Rhys and Jevon

Rhys had never felt anything that came close to how Jevon made him feel. To hear that a even a fragment of it was reciprocated blew the stress clean out of his soul. “You can talk to me, mate. And not just about sex. Do me good to listen to something outside of my own head.”

“Introspective, eh?”

Rhys shrugged. “According to my brother, the fountain of all knowledge. He reckons I have one skin for work, one for hooking up, and neither is who I really am.”

“Everyone’s got skins, dude. You think I wake up in clown mode every day?”

Rhys chuckled, but was saved from answering by the server coming back. “You order,” he said to Jevon. “I gotta take a leak.”

He retreated to the gender neutral bathrooms and by the time he returned, Jevon was alone again, twirling a straw in a rum and Coke. “So…” he said as Rhys reclaimed his seat.

“So, what?”

“How did you end up becoming a paramedic? It’s a pretty intense career choice.”

“It wasn’t really a choice,” Rhys said. “Not a conscious one, anyway.”

“Curious.”

“Scuzzy, actually.” Rhys gulped some of the rum-laced drink Jevon had ordered for him. “I was a terrible teenager, and it spilled out into adulthood until I wound up doing community service at Kings hospital. From there, I got a job as a healthcare assistant, then a place on a paramedic course. I quit briefly to work in butcher’s shop—ironic, huh?—but I knuckled down eventually, and here I am.”

Jevon tilted his head to one side, spearing Rhys with a quizzical frown. “What’s scuzzy about that?”

Rhys shrugged. “It’s not my calling, I guess. I didn’t get into it to help people…I was trying to help myself. Save myself, I suppose.”

“From what?”

“Everything. My dad died a little while ago, and before that, he was in prison for some shit that went down at home. It took me some time to get past that.”

Jevon said nothing for a long moment. Just stared at Rhys like his bottomless eyes could burn a path to everything that had ever hurt Rhys. Like he wanted to take it away and set it on fire.

But he couldn’t do that. No one could. Rhys had started plenty of his own fires, and somehow all the bullshit still lived in the ashes. “Don’t look at me like that,” he whispered. “I’m not one of your kids that needs saving.”

More silence. But the server intervened with the food Jevon had ordered while Rhys had been gone. Two pizzas, and a salad that looked like it belonged in the Tate Modern. And for the first time in days Rhys was actually hungry. They dug in while Jevon explained between bites what he was doing with his life for the next few months.

“I swore down I’d only do a few birthday parties, but I’ve got four next week alone.”

Rhys chuckled. “You don’t like them?”

“It’s not that. Any chance I get to act the fool is fine by me, but it just seems kind of—I don’t know—hollow, I guess. Which is why they make us do it.”

“Who does?”

“The team who look after the entertainers at the charity. There’s a psychologist here in London who comes to visit us on site, and checks in with us when we come home. He’s the reason we’re only allowed to do three month stints in the camps before they bring us home for a while. Before him we had people bedded in for most of the year without a break, and not even soldiers do that.”

There was beauty in the comparison. Jevon and his coworkers fought wars of their own with laughter instead of bullets, joy in place of despair. But at what cost? Rhys had seen enough medics go under to know the risks were real. “Do you ever feel like not going back?”

“Not really.” Jevon toyed thoughtfully with a pizza crust. “It’s hard sometimes—lonely too—but I can’t imagine leaving those kids with nothing, you know? Even if all we give them is a few days of madness. It is getting harder, though. Lots of governments are tearing the camps down.”

“I thought that was a good thing? The camps I’ve seen on the news look awful.”

“They aren’t great, but where else do these people go? At least in the camps the aid organisations know where to find them. And, it’s safe for them to look. We’ve done some street work, but I don’t fancy roaming the Albanian countryside on my unicycle. Getting shot ain’t my bag.”

Rhys shuddered. He’d seen a few gun shot wounds since he’d joined the chopper team, and the thought of Jevon getting hurt turned the dinner in his belly to dust. “When are you going back?”

“Second week in December.”

“Gone for Christmas then?”

“I’ve been gone every Christmas since the war in Syria kicked off. There’s a dedicated camp in Hungary for the Yazidi and Christian refugees who won’t come to the main sites. We go there when we can and try to make it really special for the children there.”

“Why don’t they come to the big camps?”

Jevon shrugged. “It’s complicated, and I try not to think about it too much. I want these kids to believe they can do anything, and I can’t do that if I’m bogged down in the politics.”

Rhys traced lazy patterns on the back of Jevon’s hand. He wanted to ask more, but at the same time, the thought of Jevon leaving the country in just eight weeks time made him feel sick. This was why he didn’t do relationships. Because life always got in the way and fucked everything up. Among other reasons, obviously. Mostly the fact that he had no idea what to do with the ever-growing bone deep affection he felt every time Jevon crossed his mind. Every time they touched. Kissed. More.

I can’t do this.

But I need him.

Rhys took a deep breath and leaned back in his seat. The pizza place had filled up while they’d eaten and it was kicking. Staff flitted around with trays of food, and the hot guy manning the pizza oven seemed to be in constant motion. Rhys watched him work, absently admiring the flex of his tanned forearms, and the concentrated expression that made him equal parts alluring and intimidating. The dude was hot, and Rhys was about to say so when another man approached the chef from behind.

This dude was half the size. Slender and blond, he reminded Rhys a little of Dylan. He climbed up the other man’s back and wrapped his arms around his neck, kissing his cheek. The chef’s answering smile was blinding.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Jevon squeezed Rhys’s fingers, breaking into his reverie. “I hung around here a lot when my sexuality first started making itself known.”

“Just to watch them?”

Rhys could understand that. Dylan and Angelo’s relationship made him jealous as hell, and Harry and Joe were so utterly perfect together that Rhys often wanted to puke when he was near them, but the moody chef and his elegant partner were a joy to watch. Like the distance between them and Rhys made their love easier to bear.

“Not just them,” Jevon said. “There’s a few queer blokes around here—more than a few, actually—and being around them made me feel normal.”

“You don’t feel normal?”

“I do now, but I didn’t for a while. There were moments when I was so terrified I couldn’t imagine how it would ever end well.”

“What changed?”

“Lots of things over time. Work, family, relationships. Things that I thought were gospel turned out to be the opposite. My dad being so awesome was a big factor, and Efe is my best friend in the world. But something has always felt missing. I figured it was just the sex, but then I met you, and…well…it’s more than that.”

Of course it was. Rhys had pictured himself having sex with Jevon so many times it almost seemed like they’d done it already. But it wasn’t enough. Being with Jevon was so much more.

A new chef took over at the pizza oven, and the dark haired man and his partner disappeared. Rhys watched them go, sensing Jevon’s gaze on him, but unable to face him, though he wasn’t entirely sure why.

“I watched them fuck once.”

That got Rhys’s attention. He turned to Jevon and wondered instantly how he’d held out so long. “I’d let him fuck me.”

If Rhys’s candour offended Jevon, it didn’t show. “Which one?”

“The darker dude.”

Jevon shook his head. “It was the other way around.”

“For real?”

“Yup. I didn’t watch it all, so maybe they switched, but what I saw was so sensual and hot, I knew I’d like bottoming…if I ever found the balls to try.”

If. A tiny word that held so much power. Rhys rarely topped, preferring the oblivion of having his own brains screwed out, but he wanted to fuck Jevon. Needed to. Even if it tied a bow around the heartbreak they were surely heading for.

Rhys caught the eye of their server and signalled for the bill. “Let’s get out of here.”