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seemed somehow…anticlimactic. Needed at the forever-understaffed clinic, Zane had stayed on for the duration. Dead on his feet, Eli had gone home.
     
    He remembered sitting on the edge of a lounger to take off his shoes, and that was about it. Sleep tended to overtake a doctor off duty, the body taking command over a brain kept over-busy and over-stressed.
     
    Funny thing about a mind overcharged with stimuli during the day: the dreams were completely out of this world. As in, from Mars. Eli couldn't think of any other way to explain them. Normally, they were your usual fare—giant IV poles chasing him around the Immaculate Grace's parking garage, suture kits doing the cha-cha around a gurney, decent food in the cafeteria. Par for the course.
     
    Today, his brain had treated him to picking up right where his idle fantasy had stopped earlier. Sort of.
     
     
     
    Zane sat on Eli's lap. Didn't seem strange in the dream. More…comfortable. His weight was familiar and easy, his hands loosely knotted behind Eli's neck, and their foreheads pressed casually together. “You're kind of an idiot sometimes,” Zane said.
     
    “Takes one to know one,” Eli said. “Kiss me.”
     
    “Since you ask so nicely.” Their lips met. Familiar now but no less exciting when Zane let Eli take the lead and opened for him. The sleek glide of his tongue teasing Eli's kindled the sparks of wanting that moved Eli to pull Zane closer and hold him with one fist in Zane's hair and one hand spread over a tight ass cheek, amazed at the firmness of the flesh and chuckling in satisfaction at the groan he coaxed from Zane when he kneaded the taut muscle.
     
    $Right about then, Holly tapped Eli on the shoulder.
     
    “Kinda busy here,” Eli said between kisses. Zane had his shirt open and began a most pleasant stroking beneath. “Mind coming back later?”
     
    “I don't have to go anywhere for you to know I'm right,” Holly said. “I just wanted to tell you not to fight this.”
     
    Zane had his lips on Eli's neck, sucking a love mark beneath his jaw. “Does it look like I'm fighting?” Eli asked, incredulous.
     
    “Don't mind me,” Diana said. She tossed popcorn kernels into her mouth from the bucket she carried. “I'm just here for the show.”
     
    “The point is,” Holly said, laying gentle hands on Eli's arm, “you can't change what you are, or will become. You both want this, even if you didn't know it. All you can do is accept who you're becoming.”
     
    “Accept this,” Zane said. He snapped his fingers. Holly, Diana, and Taye—who'd appeared to dance the hula in drag behind them—all disappeared.
     
    “What took you so long?” Eli asked, getting back to the good stuff.
     
    “Like I said,” Zane told him, loosening Eli's belt. “Sometimes you're an idiot. Then again, so am I. Kiss me.”
     
    “All you've got to do is ask,” Eli said. He reached for Zane's belt and—
     
     
     
    Woke up, blinking at the darkness of the room, striped with the red of stoplights and the wavering beams from cars outside. Chicago at night sounded about as lively, or more so, than Chicago by day, a hum of excited life outside easing Eli back into wakefulness.
     
    “The hell,” he said to himself, unfolding gingerly from the awkward position he'd curled up in on the couch. “My neck is never going to forgive me. Ugh.”
     
    Sheer habit moved him to check his phone for messages. He had one text. From Zane. Once again, reflex took over, and he read it.
     
    Shake a leg, old man. Hey. We're okay, I promise.
     
    “We're okay,” Eli muttered, dry washing his face with his palm. “Says you. You weren't the one who dreamed about—” He stopped, blushing. “Forty-three years old and I'm turning red over a sex dream. Christ.”
     
    Eli hit Reply and sent back a three-word message. On my way. Come what may, he'd be a sorry friend if he left Zane to deal with this on his own. That wasn't how they worked. He might need tequila to