Panic shoved Noah right out of sleep. He gasped for breath and scrambled to get away from Beckett, waking his friend in the process.
“Oh, no,” he blurted blearily. “What have I done? What have we done?”
He kicked and struggled against the bedsheets, and against the oversized nightshirt he wore. They tangled around him like the snakes of seduction trying to keep him in a bed where he had no right to be.
His struggles woke Beckett, who immediately seemed to snap to full wakefulness with a calming, “Shh, shh! You’re alright. It’s alright. Lie back down again.”
For some reason Noah obeyed at once. It wasn’t like him at all. His heart pounded in his chest and his body screamed that he was in danger and should run, but he flopped back to the bed on his side, facing away from Beckett so that his friend wouldn’t see his panic or his embarrassment, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.
“Did you have a bad dream?” Beckett asked, scooting closer to him.
The way he slipped his arm around Noah’s body and pulled Noah’s back tightly against his chest was…lovely. The gesture was intimate, but Noah didn’t feel anything sexual in it. He shifted his backside a bit to be sure, but Beckett wasn’t even hard.
A whisper of disappointment passed through him. That was quickly followed by sour, crushing guilt.
“How did I get here?” he asked, twisting slightly to try to look at Beckett over his shoulder. He was in Beckett’s room, in his friend’s bed. “We didn’t, er….”
Unfortunately, he started to remember exactly how he’d gotten there as Beckett sighed, then explained.
“No, we didn’t. You got a bit…excited at The Slope, after…after Marcus told you off,” he said. “I thought you were simply bouncing back from disappointment and determined to enjoy the party regardless.” He paused for an achingly long time, then said, “But then you seemed to turn into a bit of a loose cannon.”
Noah turned away from Beckett and buried his face in the pillow. He’d had an episode is what had happened. It had all seemed fun and necessary at the time. He’d been determined to paint over the pain Marcus had caused him by bringing fun and merriment to everyone else at the party.
Or, at least, that was what he’d thought at the time. Then again, he wasn’t certain he’d actually been thinking. Thinking was dangerous, and there were times when he needed to avoid it at any cost.
“We should get up,” he said, attempting to sit again. “It’s a new day and a new dawn. I’m certain they need help cleaning up The Slippery Slope after last night’s revels. Then, perhaps, we could tour Central Park, since I haven’t had an opportunity to do so yet. We could race boats in the lake they have there, or, oh!” He gasped as a flood of ideas came to him, and as he flailed to escape the bedcovers again. “We should mount some sort of theatrical display in the park, a tribute to love or—”
“Shhh,” Beckett silenced him again, pulling him firmly to lie down again. His arm was tighter than ever around Noah’s middle, and Noah began to see that it wasn’t so much a gesture of affection as one of restraint. “Lie down and breathe for a moment, Noah. You must still be exhausted after the way you wore yourself out last night.”
Deep shame spilled through Noah as, again, he did as Beckett suggested. Not only did he lie down in Beckett’s arms, he felt as though he were shrinking in on himself as even more memories of the night before assailed him.
He’d taken the revels to Bleeker Street, making a right nuisance of himself. He remembered accosting everyone he passed, trying to get them to go to the club for the ball. He remembered Beckett chasing after him for hours, allowing him enough free rein to wear himself out, but staying constantly on his toes, like a vigilant nursemaid.
Beckett was the one who had spared him from the wrath of a particularly irritated police officer. He was the one who had smoothed things over with a tough man that Noah had rashly propositioned. And Beckett was the one who had finally hired a cab to take them home, then stripped him of his Mad Hatter costume—which had somehow become stained with…sauerkraut?—and tucked him into bed.
In Beckett’s own bed, where the two of them found themselves now.
“We don’t have to conquer the world first thing this morning,” Beckett said, switching to stroking Noah’s arm in a surprisingly soothing gesture. “I just want you to lie still and breathe deeply for a bit. I believe you need a bit of calm.”
Shame heated Noah’s cheeks. He needed a bit of something, alright. Probably a bit of drowning in the East River. He’d put Beckett through so much trouble in such a short time. It was a miracle the man hadn’t tossed him out on his backside, like his sister had, or turned his back on him entirely, like Marcus had.
He sucked in a breath and squirmed, struggling to flip to his back so he could look at Beckett more easily. “Was I terribly embarrassing?” he asked with a wince.
Beckett, God bless him, laughed. “Yes, you were mortifying. But no one has ever actually died of embarrassment.”
Noah smiled at his friend’s laughter despite himself. Then everything within him clenched as affection for Beckett warred with his love of Marcus.
Beckett’s smile dropped. “Easy now,” he said. “There’s no reason to be upset. We all have our wild nights.”
Noah wanted to turn away from his friend again, but he wasn’t in a position to do that now, for several reasons. “Some of us have a few too many wild nights,” he sighed.
Concern lined Beckett’s face. He rested a hand on Noah’s chest and began to rub it soothingly. “Have you had many manic episodes like last night?”
The battle of emotions in Noah’s gut waged harder. His cock liked Beckett’s soothing touch a little too much, but that only fed his guilt and embarrassment.
“I have,” he admitted, turning his head, even though he knew he couldn’t avoid the truth now. “Far too many. I cannot seem to help myself; it just happens.”
Noah didn’t dare look up at his friend. He didn’t want to see the disgust that he knew his admission would cause. He didn’t want to see pity in Beckett’s eyes either.