Pairing: Nigel/Woody Rating: R
Words: ~6200
Disclaimer: Don't own these characters
Summary: Not the first time, but soon thereafter.
One.
"Oh, Woody, I'd so love to tell you."
Woody bolted as quickly as he could and shut the door hard behind him. He leaned back against the wall of the hallway for a moment. His face was flushed and he felt a nervous tightness in the pit of his stomach.
He wasn't sure how to feel—Nigel was putting him on the spot in a way that was only half joking. He wondered how far Nigel was willing to take it as he straightened the collar of his trench coat and walked outside.
Later, as he tried to fall asleep, the moment came back to him. I could have handled that better, he thought, but as he went over it in his mind he couldn't think of anything he could have said to take that salacious grin of Nigel's face. Wonder what would have happened if I'd taken the bait, he thought, just leaned in. That would have surprised him.
Trouble was, Woody couldn't imagine what would happen after that. Would Nigel pull back or would he go with the flow? Probably just go with it. Woody suppressed a shudder. Nigel wasn't one to back down from that kind of challenge—he was surprisingly macho about it, in his own twisted way. Woody grinned a little thinking about it. No, Nigel didn't back down from any kind of challenge to his weirdness.
Woody's mind turned next to Jordan, and then from Jordan so the woman Jordan reminded him of. Her. Linda Johnson was her name, a simple and prosaic name for someone who could make him feel just as uncomfortable as Nigel did. She shadowed all Woody's subsequent relationships with her presence. He'd been just twenty, a junior in college, majoring in criminology. She was a local detective who gave a semester-long lecture for honors students. She was probably fifteen years older than him, but that hadn't stopped either of them, nor had her being his teacher. She had dark, thick hair and serious eyes, so unlike all his other girlfriends' mid-western blonde good looks.
Woody disappeared from his own life during the six months of their affair and entered hers—a darker, adult place with many-layered pasts and long silences. And sex. Sex that lasted all night, days of smelling the scent of her skin lingering on his. He was no virgin when they met, but she was a level beyond his experience.
Linda was in complete control of their relationship, both in and out of bed. Some time near the end, long after he had given up hope of hearing "I love you, too" when he said "I love you," she said to him in her throaty voice "Do this again some day, Woody."
"Do what?" he asked with a grin. He started to kiss down her side, and lingered around her hip for a moment.
"Do that again soon," she said with half a grin. "What I meant was, make sure you act on some totally off-the-wall attraction. Like me. Something that doesn't seem right, but is. You won't regret it."
And so when he met Jordan, and felt that same attraction to her dark sad eyes, to her forcefulness, he thought this was finally it. The same things he loved in Linda, but with a vulnerability that would hold them together. Instead it just ended up pulling them apart. Woody drifted off into troubled dreams where it was Jordan who said "I'd so love to tell you," but she said it in Nigel's voice, and Woody woke up in the middle of the night, troubled without knowing why.
***
"Too easy," said Nigel to himself. Really, Nigel was amazed at all that Woody let him get away with—flirtation that would have a lot of red-blooded heterosexual men fleeing for the hills—but Woody kept coming back for more. Nigel was of two minds about it: either Woody was secure enough for the flirting not to undermine him . . . or that adage was true, that every joke has an element of truth.
"You can't always get what you wa-ant," Nigel sang to himself, slightly off key. "But you can try, try and try." He snapped his headphones back on (noise canceling, thank you very much, and worth every penny, even if they did put an unfortunate crease in his hair). He was just playing with Woody, really, he told himself, just having some fun. Not that he'd turn it down if Woody seemed interested, but pining after unavailable people kept a bloke from getting any action. Witness Woody and Jordan. Witness him and Jordan, for that matter. Nigel skipped songs on his iPod until something cheerful came on.
"Oh l'amour . . . broke my heart and now I'm aching for you. Oh l'amour, what's a boy in love supposed to do . . ." Well, the music was cheery even if the lyrics were not.
***
"They're sending you to the Forensics Conference?" Nigel asked incredulous. "Is this some kind of remedial thing? You always seemed to know what you were doing, at least in comparison to some of the cops we have nosing around here."
"Thank you, Nigel," said Woody as he straightened his tie.
"It's a bloody waste of resources," continued Nigel. "We've needed a memory upgrade on the lab's computers for month's and the city's throwing away money sending Woody to a conference."
"I think it's a good idea," said Jordan from down the hallway. "If nothing else, the New York MEs you meet will help you appreciate what you've got here. And anyway, Nigel, don't complain." She started to push by them and hit Nigel on the back. "You're going, too."
"I'm what?" screeched Nigel. "I certainly don't have anything to learn there. At least Woody might finally get some rudimentary anatomy drilled into his thick head—"
"I heard that," called Woody from near the elevators, but Nigel continued.
"—but I've got no reason to be there."
"Relax, Nige," said Jordan with a half-smile. "You're presenting."
Nigel followed her into Macy's office where she had been typing up reports. "What exactly am I presenting?" he asked. "Our new computer systems that are hooked directly into the mass spectrometer so we have near instantaneous look-up of every man made substance? The larvae database—no you'd send Bug for that . . ." he trailed off as he noticed Jordan looking at him impatiently.
"These are cops," she said. "No, you'll be going over basic and slightly less basic procedures for preserving and cataloging physical evidence at crime scenes. Some of these cops come from police departments that don't have quite the resources we do in Boston."
"But . . . but . . . it's in less than a week. What if I had plans?" Nigel protested. "I did have plans." Jordan ignored him and soldiered on.
"Garrett has a pretty standard presentation he likes to give. The slides and notes are on the file-server. If you want to do a practice run, I'm sure Lily would be willing to be an audience."
"How come you don't have to do this?" Nigel asked as she shooed him out the door.
"Seniority, baby."
"Bugger," Nigel said under his breath as he closed the door behind him.
***
"I am not sharing a room with you," said Woody as he barged into the lab a few days later.
"Knock, knock," said Nigel without looking up from his cadaver. "I can't get any peace around here."
"They wouldn't," said Bug. "We're on separate budgets." Woody and Nigel both turned to him in surprise. "What?" he said at their expressions, "Macy made me run the quarterly numbers last week because you had Nigel out on some wild goose chase." Bug turned back to the microscope. "Someone's been spending a large portion of the office supply budget on ergonomically correct mouses for the lab computers." He gave Nigel a look.
Nigel put on his best expression of offended innocence. "I'm sure I had nothing to do with it. Anyway, someone is having you on, Woody." He raised his eyebrow at Bug. "We're on separate budgets."
"You think you sound like me," said Bug, still without looking up, "but you don't." Woody shrugged and nodded at Bug as if to indicate that he had a point, and Nigel sighed deeply.
"Why do I even bother?"
***
Nigel decided to make the best of a bad deal and went down to New York a day early to check out what was new in the SoHo shops and galleries. He'd been neglecting his designs lately, with Jordan and Woody keeping him so busy, but it never hurt to look for new inspiration.
He left his luggage at the hotel on the West Side but didn't bother to check in until after dinner. He wanted to go dancing—New York clubs might not be better than Boston's, he thought loyally, but there were so many more of them. But his first presentation was at 8:00am, so he decided to go to bed early.
Nigel didn't pay too much attention to what the hotel clerk was saying when he checked it; he was too busy noticing the lovely, long-legged redhead giving him the once, twice and three times over from where she sat at the hotel bar. I love New York women, he thought to himself but unfortunately, the man she was waiting for showed up, and her attention was turned to him by the time the clerk was finished coding Nigel's keycard.
The light was already on when Nigel entered the room and he heard water running. He called out and heard a muffled voice . . . singing? A moment later, Woody came out of the bathroom, dripping wet, and naked except for the towel around his neck.
Nigel just blinked for a moment, as his mind struggled to take in the, well, the vision of beauty in from of him. Perfect stomach, perfect arms, long and well-muscled legs. Pale, but still . . . "Perfect," he breathed, before he recovered enough to flash his usual grin.
"What are you doing here?" Woody asked, hastily wrapping his towel around his waist.
"This is the room they gave me," said Nigel, forcing his eyes up to Woody's face. He twirled the keycard between his fingers for a moment then sighed. "I'll call the front desk and find out what happened."
"I'm calling the office," said Woody.
But the front desk was no help, and although Nigel was somewhat distracted sneaking glances at the well-toned muscles in Woody's back, Nigel was able to determine that yes, they had been booked into the same room, and no, there weren't any other rooms available.
"They did this on purpose," said Woody after he closed his cell phone. "Separate budgets, my ass."
And a lovely ass it is, Nigel just managed not to say.
"Fine, there's two beds. I get this one," said Woody. He glanced at Nigel whose gaze had wandered down Woody's torso again. "And I'm putting on a shirt."
"If you must," said Nigel, half a beat too late.
Two.
Nigel gave a good lecture, Woody found, if a little too full of his favorite witticisms. And how someone flirts with an entire audience, thought Woody, I'd love to know. After attending Nigel's first presentation, Woody had a full day of other speakers: talks on lifting fingerprints from unlikely surfaces, an obnoxiously thorough review of Miranda laws, and a case study of a truck stop murder.
At six, when the last workshop let out, he went to have a beer with some of the DC detectives he'd befriended during the day. One of the women detectives surprised him by asking if Nigel was single. Woody raised his eyebrows for a moment, and said that he thought probably so.
Later, he went back to the room and called Jordan. "You surviving without me?" he asked when she picked up her cell phone.
"Well, you know me," she answered vaguely.
"Sorry I had to miss you this weekend," he said. They'd sort of had plans to go walking around Gloucester when the department decided to send him to the conference instead. "Next weekend maybe? What do you think?"
"Oh no," she said, not sounding particularly concerned. "I told Garrett I'd help him with some inventory next weekend."
"All weekend?" Woody asked.
"'Fraid so," she answered. Woody considered calling "bullshit", but decided that wouldn't accomplish anything but widening the rift between them. If she really wanted to see him, she would have been able to make the time.
He slammed his cell phone shut with more force than necessary as Nigel came bouncing into the room. "Sorry I'm late," he said, "but there was this lovely blonde detective who wanted to know so much about what MEs do. It was all I could do to get away."
Woody held up his hand to try to stem the flow of words. "Late? Nigel, you and I don't have any plans. Go find your . . . blonde or something."
"Ah-hah. That's what you think, however, I am now the proud owner of two VIP passes to the FIT spring fashion show after-party." He pulled two glossy cards out of his back pocket with a flourish and splayed them out on the hotel desk like a winning poker hand.
"I don't know," said Woody, "I think I might just turn in early—wait—fashion show? As in models?"
"Models, designers, and all manner of college-age lovelies," said Nigel with a raised eyebrow. "Got them from an instructor friend of mine. Not bad, eh?"
"Not bad at all," said Woody as he grabbed for one of the passes. "What does VIP mean for this?"
"Nothing, really, just means we get into the party. Don't worry, though," he said, "I know people."
***
"How long, exactly, does it take you to get ready?" Woody asked an hour later. Nigel had disappeared into the bathroom, and aside from the sound of the shower and then the hairdryer, Woody had no idea what was going on.
"Gotta look good, love," came Nigel's voice through the closed door. "Plus, hotel hairdryers are for shit. I can't believe I forgot mine." A few minutes later he came out wearing black leather pants and a slinky button-down shirt that seemed black but under certain light turned the deep red of dried blood. It was unbuttoned several buttons too far, in Woody's estimation, but he had to admit that the look suited Nigel.
"Okay, let's go," said Woody, rubbing his hands together.
"You're wearing that?" asked Nigel, incredulous.
"What? What's wrong with it?" replied Woody, a little defensive. Nigel walked toward him and Woody backed up a little.
"Relax love," said Nigel, "this is what I do," he said. "Now, can we lose the jacket? You're not going to be interrogating a manacled suspect. At least not—" Nigel smirked, "—right away." Woody rolled his eyes, but took off his sport coat.
"That's a little better," Nigel continued. "The trousers are bad, but that's something we're going to have to live with." Nigel walked around behind Woody and un-tucked his shirt from the maligned pants. "Mmmm, you're going to have to take off the undershirt." Woody rolled his eyes again, but complied.
"Mmmm," said Nigel again. He stpped in close to Woody and undid the top two buttons of his shirt.
"Okay!" said Woody a little too loudly. "I think that's just about enough."
"Just trying to help, love," said Nigel. "You need it."
"Yeah, help with what?"
"These aren't Boston girls. I love a man in a suit, but you would have been too . . . preppy. Fratty."
"Hey, I was in a fraternity," said Woody.
"Yes," said Nigel sadly, "we all have skeletons in our closets, but it's really not best to advertise them."
"Okay," said Woody dubiously, "as long as all this is really for the girls."
"Methinks the lady doth protest too much," Nigel quoted. He stepped in close again and mussed Woody's hair a little. "Don't worry, they'll love you."
In the club, a gorgeous Latina woman greeted Nigel with an enthusiastic kiss on the lips. She had light coffee skin and honey blonde hair. Probably dyed, but on her it looked incredible. A bemused Woody watched Nigel return the kiss with vigor. Even when Nigel talked about women, it was still hard for Woody to believe it.
"Maria, this is my friend Woody," said Nigel. "Woody—Maria." Maria kissed Woody's cheeks then turned back to Nigel.
"Friend?" she asked skeptically.
"Not like that, love," answered Nigel. He wrapped his arms around Maria from behind and nuzzled her neck for a moment. "Let's introduce Woody around," he said.
Maria nodded decisively, and took Woody's arm, leading him deeper into the club. The music and lights were overwhelming, and everywhere Woody looked he saw girls dancing and drinking and laughing and looking like they belonged in some movie, not standing in the same room with him. "Woody, this is Francesca," Maria said, "She just completed her masters' portfolio. Make sure she has a good time." Francesca was tall and curvy with long, loose curls and huge dark eyes. Woody didn't often get to talk to women this glamorous, and he swallowed hard.
"Congratulations on your portfolio," said Woody. "Can I buy you a drink." Francesca's eyes traveled up and down Woody's body for a moment.
Then she called out, half to him, half to the bartender behind them, "vodka martini."
"Make that two," yelled Woody over the music. "You could be a model," said Woody after a moment of waiting for their drinks. Francesca just looked at him. "Sorry, you must get that all the time," he said, chagrinned.
"Models are dumb and skinny," she said in an accent Woody couldn't place. "I am neither." Woody was about to beat a hasty retreat and see if Nigel knew any girls who weren't too beautiful to talk to, when Francesca reached down and took his hand.
"Let's dance," she said. She downed her martini in one gulp and Woody did the same. Francesca was soft in his arms, and her hair smelled delicious. After a few songs, she reached up with a cool hand and pulled his face down to hers. When Woody came up for air, he saw Nigel across the room, dancing with Maria, laughing and whispering to her. When they turned with the music, Woody saw that Maria had her hands tucked firmly into the pockets of Nigel's trousers.
***
The evening wore on. Woody bought many rounds of drinks until his cash ran out, and his head was swimming. Near midnight Francesca and Maria went off to the bathroom, and Woody found himself talking to Nigel again. From across the room, Francesca looked a little bit like Jordan.
"It's not going to work," he said to Nigel, with the exaggerated diction of the very drunk. "Jordan's the only woman I want right now." Nigel looked at him for a moment, listening less to what he was saying than how he was saying it.
"Bloody hell," said Nigel after a moment. "You're drunk."
"No, I'm not," said Woody, and drank the rest of the vodka in the glass in front of him.
"You're drunk," said Nigel again, "and in am moment you'll be too drunk for any cabby to risk you puking in his car. I'm getting you out of here." Nigel said a hasty goodbye to Maria and Francesca, who looked pouty, and poured Woody into a cab. "Just focus on the meter," he told Woody, when Woody looked like he might not make it back to the hotel, and Woody focused blearily on the changing red numbers.
"She doesn't love me," said Woody after a moment, and the cab drove smoothly uptown. "She doesn't love me and she never will." He paused a moment. "Lots of girls want me. France—whatever—she wanted me. She would have taken me home. Hell, you want me."
"Not right now I don't," said Nigel acidly, but he saw how distraught Woody was and relented. "You can't always get what you want," he said quietly. "And Jordan? She'll love you only when she can't have you." Nigel sighed, and dragged Woody up to their room and put him to bed.
Sometime during the night Nigel heard Woody get up to go to the bathroom. Nigel was drunk enough himself that he didn't think anything of it when someone snuggled up behind him in bed. He simply relaxed back into the strong arm flung over him and fell back asleep.
Nigel woke up next to morning light coming in around the curtains, and the feeling of someone's morning hard-on pressed into his lower back. He went over the night before in his head a moment, and debated sneaking out of Woody's embrace before he awoke himself and started freaking out. Then he grinned; it's his arm around me, he thought.
Nigel felt Woody shift behind him, and draw him close. Then Woody froze. Now it comes, thought Nigel. He had a wicked urge to turn around a face Woody and give him a nice good morning kiss, but waking up with his arms around Nigel was probably traumatic enough to the poor boy's heterosexual identity without Nigel twisting the knife.
Suddenly, Woody sprang out of bed, and Nigel heard a crash behind him. Nigel rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow. "Did you have nice dreams, love?" Nigel asked. Woody sputtered for a moment, and looked a little queasy. "Calm down," said Nigel, "you got drunk, passed out, and at some point got up and got into the wrong bed. End of story."
Woody sat down on the other bed and put his head in his hands. "Oh God," he said after a moment, "I was really bad last night, wasn't I." He raised his head gingerly. "Thanks for taking care of me."
"That's what friends are for," said Nigel.
"Oh God," said Woody, running his fingers over his forehead and wincing. "I feel like shit. I'm going to take a shower. And Nigel, can we not mention this—" he gestured to Nigel's rumpled bed—"to anyone?"
"My lips are sealed," said Nigel. And after Woody had gone into the bathroom he grumbled, "I just wish there were something to tell."
Three.
Woody was in no shape to go to any workshops that morning, so they decided to drive back early. Nigel had a train ticket, but one look at Woody told him that they'd be better off if Nigel drove. Woody barely put up a fight about Nigel driving, which made Nigel worry about him all the more. During the two hours Woody snoozed and Nigel listened to his iPod, refraining from singing along with some difficulty.
Around
Nigel turned off his music when he saw Woody alert and looking around. "Feeling any better," he asked solicitously.
"I've been worse," said Woody. Then, after a moment he shut his eyes in pain, "ugh, but not much." He looked out the windows for a few minutes. "It's really coming down, huh? Wonder if it'll stick around enough for skiing this weekend."
"Probably not," said Nigel. "Bloody Massachusetts Springs. In
"So what's with you and Maria?" Woody asked after a few minutes of silence.
"Please," said Nigel, "a gentleman doesn't kiss and tell."
Woody snorted. "Yeah, well this is a long drive, and by the looks of it, getting longer."
"We're friends," said Nigel after a moment. "Sometimes more, but never less."
"Huh," said Woody. "I've never been able to stay friends with an ex. Too awkward."
"Well, she's not really an ex."
"Like a friends-with-benefits-thing?" Woody asked. Then, with a grin, he sang "'If you can't beeeee with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with.'"
"That's the basic idea," agreed Nigel. "I didn't peg you as a
"It is, a little. Anyway, I never got that to work either; it's always been all or nothing." Now it was Nigel's turn to snort.
"So I've noticed," he said. "You should give it a try sometime."
"I have tried," protested Woody. "There was this woman, Linda . . ." The weird snowy light was oddly suited to confidences. "It was supposed to be like that—easy and casual. But instead . . . well, you know the story. Young guy, older woman. I fall hard, she gets bored and leaves." He stared out the window for a few minutes. "I did anything she wanted. Anything."
Nigel could have said something; his own string of lost loves and stupid sacrifices stretched back across the years, and his flippancy was hard earned, but he wasn't sure how welcome that would be. Woody is still so young, he thought.
"Got any music in this death trap?" Nigel asked. Woody flung him a dirty look and dug under his seat and pulled out a thick book of CDs.
"Hmm, well, I've only got half of my Kinks CDs in here, and I've got a feeling you're not a Dave Matthews fan . . ."
Nigel fake-shuddered. "You've got that right. But the Kinks? You surprise me Detective Hoyt." Nigel caught Woody grinning out of the corner of his eye.
"Kinks it is, then." Woody slipped the CD into the CD player—the one thing on his car that hadn't passed its tenth birthday years ago.
"Of course, if we're talking British invasion, I like the Alan Parson's Project better," said Nigel, once the opening strains of "You Really Got Me Now" filled the car.
"Of course you do," said Woody. "But they'd never have made it without the Kinks coming first."
"Fair point," agreed Nigel.
They happily wrangled about music for the rest of the drive, even while traffic slowed and a false early night fell as the storm clouds thickened above, and the snow grew deeper on the road. When they finally reached the reached the streets of
The moment they got off the highway Nigel's phone started ringing and then Woody's followed soon after.
"Body in the Commons," said Nigel after they hung up. "What's yours?"
"Same."
Woody turned the car toward the park. A few skaters were gamely trying to skate through the snow, but they went slowly and stumbled frequently over the snow building up on the ice.
"Just drive over the grass," said Woody.
A cop stopped them a dozen yards from the body, and Nigel pulled his leather jacket tight around his shoulders, hoping the snow wouldn't do it too much damage. The body was that of a young man, and from the set of the cold in its flesh, Nigel was pretty sure this had happened right after the snow started.
A few feet away Woody talked to the cop. "You're the only one here?" he asked.
"Yeah," said the cop. "The day was slow and they're talking about closing the roads. The chief sent home all except a few of us who live downtown. This freaky weather—only happens every few years, but it can shut down the city." As he spoke the wind picked up around them and drove a blast of wet snow into Woody's face.
Woody came over to where Nigel was kneeling over the corpse and squatted next to him. "Cause of death?" he asked.
"There are some stab wounds, but I'm not sure that did it," he said. "Not enough blood, and it doesn't look like anything vital was hit. It's hard to say with the cold, but I'm pretty sure if he'd bled to death there would be more. We'll have to get him back to the lab, but I think we're going to find that the cause of death is hypothermia, aggravated by the wounds." Nigel bent down over the body again, and felt the thinnest whisper of breath coming from the body.
"Woody!" he yelled against the rising wind, "Get help! I think he's still alive." The shot came out of nowhere, before Woody had a chance to stand up and open his phone. It came whistling in between them, a high-pitched whining that cut through the roar of the wind. It slammed into the victim's head and sent bits of bone, blood and brain flying out. Nigel sprang back in time, but Woody got a face full of hot gore spraying at him.
"Shit!" he yelled, wiping frantically at his face. Nigel sprang up and gave full chase to the shooter, but all he could see of him was a dark silhouette streaking across the snowy park. After a particularly daring leap, Nigel's shoes slipped and he lost the man from sight among the narrow streets of the
Back at the now definitely dead man, Woody was kneeling in the snow, trying, with some difficulty, to remove the fragments of blood and bone that had coated his face and hair. "This is disgusting," he said dully. "You never mention how sticky blood is."
"Usually I wear gloves," said Nigel, "And I don't generally take a bath in it either. Legends aside." His quips fell on deaf ears, and Woody looked like he was on the verge of passing out. "Come on," he said, hauling Woody up by the shoulders, "let's call the van, and get you back to the station."
They stayed until Bug and Macy arrived with the van and loaded up the corpse. At that point Nigel and Woody had become so cold that they were taking turns sitting in the car, but the meager radiator couldn't keep up with the growing winds. "Bugger," said Nigel to himself. "It's fucking April. This is ridiculous."
"Wait," said Woody, as Nigel started to climb into the back of the ME van. "You've gotta give a statement about the shooter at the station. Sorry." So Nigel bid bug and Macy goodbye and went around to the driver's side of Woody's car to drive them to the police station. Inside the precinct Nigel got himself and Woody cups of the execrable police coffee, but it tasted like heaven after the cold. In typical cop fashion, Woody was a terrible typist, so Nigel typed up his own report on the computer, printed out a statement and signed it while Woody attempted to clean the blood and bits out of his hair. Nigel was nervier than he'd thought—the stress of being shot at told in his unsteady hands.
Woody came back into his office when Nigel was nearly finished typing. "God, this stuff won't come out. Not with hand soap and paper towels, anyway," he grumbled. "I'm going home. Can I drop you off anywhere?"
"Sure. Home," agreed Nigel.
A few blocks out of the station's parking lot, Woody started pounding on the steering wheel. "Shit shit shit shit shit!" he said, uncreatively. "The super was turning off the water for maintenance today. With the pipes always crapping out in bad weather, there's no way I'll have hot water. This day just gets better and better."
"You can use mine," said Nigel wearily. He was very much looking forward to bundling up in a bathrobe and blanket, getting a hot cup of tea, and putting on a Buffy episode. The weekend had had its moments, but really Nigel just wanted it to be over. Still, he couldn't put Woody out in the cold.
Woody was stumbling and shaky when Nigel helped him up the two floors to his apartment. The abuses Woody had heaped on his body over the past twenty-four hours were starting to catch up with him. "Are you going to be okay?" Nigel asked.
"Yeah, just need to clean up," said Woody thickly, and Nigel looked at him, worried. After Woody showered he realized that one of the bits of bone had lacerated his forehead, and the hot water caused it to bleed again. "Do you have a first aid kit?" called Woody from the bathroom.
"Of course," yelled back Nigel. He got some gauze and tape and after knocking lightly on the bathroom door, went in. Woody had put back on his pants, but he still had his shirt off, and he was looking at the cut on his forehead in the mirror.
"Let me look at it," said Nigel. Woody turned around and leaned back against the sink. "It's not very deep at all," he said after looking at it for a moment, "so I don't think you'll need stitches, but since it's a head wound, it will bleed a lot." He cut a long narrow piece of gauze and some tape and started to clean the wound on Woody's forehead.
Being so close to Woody in the warm, moist air of the bathroom reminded Nigel again, that he'd just put his life in danger. He tried to focus just on the cut to avoid looking at the sweat beaded on Woody's upper lip, to keep from thinking about the heat from his body. In his days British Navy, there had always been some way to manage post-battle randiness—some willing soul in the same straights. But here in the civilian world, things weren't that easy.
Their faces were only inches apart. Get a grip, Nigel thought to himself, he's straight. Just put the bandage on him and send him home. Nigel reached up to touch Woody's forehead again, and said softly, "Never mind, it's stopped."
Exactly how it happened, Nigel could hardly remember, after, but it seemed that Woody grabbed him by the back of the neck with a strength Nigel wouldn't have credited after seeing him stumble up the stairs, and kissed him hard. Nigel barely hesitated a moment before kissing him back, and letting his hands run up that well-muscled back he'd been itching to touch.
I shouldn't be doing this, thought Nigel, as his hands and lips disobeyed him. He's straight, he's shocky, he's injured, he's hungover, he's in love with
And then he couldn't think at all, as Woody's hand ran down over the front of his pants. Nigel undid his fly and Woody's as quickly as possible, some part of him knowing that Woody wouldn't be quite as fast as him, and any delay might derail them. He pushed Woody's trousers just down over his hips and felt the same done to him, and then a hot slick hand was around his cock, and his was around Woody's and they both came fast and hard until Woody collapsed back against the mirror, sweating and his pulse hammering in his neck.
Nigel waited for just a moment unsure of what to do next. He'll bolt. He'll start saying "Oh my God, what have I done?" He'll blame me. Nigel's head rested on Woody's chest, but as Nigel stiffened and started to move away, he noticed that Woody did not say anything, did not try to move out of Nigel's sticky embrace. Instead he tugged on Nigel's neck, as if . . . as if to pull him forward for more.
"Guess I'll need another shower," said Woody, a little unsteadily, but cheerful enough, and he finished the job of stripping himself that Nigel had begun. Nigel looked at himself in the mirror for a moment, and took a deep breath. I guess I should know an invitation when I hear one, he thought, having offered up so many of my own, and then he joined Woody in the shower.
The next morning . . .
Bug came into the lab and heard the soft sound of Nigel whistling as he rearranged the cables in the back of the computer. "Why are you so cheery?" he said suspiciously. "You just got shot at."
"It's a new day," said Nigel, standing up. "The sun is shining, birds are chirping."
"They are not. The city's come to a standstill. There will be 50 unidentified frozen bodies coming in here in the next hour," said Bug sourly.
"At least they won't stink then," said Nigel. He walked over and hugged Bug's shoulders quickly. "Look on the bright side." Nigel walked down the hall whistling. Woody had left some time during the night, but much later. It might never happen again, he thought, but there are worse ways to spend a weekend.
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