but this time he doesn’t look away. “So was I.”

He takes one step toward the bathroom. Then stops.

Jack is still lying there, half covered by the sheet, his chest bare, the dark hair across it catching the morning light. His boxers sit low on his hips, stretched by an erection he makes no effort to hide.

Every sensible thought tells Adrian to keep walking, close the bathroom door, turn on the shower.

Instead, something less sensible takes hold.

“Move over a little,” he says.

Jack’s eyebrows go up, but he shifts toward the middle of the bed.

Adrian crosses to his side and sits on the edge of the mattress.

“What is it?” Jack asks.

Adrian doesn’t answer right away. He puts one hand on Jack’s thigh.

The muscle beneath his palm is warm and solid. Adrian lets his hand travel slowly upward, following the line of Jack’s leg. As it passes over his hip, his fingers brush against the hard shape straining beneath the fabric.

The contact is brief enough to seem accidental. Neither of them believes for a second that it is.

Jack draws in a deeper breath.

Adrian keeps his eyes on him as his hand moves on, across the firm plane of his stomach and upward.

“What is it?” Jack asks again, more quietly.

Adrian’s palm reaches the dark hair covering Jack’s chest. “I needed to touch you before I tried to be sensible.”

Jack’s expression changes. The trace of humour stays at the edges, but something warmer settles beneath it.

Adrian spreads his fingers against Jack’s chest — the heat of his skin, the roughness of the hair beneath his palm, the steady beat of his heart. He wants to lean down and put his mouth there. Then lower. He wants to kiss every inch of the man in front of him until neither of them remembers the time, the flight, or the colleague who might be awake on the other side of the wall.

Jack covers Adrian’s hand with his own.

For several seconds, neither of them speaks.

It takes more control than Adrian knew he had to pull his hand back.

“You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to seeing you again,” he says.

Jack’s gaze stays on him. “I think I have some idea.”

Adrian stands. His eyes travel over Jack once more, openly this time, more hungry than he can remember feeling for any man in years.

“But for now, I’m going to take a shower,” he says. “Then we’re going out for breakfast. Deal?”

Jack glances briefly at the unmistakable strain beneath Adrian’s briefs before looking back up at his face.

“Deal.”

Adrian turns toward the bathroom before his remaining self-control gives out completely.

Behind him, Jack says his name.

Adrian looks back. Jack is still watching him from the bed.

“Next week,” Jack says.

Adrian holds his gaze. “Next week.”

He steps into the bathroom and pauses before closing the door. He rests both hands on the sink and looks at himself in the mirror.

A small smile touches his mouth.

What the hell is happening to me?

Then he reaches into the shower to turn on the water and decides it may need to be considerably cooler this morning.

“But that wasn’t the only reason.”

“No.”

Jack is quiet for a while.

“I liked the work. I was good at it. But after enough years, every shift started with the possibility that somebody else was about to have the worst day of their life.”

Adrian waits.

“I got tired of the alarms,” Jack says. “Tired of never knowing what was waiting at the other end. And I missed working on things that could usually be put back together.”

“Cars are simpler than people.”

“Most of the time.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Parts of it. The people. Knowing the work mattered.”

Jack rubs his thumb over the label on the bottle.

“I don’t miss taking it home with me.”

Adrian understands there’s more beneath the sentence, but he doesn’t ask Jack to open it all at once.

“So you came back to the garage.”

“Dad talked about retiring for years. Eventually I stopped waiting for him to mean it.”

“Did he actually retire?”

“He comes in every Thursday.”

“That doesn’t sound retired.”

“It isn’t. But now he gives advice without doing any of the work, which seems to suit him.”

Adrian smiles.

The sun has moved lower, and the air off the water is starting to cool. Jack shifts slightly closer, enough that the side of his arm rests against Adrian’s.

“What about five years from now?” Adrian asks.

Jack turns his head. “What about it?”

“Do you think you’ll still be here?”

“At the garage?”

“Here. The shop, the house, this part of California.”

Jack considers it seriously. “Probably.”

“You don’t sound completely certain.”

“I’ve never planned that far ahead in much detail.”

“But you’ve thought about it.”

“Sometimes.”

Jack rests his forearms on his knees.

“I’d like to work less. Not stop, but maybe not spend twelve hours a day at the shop. Hire someone who can handle more without calling me every twenty minutes.”

“Mike?”

“Mike’s good. He just enjoys making his problems communal.”

Adrian laughs softly.

“And the house?” he asks.

“I like the house.”

“That wasn’t quite the question.”

Jack looks out across the water. “I always assumed I’d stay there.”

“And now?”

Jack considers that. “I still think I will. I just don’t know what five years from now looks like.”

Adrian nods slowly. “Fair enough.”

“And outside the shop?” he asks. “What do you want there?”

Jack takes his time answering. “I’d like there to be more.”

“More what?”

“Life, I suppose.”

Jack gives a small shrug, as though the admission makes him uncomfortable.

“I have the shop. Sam and a few friends. The house. It’s a good life.”

“But?”

“But sometimes I get home and realise I haven’t spoken to anyone all day unless they wanted something fixed.”

Adrian says nothing.

“I don’t want to wake up in eight years and find that I let work take everything else by default,” Jack continues. “That’s about as far as I’ve got.”

It’s not a grand confession. That makes it feel more honest.

Adrian looks toward the horizon. “I understand that.”

Jack turns the question back gently. “And you? Five years?”

Adrian lets out a breath. “I’ll probably still be flying.”

“You want to be?”

“Yes. Most days.”

“But fewer flights?”

“Possibly. I say that every year.”

Jack waits.

Adrian watches the waves below them.

“I still like arriving somewhere new, even when I’ve been there before. I like stepping outside the hotel and knowing nobody expects anything from me for a few hours.”

“The walking.”

Adrian looks at him, caught for a moment by the fact that Jack remembers.

“The walking.”

“And then?”

Adrian thinks about his apartment, the suitcase waiting to be unpacked, the silence after long rotations.

“I think I would like my life to feel less temporary.”

Jack doesn’t respond right away.

Adrian continues, because stopping now would make the words sound larger than he intends.

“I’ve spent a long time measuring my life in flights, hotel rooms and days off. It works. I chose it. But sometimes I come home and realise I’ve spent more nights away than in my own bed.”

“Does that bother you?”

“More than it used to.”

Jack’s hand rests on the blanket between them, palm down. After a moment, he turns it over.

Adrian looks at it, then places his own hand in Jack’s.

Jack closes his fingers around his.

They sit that way for a while, looking at the water.

Adrian speaks first. “I should tell you something.”

Jack’s hand tightens slightly. “All right.”

“I’m coming back next week.”