And Fox didn’t want him to know.
He was already going to hurt Summer by leaving him, by leaving Omen, once this charade was over.
While they were here, while they were together...
He could at least keep his fears, his hesitations, to himself—and not use them as blunt objects to hurt Summer even more.
Right now, though...
He suddenly couldn’t stand to be idle, in this moment.
Couldn’t stand to lie here playing at domestic bliss, with Summer’s body heating the bed.
And so, gently disentangling his hair from the snares of Summer’s limbs, he slipped out of bed and into the living room, drifting to the window.
The plants along the windowsill were hardy succulents, and he ran his fingers over their dry, waxy leaves, stopping on an aloe plant. He hadn’t made anything, from the simplest aloe salve to herbal pain relievers, in so very long; even the salve that helped Summer not be quite so obvious about why his nethers were smarting was from older stock that Fox had tinned and set aside ages ago.
And he smiled faintly, bitterly, to himself as he tested the jagged edge of another thick leaf with his fingertip, then let go, lifting his head to stare down at the spindly trees below and the way the mist crawled and rolled through the nighttime forest like a strange, smoky thing.
He used to create things. To take pleasure in making things simply for the sake of building something useful with his hands; simply because that was one of the things that made him feel alive.
He would say he didn’t know why he stopped, but he knew.
The same moment when he’d stopped doing anything that wasn’t the bare necessity to function, and to fulfill the duties that were expected of him.
He drifted his hands along the shelf beneath the windowsill, stopped when he found the familiar gritty shapes of an old, pecked stone mortar and pestle, an antique piece he’d picked up on his last visit to Japan, when wandering shops in Sapporo. He didn’t know why he felt so hollow, right now. So pointless, so devoid of purpose, his hands aching for something to do, but...
Gathering his hair up behind his head, tucking it into a knot, he dragged a chair over and pulled over the aloe plant, the mortar, the little carved wooden box he kept on the shelf full of various dried herbs and ingredients.
He didn’t know what he’d do, not just yet.
All that mattered was that he was doing something.
Instead of continuing years and years of doing absolutely nothing at all.
Summer wasn’t sure what woke him.
Maybe the emptiness of the bed, the sheets cooling around him when he was getting used to the warmth and weight of Fox against his back, heavy arm over his waist.
Maybe it was the chill of the night air, prickling at his skin.
Or maybe it was the overwhelming scent of peppermint, drifting through the suite and powerful enough to sting his nostrils.
He creaked one eye open, sniffling and rubbing at his nose, then pushed himself up and squinted drowsily around the room. No sign of Fox, but that smell was overpowering. Had something spilled in the essential oils in the bathroom...?
Yawning, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulders, Summer stood, rubbing the back of his neck and padding out to the living room—only to stop at the threshold of the doorway, as he saw Fox.
Silent, his posture gracefully taut, Fox sat at the windowsill, using the shelf beneath it as a table. He was surrounded by many of the potted plants scattered through the apartment, different herbs, some of them delicate, some thick and succulent. A carved wooden box with multiple compartments sat open next to him, and he worked over a mortar and pestle, grinding something green and strong-smelling into a waxy, oily paste against the carved stone basin.
And his expression was...
Summer didn’t think he’d ever seen Fox with his expression so relaxed, so gentle, calm and at peace.
Completely transfixed on what he was doing, Fox worked his hands with a quiet, knowing deftness, a delicate touch, constant rhythm stopped only by a pause to add a leaf plucked here, a sprinkle of something dried there. His lips were subtly curled in a soft, thoughtful smile, his eyes half-lidded, gleaming like captured moonlight, the shadows and light from the window falling over him in soft gray shades to make him a misty, ghostly thing, ethereal and silent.
And Summer had never seen him more beautiful.
Not even when he arched over Summer in a moment of captured pleasure did he look so serene, so...content.
And it hurt, in the strangest way. Lovely and odd and hollow all at once, when Summer loved to see Fox like this—open, unguarded, and doing something that clearly made him happy when he’d seemed so determined to punish himself with misery for so very long.
It just ached that...
That Fox had never looked at him that way.
That Summer couldn’t make him happy that way, and instead just seemed to bring Fox more and more trouble, more and more heartache.
He shouldn’t look at it that way. It was selfish—but then Summer himself was so very selfish, for clinging so tight to what he craved so desperately with a man who clearly only tolerated him because it was easier not to argue; easier to indulge him.
It felt like a knot lived in the back of Summer’s throat lately, one he couldn’t ignore every time he stopped letting himself believe in hope and remembered just what their situation was. A casual arrangement. A dalliance. A way to pass the time until Fox could escape Albin...
Escape him.
And that knot in Summer’s throat grew to the size of a fist, as he stepped backward soundlessly, slipping from the room to return to bed.
And leaving Fox to
