In my time with CI5, I've spent many an hour lying awake in a shitty motel bedroom, listening to the sounds of traffic on the freeway, which is always too close and too loud.

For once, this motel isn't right next to the freeway but right now I would give my right arm just to hear the sounds of trucks thundering past in the early hours. Anything would be better than having to listen to this.

I don't think he knows just how paper-thin these walls are. Or maybe he does and just doesn't give a fuck. Doesn't care how much I can hear, doesn't care how it makes me feel. Maybe he just doesn't realise that I feel anything. My partner. My friend. My never to be lover.

When I first heard the door to his room open, sometime around one a.m., not that I was watching the clock or anything of course, and I realised that I could hear two sets of footsteps, I thought he'd picked up some blonde bimbo in the bar I'd left him in. That I could, and had, coped with. He's straight, you see. Damn straight. As straight as straight could be. Don't get much straighter than Sam, and if I'd ever had any doubts about that then... well, maybe I would have risked something. Like our friendship.

So I was all prepared for high pitched and girlish giggles. They always giggle. Always. They're pretty and funny and not too smart and definitely not too serious. Sam has serial monogamy down to an art form, and it didn't take me long to figure out that the reason he always went for that type was because he *definitely* didn't want it to get serious.

My partner has a fear of commitment, and if that isn't an understatement then I don't know what is.

But then a man's voice drifted through the walls, and it wasn't Sam's.

My first, stupid thought was that he was in trouble. Why else would Sam, *Sam*, my partner, have a man in his room unless it was uninvited or something to do with a case. In fact, I was already throwing back the covers, ready to leap to my feet, to leap to his defence.

And then Sam laughed.

I'd heard him laugh before, more than once, and I knew without even seeing who was laughing that it was Sam. Even though the wall muffled the sound. Even though I'd never heard that tone in Sam's laugh before. This wasn't the laugh he gave me, when I tell him some amusing anecdote from my past, something that makes me look like a jerk just to see his eyes light up with tolerant amusement. Christ, I'm pathetic.

No. This laugh was low and rich, a chuckle that spoke nothing of amusement and everything of sex. And that was when I knew. That was when the world came crashing in on me, and I sank back onto the bed, desolation sweeping through me. I didn't need to hear the other sounds that followed to tell me what he, what they were doing.

I would have given my right arm to hear that laugh aimed at me. I could imagine the look in his eyes, all heat and fire, seductive underneath lowered eyelashes. I could imagine the way that his mouth would curl up in that small smile, the one that barely touches his lips but goes straight through me anyway, straight to my cock.

It tore me apart.

And the sounds I can hear now are only making things worse. I didn't think that anything could be worse than that first, crushing realisation, but I was wrong. Each creak of the bedsprings, each sigh I can hear, each moan only drives the knife in deeper.

Sam isn't straight. He just doesn't want me.

I close my eyes, press my palms hard against my ears and it doesn't help. Even when I can't hear them I can 'hear' them. Even though I can't see them I 'see' them all too clearly in my mind. And my imagination is even more vivid than the actual sounds I can hear.

Sounds of pleasure that bring sounds of pain to my lips. Sounds I hold back because these walls are too thin.

I lie there, sweating in the dark, staring at the ceiling while all the time I can see him. See the smile. See those eyes - grey, green, silver, who knows. And all of the time I can hear those sounds - nothing too loud, nothing too crude, just the soft sounds of two people fucking, muffled through paper-thin motel walls.

And I wonder who's doing the actual fucking. Are they fucking? Or are they just experiencing that long, slow slide of two bodies together, bringing release? Is Sam pounding into some unfamiliar body, some man he'll never see again, some stranger who'll ask nothing of him but this one night? Or is Sam on his hands and knees while some fucking *nobody* slides in and out of his tight heat?

Or worse. Are they face to face? Is someone staring down into Sam's eyes, watching as each stroke brings him pleasure, watching as each feeling flickers through those emotive eyes? They'll be dark with passion, the irises wide and black surrounded by a narrow ring of vivid green. I've never seen them like that, never will see them like that but I know intimately what they will look like.

I've seen them in my dreams.

But Sam doesn't want me. He'd rather pick up a stranger in a bar and let him fuck him. Or fuck a stranger himself rather than me.

In spite of myself I'm hard, and I slide my hand to my cock, slipping it into my cool, cotton boxers and cupping my aching flesh.

Sam will wear silk no doubt.

I clench my eyes tightly closed against the pain that thought causes, against the pain that the sounds are still causing, but it doesn't help. And so instead I give in, let my imagination have free reign, for this one, brief moment almost glorying in the pain.

Because for this one moment I can hate him. Hate him for making me fall in love with him. Hate him for always being there for me, always being my friend, always being supportive, for caring...

And for not caring the way I want him to.

Sam doesn't do commitment, and that's what I want from him.

And so I take the anger and the grief and the pain and I turn it into a furious rubbing of my aching cock, muffling any sounds with my hand pressed over my mouth as I fist it almost violently. And all the time I can hear them. I close my eyes and I can see them. Sam on his knees, taking someone's cock into his mouth while harsh fingers slide into that silky hair, holding him in place while this man fucks his mouth with abandon. Or on his hands and knees while someone...

While someone takes what's mine.

They're close. The soft creak of the bedsprings speeds up slightly, and the sounds get a little louder, almost as though they've reached the point where they don't care about being quiet anymore.

I hear a long, drawn out moan and I don't know whether it's Sam or *him*. And I don't care, because it's over. For them, for me. I bite down hard on my hand and come, no pleasure in it just a release of tension. No joy.

They're quiet now, and I thank God for small mercies even while cursing him for making me privy to this, for dashing my last, small and stubborn hope.

I lie there, panting, my sore hand leaving my mouth to wipe away the tears that are coursing down my face.

I can't cry, not out loud, even though I need the release of that more than I needed to come. I can't give voice to my pain.

The walls are too thin.