“And then you fell on your ass.”
Before anyone could answer, the alarm shut off just as suddenly as it had started.
They all stood in the ensuing silence, Ty’s harsh breathing really the only sound to be heard.
Julian moved his arm, rotating his shoulder, and Ty allowed his hand to go with the motion.
“I’m fine,” Julian grumbled.
“Liar,” Cameron said. “Should we check to see if there’s a real fire?”
“Call the front desk,” Ty suggested. He was still frowning, and he looked oddly haunted by the events of the evening. Julian’s words about having flashbacks now seemed like more than mockery between the two men.
Zane moved to the phone and called the front desk. After a moment of listening, he hung up. “There’s a short somewhere. They’ve got people coming to fix it.”
“How long will that take?” Cameron asked, reluctantly pulling away from Julian to let him work out the kink in his shoulder. He’d no more than gotten the last word out when the alarm shrieked again for about five seconds and quit.
“Answers that question,” Zane muttered.
Ty sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed at his eyes. Julian was forced to take a step closer, hovering over him and looking mutinous.
“Sit down and chill,” Zane told Julian. “Or I can break out the bungee cords and fasten your wrists to your ankles. It’s great for the circulation.”
Julian turned his head to look at Zane, and Cameron recognized the look in his eyes. His lover was about to kill something. A glance at Zane revealed the same look, and it made Cameron very nervous. Zane and Julian seemed far too much alike for his comfort.
“Why don’t you cuff him to me?” Cameron asked.
“Because you’re not a resistant force.”
“A what?”
“You’re not exactly trying to keep him here,” Zane said as he paced over to the window and looked out through the gauzy curtains.
“But he….” Cameron stopped, looked up at the intensity on Julian’s face, and then nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
Ty still had his head down, rubbing at his eyes. He sniffed but offered nothing to the conversation.
Zane looked over his shoulder at them, his eyes flickering from person to person. “It’s 4 a.m. Get some more sleep,” he said before walking past the bed to the light switch. “Come on, Cam.”
“But Zane—” Cameron started.
Julian’s hand reached out to catch at him in the dark. “Cam,” he said in a low voice.
Cameron turned back to his lover.
Julian pulled him closer, pressing his lips to Cameron’s ear. “It’s okay,” he whispered. His words were followed by another blast of the malfunctioning fire alarm. Ty gave a jerk.
Cameron winced as he felt Julian’s arm jerked. “All right,” he said.
Julian nodded and let go of him. “Good night, love.”
“Oh God,” Ty grunted.
In a fit of frustration, Cameron huffed at Ty. “Don’t you have someone who misses you? Someone you miss?” The alarm cut off again.
Ty looked up at him, and there was an odd flash in his eyes as the light reflected in them. It instantly made Cameron nervous. Ty stood to tower over him. “You know what? I do,” Ty said. “And the longer you two f**k around and draw this out, the longer I’m away, the longer I go without being with the person I love. So how about you take your goddamn simpering advice on romance and stick it up your ass!”
Cameron felt a pang of both shame and pain in the face of Ty’s blunt honesty and obvious frustration. He’d never thought about the lives the two agents had been pulled away from to do this. He backed up until he bumped into something, only to turn around and find out he’d run into Zane, who was watching his partner, a slight smile pulling at his lips. Cameron shook his head and detoured around him, unable to say a thing in response.
Zane flicked the light off, and the room fell into silence. As soon as Cameron settled on the bed, the alarm cranked to life again. He curled up on his side, pulling a pillow over his head.
JULIAN waited until Zane had shut out the light again. Then he sat gingerly on the edge of the bed next to Ty. He was hesitant to speak at all; the agent’s outburst had caught him just as off guard as it had Cameron. He absolutely loathed the moments where enemies became men with emotions and feelings.
“So,” he said awkwardly, wincing in the dark.
Ty sighed loudly. The silence stretched on until Julian was fairly certain that both Cameron and Zane had dozed off once more.
Julian strained for something to say to the man that would border on polite, or even civil. But he was still fighting the almost overwhelming urge to throttle him. He cleared his throat and shifted, taking Ty’s arm with him as he turned. “The last time I found myself handcuffed to someone and we had to sleep, we found it was actually more comfortable—”
“To sleep on your sides on the opposite arm, yeah,” Ty said with a solemn nod.
Julian found himself staring in the low light, surprised. “You and your partner, you’re not really the average field agents, are you?”
“Zane is not an average anything,” Ty said, voice soft and hoarse.
Julian frowned, confused by the answer at first, but he realized what Ty was doing. The man was as good at avoiding an answer as Julian was. Only he did it with such good ole boy, backwater sincerity that it probably worked better than Julian’s methods.
“I believe I’ve just discovered why you and I hate each other so much.”
Ty snorted.
“I’m serious. You and I were the same person at one juncture. You took one path, I another.”
“Are you saying you’re my evil twin?” Ty asked. His voice was too tired to have any sarcasm in it.
Julian pursed his lips thoughtfully.
“Fuck it, just…. You take this side, I’ll take that one, see if we can keep our arms from going to sleep.”
Julian lay down obediently, disturbed and distracted by his new realizations. Outwardly he and Zane Garrett were very alike. But perhaps deeper down, Julian and Ty Grady were more alike than either man was comfortable with.
As if to accentuate his thoughts, the fire alarm blared to life again, and he and Ty both shot up in the bed before either could curtail the instinct. They sat in bed together, tense and looking at each other in the darkness, until the alarm cut off.
“I hate Ohio,” Ty muttered before he flopped back to the bed.