by Willa Okati
“Patrick.”
“Hang. Up.” Rory dropped his pencil and upped his ‘tude. “We’re not goin’ another three rounds with that asshat. Harper?”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Patrick had his game voice on, the rich, sensual tones snaking tendrils around Harper’s senses and attempting to cozen and lull him into trust. “Were you in conference? Apologies for interrupting. Are you working on your new project? Care to offer me a sound bite?”
Attempt didn’t equal accomplishment, especially when mutual loathing entered the picture. “Quit screwing around, Patrick. Tell me what you want so I can say no. It’ll save us both time.”
“Rude, Harper. I’ve sent you an e-mail.”
“And?”
“And I think you may want to take a look. Are you on your BlackBerry? Good. I’ll hold.”
Abruptly at his side without visibly crossing the room, Rory nudged Harper. He wrinkled his nose as if he’d caught a whiff of something rotten. For once, he said nothing, though he stood with a certain conviction that told Harper he wasn’t going anywhere before the conversation had come to an end.
Harper thought he’d rather that was earlier rather than later. “Sorry. No can do. I’ll get back to you.”
“Like hell. I’ll crack your password and delete his e-mail first,” Rory mumbled. He sounded almost… jealous?
“Fine.” Patrick chuckled, far too amused by himself. “If you don’t want the link to the YouTube of the hour --”
Harper stiffened. “You didn’t.”
“-- featuring a prominent writer stumbling through Manhattan seemingly drunk before nine a.m. --”
“Bastard.” Harper forgot Rory, shimmering heat waves of anger clouding his vision.
“-- and funnily enough, no Bluetooth can be seen on either ear. Interesting. Tell me why it’s really so important that you have a sterling public image right now -- cough, Rialto, cough -- and I’ll take it down with a formal apology,” Patrick replied. “I know you, Harper, and you’re hiding something big.”
“If I was --”
“There’s no ‘if’ to that.”
Harper’s fingers twitched. “If I was, what do you plan to do about it? YouTube me to death?”
“For starters,” Patrick agreed.
“A slow death by a thousand cuts.”
“Harper, this isn’t the dark ages. I prefer a million mouse clicks instead.”
Harper’s temples throbbed. “What do you get out of this, Patrick?”
“More than a byline. Can’t say anything else, unfortunately. Confidentiality agreements. You know how those get a man by the short hairs.”
“You’re unbelievable.” Harper speared his fingers through his hair and tugged. “Is the next step in your master plan to pull my pigtails?”
“Of course not. That would imply I like you. I’d rather push you in the mud until you stay down.” Patrick rolled the syllables around in his mouth as a wine taster would savor a good Burgundy. “I last longer than you do, Harper. In everything. You know I’ll wear you down. One crumb at a time.”
Mouth open, Harper hesitated. One throwaway. Didn’t even have to be the truth. If it got the prick off his shoulder for long enough to catch his breath --
Flashing behind his mind’s eye, he saw Janie with her hair tied in a messy knot. “I put my neck on the line for you,” she whispered.
Lisa popped her head up behind Janie. “Harper, you gigantic ass!”
Harper shook off the temptation. “No.”
“Your choice, Harper. I think you’ll remember I keep my promises.”
“Actually, no. You really don’t.”
“When I want to, I do.”
“Go to hell.” Harper flipped his phone closed and breathed. In. Out. In. Out.
Rory’s hand closed around Harper’s wrist, firmer than life. “Calm down for me, Harper. Shake it off.”
Harper didn’t reply. Couldn’t, not in words. The phone burned his palm, its plastic stinging his skin, vibrating with the tension in his fingers.
Calmly, he shook off Rory’s grip, raised, aimed, and sent his beloved BlackBerry flying across the room. The collision destroyed his phone. The casing ricocheted from the impact; the keys popped loose, pinging off the window.
Rory’s “Holy shit!” barely skimmed the surface of Harper’s hearing.
Not enough.
Harper drew back his fist and aimed for the wall.
Chapter Four
“You ever notice you have a small problem with overreacting?” Rory held his forefinger and thumb a quarter of an inch apart. “Just a skosh. Hold still.”
“Sorry.” Harper shifted in his chair, looking anywhere but at Rory. He chose a spot three inches above and to Rory’s left, looking at a patch of graffiti in what he thought might be Farsi.
“I always wondered why they kept these honkin’ huge first-aid kits in business offices,” Rory mused. He screwed off the lid of a palm-sized bottle of dark glass, releasing a rolling whiff of eye-watering vapors. “Whoo! Wow. Yeah, that’s iodine.”
“How old is this kit?” Harper attempted to jerk his injured hand away from Rory, who slapped his wrist.
“Not at old as me.” He spread Harper’s hand open, cupping it in both his palms, tipping it this way and that. Nudging his fingers and brushing blood off with his thumb. “Talk about a mess.”
“I can always count on you for the truth.” Harper winced reflexively when Rory came too close to a scrape.
“Damn skippy you can,” Rory said, still absent, worrying his lip between his teeth. He poked at the base of the nail on Harper’s index finger.
“Ow!” Harper exhaled heavily and sat back to watch Rory work. His lips twitched, amused yet touched by the serious concentration Rory gave to his patchwork. “Give it to me straight, doc. Will I ever play the violin again?”
“Nope, but since you never did in the first place, I wouldn’t worry about it.” Rory winked at him. “I’m not telling you how old I am -- no can do -- but trust me, I know my Jack Benny.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“If I told you, then that’d make the point moot. Suck it up and deal.”
Harper regarded Rory, lost in thought and leftover adrenaline jangling his nerves with nowhere else useful to go. “I really can count on you to be honest with me, can’t I?”
“Always.” The duh Rory left implied, as if it should have been obvious and he gave Harper a pass on this one due to the remnants of temporary insanity. He prodded Harper’s hand once more and lifted his chin. “This looks easy enough. I can patch you all the way up here. No stitches. You okay with that?”
“Are you a nurse, too?”
“Muses provide all kinds of inspiration.” Rory rolled his shoulder in lieu of a proper shrug. “Do you trust me with everything?”
That was the million-dollar question. “I’m not sure,” Harper admitted.
“Huh.” If Rory hadn’t had his face down, intently examining the surface damage to Harper’s hand, Harper thought he would have missed the small droop of Rory’s lips and the shuttering of his eyes. A snapshot of time, less than a second’s worth, as bittersweet as burned almonds.
“Rory, I didn’t mean --”
“Yeah, you did. No sweat, Cap’n. Let’s get this fixed up.”
“Rory.”
“Iodine, yes or no? Eh, it’s probably too old. Shame. Good old alcohol wipes do just as well. Not as colorful, though.”
Harper let it go, and did his best not to flinch or pull away from the invasive sting of alcohol-soaked swabs and the off-key melody of Rory’s humming.
Looked like muses couldn’t sing, or at least his couldn’t. Maybe he’d traded in the ability for a tongue otherwise hinged in the middle, able to flap at both ends.
He shifted his weight from one hip to the other, uncomfortable with himself more than the hard chair. What kind of ungrateful prick was he, anyway? “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“For what?”
“Flying off the handle. It’s been a strange day for me… I don’t usually --”
“S’okay. You push anyone hard enough, and sooner or later he’ll go ka-boom.” With his face tilted down, his eyelashes hid Rory’s changeable irises and muted his expression. “I tend to forget as much.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“Sorry, Charlie. That’d be my job.” Rory shushed him before Harper could form a retort. “Good thing you didn’t aim for a window. The drywall did its fair share of ouch, but at least I’m not picking out shards of glass. Your phone, on the other hand, is a total write-off.”
“I figured.”
“I’d ask if the whole violence thing helped. I suspect I already know the answer is ‘no.’” Rory industriously blew on the surface of Harper’s hand, cooling the alcohol burn. “Something I wanted to ask you. Y’know, there are bad breakups, and then there’s Chernobyl.” He clicked his tongue. “You two are toxic on a toothpick. Sticks and stones --”
“If you, a muse, dare to finish that rhyme, I’m going to pour the iodine down the back of your neck.”
Rory’s small chuckle told Harper he’d won back a degree of approval. “You got me there. Maybe a butterfly bandage or two wouldn’t go amiss here. There should be some…” he trailed off, transferring Harper’s hand solely to his right. He bent to his left and rummaged in the Red Cross kit. “Ha! Gotcha.” He ripped open the packaging with his teeth, muttering around the paper what Harper took to be a demand for baklava in repayment.
He spit the paper out. “Why do you let him get to you so much?”
Harper figured he owed Rory that much. “He hammers my hot spots; I turn the other cheek because that’s what drives him craziest. Rinse, repeat.”
“That’s healthy.” Rory wrinkled his nose.
“If he’d grow up, so would I.”
“That a fact.” It wasn’t a question. More of a scoff dripping with disbelief like sickly NutraSweet syrup. Still, Rory’s touch gentled further, cradling Harper’s hand rather than seeing to business. Harper swallowed around a rising lump in his throat. Felt great. Too much so.
Rory broke the tension by saying, offhand, as he got a better hold on Harper’s wrist, “Someone oughtta lock the two of you in a room and let you duke it out, then, instead of battering innocent walls.”
Harper barked an unexpected laugh as he entertained a brief daydream in which he and Patrick stripped to boxing gloves and satin shorts, bouncing on their heels and toes on a center ring made of administrative directives.
“Your aura indicates naughty thoughts. Share, share.”
“Mostly the understanding of how stupid Patrick would look in slippery purple.”
“Say what now?”
“Take a closer look, if you want.”
Rory’s eyes widened. A giggle -- a manly one -- escaped him before he pressed his lips tight. “Bad form, Harper.”
“Uh-huh.” Harper shifted, propping his elbow on his knee and his chin in his free hand. “It’s still fun.”
“You’re not wrong there. The guy’s a grade-A dick. Funny, though.” Rory nipped open and spat out a butterfly wrapper. “You’re gonna look like Return of the Mummy.”
“I’ve written scripts for worse.” Harper forced out a deep breath, visualizing the last of his anger flowing out and dissipating. Rory’s touch, light as a dragonfly’s wings and warming as biting into a clove, just as spicy, was too good to waste by keeping his mind focused on staying pissed off at Patrick.
“Attaboy,” Rory murmured, closing the box of bandages. “Let it all go.”
Harper hmm’d. “I think your impulse control issues are rubbing off on me.”
Rory caught the tip of his tongue between his teeth as he chortled, nimble touch never ceasing to smooth and mend.
“Okay, I asked for that one. The handjob” -- Harper waited for Rory’s snicker to fade away -- “is warping my sense of self-preservation. You’re unbelievably good at this.” He remembered Rory’s massage and made a connection. “Healthy body, healthy mind?”
“The Greek philosophers did get a lot right,” Rory agreed. “Almost done. By the way, I figured out what’s wrong with the show. I know what you’re doing wrong. We pull this creative cork loose, and it’ll be easy-breezin’ from here on out. Hand me the cap to the iodine, would you?”
Harper sat up sharply straight. “Explain what you just said.”
“If you’d ever cleaned up spilled iodine, you’d -- okay, okay.” Rory dodged Harper’s clumsy swipe at him. His new cheery mood failed to dull. “It’s not too complicated. A program like In Outré needs something to go deep and twisty with a toy surprise in every box, right? You gotta think ahead. Way ahead. Like chess. Not in noodle-doodle circles.” He twirled a finger at his temple.
Remembering his broken phone and the dented wall he’d end up paying to repair, adding to them his fried computer and a distinct absence of usable flash drives in his life, Harper winced. “Hate to break it to you, but in case you hadn’t already noticed, patience sometimes isn’t one of my strong suits.”
“Don’t sound like I just told you your pet poodle died. You can learn.” Rory patted Harper’s hand and let go reluctantly. “There. Good as new.”
Harper examined his now multicolored fingers; Smurfs on the index knuckle and Roo on the pinky and some unidentifiable aliens on the back. “New and improved with 60 percent more cartoons.”
“Whatsamatter, baby doesn’t like the decor? It’d mean ripping off a lot of adhesive, but you want I should start over with the tan-colored crap?” Rory grinned at him, smug in his understanding of Harper’s pain thresholds.
A laugh surprised its way out of Harper. “Fuck you.”
“Ooh.” Rory wiggled. “Anytime, anywhere. Always on tap, my friend.”
Weariness unbuckled the last of the ties on Harper’s tongue. He’d had a hell of a day. “I don’t get you, Rory.”
“How so? I’m an open book. Write in me.” Rory hooked his ankles around the legs of his chair. “Or on me. I’m good for either.”
“Be serious.”
Rory’s eyebrows drew closer together, but he nodded. Maybe he’d worn himself out, too. Even hummingbirds had to rest every now and then. “Speak your piece. What’s the mystery?”
“I have to know… all this, is it just me? And don’t ask me what I mean. The come-ons. The leering. The all but laying yourself out on a platter with strategically placed parsley garnish.”
“You offend me, sir.”
“Because you wouldn’t waste the parsley?” Harper tipped his chair back, mirroring Rory’s sprawl. “Do you do this with everyone you’ve played muse for, or is it just me?”
Rory developed an immediate, fixed fascination with cleaning up discarded wrappers. It was almost cute.
“I’ll just keep asking if you don’t tell me.”
“Some things you’ve already learned too well.” Rory tidied scraps into a pile, scratched his jaw, and heaved a sigh. “It’s not, uh, I’m not. I don’t offer myself up on a silver plate for everyone.”
Harper wasn’t sure if he liked that answer more or less than he would have another. “You do strange things to my head,” he remarked.
“That’s the job,” they said, nearly in sync.
“Then what is it about me?”
Rory rocked his chair on its hind legs, balancing. He studied Harper. What he saw there, Harper didn’t know, but he waited for Rory to riddle it out all the same. “You honestly don’t know, do you? No. No, you don’t. Huh.”
The chair legs dropped with a thump. Rory moved human-slow, sliding over and into the V of Harper’s open thighs. He placed two fingers under Harper’s chin and raised it, turning him this way and that, as he had with Harper’s hand.
Harper let it happen.
“Harper.” Rory’s breath tingled on Harper’s cheekbone. He let his eyes drift closed at the touch of Rory’s lips to his.
Though Harper had expected -- hoped -- for
this, his lips parted on a soft inhalation of surprise. Rory licked once over the bottom one, tugging once with careful teeth, and only released him reluctantly. “Let me?” he asked, rough, whispering. “I’ll make it good. I swear.”
“You don’t have to,” Harper said, catching Rory by the forearms. To keep him close or to push him away? Harper didn’t know.
“I want to. Harper? Harper, look at me.” Harper’s eyelids drifted open. His vision cleared on a two-inch close-up of Rory’s irises, their color flowing from gold to green to blue to gray. “I’m your muse. Beyond a certain point, when you hurt, I hurt.”
Harper inhaled. “Never thought of it that way.”
“Blue balls are no more enjoyable when shared, believe you me.” Rory thumbed his lip. “Whaddya say, huh?”
Harper licked his lips, gone dry. His throat burned and he doubted chain mail would have been able to hide his rising hard-on pressed full and thick, warming the tight globes of Rory’s ass through his painted-on jeans. “I’m still not sure this is a good idea.”
“Does it matter?”
“Right now?” Harper let go and nuzzled under the shadow of Rory’s jaw, scraping his skin on Rory’s stubble. “No.”
“Then let me,” Rory insisted.
Harper closed his eyes and slid underneath, easy as breathing the tiger out of its cage. Relief brought with it a cool rush of spicy headiness. He’d hate himself in the morning probably, but he’d been there and done that plenty of times before. He’d hate himself for the rest of his life if he said no to Rory now.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Please. Just… not here, okay?” He caught Rory’s hand as it snaked toward his inseam, fingertips grazing his fly. Rory’s frustrated whimper did strange things to the inside of Harper’s head. “Come home with me.”
Rory’s breathing hitched. “For real? No take-backs, Harper. You ask me in, I’m yours.”
Harper’s eyelids drifted open. He pressed his forehead to Rory’s, fixated on the glaze to Rory’s eyes and the shiny, swollen fullness of his lips. I did that to him. “I got the memo.”
“Want me?”
“Too much. Come home. With me.” He stole a fast taste of Rory’s mouth. “Besides. You already wandered around bare-assed for no reason. The cosmic balance has to be set right.”
