by Peter Styles
Markus grunted and moved back into the living room. After fetching a plate and gently sliding the omelet out of the pan, Jeremiah grabbed a fork and headed out after him. Markus still wore his dirty shoes, having now propped them up on their white ottoman. He held back a sigh as he saw the dirty smudges on its soft surface. Why fill their place with nice things if he was the only one making any effort to maintain it?
“Thanks.” Markus took the plate from him and had the entire omelet gone in about five seconds. Jeremiah wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or impressed.
“So, why do I need to be sitting down?”
“Because you are my ace in the hole!”
Markus beamed, but Jeremiah just shook his head and didn’t understand. “I don’t understand,” he said out loud.
“Of course not.” Markus tweaked his cheek with enormous fingers. “You’re lucky you’re pretty. And I’m lucky, too. You see, babe, I know you were at the park today.”
He was still mystified, unsure if any of this was supposed to actually make sense to him yet. “Well, yes, I was. I had some time between classes and it was a nice day outside. Uh… were you there?”
“No, no,” Markus said, still grinning. “Not me, but Chris was. You see, I decided to have someone tail along behind Chris to see what he was up to.”
“You’re having someone stalk him?” Jeremiah gasped.
“Not stalk. Just… conveniently be in the same place. Chris was there at the park meeting with a client…” Markus made a face, clearly of the opinion that business should be held inside an office “…but before he did, he was looking at someone else: you.”
“Oh…” He didn’t even have any idea what Chris looked like. Was he supposed to have been keeping an eye out for someone he didn’t even know? “Is that a bad thing?”
“No, it’s a very good thing!” Markus spread his hands. “Chris was clearly interested in you. He watched you until his head nearly fell off! We can use this.”
“We?”
“I have a brilliant idea. Chris has the hots for you, so if you pretend to be interested in him, you’ll get him to spill all his secrets to you. Then, you break his heart and come back to me with everything you learned. It’s brilliant!”
Jeremiah blinked, mulling the words over in his mind as they started to fully sink in. His own boyfriend wanted him to fake a relationship with another man to spy on him? That wasn’t just absurd, it was dirty!
“No way, Markus! I won’t do that. That’s… that’s awful. Why would you think something like that is okay?”
“Because this is business, babe!” Markus leaned forward and stared hard into his eyes. “Think about it. It’s not like you’ll really have any feelings for him, and he gets to have a fun time.”
“A fun time?” Jeremiah gaped. “What exactly do you want me to do with this guy?”
“Take him on some dates; get cozy with him! Use your imagination!” Markus was no longer smiling. An intense grimace spread across his lips to match the seriousness in his gaze. “It isn’t being unfaithful if we decide to do this together, and if you tell me everything you do with him.”
Jeremiah looked down. That made sense, in a backward sort of way. After all, how else did open relationships work for other people? It all had to do with communication. And if this was what his boyfriend wanted…
Why does this still feel so wrong?
“This just seems kind of dishonest, Markus.”
“It’s business!” Markus insisted. Just like that, he went back to smiling. His eyes glimmered brightly. “But I suspect you’re doing business with me too right now, aren’t you, babe? You want something out of this deal, huh?”
That’s not…
Markus took his hand and patted the back of it. “I’ll buy you anything you want if you do this for me, babe. I’ll buy you anything. You want a new suit? I’ll get you the best. And a back-up suit. One for the wedding and one for the reception!”
Jeremiah gasped. “What? Wedding?”
“That’s right!” Markus said, beaming. “If you do this for me the way I know you can, I’ll put a ring on that pretty finger of yours. On all ten of your fingers if you want!”
Jeremiah turned his head away slightly, thinking hard. All this time, he’d been waiting and waiting for Markus to take their relationship to the next step and it seemed like this was the price. They would be engaged, married even, if he did this simple thing.
And it was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? To help his boyfriend beat his rival?
Jeremiah looked in Markus’s eyes and knew his decision.
Chapter 4
“Are you really sure that this is okay?” Jeremiah asked, as Markus had his driver park them out in front of the expensive clothing store. He couldn’t even pronounce the name, and couldn’t even begin to guess what language the words might be from. His misgivings, which he had from the start of this, were only becoming that much stronger by the second.
“What?” Markus said, feigning ignorance as he climbed out of the limo and helped Jeremiah out behind him.
“This!” He gestured around at the strip, at the high-end restaurants that catered to ridiculous tastes such as caviar doughnuts and gold leaf-infused steak marinades. He didn’t belong here, where the music was a weird blurring of techno and hip-hop that somehow managed to embody only the worst aspects of each. This was a trendy place where everything was priced as though popularity was worth, and he wasn’t sure how to deal with that. This place was where culture came to die, especially because he was beginning to have a dreadful certainty that those words atop the clothing store sign were actually in English. Street English. Internet English, the worst kind of all. Oh, he didn’t belong here. “It’s just so… out of my league.”
“Correct,” Markus said. With one wave of his hand, he dismissed their driver to go park somewhere nearby where he could pull up again the moment he saw them emerge. “And that’s the point. Business evolves with the time. And at this upcoming party, there are going to be a great deal of new young folks trying to make connections. We have to ensure that you blend in.”
Blend in? The only thing Jeremiah ever blended into was the background, usually with his face hidden by whatever he was reading. He didn’t mingle with any crowd in particular or pay any attention at all to trends because he just didn’t have the right look for it. He hadn’t grown up with this like a lot of other people his age. Dressing like them, acting like them, made him feel like a poser. And they could sense his falseness from a mile away too.
Still, he really wanted to marry Markus and have all his dreams come true, so he shoved down his misgivings and followed his boyfriend into the dreadful store.
The second he did, he nearly went deaf. Most of the horrible techno music that could be heard all up and down the street was being pumped from a speaker right inside here, and it was almost enough to blow his eardrums out. How did this place still have windows?
It wasn’t just the sound that was a nightmare. It was the colors. Nothing went together, and there was no sense of pattern at all. Everything was unicorn-hideous or tie-dyed, or done in some form of rainbow shading. Everything was too bright, from the fabrics to the lights up above.
Jeremiah couldn’t see a single thing in here that he would call sensible business wear. Even knowing he would be going to a party soon, he wouldn’t be caught dead in any of this. These were clothes to go to a rave in, or a second-grader’s sleepover birthday party.
“Hi there!” a sudden voice shouted from nowhere. Jeremiah practically jumped out of his skin as a black woman with neon pink hair strode up to them. She practically had to scream to be heard over the music. “Welcome to…” Even spoken aloud, he still couldn’t understand the name of this place. “Can I help you two find anything in particular?”
“Suits,” Markus rumbled back, in his normal tone of voice.
The lady nodded and smiled, turning and pointing all the way toward the back of the store. Jeremiah squ
inted but all he could see was a giant display of shirts covered in emoji faces. “Back in that corner! My name is Shawntaya! Come find me if you need anything else!”
Markus thanked her and then grabbed Jeremiah’s arm, pulling him through the maze of thin shirts meant to be layered and hideous shredded jeans.
Jeremiah pressed up close against his boyfriend’s side and whispered directly into his ear. “This place is horrible.”
“You don’t like dubstep?” Markus chuckled.
“Dubstep? Is that what this horrible music is called?”
“It’s all the rage with the kids these days,” Markus replied, still laughing. “Might as well get used to it. Become it. You need to wear the best disguise you can tomorrow!”
Jeremiah stopped in front of the emoji shirt display. He didn’t want to look past these racks, because out of the corner of his eye he was seeing a whole lot of glitter and it was making his stomach hurt. “How do you even know Chris Finley is going to be interested in any of this? Maybe we should call this off until you know more.”
“Ah-ah-ah!” Markus tutted, waggling one finger teasingly. He leaned in and gave Jeremiah a quick peck on the lips. “The whole point of doing this is so you can find out that information for us, babe. And Finley doesn’t need to be interested in this. You just need to blend in and not look like a spy.”
Jeremiah shook his head. “And what is being here going to do to help with that?”
Markus grinned and strode past him, deep into the disco-ball of suits. He waded in, snagged something, and immediately waded back out again. “Ever see a spy who would be caught dead in one of these?”
Only under the vaguest of situations could that garment be called a suit. Yes, it had all the proper parts, pants and jacket and optional vest, but it wasn’t black or grey or even white. It was silver, yet shot through with light blue and purple and pink in a terrible imitation of some sort of galaxy and scattering a dust of glitter whenever Markus waved it around. The buttons were five-pointed stars.
My god, Jeremiah thought, horrified, I’m going to look gayer than I ever have in my entire life.
Markus handed him the outfit to go try on. And, horror of horrors, it fit. It fit almost perfectly, and Shawntaya gave them the name of a tailor who would bring in some of the errant seams. At least she put it in a black bag, so that the general public couldn’t see his shame when he carried it back out through the doors and onto the street again.
“You looked adorable,” Markus said, as the driver pulled back around and opened their doors for them.
“I looked like a sexually-confused five-year-old!”
“If Chris Finley is into that, please let me know.”
Jeremiah gave a short, unamused laugh. At least this part of the horrors was over… but, it seemed, there was more to come. Rather than heading back toward their apartment, the driver took them in the direction of the street that he recognized as being part of the tailor’s address.
“Oh, please, Markus. Don’t make me put that hideous thing on again!”
“It won’t take very long at all, babe. Don’t worry. And it’ll be worth it in the end, I promise.”
As it turned out, Markus’s idea of “worth it” was an hour of miniscule stitch work followed by a low-fat ice cream cone from McDonalds on the way home. Jeremiah didn’t share the same sentiment. To him, this whole damn venture would only be worth it when he was finally able to go to bed… with his husband.
Chapter 5
Finally, the party. If such events as this could be called that anyway. Chris suspected the term was used in place of “meet and greet” at the urging of someone who wanted to make their life seem as though it was less boring than it actually was. After all, who wouldn’t be jealous of a real estate employee if he went to work-sanctioned parties every other weekend?
The reality was a great deal more like a disappointing prom, or an even more disappointing night at a bar. The purpose was to make a connection with others, whether that was clients connecting with a company, or potential employees testing the waters by being in direct contact with company bosses. Chris saw accountants and bank managers and talent agents in the crowd as well, all of them keeping a sharp eye out for anything at all that might pique their interest. Typically, that only happened at certain times of the year when fresh graduates flooded the waters and were immediately picked off by the hungry sharks, but an occasional straggler might wander in otherwise.
Why, then, did so many people show up time after time when they knew they would only face disappointment?
For many, it was the free booze and catering provided by the company that hosted the party.
For Chris, it was the price of keeping up appearances. Business folk were remarkably temperamental. If it seemed as though he was losing interest in making public appearances, the assumption would either be that he had given up or was becoming too big for his britches. Neither one was what he wanted, especially after losing out on a partnership with Mr. King the other day, so here he was again as though he had nothing better to do with his time but watch his peers drink themselves into oblivion.
He himself never usually had more than a cup or two of beer, although he carried the drink around with him the whole time as a sort of prop. He was one of them. He was Chris Finley, rival and friend and occasional funny guy.
And mortal enemy, to some.
He stayed on the outskirts of the meeting area, which was a rented party room longer than it was wide. There were tables decked out with morsels of food, and an array of wine bottles and kegs, which would all be half-empty at this time of night. Most of the chatter had gone quiet as topics were thoroughly worn out, except for an occasional burst of drunken exclamation. Chris ignored most of it, preferring to keep to himself at the corner. Unless, of course, someone walked by. Then, like any good company manager, he engaged them in a rousing conversation for a dutiful length of time.
It was routine, simple, and incredibly boring.
And then, the routine was blown out of the water by a glimpse of something he hadn’t even known existed in such a sensible world as this one. How he had gone this whole night without noticing that eyesore, he had no idea. But it was there now, and he couldn’t look away. His eyes were glued.
Glitter-glued, that was.
It was a walking disco ball in the shape of a young man, a lanky fellow who moved as though he wasn’t used to owning a piece of clothing that was tailored to his exact measurements. His shoulders were slouched, his back bent, causing the garment to pull uncomfortably in some places and sag in others. And the color of that ugly suit… It looked like an art gallery had vomited; like a bad piece of modern painting spewed from the depths of some glimmering hell.
Who in the hell…
He was smiling. He could hardly believe what he was seeing, and the smile curving on his lips was, as a result, born more of confusion than amusement. Amidst these business and business-casuals, there was a unicorn.
Okay. Chris straightened up. I have to go meet this guy.
Oddly enough, no one else seemed terribly interested in the unicorn in their midst. They’d probably been seeing him all night and grown used to the sight, which still begged the question of how Chris missed him when the lights were literally shining on this guy. Oh, well. He had probably convinced himself so thoroughly that there was nothing to be seen, that he literally hadn’t seen.
Clutching at his cup, he skirted around the edge of the wall and down the next to reach the unicorn where he sat as inconspicuously as possible in the shadow of an ornamental Ficus.
The unicorn had his face buried in a wine listing, with only a meticulous shock of black hair protruding above. The sight was so incredibly familiar that realization slapped him across the face like a bolt of lightning.
I’ve seen you before. At the park. You were reading there, too! It’s you!
Before Chris could stop himself, excitement lurched up in his throat and he practically threw himself down at th
e other man’s table. The other man jumped, startled, slapping the drink listing down on the table while wildly looking around.
“Oh!” he said, and his voice was like diluted whiskey: smooth, but still a bit weak. “Oh. Uh… hello.”
“Hello to you,” Chris said, and stuck out his hand across the table. “My name is Chris. Chris Finley. I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before?”
The unicorn swallowed hard, clearly nervous. His grip was as weak as his voice. “I know who you are. Everyone knows who Chris Finley is.”
“Do they?” Chris said, pleased as a peach. Compliments were something for which he always had a craving, only now it seemed as though this glittering unicorn didn’t realize he’d been flattering at all. “Well, I guess that’s the best I can ask for, huh? Can I ask who you are?”
“Oh… uh… Jeremiah.”
Quickly, Chris ran through a mental checklist of all the people he knew but the name wasn’t familiar. “Jeremiah who?”
“Jeremiah None-of-your-business,” Jeremiah snapped.
Chris held up his hands, leaning back slightly. “Whoa, there. A bit high-strung, huh?”
Shying away like a little horse.
Jeremiah suddenly sighed and plucked at his suit, scattering puffs of glitter across the tablecloth as he did so. “Sorry. This is my first time at one of these and I’m kind of nervous.”
“I can tell you’re new,” Chris said. He really couldn’t take his eyes off that suit. And he really didn’t want to be caught staring, or laughing, but damn. A smile curled up on his lips again anyway. “That’s a pretty unique get-up you’ve got on.”
Jeremiah scowled, crossing his arms and pouting like an offended child. “I was invited here by someone and they made me wear this ugly thing. I really don’t know why.”
His tone of voice said that he knew exactly why, and Chris did too. It wasn’t uncommon for people here to invite their children or significant others along, to help scope out information or simply to keep them company. Clearly someone had gone in the opposite direction and turned this poor man into a unicorn as a distraction.
