a horny teenager, so that left only two people it could be, and he wasn’t sure which one was worse.
“Oh, shit, sorry,” Colt blurted out, stumbling back only to trap himself against the door. “They said you were sleeping. I should have knocked.”
He put a hand over his eyes, and Ronnie hastily grabbed the clothes he had dropped.
“That’s what I get for pretending to be asleep,” Ronnie said. By the time he pulled the robe back on, he had gone from thinking maybe it would be better if he just died to being absolutely certain of it.
At least one matter was settled definitively: It was way worse that Colt was the one who’d walked in on him than it would have been if it was Roland. No doubt about that.
“Sorry,” Colt said, looking through his fingers. When he finally pulled his hand away, his face was red.
“So am I,” Ronnie said flatly, folding his arms as he leaned back against the dresser. “I figured things would be awkward the next time I saw you, but I guess we got that out of the way.”
Colt snorted a laugh. “How are you feeling?”
Ronnie shrugged, surprised when it didn’t hurt. “Like I just ate part of a guy.”
Colt grimaced. “Yeah. I remember that taking some getting used to.”
Ronnie gave him a look. “I’d really rather not get used to it.”
“Fair enough,” Colt said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Ronnie had imagined this moment a thousand times, but definitely under different circumstances.
Colt looked him over, and he felt more exposed than he had a second ago with his ass bare to the world. “I know talking about what happened is probably the last thing you want to do right now, but it might help.”
Ronnie sighed. He’d known this was coming at one point or another since the moment Colt had found him at the pier. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything you feel like sharing.”
Ronnie’s throat tightened, and he found it hard to remember how to breathe. Maybe it was just the fact that Colt’s cologne had an effect on him under normal circumstances, and he was already feeling off. Their close proximity and the intimate setting weren’t helping.
He wanted to lie, but he didn’t have the energy, and Colt was the one person he couldn’t stomach lying to without a good reason. He finally launched in at the beginning, or at least the point where he’d started to realize something was horribly wrong, and once he’d started, he couldn’t figure out how to stop. The words just kept flowing, another dam unleashed, and it felt at once good and terrible to get them out.
They were things he could never tell his parents. Memories he didn’t want to put on their shoulders. When he was finished, he felt lighter somehow, but that was a dangerous state in itself. It felt like he might drift away if something didn’t weigh him down.
Colt said nothing for a few moments, and when he finally stood, Ronnie felt a twinge of dread. He fully expected Colt to turn around and walk out the door, proving he’d been right to hide everything all along.
He was fucked up. Too fucked up to fix. Colt was smart enough to realize that. Smart enough to know he was more trouble than he was worth. He probably regretted finding him. Ronnie doubted it was anything more than obligation at this point. A misplaced sense that he owed some debt, if not to Ronnie, then to his parents.
“I—” He’d no sooner opened his mouth to speak than Colt took him into his arms and pulled him against his chest in a squeeze as tight as the one he’d given him at the pier. It hurt, just like it had then, but pain coming from Colt was sweeter than pleasure coming from anyone else.
Ronnie instinctively relaxed in his embrace. He couldn’t do anything else. It was an immediate, automatic response. The other man’s strong arms wrapped around him made him feel safe. More importantly, it made Ronnie feel like the people he loved were safe from him, even if he knew that was bullshit. Even if his powers could send Colt to his knees, the same as they had that ghoul in the woods--and this time, if the monster inside took over again, Ronnie wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop it.
He couldn’t bring himself to pull away, though. Instead, he wrapped his arms around Colt, or at least as far around