Chapter 83
Colby felt lit up and happy too. Mist twinkled outside like magic, and museums, and those mornings Jason had imagined for them. The twinkles echoed under his skin, along his veins, in every beat of his heart.
“You said it,” Jason pointed out. “I heard it. Is that seriously your middle name? Names plural.”
“My mother…” He skipped hastily over scars old and new. “Likes poets and philosophers. She wanted something American and something English. The Algernon bit is a Swinburne reference. Which one might consider ironic, I suppose.”
“Gonna have to explain that one.”
“Decadent, scandalous, and…ah…algolagnic…Pre-Raphaelite poet. Enjoyed his own outlandish reputation, and also flogging. I’m not certain I count as decadent, but I do quite like scones and, er, being submissive, apparently, so there’s that.”
Jason processed this torrent of vocabulary. “So…he was into feeling pain as pleasure? Like a masochist? I can ask about scones if you want them. And also no flogging.”