Shades of Henry (The Flophouse Book 1)

by Amy Lane

  But something about the last two days—the last two months, really—had been teaching him that he could make mistakes and learn from them. That his life wasn’t over, that he was, in fact, a work in progress.

  Oh. That was a little bit promising. Works in progress were… were growing, were learning new things.

  Could fall in love.

  Lance watched as Henry grabbed the scrubs he’d been wearing the night before—now freshly cleaned—and followed Rivers out the door.

  “Text me!” Lance said weakly as the door was closing, and Henry turned to him seriously and nodded.

  “Swear.” He smiled then, and Lance could see the joy, the purpose. Yeah. This whole situation was fucked-up, but it apparently was teaching Henry something awesome about life, and maybe Lance needed him to see that before they moved forward any further.

  As the door closed and Lance tried to contain his worry, he really hoped they’d move forward further.

  HENRY CAME back that night exhausted and exhilarated. He took his turn cooking dinner, and then told the guys all about his adventures—the being questioned, the two different forged tapes, the fact that the super was in the hospital and by the way they should never, ever, ever, blow someone for rent without checking with the rest of the guys in the house first.

  “But what did you do this afternoon?” Zeppelin asked, wide-eyed. “’Cause we got home and Lance said you’d come and gone!”

  Henry grinned, looking at Lance with glee. “Well, me and the PI—”

  “That Rivers guy who got stabbed,” Fisher said, sitting practically on Zeppelin’s lap. “That guy?”

  “Yeah. Together we went to Scott’s dad’s practice, wearing scrubs. We pretended to be transport orderlies and went snooping around his office to see if there was something to indicate he was a douchenozzle.”

  “Was he?” Curtis had spent most of the afternoon seething in his bedroom, but hearing Henry back and working in the kitchen had drawn him out for dinner.

  “Oh my God,” Henry said. “Such a douchenozzle. Like big-time. He’s been double-dealing drugs out of the hospital, and it’s ugly. I don’t know what we’re going to do tomorrow, but I’ll bet it’s going to be looking around the hospital to see if we can find a distribution center.”

  “Did Rivers say that?” Lance asked.

  Henry looked sheepish. “No. It’s just… I mean, it’s what I would do if I was in charge.”

  “Which you’re not,” Lance reminded him.

  Henry shrugged. “Nope. Barely in charge of going to the bathroom. But I gotta admit it’s fun to run around and play detective.”

  “Oh, hey,” Curtis said, nose wrinkled. “Has someone been yakking in the bathroom? The pipes are starting to act funny, and it smells in there.”

  They were eating egg casserole—one of Henry’s specialties—and the whole table groaned. “God, Curtis!” “Curtis, could you not?” “Seriously, at dinner?”

  Henry stared at Billy. “Yakking?”

  Billy’s ears went red, and very carefully he avoided looking at Lance. God, it was a year ago—was that how long, a year and a half ago?—when Bobby had realized Lance and Billy were both bulimic as hell?

  He’d been so disappointed—and so hurt. Bobby had grown up knowing what it was like not having enough to eat. The idea that they would voluntarily purge their bodies of calories, because they felt ugly—it had blown his mind.

  For a few months, Billy and Lance had filled out calorie diaries, talked each other down from purging, stayed away from the laxative aisle in the store. Then Lance’s residency had started and Billy had broken up with his girlfriend again, and Lance had gotten that really stupid online reviewer who liked to poke at his baby fat, and Billy had sprained his ankle and had been unable to run for a couple of weeks, and….

  And suddenly they were avoiding each other’s eyes when they were coming out of the bathroom again.

  But in that time, they’d lost a whack of roommates and replaced them again with the current crop, and they were the only ones who knew.

  Unless Henry tried to fix the damned plumbing.

  “I can call Bobby,” Billy said casually. “You’ve got enough on your plate this week.”

  Henry rolled his eyes. “I can check it out tomorrow night, after dinner with my brother.” He looked hopefully at Lance. “Were you going to come with me?”

  Oh crap. “I’m sorry. I took an early half-day today. I promised my buddy I’d make it up tomorrow. I’m sorry, Henry.”

  Henry shrugged, and he looked disappointed but not hurt. “I was really glad you were here today,” he said. Then he looked back at Billy. “No, seriously, I can do it. Just make sure you guys have cleared out of the bathroom by the time I get back from Davy’s.”

  There was a general consensus, and Lance could only thank God he’d be gone. It was easier to not look guilty when you weren’t there.

  “So tell us how your buddy chased the bad guy with the knife,” Randy begged, and Lance wanted to groan. No. No hero worship of Jackson Rivers. Lance had met the guy—he was lost and damaged—and he hated that Henry and the others thought he was some sort of god.

  Chasing someone into a rat’s nest of apartment buildings after he’d just stabbed you sounded like pure suicide to Lance. The fact that it sounded like fun to Henry sent Lance into random sweats periodically, and that wasn’t hyperbole, and it didn’t get any better as Henry recounted the story. Lance would have thought he was exaggerating much of Jackson Rivers’s stoic “I got this,” but Lance had been there as he’d blown off his boyfriend while getting his back stitched up, and he knew it was true.

  Dammit. He did not need to worry any more about Henry Worrall.

  But that night, Lance nodded at Cotton this time, letting him know he could use Lance’s bed, and crawled onto the air mattress while Henry—showered and wearing his boxers and a T-shirt again—turned off the lights and then went toward the couch in the dark.

  “Henry?” Lance said tentatively.

  “Yeah?” He sounded uncertain too.

  “I mean, I don’t mind.”

  Henry let out a soft laugh, but he got up and moved over to the mattress, slid under Lance’s blanket, and set his own pillow down next to Lance’s.

  “Rivers and I talked about you today,” Henry said, and Lance fought the temptation to kick him off the bed.

  “Wonderful.”

  “Don’t be jealous.”

  Augh! “I hate that you know what this is,” Lance muttered. He hadn’t figured out what it was until Henry had used that exact word.

  “It’s… it’s what I feel in my stomach, thinking about you filming porn,” Henry said baldly. “I… I tried to tell Jackson that. That’s why we couldn’t be together.”

  Lance’s heart started pounding hard in his throat. God. This. This was terrifying. “What did he say?”

  “He said there was sex for sex’s sake and sex that meant something. And I said I’d just found my second lover dead in a dumpster.”

  Lance sucked in a tight breath. “Henry….”

  Henry shook his head. “And he asked me which one hurt most. Malachi betraying me or finding Martin Sampson.”

  Oh God. Lance breathed through broken glass. “Which one?” It was a stupid question, but he needed to hear the answer.

  “The betrayal hurt the most,” Henry said, and they were so close in the dark, Lance could see the glint of his blue eyes, almost colorless, and feel Henry’s breath on his face as he told secrets. “And I’ve been thinking all day about that. You’d never force me. And you’d never betray me. But I don’t know if you could care enough about me to help me deal with all that other stuff. I’m… I’m not going to be okay with the porn right away. Can you deal with it when I’m an asshole about that? Can you help me not hurt you too much?”

  “I can try,” Lance vowed, suddenly needing to say the words. “Can you… can you deal with finding yourself? You’re… you’re so in flux right now. Do you real
ly want to start something with—”

  Henry’s touch of lips on his own silenced him. Rough. A little gritty. Henry’s lips weren’t soft, just like Henry wasn’t sweet, not on the outside.

  Lance closed his eyes, suddenly so desperate for this, for this kiss, for this touch. He wasn’t sure of anything—wasn’t sure if Henry could even get out from under the cloud of suspicion he was fighting. The police hadn’t seemed to take anything Lance or the roommates said seriously, particularly when they asserted Henry hadn’t had the time to go out and kill someone and then hide the murder weapon.

  But Lance, so pragmatic in every other aspect of his life, suddenly didn’t care. Gruff, grumpy, practically a social throwback to the days when men like his father had ruled, Henry Worrall was rock-solid and responsible. He’d shown kindness to guys some people might assume were grown, corrupt, or stupid—and he’d taken a loosely knit bunch of assholes and bound them more tightly into the family unit Lance had craved.

  And he’d been alone, and lost, and vulnerable for longer than even Henry knew, and not once had he asserted it wasn’t his fault.

  Henry would take ownership of a relationship, just like he’d taken ownership for trying to end his last toxic binding to a man who would rather force him than claim him.

  Lance opened his mouth and let Henry in.

  Henry tasted him, tentatively, sweeping his tongue along the seam of Lance’s lips, venturing inside. Lance’s low moan welcomed him, and he deepened the kiss and went a little further, exploring.

  Lance rolled onto his back, giving Henry more room to maneuver, more control, and was surprised when Henry pulled back a little.

  There was embarrassment in his expression. “I… I’m not a good kisser,” he said, resting his forehead against Lance’s temple.

  “Wha—we were doing good so far!” He was pretty sure he’d been waiting for that kiss since March. “No disappointments yet!”

  Henry let out a broken sound. “Mal and I didn’t really kiss,” he confessed. “I… it wasn’t supposed to be a relationship.”

  “Then let’s keep doing it,” Lance murmured, brushing his lips along Henry’s jaw. “Maybe that’s all we need to do tonight. Just—”

  Henry caught his mouth again, a little more confidently, and Lance almost cried. His body was aching already, feverish, needy, and Henry wasn’t sure he knew how to kiss. He arched his hips unhappily, knowing they weren’t at an angle where he could even grind, and Henry pulled back with an evil grin.

  “I’m not great at kissing,” he said, “but I’m hell at the blowjob. Wanna find out?”

  And Lance almost said, “Yes! Just blow me and I’ll be great!” But was that what he really wanted? He hesitated, and Henry pulled back, hurt.

  “You don’t want—”

  “Keep kissing,” Lance whispered. “Keep kissing me. I’m not going anywhere. You don’t have anything to prove to me.” He lunged up and pulled Henry back to kiss him again, and with some rolling—loud on the mattress—Henry ended up on top, between Lance’s spread thighs, the kiss gaining momentum.

  Lance’s breath grew labored, and Henry’s kisses grew more urgent, and their frotting quickened in pace.

  Henry sat up, shucking his shirt, and Lance followed suit. They paused for a moment, staring at each other in the moonlight coming in from the front room window.

  “Tighty-whities too,” Lance directed. “I want to feel you.”

  Henry hmmd, and there was some more wrestling with clothes until he was back on top, and they were skin to skin. Lance sighed happily, luxuriating in their closeness in spite of the heat and the overworked air-conditioning of the upstairs apartment.

  But suddenly Henry was shaking.

  “Henry?”

  Henry kissed him as a reply, mouth hot, body aggressive against Lance’s own, and for a moment Lance responded in kind.

  But he remembered that hesitation, that shyness, and lifted up, smoothing Henry’s hair from his temples with both hands.

  “Sh…,” he murmured. “There’s just us in this bed. We have all the time in the world, okay?”

  Henry shook his head. “But we don’t,” he said brokenly. “What if…?”

  “No what-ifs,” Lance told him, keeping his voice firm. “Just you and me, and skin on skin, and nobody outside of us is gonna hurt us now.”

  Henry nodded. “You’re… you’re really brave with all that hope.”

  “You’re really brave with all that chasing down the bad guys stuff,” Lance told him. “It terrifies me. Your new friend terrifies me, but he’s not here.” Lance lunged up again, and the kiss went on, some of Henry’s frenetic urgency easing, until they were moving against each other, their cocks bare on each other’s skin, their arousal amping up.

  More, and more, and more, their mouths moving deliriously, their rhythm growing slow and short and hard.

  “Lance?” Henry begged, and Lance slipped his hand between them, wrapping his fist around Henry’s cock in a basic hand job. Henry followed suit. Lance kept it slow, feeling Henry’s sturdy thick base, squeezing the solid shaft until his hand caught on the ridge, rubbing his thumb along the slit. Henry gasped and did the same to him, but the kiss—that was the thing, and it didn’t stop until Lance’s entire body ached with need, and Henry whimpered inside his mouth and bucked once, twice….

  He ripped his mouth away from Lance’s so he could bury his face against Lance’s neck as he came.

  His cry of climax was one of the loneliest sounds Lance had ever heard, and before Lance could comfort him, his own orgasm rolled slowly out, until he was gasping, shaking, clinging to Henry with his free hand as Henry’s hot spend cooled on the one below their waists.

  Henry’s ragged breathing stuttered against his throat.

  “You okay?” Lance whispered.

  “I’ll go get a—”

  Lance pulled his hand away and wiped it on the sheets. “We do plenty of laundry,” he murmured, pulling Henry’s hand and using the sheet to clean it too.

  “I’m sorry,” Henry said, not looking at him. “That was probably… stupid. Kid’s stuff—”

  “Hey.” Lance kissed him. “There’s nothing stupid about sex. It doesn’t have to be anal or oral or penetrative to mean something. Yeah, with some guys a hand job is a handshake, and with other guys a kiss is a wedding proposal. This was something in between.”

  Henry laughed softly and moved so he could rest his head on Lance’s chest. “You’re really good at that, you know?”

  “Good at what?” God, he felt wonderful. The pleasant buzz of sex pulsed along Lance’s nerve endings, but more than that, having Henry, bare and vulnerable, draped over his body was filling all his empty places.

  “Making me feel not stupid. Making my fuckups seem human.”

  Lance grunted. “You should see people in the hospital,” he said. “Maybe they banged their thumb with a hammer or put on too much weight. And they won’t ask for help. They don’t go to a doctor until their thumb is six times its normal size and practically falling off. They don’t ask for diet help until they can’t get out of bed in the morning. Shame is a horrible thing, you know?”

  Henry lifted his chin. “Oh,” he said, his lips quirking in the moonlight.

  “Oh what?” God, he was so handsome. The stark lines of his face were perfect, even his flat-eyed gaze.

  “Porn,” he said, a smile ghosting over his kiss-swollen mouth. “I get it now.”

  Lance would have sat up right then, but their adventures had left the mattress a little… soggy. “Get what?”

  “No shame. I kept wondering—why porn? Why not waiting tables or folding jeans or something. But… but all the people in your life, they tried to make you ashamed, all at the same time. And you….” Henry bit his lip and rubbed his knuckles along Lance’s cheek. “You don’t play that fucking game. You took this thing that people wanted you to be ashamed of and told the whole entire world that you were proud of it. You did it naked and you did it
in style. You’re beautiful and you showed everybody that you were meant to be seen. That’s amazing. That’s… that’s what makes you so fucking brave.”

  Lance’s eyes burned. “That’s really perceptive, soldier. I’m pretty impressed.”

  “Not nearly as impressed as I am,” Henry said, and then he kissed Lance. It was a different kind of kiss, not exploratory, not building. Just… just a happy kiss, exulting in their bodies, still come-sticky, still soaring happily on sex-endorphin airways, but happy.

  Lance returned it, until they were both a little sweatier, a little more breathless.

  And then Henry broke off the kiss to yawn.

  Lance laughed and rolled Henry off him and to the side. “Sleep,” he proclaimed. “We will do this some more.” The air mattress creaked. “In my bed. And we will do it in an empty house, and we will be alone, and I will think of all sorts of ways to make noise, do you understand?”

  God, please let this not be the only time. Please.

  “Yeah,” Henry said. “It’s ours. We’re not going to have sex with all the guys around, like soldiers whacking off in a barracks. I get it.”

  Lance’s relief was palpable. “I’ve had easy sex,” he told Henry. “And I’ve had it for pay. In case you were wondering, this thing you and I just did, it’s a whole lot more important.”

  “I wasn’t wondering,” Henry said gruffly. “I’m stupid. I mean, God. My first relationship was a clusterfuck of entrapment—you know that. But I’m not so stupid I don’t know this is special.” He wrestled a little to sit up and then fell back against the fucking mattress again. “Should we put on our underwear?”

  “No.” Lance wasn’t arguing about this either. “This way all the guys will know what we’ve been doing, and they’ll all know it’s you and me.”

  “Will they know it’s important?” Henry asked, eyes searching Lance’s in the darkness.

  “They’d better.” Lance swallowed. “I’m not sharing you.”

  “Me neither.” Henry grimaced. “But that may make life a little harder when you’re up on the schedule again.”