longed to take him home and tuck him into bed.
“I just want to do a sweep through the kitchen,” Xan said, his voice flat.
Luca’s jaw ticked like he was holding himself back, and Sebastion could only begin to imagine his restraint. “I’ll take the bags and box down—check on Ivy. Want me to come back up, or…?”
“We’ll meet you,” Xan said. “There’s like two mugs I want to grab, but I can’t think of anything else.” He glanced at Sebastion. “You can go too, if you want.”
“He should stay,” Luca cut in as he snatched the bags from the floor and hefted the box up with his good arm. His injured one reached out, then pulled back before his mind clearly said fuck it, and he dragged Xan in close. “Promise you’ll let me feed you after this.”
Xan snorted, and he buried his face in the front of Luca’s shirt. “Burritos?”
“Always burritos,” Luca said quietly.
Sebastion felt his body flood with warm affection and need, and he had to turn away until he heard Luca’s steps head for the door. It shut behind him with a soft click, then Xan let out a breath.
“I’m sorry.”
Sebastion looked up with a frown. “What on earth for?”
“For…that,” Xan said. He waved his hand at the door weakly.
Taking a step closer to him, Sebastion furrowed his brows. “Alexander, I don’t understand…”
“I don’t mean to put myself between you two, okay?” he said, a note of tension in his voice. “Luca was so fucking nice to me, and it had been so long since someone was nice to me without wanting something in return. Then he hugged me, then he asked me to stay.” He dragged his tongue over his lower lip and let out a puff of air. “Then you showed up, and you two are perfect together, and you just keep wanting me to stick around even though I…” He stopped abruptly, and Sebastion felt his resolve cracking.
He closed almost all the distance between them and forced himself not to reach out. “Even though you what?”
Xan shrugged. “I liked it. I liked the attention. The hugs. I liked when you comforted me after Max,” his voice cracked, and he stopped. “I liked that he called even though you promised you weren’t going to. And I’m poison, Sebastion. Max said that to me once when he was drunk, and we got into a fight because I didn’t want him to go out with some of his friends. They got mad at him, and he called me poison… and he was probably right.”
Sebastion shattered. He lifted both hands and cupped Xan’s cheeks and held him. “You’re not poison.”
“I like you. I like him. It’s not fair.” Xan’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat softly. “What I want feels unfair.”
“What isn’t fair is that you’ve been made to believe you’re not worth love and attention,” he said, his voice hard, though he kept his fingers gentle. “What isn’t fair is that you don’t think you’d be worthy of someone like me or Luca.”
“I hate that I wish I’d met one of you before you two…” he let out a watery laugh and waved his hand. “You know. Met or whatever. Even though I was a kid when that happened.”
Sebastion closed his eyes and breathed slowly. “We have a lot to talk about, I think, and you need to take some time to deal with all the shit that just happened.”
“I know,” Xan whispered.
Sebastion stroked over his cheeks with his thumbs and waited until he looked up again. “Right now, though, we need to get your shit and go. We’re going back to the hotel, and we’re going to watch food reality TV and eat burritos and hug as many times as you need to be hugged.”
Xan closed his eyes again, but the look on his face was softer—calmer. “Okay.”
Sebastion dragged his hands away, but he didn’t drop them. “Do you need one now?”
There was a beat of silence, and Xan’s eyes flickered to the door. “I think I should wait.”
Unable to help his grin, Sebastion nodded. “Then let’s get packing.”
Xan hadn’t been lying about just wanting a few things. He took a set of very small teaspoons that were his mother’s, a potholder with a burn in the center which had belonged to his aunt, and two badly thrown ceramic mugs of sloths, which he held in his hands and stared at for a very long time.
“We made these on our fourth date,” he said very