High Energy Collision [Completed]

Chapter 49 - You Got Me in Love again

With a shiver, Win pulled the zipper on his coat all the way up.

For the second time since they had gotten here, Win found himself banished from the apartment, to give one of the other couples a bit of privacy.

He pulled off his right glove to check the time on his phone: 2PM.

Plan had probably already finished his presentation. It had probably gone really well. Both Mean and Plan had been ecstatic yesterday, after they had networked and socialised with so many big shots in the field of physics.

Luckily, today, Laure was there, too, she had to report for the university website. And the girls were... busy.

Still no message.

Win took a deep breath and enjoyed how the cold air stung in his chest.

He could pretend he had taken out his phone to check the time, because he was thinking of Plan's presentation.

But that was only half true.

Until yesterday in the late afternoon Swiss time, he had exchanged messages with Vic constantly. It had been the only thing that had kept him sane, or so it felt like, amidst all the craziness that had happened since they had gotten here.

It had felt good, to have someone to vent to, about the Black Hand leader turning out to be Mean's cousin, about the sickeningly sweet romance between the happy couples around him... and about having to share his room with two seriously horny guys, one of which was his ex.

Before he had hooked up with Vic, Win would not have expected that hearing and seeing Plan and Mean make out with each other in front of him wouldn't affect him at all.

Sure, he was over Plan. Had been the moment Win had realised he would be competing with Mean. He just wouldn't have wanted to go up against the White Hand leader, and now, he knew that they worked better as friends, anyway.

But without Vic, hearing what Mean had that he couldn't have, would probably still have hurt.

Plus, Vic had responded to his messages exactly the way he had hoped – with barely concealed innuendo and a lot of juicy hints about what he would let Win do to him once they were reunited.

Win smiled at the memory of their past hookups alone.

He sat down on a bench on the old rampart, and looked over the smoking chimneys of the city below, under the grey, fog-covered sky. Even the lights of the Christmas market didn't really shine in the middle of an average Tuesday afternoon. Not like yesterday evening, when they had all gone out to drink mulled wine with some of Plan's and Mean's new physicist friends, and the little market had felt like a mirage out of a Christmas fairy tale.

Win wanted to put away his phone and stop waiting for a message that didn't come, but he couldn't.

Instead, he unlocked it and started to scroll through their last conversation.

There should be a hint, something telling him why Vic had suddenly gone into complete radio silence. If it wasn't so expensive, Win would have caved in long ago, and tried to call, just to get clarity.

"What am I doing?" he murmured angrily to himself, and shoved the phone back into his pocket.

The Christmas lights really didn't shine right now.

It wasn't like he had any claim on Vic.

They had made it clear from the onset that this was just a casual thing. Win had been okay with that; more than okay, he had suggested it. After he had understood just how asymmetric his feelings for Plan had been, Win had had no plans for a serious relationship anytime soon, but a lot of appetite for adventure.