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  "Oh God, you're torturing me," Cam moaned.

  "There's lube by the bed." Mason whispered.

  "Okay, okay, god…" Cam relented and took an unsteady step back. "You win. Bed."

  Mason grabbed Cam's hips and turned him in the direction of the bedroom and steered him that way.

  In the bedroom, Cam made a move to strip off his clothes, and Mason grabbed his wrists.

  "Don't," said Mason.

  "Why? Are you planning on torturing me some more?" Cam's pupils were blown wide, and his lips were curved in a silly grin.

  "Let me undress you."

  Cam nodded, and Mason pulled off the tunic shirt, dropping it on the floor. He spent a long minute dragging his fingertips inside the edge of the T-shirt collar before he reached down and inched the shirt up over Cam's head and finally off. Cam's neck and chest were slightly flushed with arousal. Mason dipped his head to place a line of kisses along Cam's collarbone.

  Mason knelt and untied Cam's boots, nuzzling his face against the tented cloth of Cam's boxer-briefs as he did so. Cam groaned and clenched his fingers in Mason's hair for a few seconds. Hooking both thumbs in Cam's underwear, Mason finally pulled them down and Cam stepped free.

  "Do you know how ridiculous I look standing here in my socks?" Cam asked. "I probably look like an extra in a bad porn video."

  "Huh-uh, a good porn video," said Mason, with a smirk. He pushed Cam back onto the bed with one hand, then yanked off Cam's socks. Mason hastily shucked his clothes and grabbed the lube off the nightstand. He kissed his way up the outside of Cam's hip and hooked Cam's leg over his arm as he pushed a couple of slicked fingers into his lover.

  "Get on with it before I lose what little patience I have left," Cam begged. Mason had to chuckle. Listening to his partner be that desperate was just plain hot. Mason lubed up and pressed into Cam. Cam groaned in pleasure and clenched around Mason. Oh hell, that wasn't fair. Mason had intended to draw this out longer, reveling in the combination of his own pleasure melding with Cam's. It was all he could do to hold a slow pace to start, but then he gave up and gave in to hard and fast. He could feel Cam's needy, desperate desire climbing higher and higher, ultimately exploding in long shuddering pulses. Mason slammed into his lover, lost in the sensory overload of his own climax mixed with Cam's.

  Mason flopped limply to the bed beside Cam, one arm wound slackly around him.

  "Wake me up next week," Cam mumbled.

  Chapter 3

  Who knew it would take five days to catch up on the appointments, surgeries and paperwork for being gone not quite three days? Mason slouched back in the chair at his desk. The orthopedic office was quiet this late at night. He rubbed his eyes, then cast a look at the stack of CVs. One of those just had to be the right person for the position. Mason knew he couldn't keep putting in the same monumental number of make-up hours every time he went off and did work for Division P.

  In that pile of CVs there were two that caught his eye the most. One was for a woman, an extreme rarity in the orthopedic field, and the other was for a relatively fresh out of residency guy. Both of them had a heavy focus on knees and hips, which could eventually go a long way toward lightening Mason's case load. He'd recommend those two to Steve and Kyle for interviewing.

  Mason was in no great hurry to go home. Cam was flying night ops all this week, and the house would be empty yet again when he got home. They had managed to snag a few brief early morning hours together over the past few days but their schedules were not meshing well at the moment. So far living together wasn't actually involving much face time. Oh well, schedules would change again in another few days. In the mean time, Mason needed to think about surgery for Jonas Nightengale's shoulder later in the week. He and Peter couldn't do any active healing on the man's shoulder until those ligaments were repaired and put back in the right spots.

  There was a state of the art OR at Division P, even if it didn't get used very often. Between Nightengale's strange drug allergies and his currently oversensitive psi Talents, moving him to Norfolk or Virginia Beach for surgery at one of the area hospitals was risky. He was, however, fairly stable and Mason felt with help from Peter, Trevor and Craig Sanderlin, repair of Jonas' shoulder should go smoothly.

  ***

  For anything that wasn't emergency surgery, Mason preferred music to the near silence that often reigned in an OR. Sometimes he hooked his IPod to the back of his scrub pants and threaded the earbud cord up under his shirt so that it all stayed out of the way. Today he'd forgotten the earbuds. Peter had offered to put a dock in the far corner of the OR to compensate.

  Mason stood scrubbing in beside Craig Sanderlin. He didn't really know the other man's qualifications except that he was a trauma surgeon at Norfolk General and he was an empath.

  "Peter said the burn on the back of Nightengale's torso is better than fifty percent healed, which is good because it'll cut down on the infection risks with incisions only inches away," said Craig.

  "Yeah, Peter's been focusing hard on all the injuries except the torn ligaments. The shrapnel wound to his leg is close to healed too. The worst in some ways is the persistent psi shock problem. Jonas had a near fatal injury less than a year ago. This second round of damage has put him really close to the edge. Peter said he thinks there's a PTSD component in there somewhere. Can you wrap your head around doing this in a regular hospital? Headblind nurses touching him every twenty minutes while he's in recovery."

  "Yeah, it's a hard situation. Nightengale's girlfriend is still around isn't she?"

  "I think so. Peter mentioned something about the powers that be discussing recruiting her. He didn't think she was interested," replied Mason.

  "Not everyone is willing to face what they have, and if even if you are, you still have to sign on the dotted line."

  Mason and Craig went into the OR and gloved and gowned. Peter had already turned on the music. The volume was low but that didn't disguise the heavy electronic beat.

  Peter stared at Mason from where he sat doing anesthesia and monitoring Jonas' vitals. "Flynn, what the hell are we listening to?"

  Mason grinned behind his mask. "Basshunter."

  "You, my friend, have bizarre taste in music," teased Peter.

  Mason shrugged. "I like the rhythms. It helps me focus."

  Chapter 4

  Every beat of his pulse was a painful pounding thud in his head. Mason opened his eyes and stared at the clock. 1:45 am. Unh. He felt cold and achy and damn it all, he needed to pee. And that meant getting out of bed. He slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. In the near darkness, the room tilted an odd angle. He stayed sitting on the edge of the bed for a couple of minutes. If he'd been drinking, he would have thought it was suitable payback, but he hadn't even had a beer in a couple of days. Must be that flu stuff that Tyra had. And come to think of it, hadn't Villetti said both his kids had been out of school with it?

  He slowly pried himself up off the bed and staggered toward the bathroom, momentarily thinking he was going to have to hold onto the wall to take a leak without falling over. He opened the medicine cabinet, intent on finding some Advil, and the room started doing its best imitation of a tilt-a-whirl. Grabbing onto the edge of the sink, he shakily lowered himself to the floor. Falling over and bashing his head on something wouldn't help the situation. He leaned his head against the sink cabinet and shut his eyes. Did that make it better or worse? Well at least he wasn't actually watching the room whirl around even if it still felt like he was spinning. He shivered. It was fairly cold for the end of November in Virginia Beach, and he wished he'd worn more than just a pair of pajama pants to bed. The fact there wasn't another warm body in that bed to snuggle up to was just one more misery.

  There was a noise somewhere else in the house, and Mason struggled to place the sound. Footsteps. It had to be Cam, nobody else had keys to the house. But wasn't Cam at work, stuck on more than a week's worth of night ops? Much as Mason hated to be sick around another person, even Cam,
he could really use a hand about now.

  ***

  Eight straight nights in a row sucked, Cam decided. At least night ops were over for a while, and maybe he could get the remainder of his gear moved over to Mason's house. That phrase hung in his brain for a moment. If he was living here now too, that made it their house, right? More specifically that made it home.

  Cam had gotten off early tonight. Thank God for small favors. At past two in the morning, Mason would be asleep, but that didn't preclude a little middle of the night cuddling. Cam walked through the house and saw a glimmer of light coming from the direction of the master bathroom. He followed it to the source. Mason was sitting on the bathroom floor, eyes closed, head against the sink cabinet. Cam knelt down, suddenly worried.

  "Mason? Are you okay?" he asked.

  "Fine. If you can find a way to make the room stop spinning, I might manage to go back to bed."

  "God, you look like shit," said Cam. He brushed sweat damp hair back off Mason's forehead. Mason's skin was hot. Usually the only time Mason ever felt this hot was when he was actively healing some sort of massive damage. "Are you sick or this a side effect of your healing stuff?" He needed to know, to have a clue what to do about it.

  "I think I've got the flu thing that Steve's kids' had."

  "You're burning up."

  "I was going take something, then everything started spinning so fast, I thought I was going to take a header onto the floor."

  "Tell me what to look for. Tylenol? Aspirin?" Cam suggested.

  "Morphine."

  "What?"

  "Just kidding, but it would make me feel better. Unh, there should be a bottle of Advil up in the cabinet. Grab me three of them," said Mason.

  Cam stood up and rooted through the contents of the cabinet for a moment before finding the right thing. He poured out three tablets and put some water in a cup, and handed both to Mason. The man gulped them down.

  "Maybe I should scrape you off the floor and put you in bed," said Cam.

  "It'd be warmer," Mason replied, a visible shiver shaking his body.

  "If you get much warmer, you're gonna spontaneously combust!" He helped Mason to his feet and was disconcerted by how tightly his lover hung onto him. Mason's face had gone pale and his eyes were making a weird jerking movement.

  "Christ, I wish the room would stop going around," muttered Mason.

  Cam guided Mason's stumbling steps toward the bed and eased him down onto it. Mason shivered hard as Cam pulled the blankets up over him. Cam sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his hand along Mason's cheek. It worried him to see his lover this sick.

  "Who do you call when the doctor gets sick?" he said softly.

  "Steve or Kyle. S'ok, probably just something viral. I'll either be better in a day or so or I'll be dead." Cam knew the two names were Mason's partners in the orthopedic practice.

  "You damn well better not die on me," said Cam. He knew Mason was joking, but still … "Listen, my body clock is on night shift. I'm going to go grab a beer, then I'll be back in a couple minutes and keep an eye on you."

  "No offense hon', but why are you here? Not that I'm complaining," said Mason.

  "I'm done with night landing practice and I have the next four days off. I was kind of hoping to spend some time with you."

  "Mmm. Maybe I'll feel better in the morning."

  "I hope so. Get some sleep." Cam placed a soft kiss on his lover's temple. Mason's skin still felt hot.

  ***

  The vertigo had apparently been traded in for muscle aches so bad he wondered if he'd been run over by an invisible truck while he slept. Mason shuffled back to the bathroom sometime before dawn. The pounding headache had returned, too. He choked down some more Advil and went back to bed. Cam was sitting up, looking all sleep tousled in the glimmer of light from the clock. Mason guessed he must have crawled in bed beside him at some point.

  "Feeling any better?" Cam asked.

  "No. Everything hurts." Mason laid his head back down onto the pillow and closed his eyes, hugging his arms around his body. The last thing he wanted to do was inflict his misery on Cam.

  "I'm supposing this isn't something the healing talent helps with?"

  "Even after months of training by Peter, I'm still pretty much crap at fixing myself. And my head hurts so bad I can't hardly hold a thought long enough to even really have a go at it."

  "Anything I can do to help?"

  "Shoot me up with enough ketamine to sleep for the next three days."

  "You're losing it." Cam's hand landed on Mason's forehead. "You're hot, really hot. Do you own a thermometer?"

  "In the bathroom. Somewhere." Mason felt Cam get out of bed. It was too much trouble to open his eyes.

  After a few minutes Cam returned. "Okay, tell me what to do with this thing," he said. Mason opened his eyes just a little. Cam had the ear thermometer in his hand and was sitting on the edge of the bed. "Why don't you have one of the stick it in your mouth types?"

  "Join the twenty first century. Jus' stick it in my ear and pull the trigger."

  "That sounds weird." Cam's hands tilted Mason's head sideways and he did as he was told. The thermometer made a click. "It says 103.9. Damn. Maybe I should drag you off to the hospital."

  "I just took some more Advil. Just let me die in peace."

  "Did you drink anything?"

  "What, like tequila?" Mason was frustrated by all the questions. He just wanted to curl up and sleep.

  "No, you moron. I meant like orange juice or Gatorade or something."

  "No."

  "I'll get you some juice. Don't go back to sleep yet."

  Mason just groaned and buried his face in his pillow.

  Cam trotted off again and returned with a glass of juice. "Come on. Sit up and drink this."

  Mason slowly hauled himself up into a sitting position and took the glass. The glass felt blissfully cool in his hand, but he could only stand to drink about half of it before his stomach objected. Cam took it from him and set it on the night stand. "I'm going to set the clock to go off in a couple hours. If your fever's still up, I swear I'm gonna put you in a cold shower."

  "Bastard."

  "Uh-huh. And for a doctor, you make a fucking lousy patient."

  ***

  Slightly less than two hours later, the phone rang. Mason groped on the night stand for his cell.

  "Hullo," he groaned.

  "Flynn! Where the hell are you? The hospital just called. You were supposed to be in the OR half an hour ago starting Trenton's knee replacement," Villetti's voice said.

  "Oh fucking hell…," replied Mason. "I'm sick as a dog. I think I've got what your kids had. I am so sorry. Damn, damn, damn."

  "I have to admit you sound awful. I'll call them back and tell them it's a no go. I take it you won't be in for office hours later?"

  "No. Yes. No, but I'll swing by sometime after lunch and try to set up the reschedule," Mason said, trying to pull together enough brain cells to form a plan.

  "Okay, see you then," replied Steve.

  "I'm guessing you were supposed to be somewhere right about now?" said Cam. He rolled over and draped an arm around Mason's body.

  "Unh, shit. Yes, I was supposed to do a knee replacement this morning. Christ, I should've remembered to call and tell them to cancel it."

  "I think you have a good excuse. You still feel like you're set on slow broil."

  ***

  Too worried to sleep, Cam rolled out of bed and went to get the thermometer again. Mason lay curled with his head on the pillow as Cam stuck it in his ear again.

  "103.7, it's not going down," he said. Cam was beginning to feel just a little wigged out. When you had the flu, you took meds and your temperature went down. Wasn't that the way it was supposed to work? "What do I do to cool you down? I wasn't exactly kidding about the cold shower."

  "Go buy me some Tylenol," Mason muttered.

  "Was that a real suggestion or more snarky commentary?"

&
nbsp; "You alternate them. Every two hours or so. Different meds. Gets used on little kids a lot, not so much on grownups."

  "Since you said go buy some, I guess that means you don't have any?" Cam asked.

  "You can look, but I don't think so."

  "Will you be okay, if I leave you here?"

  "Just fine. 'm going back to sleep," Mason mumbled.

  "Okay, I'll be back soon." Cam rubbed a hand down along Mason's arm. That usual undercurrent of vibrating energy was missing, and that worried him as much as the fever. He wondered if he should call Peter out at Division P. Would it be better to have a healer take care of a healer? He'd make the call on his way to buy the Tylenol.

  When Cam called, Peter Vithoulkas wasn't available. According to Danny Valentine, the other healer was in Baltimore visiting their girlfriend Jennifer.

  "If you think he's really that sick, you can bring him out here. Trevor's still around. He could have a look at him," Danny offered, referring to the man who functioned as a corpsman for Division P. Trevor wasn't as gifted as Peter, but he did understand the odd dangers that psi were often prone to when injured or ill.

  "I… I'm probably overreacting but I'll keep that in mind as a backup plan," said Cam.

  Tylenol in hand, Cam returned to Mason. His lover had fallen back to sleep. Cam sat on the edge of the bed beside Mason, watching him. His face was pale and sweaty, jaw darkened by beard stubble. His body was curled in a sort of tense discomfort. Time to wake him up and dose him with more meds.

  ***

  Mason stood with one hand braced on the wall of the shower. The water hitting his body was only lukewarm, not the cold shower Cam had threatened but not entirely comfortable either. Hot water would have helped the agony of his aching muscles, but not the fever. And the dizziness apparently couldn't make up its mind whether to stay or go, hitting him at random intervals. Cam got in the shower behind him.

  "You doing okay?" asked Cam.

  "Still breathing," growled Mason.

  "Still acting like a pissed off bear, too." Cam reached around him and grabbed the bottle of shampoo. "Tip your head back."