Page 201 of The Locker Room

the hotel bed quilt under his head.

Chris wrapped his hand around Xander"s clenched hands, and

brought them up to his mouth to kiss softly.

The Locker Room 173

“Xander? You okay?”

Xander let out a shuddering sigh. “Obviously not,” he muttered.

“Obviously I"m a big stinking baby who can"t even have sex right.”

Chris grunted and shifted in his arms and said, “Get off the covers,

genius, I"m freezing my ass off and my balls are shrinking.”

Xander laughed and passed his hand across his eyes while he was

complying with the orders. “Your balls could stand a good shrink—you

really are hung like a fucking goat, you know that?”

“Yeah, whatever.” Chris rolled to his side and burrowed under the

covers, holding the quilt back for Xander to crawl into bed with him.

Xander did, and the feeling of their long, muscled, hairy man legs

twining under the coverlet was enough to make him sigh, releasing that

last bit of tension that he didn"t know was still riding between his

shoulder blades.

As their bodies stopped shivering in reaction, Xander got a good

look at Chris"s big brown eyes, and saw that they were rimmed with red,

and leaking at the corners too. He tried to smile in sympathy, but he

couldn"t. Instead he just caught the steady little trickle down the side of

Chris"s nose with his finger and tried to wipe it off.

“Don"t cry, baby,” he said hoarsely, knowing he was one to talk.

“I"m here.”

They clung to each other under the covers for a long time after that.

They talked, quietly, about stupid things—Clifford"s wife (“Don"t

spill the potpourri for Chrissakes! Dammit, Edwards, that shit covers up

your man-stink, leave it in the fucking bowl!”),and about the dogs

(“Max is still loyal, man, but I think you"re going to have to bring a