Page 72 of Touch In Excess

“Fuck!” he cried, but before he could truly panic, the timer ended, and the notification popped up on his screen that he was the winner. He hadn’t realized his heart was pounding and racing until he noticed the beat of it thrumming deep inside his ears. His throat felt constricted for a moment, and he only just realized that Rami was slumped back, torso out of the frame, his thighs and lower stomach covered in his own come.

Skye’s body shivered, and his tongue ached at the sides with the desire to lick it all up and taste him. He swallowed that down, then breathed deeply as the screen went black and the live ended. His hands were trembling as he reached for his phone, and he held it tightly until it began to buzz.

It was another FaceTime request.

‘You did it,’ Rami signed. It was obvious from his expression he’d lost his verbal words.

Skye nodded. He fought back the desire to lift up the three-fingered sign that could only just convey how he truly felt about this man. “I did it. Are you okay?”

‘Yes,’ Rami’s fist nodded. ‘See you soon?’

“I just need a minute to regain my composure, and—” He stopped abruptly when he felt his head give an almost violent lurch. Then the room began to rock back and forth. “Shit. Shit. I can’t…fuck, I can’t see straight.”

Rami was signing, but Skye couldn’t follow his hands. He hadn’t had a vertigo spell this bad in a long, long time. He supposed he should have expected it. He could cut out all the salt in the world, but nothing would ever be able to cure his stress.

“Skye,” he heard, very faint and muffled. His ears were ringing now—like a thousand high-pitched bees, and they felt like someone had stuffed them full of that goop the audiologist used to make his earmolds. “Let…if you…come over.”

Skye shook his head, making the vertigo worse. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.” Oh, and here came the nausea. He swallowed heavily. “I’m having a bad spell.”

“Skye,” Rami said very slowly and very loudly. Normally Skye hated when people shouted at him, but right now, he needed it. “I’m coming over.”

“You can’t drive.”

“I can Uber. Be there soon.”

The call ended abruptly, with just enough time for him to drop the phone and lean over. Skye lost control over his head, his ears, and, a moment later, his stomach.

He was still walking like a drunk when his doorbell flashed, but he was a little more steady and far less sick. He dug out his folding walking cane he hadn’t used in too long, and he managed to get the door open without an incident. His nystagmus was a nightmare, but he got a glimpse of Rami’s worried face and waved his hand at him.

“It happens. I promise I’m okay. But I can’t really focus on sign right now, and I can’t hear shit, so I might not be the best company.”

Warm, careful hands touched him, guiding him into an embrace. Skye’s entire body relaxed against Rami’s strong one, and he gave no resistance when Rami began to guide him back to the bedroom. The lights were off, and he let out a sigh of relief when Rami didn’t turn them on.

He just eased Skye back under the covers, and then with careful movements that didn’t shake the bed, Rami slipped in beside him. No words were spoken. There was just this—two bodies that fit together like the last pieces to a puzzle to make the picture a whole. Rami spooned him, hooking his calf over Skye’s legs, and his cocks were limp but fat, pressing through his sweats and into the small of Skye’s back.

“I won,” Skye eventually murmured.

He heard Rami’s laughter, muffled and faint through his tinnitus, and then Rami squeezed him in response.

“You’re all mine now.”

Rami shifted so his mouth was right behind Skye’s ear as he said, “I always was.”

And if that wasn’t the truth, they were both damned.

Eighteen

Skye knewit was late into the morning when he woke up. The blinds were drawn, and the room was dark, but he could almost feel how much time had passed. Reaching out, he found the side of the bed Rami had been curled up in empty and a little cold. His heart rose into his throat, beating out a tattoo of anxiety.

Sitting up slowly, Skye tested his equilibrium. He felt steady and stable, the vertigo all but gone apart from a little swooping sensation when he swung his legs off the bed. Then he let out a tiny cough and realized that his hearing was more muffled than usual.

This had happened before—the feeling of overstuffed ears and the high buzzing sound of his tinnitus that eventually eased up in fizzes and pops over the course of a day or two. But lingering in the back of his head was the knowledge that at some point, his hearing wouldn’t come back. Maybe he wouldn’t lose it rapidly like this—a wave all at once.

But maybe he would.

None of his doctors could predict the way it would go. When he first got his diagnosis, his ENT told him that most people didn’t lose much of their hearing. They told him only fifteen ortwenty percent of people lost it in both ears. They told him what he did lose would happen very slowly, over time.

He beat the odds in all of those.

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