Jeff Hardy paced around his hotel room muttering to himself. Angrily he kicked the trash can grunting happily when it flew across the room and crashed into the wall. Turning he paced the short distance to the door of the room then turned back and paced across the room again. Life sucked… royally. No job, no man, his friend were all scattered… He was alone.

But that was the point right? That was what he wanted. Jeffrey Nero Hardy finally gets to stand on his own two feet. He gets to be the ruler of his own destiny. He gets to be the captain of his own ship. But was he supposed to be the only person aboard? Somehow he didn't remember it that way.

Suddenly Raven was in his head and his predictions of doom and gloom were whispering to him telling him that he'd warmed him… urging him to return promising that he and he alone understood and loved him, but clenching his jaw Jeff shook his head. Pacing to a wall Jeff slammed his flat palm into it then drawing back his arm curled his fingers into a fist, but before they could connect painfully to the hard stucco his body lost its energy and his shoulder's sagging let the fist drop lifelessly to his side. Raven's words were nothing more than that of a jealous ex lover intent on pain when he realized that the possession he claimed at HIS was not going to return to him. Jeff had been nothing more than the pawn he used to hurt Shane.

Not that Jeff had been an unwilling participant. He had been too eager to let out some of the pain coursing through his body that he couldn't admit to. After all his break up with Matt had been HIS idea… HIS demand,,, his salvation. Only his salvation had turned into a lifetime of pain and suffering at the knowledge that Matt had moved on without him. HE was the happy one now while Jeff, who was supposed to be getting his second chance at happiness and dream living, was suffering alone and scared.

What if he was really nothing more than the attention grabber for the Hardy Boys? What if he was meant to be simply the flash that caught people's eyes for Matt Hardy? What if he had, by basically forcing the WWE to fire him, made the biggest mistake of his life?

Over and over Raven had told him that he was simply nothing. He was an empty shell with a pretty wrapping. There was no stimulating or fulfilling content to make anyone want to keep him for anything other than arm candy. A pretty face to smile and make someone else look good, what if he was never meant to do nothing more than that?

All his life he'd been safe and secure. Even as he stood on top of a ladder and looked down he somehow knew that Matty would never allow him to be hurt, but now… now it was different. Over the last several months he had done his best to make sure that everyone hated him, that everyone wanted nothing to do with the headache he was. And he had succeeded, but then if Matty had taught him anything it was to finish what you started and do it well. But he never really believed it would happen even when he was telling himself that was EXACTLY what he wanted!

But it wasn't.

He could close his eyes and remember what it felt like to have Matt's touch on him, his lips roaming his skin, his scent filling his senses. How could one night leave such an impression? Oh he knew what people thought, what they whispered about, what they believed. Matty always said, "FUCK WHAT THEY BELIEVE! They don't KNOW shit!" But they had.

People weren't stupid… just overconfident in his powers. Matty's will was always stronger than his and his big brother's conviction that Incest was really the greatest sin was simply too much for him to overcome. The greatest live of his life was Matty's worst and never would he be allowed to forget it. Never mind that he had only been a child… maybe a man in the eyes of the law, but a child by any who knew him. Never mind that he'd been awestruck by his older brother's overpowering influence over every single thing in his life. Never mind that it hadn't even been his suggestion.

But Matty insisted that it was Jeff's will that got them there and Jeff, who would give anything to have just one more taste, didn't have room in his battered soul to argue. So finally after years of having to be so close that he could feel it, taste it, smell it, but never allowed to have it had found a way to escape it. HE had thought that distance would be the healing power for his illness. Illness… he was beginning to sound like Matt. That was something HE would say. "You are SICK Jeff!" He'd curse his face turning red and his eyes dropping unable to meet the hazel ones of his little brother. "That is unnatural and will doom us both to eternal damnation."

But some how there still lay a tiny seed of hope somewhere in his soul that told him if he just didn't give up all hope… maybe…

But now his brother lay in the arms of Shane, the man he'd become Raven's play thing for. When those brown eyes looked at you and begged things that words couldn't express, not even someone like him could resist. Wearily he turned and crawled under the covers pulling them over his head. Maybe tonight would be the night… the night that the dreams didn't come, the night that signaled he was finally free of his fantasy and his brother's damnation.

The dream always started the same…

It was pitch black. He couldn't see anything but then he felt a pair of lips touch his ear then heard a voice whispering. The accent thickened from the wine he had consumed and the words slightly slurred, but still recognizable. The words and their meaning had been quite clear to him as they brought his every fantasy to life.

The he could feel hands… slipping under his shirt and over his stomach still soft with baby fat. Hot breath was hitting his neck just before he tilted it allowing the owner better access. "I am going to make you mine. Before Shannon or anyone else can touch you and steal what has belonged to mea since the day you were conceived… I am going to make you mine. Then no matter what happens, no matter what I say or they say or God says… you will be mine. Your soul, your body, your heart, your everything will belong lock stock and barrel to me! And there won't be a motherfucking thing anyone can do about it.

He's half moaned half whimpers Matt's name then wanting what he knew was coming so badly that it never even occurred to him that they were committing some mortal sin. Before he knew it his clothes were gone and Matt had him pinned to his bed… his mouth roaming over his little brother's body as if he could devour every cell or brand his mark on each. Jeff's head had rolled from side to side on the pillow as he begged shamelessly for more wanting that moment to come so that he could freeze time and they could live there forever.

After it was all said and done and the years had passed a sane man would have looked back and admitted that it wasn't the best he'd ever had. It wasn't the longest or the hottest or the most romantic. It had been short and painful and to Matt nothing more than a fuck, but to Jeff… it had been life altering. It HAD been the best EVER. And nothing else mattered other than the fact that the one man he'd always wanted and never had was finally there with HIM!

He'd never been the same since then.

Pain had become his mistress and intimacy had come to become his enemy. But if he could have anything in the world, if he could relive ANY moment in his life it would be that ten minute fuck in his bed in his father's house with his older brother. Because since then he'd never found anything that felt half as right.

So there he lay…

Alone in a bed in a hotel room having the same erotic nightmare he'd had ever day since the night after his eighteenth birthday. His torture still ongoing, his hope still alive, and that moment still just out of his grasp… Matt and Shane would never last. Raven would see to that and for once Jeff was thankful that Raven was such a possessive SOB.

The End… until the next story >:)

Read Story #4 The Tale of a Lonely Bottle