Elliot groaned, but kept his mouth shut for too long. “Maybe he’ll come around? I hope. But I gotta say it’s tough. I know I wouldn’t want kids. Not with Knight. He’d want to spend too much time with them.”
Laurent tapped his head against the window in frustration. “It’s not a competition. It’s a family. What is wrong with you? Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it. Today was the first time he spoke to me in days, so it’s not like I’m the only guilty party.”
“Yeah, but maybe you should be the one to reach out.”
Laurent pouted, watching the sun turn the sky purple. “I do miss him so much.”
Elliot remained silent for several moments. “Love isn’t a battlefield, you know. If you don’t make yourself vulnerable, you’ll never get anything meaningful. And Beast is a good guy. He won’t hurt you when he sees an opening.”
“But it’s not fair that he wasn’t even happy about me getting a job. Made a big thing out of it.”
“Christ. You don’t need a job, he’ll provide for you.”
Laurent clutched at his hair. “Not this again! I need to be my own man.”
Elliot groaned. “What do you need him for then? Jeez.”
Laurent bit his lip, thinking back to Beast’s thick fingers trailing over the counter at the café, so close to him. “Things.”
Elliot burst out laughing. “Ohh, you’re horny. That’s what this is, you’re missing a good fuck!”
“No need to be crude! It’s not all I’m missing.” Laurent put his hands over his cheeks. “I never considered myself thirsty for flesh, but here I am, yearning for him so much. And yet I know it’s no reason to make up.”
Elliot leaned Laurent’s way to nudge him on the side. “You sure? Don’t let him forget what he’s missing out on without you. Knight told me Beast lived like a monk before you showed up.”
Laurent fought back a smile, because despite his mind fighting it, he did feel a tickle of satisfaction hearing that he was the first man Beast had pursued in years. “We need to have a serious conversation about the future and where we are both headed before anything else can happen. His touch is like quicksand.”
Elliot smirked. “You’re so poetic about it. My past self would have been so jealous I’d have strangled you.”
Laurent shook his head, happy to already see the old asylum building looming against the backdrop of the sunset. “I am very fortunate that you have Knight, then. Do you know what they’re doing tonight?” he asked casually. He didn’t want to sound desperate to find out.
Elliot shrugged, driving past the circular fort, which appeared in front of the club’s main entrance across the past few days. Behind the wooden palisade were large red-colored tents in a variety of shapes and sizes, and even metal scaffolding on the side that faced the clubhouse. Dressed with rustic decor and velvet drapes under a waterproof roofing, it served as Magpie’s terrace/balcony and was topped with the national flag.
Elliot chuckled. “Knight and I visited him yesterday. Now I wanna go glamping myself.”
“Glamping?”
“Glamorous camping? It’s what Magpie says he’s doing. His tent has everything. I’m not much of an outdoorsy guy, but I could do that.”
Talk of tents and camping only made Laurent think of Beast, and he sulked in silence, trapped in the conundrum where he was too angry with Beast to reach out to him, yet craved his presence like nothing else in the world.
Elliot had something to do for his YouTube channel, and he disappeared right away, leaving Laurent to his thoughts and an eerily quiet clubhouse. He stumbled upon Nao and a couple of the other girls watching a movie in the room with the projector, but it was the embarrassing kind where people had sex with each other in strange places. While Laurent didn’t mind female nudity as a form of artistic expression, he didn’t want to witness such things in company. And all this made him feel desperately lonely.
His thoughts were preoccupied with Beast and the secretive job he didn’t want to tell Laurent about, but when he spotted Lana and Xavier in the kitchen, he knew they were just the distraction he needed. For once, the boy was calm as an angel, too.
“How is Xavier doing today?”
Lana jumped as if she’d been caught eavesdropping on a club meeting and barely kept her emptied plate from crashing to the floor. She wasn’t wearing her usual baggy clothes and instead donned a sleek pair of jeans and a white blouse.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, and her shoulders lowered in relief. “He’s… doing fine. I fed him and he should be asleep for a while.”
Maybe she was a good person to mine for information. “It’s marvellous to see him so peaceful. Have you maybe seen Travis? I wanted to talk to him.”