Shane beside him. The man sat with his chair canted to the
side, almost facing Vic so he was halfway beneath the shade of
the umbrella, and he might have been looking at Vic from
behind his sunglasses, but he might have been simply staring
off into the distance or even asleep.
“What?” he asked as soon as Vic looked at him.
“You okay?” Vic asked softly.
“I feel like I have the Grand Canyon etched into my back,”
Shane said gruffly. “Though I can’t say I regret how it got
there,” he mused with a lazy smile.
Vic wished that he could see the other man’s eyes. A grin
from Shane was never complete without the sparkle of his eyes.
“You look happy,” he murmured to Vic after several
moments.
“Shouldn’t I be though?” Vic asked with a grin, thinking of
the night before and how he didn’t mind how sore he was this
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morning. Just the thought of Shane inside him, holding him
close as he gasped his name still made Vic grin like a fool.
Shane didn’t answer. He just nodded his head and turned
to look at Owen as the younger man let out a squawk and
flailed a little, trying to get away from a large wave that
splashed at his calves.
“Jesus, you guys said the water was nice!” he cried as he
came thumping back up to sit on his towel.
“It is nice. Look how beautiful it is!” Vic said contentedly.
“It’s like fucking ice water!” Owen griped as he flopped
onto his back and closed his eyes against the sun’s rays.
“It’s not that bad once you get past the breakers,” Shane
said in a low mumble that made Vic shiver with delight for
some reason. Vic could sit and listen to Shane talk for hours if
the other man were so inclined.
“So what have you two been up to, huh?” Owen asked
lazily as he reached his hand out blindly for his beer. Vic
leaned forward and picked it up, placing it in his hand for him.
“Thanks,” Owen said happily.
“Uh-huh,” Vic responded as he leaned back and stretched
his toes out into the sand. He watched Owen drink without
ever lifting his head, and wondered how in the hell the younger
man did it without spilling it up his nose like Vic always
managed to do.
“Oh, you know,” Shane answered. “Old man stuff. Sit on
the beach. Drink. Go inside. Drink. Come back out. Drink. Go
to bed at nine o’clock ’cause you’ve run out of beer to drink.”
“Sounds heavenly,” Owen said with a grin.
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“It certainly was,” Shane murmured softly, and Vic cut a
sidelong glance at him and frowned. Shane either had his eyes
closed now or was ignoring the concerned look Vic shot him.
This wasn’t going quite as well as he’d hoped. Shane had
deflected Vic’s attempts at talking quite easily, and Vic didn’t
plan to disrespect Shane’s obvious wishes to keep things quiet
by discussing them in front of Owen.
Several hours and six-packs of beer later, Vic was
surprised to find that he had fallen asleep on the beach. He
was going to feel like burnt toast by nightfall. He raised his
head to find that Owen was facedown on his towel beneath the
umbrella, and that Shane was nowhere in sight. Vic sat up and
looked around, glancing up at the sky and estimating the time
to be around four in the afternoon.
“Hey,” he said groggily, kicking sand at Owen and earning
a perturbed glare for his trouble.
“Jackass,” Owen said matter-of-factly.
“Where’d Shane go?” Vic asked as he eased himself to his
feet. He wasn’t as burned as he thought he would be, but he
was definitely stiff from sitting in the little chair for too long.
“Went inside about an hour ago. Said he was burning.”
“Should have woken me,” Vic mumbled as he looked up at
the cottage and wondered if Shane was even then looking out
at them. The glare on the sliding glass was too strong to see
anything.
“You going in?” Owen asked as he got to his knees and
stretched a little before sitting back on his haunches and
“Yeah. Think I’m done cooking for today,” Vic answered as
he stretched and then yawned widely.
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“Wanna go for a walk or something?” Owen asked. “I’m
getting twitchy.”
“Why don’t we go in, see what’s for lunch… dinner…
whatever…. See if Shane wants to go too, huh?” Vic suggested
distractedly as he gathered up his stuff.
“Okay,” Owen responded, his tone hesitant and rather
curious. “Are you okay?” he asked as he stood and brushed off
the errant sand on his arms and chest.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Just… you seem off,” Owen observed as he looked Vic up
and down. “Relaxed. You’re not high, are you?” he asked flatly.
“That gets really awkward for your law enforcement friends,” he
advised.
“No,” Vic answered with a laugh. “It’s a vacation. You relax
on vacations.”
“Uh-huh,” Owen responded disbelievingly. He looked at Vic
for another minute and then shrugged in acceptance of the
answer anyway. “And what happened to Shane’s back?” he
asked as he bent to pick up his towel. “He looks like he spent
the night with a Singapore whore,” he said carelessly as he
shook his towel and began folding it haphazardly.
Vic barely managed to cover his surprised laugh with a
cough as he dealt with the umbrella. He covered his mouth and
lowered the material of the umbrella around himself so Owen
wouldn’t see as he tried to compose himself. When he was sure
his voice wouldn’t tremble with laughter, he said, “Water’s
rough. We think he did it when he got pulled under yesterday,”
he lied handily as he took the umbrella down and tossed the
pieces aside.
He glanced up at Owen to see if the story would fly,
knowing that if Owen asked outright about him and Shane
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then he wouldn’t lie to the man about that. He didn’t want to
lie about Shane. It felt too right to have to lie about it.
He was startled to find Owen watching him with narrowed
eyes.
“What?” Vic asked with an innocent shrug as he turned
away to pick up the cooler.
“Something fishy,” Owen said with a suspicious wag of his
finger. “I’ll figure it out, though,” he said confidently. “You
cagey bastards can try to snuff it all you like. I’ll figure it out
anyway,” he said playfully as he grabbed up what remained of
their things and began hauling everything toward the relative
shelter of the little deck.
Vic watched him go, smiling slightly.
“Does this sofa pull out?” Owen asked as he looked down at
the couch and cocked his head to the side. He poked it with his
foot and shook his head dubiously.
“
No way are you sleeping there,” Vic said immediately.
“That thing would kill your back.”
“I’m not taking over one of your beds, though,” Owen said
with a frown as he looked over at Shane and Vic, who both still
sat at the little dining table staring at a jigsaw puzzle morosely.
“You can have the back room. That mattress is hard as
brick, just like you like it,” Vic told him as he picked up a piece
and turned it over and over trying to figure out what the hell it
was. He looked up at Shane when he felt the other man’s eyes
on him, and his eyes widened at the pointed stare Shane was
giving him. “Hmm?”
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“Why don’t you two take the good mattress?” Shane
suggested as he plucked the piece from Vic’s hand, looked at it
briefly, and then placed it immediately into a hole near the
corner of the puzzle. “You didn’t get enough puzzle time as a
kid,” Shane told him off-handedly. “You’re shit at this.”
“Yeah,” Vic agreed distractedly as he picked up another
piece.
“By ‘good mattress’ you mean soft, I assume?” Owen asked
as he came back over and sat down, picking up a piece of the
puzzle and frowning at it. Shane nodded wordlessly and Owen
said, “Can’t do soft. Hurts my back sometimes. Who will I be
displacing with the hard mattress?”
“No one,” Vic answered immediately, not worried that it
would sound suspicious. “I couldn’t take more than a couple
nights on it.”
“Ah, I see!” Owen said sagely with a nod of his head and a
wink as he placed the piece into its rightful spot. “Been double
bunking, huh?”
“It was that or sleep on the beach with the crabs,” Vic said
wryly as Shane hummed thoughtfully over a new piece. “So I
just picked a crab that didn’t come with sand,” he added with a
snicker. Shane glared at him briefly, and Vic added, “Besides,
Shane’s been keeping the nightmares away.”
“Nightmares?” Owen asked in confusion.
“He’s been trying those melatonin pills,” Shane said
without looking up.
“Ooh, yeah, those things can give you some wicked real
dreams. That sucks that they’re bad, man,” Owen said
distractedly as he placed another piece.
“Not so bad anymore,” Vic said as he looked from Owen’s
bowed head to Shane’s. They were both chewing on their lips in
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thought, their heads resting in one hand as the other held a
puzzle piece, mirroring each other, and Vic smiled fondly at
them both. He was glad he hadn’t let his irrational anger drive
Owen away. He was even gladder, though, that he and Shane
had discovered something down here, something that would be
special if they let it.
Shane looked up at him and blinked when he found Vic’s
eyes on him, and he cocked his head and frowned a little.
“I think I’m ready to turn in,” Vic said with a slow smile,
not looking away from him.
Shane looked away, his gaze focusing on the glass tabletop
briefly before glancing at Owen. “You sure you don’t want the
good bed?” he asked uncertainly, looking at them both in turn.
Vic raised an eyebrow at him, wondering why he wasn’t
just taking the offer to go to bed and running with it.
“You two take it,” Owen said with finality as he looked up
at Shane with wide blue eyes. “No point in either of you
sleeping on a hard mattress when you have to share a bed
anyway, you know?”
“Right,” Shane said slowly.
“Who the hell buys a puzzle with popcorn on it anyway?”
Owen asked as he stared at another piece and turned it end
over end.
Shane snorted and shook his head, trying not to smile.
Vic stood and stretched. “I’m gone. Too much sun and
beer,” he said as he stepped away from the table and started
for the front bedroom.
“Gonna finish this,” Shane said thoughtfully as he
watched Vic. Vic looked at him long and hard and then nodded.
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“Night, Vic,” Owen said without looking up from the
popcorn puzzle.
Vic smiled at them both and then disappeared into the
bedroom. He was so tired he didn’t think he would be able to
stay awake until Shane got there. Hopefully, though, Shane
would wake him. They desperately needed to have a
discussion, and it was high time that Vic told Shane how he
thought he felt. The word “love” might not yet enter the picture,
but the words “desire” and “need” certainly would.
Vic heard the heated argument from the bedroom even before
he was completely awake, and it took him quite a bit of
fumbling and stumbling through the dark rooms before he
found it. Owen and Shane were both down on the beach,
apparently having gone there in order to keep from waking him
and not knowing he’d opened the window in his bedroom. In
the light provided by the enormous moon over the water, Vic
could make them out quite clearly. They were squared off
opposite each other, Shane standing with his fists balled up
angrily at his sides and Owen with his arms crossed stubbornly
across his chest.
“I’m not stupid, Shane. It took me a while but I finally
figured it out. It’s so obvious what happened here you may as
well be wearing a flashing neon sign on your asses!”
“And what is it you think happened, Owen?” Shane asked
him. “And tell me, please, how it’s any of your fucking
business!”
“It’s my business if he gets hurt! You keep ignoring it and
he will! Why are you so blind that you can’t see it?” Owen was
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asking harshly as Vic pushed the doors open and stepped out
onto the deck to look out at them in the moonlight.
“I’m blind?” Shane asked in an incredulous growl. “You’re
one to talk about not seeing!” He continued shouting, but the
roar of the waves momentarily drowned out his words and Vic
couldn’t hear them.
Whatever he said made Owen pull up short.
“What are you talking about?” Owen asked in confusion.
Shane took a few impetuous steps toward him, his feet
going deep in the soft sand as Owen backed up a little in
alarm. Vic’s eyes widened in panic as he realized that Owen
could quite handily tear Shane in two if he felt so inclined, and
he hesitated briefly before running down the short walkway
and jumping down into the soft sand. Vic was far too sore and
stiff to be doing that, he realized, as his ankles and knees
protested the landing.
He wasn’t about to let them start fighting, though.
“Shane!” he called out in alarm.
Shane stopped dead in his tracks and turned to look at
Vic, and Owen warily looked at them each in turn as he
continued to back away.
“What the hell are you doing?” Vic demanded of them
bo
th.
“Trying to pull his head out of his ass!” Shane yelled.
“Wait a minute. My head out of my ass?” Owen asked
incredulously. “That’s what I was trying to do to you!” he said
indignantly as he pointed at Shane.
Vic looked between them in confusion. He couldn’t imagine
how a popcorn puzzle had turned into this.
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Shane pointed a finger at him warningly. “Don’t test me,”
he said in a low voice.
Owen closed his eyes and put up both hands in a
placating gesture. “Okay, calm down,” he requested. It seemed
the policeman in him was trying to take over, making sure
cooler heads prevailed. Vic was relieved to see it.
“Look, I didn’t mean to intrude in your private business,”
Owen told him slowly, as if trying to reason with a charging
bull. “I just… I wanted to tell you that if you two are happy
then that’s good,” he assured Shane. Then he looked to Vic. “I
told him as long as he was good to you then I was happy for
you,” he insisted. “Then he started yelling at me!” he said
accusingly as he pointed at Shane again.
Vic looked between them and shook his head helplessly.
Now he sort of knew how Shane felt on the bench when there
were bickering lawyers and he had to call for order. Sort of like
a mother breaking up a fight on the playground.
“Idiot,” Shane hissed angrily. He looked at Vic and sighed
sadly, as if apologizing for what he was about to do, then he
looked back at Owen and his features immediately softened.
“He loves you,” he told Owen in a soft, defeated voice as he
gestured toward Vic.
Vic stared at him in shock, hoping that somehow Owen
hadn’t heard over the sound of the roiling ocean.
“He’s loved you for years,” Shane told Owen, his voice
growing angry once more. “What will it take for you to see
that?” he asked in frustration.
Vic could feel Owen’s shocked eyes on him now, but he
couldn’t tear his own gaze away from Shane long enough to
look at the other man. Vic had never felt quite so betrayed in
his life. Why would Shane tell Owen that, knowing that it