Eden's cell rang. The blaring electronic ringtone practically rattled the air around him, it was so shrill. More than one irritated customer glanced his way before he could fumble the phone out of his pocket and flip it open. "Sorry!" he whispered to no one in particular, pressing the cell to his t-shirt before raising it to his ear. "Hello?"

"What time did you get home last night?"

"I beg your pardon?" he said, caught off-guard. He knew that voice, but it shouldn't be on his phone. It shouldn't know his cell-phone number.

"I said, 'What time did you arrive home last night?' This is serious. Don't. Fuck with me."

"I- I- I- Around midnight, I think. Why?" He didn't know what he'd do if pressed to come up with evidence, because that was the blackest lie his heart had issued in a long, long time.

"Did you go to Inez's party?" Nico demanded. There were people in his background; Eden could hear them laughing.

"I stopped in. Why do...who gave you my cell number?" This could be bad. Already, his stomach was clenching in the familiar way it always did when he heard that too-low-for-his-age voice.

"Avel got into some trouble last night; I'm just trying to find out what happened. Someone dropped your name so I thought I'd give you a call." Innocent enough, but Eden could hear the iron behind the silk. Like the muscles beneath his lover's skin.

"Trouble like what? Is he alright? I thought he stayed at Inez' party the whole night- "

"The details are none of your business. Tell me you had nothing to do with it, and we're done here." God, he was so cold. Always so dark, like a glowering storm cloud on the horizon. Not like Avel at all...kind, warm Avel. Laughing Avel. Plastered Avel, stretching like a drunken cat on the cheap hotel bed, calling him Nico and teasing him with french love words he slurred too badly to be recognizable-

"I had nothing to do with it. Wait- at least tell me if he's alright. Please." The books before him lost all his interest, and the foreign titles and descriptions drifted back into the land of the misunderstood. A pang of guilt strummed his ribs. What if he’d really hurt him?

There was a moment of silence, and when Nico spoke again his voice could freeze blood. "As long as we're on the phone, Eden, let me explain something to you. Your eyes wander too far and rest too often on things that are not yours. I don't like how often I see you these days."

Eden froze. Was he really going to get this talk right now? In the middle of a bookstore on his cell phone surrounded by people watching him curiously? He'd known it was coming, but part of him denied even needing it.

"I- "

"I don't want to hear your excuses. I'm so tired of all the excuses. Stay away from Avel...and stay away from me."

If he could stay away, they wouldn't be having this conversation right now. If he could've walked away from falling-down-drunk Avel last night at Inez' jumpin' party, if he could've resisted those bright-as-stars blue eyes and elegantly raw limbs tripping him in as simple a gait as a walk... Half of the entire crime had been instigated by the knowledge he'd be putting his hands where Nico’s hands had been.

"N-Nico- I'm sorry you feel that way- "

"If I hear even one word that leads me to believe you had a hand in hurting Avel...if I so much as wake up one night and think of something I hadn't thought of before...I will make it fifty times worse for you, Dubois. Do you understand?"

'I didn't hurt him!' Eden wanted to protest. He hadn’t meant to, anyway. He'd been infinitely gentle with every inch of him, tracing the delineations of his muscles with reverent fingertips; kissing his eyes and his nose and his mouth with butterfly softness; untangling each and every hair on his perfect head with the tenderest of care. He knew Avel had been 'hurt' that way in the past, it filtered through the grapevine he subscribed to. But he'd been so agonizingly careful to back off when even the slightest shadow passed through his spirit-dulled eyes...

"Do you understand me, Eden?" Nico repeated. The people behind him were still chatting gaily in a language he didn't know.

Ah, but denial was so perfectly sculpted for situations just like this. An appropriately careless mask dropped into place like iron bars around his heart. "Nico," he began, "I hate to burst your suspicion-riddled bubble here, but not everyone in the world is like you."

"And what does 'like you' mean?"
Self-confident. Content with your own faults. Calm in the face of danger.

"You know- gay. I actually pride myself on the fact that I don't HAVE to ride the hershey highway. I resent that you think that I would. If I had been lonely last night, I would have picked up a chick at Inez' party and brought her home with me. I don't need to date-rape a faerie to get my ki- "

Nico hung up on him.

It had been a year and two months since he had seen a girl even remotely pretty enough to give him a hard-on. He kept catching himself wishing her hair were lighter, pale as the cornsilk strands that always caught on Avel's eyelashes, or olive-skinned and thinner, closer to Nico's almost spidery delicacy. He wondered briefly if Nico had any tattoos. Probably not. From what Eden had seen of him, he was very respectful of the sanctity of his body. And it was such a fine body, to begin with- too bad it housed such anugly mind.

His rather heated conversation with Nico had drawn more than one eye, including the sole waiter in the bookstore/cafe he had been browsing. God only knew where that man's proclivities lay but he was watching Eden like one might watch some kind of extremely unappealing bug. Eden dropped his eyes in shame and inconspicuously exited the store. He didn't need any more lectures today.

All in all, he'd say he'd gotten off scot-free. Gotten what he wanted- well, half of it, at least- and Nico seemed to have reaffirmed his faith in Eden's innocence of the affair, albeit with feathers ruffled to show for it. But if everything had gone so well...why did he feel like crying?