Waiting for Patrick

by Brynn Stein

  Elliot decided “easier to talk” was a bit optimistic once they reached an empty table in the corner, but he was more comfortable since they were farther away from the main throng. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do now. It was far too loud to talk to Sheri very easily. He ordered a beer and nursed it for as long as he could. When it was finally empty, Sheri flagged down a scantily dressed man who apparently worked there, and ordered them each another drink.

  Not long after the second drink arrived, a young man, mid- to late-twenties, sashayed over to the table and draped himself over Elliot’s shoulder. His blond hair was short on the sides and stuck up on top in the “I just got out of bed and didn’t do a thing with my hair” style he’d probably spent forever on. A mixture of beer, cologne, and sweat overpowered Elliot before the man even spoke.

  “Hi, gorgeous,” he slurred. “I’ve been watching you all night.” Elliot wondered how an hour or so could possibly be considered all night. The man continued. “Let’s dance.” He grasped Elliot’s wrist and pulled.

  The kid was probably two or three inches shorter than Elliot and slightly built. He wasn’t going to be able to move Elliot unless Elliot allowed him to.

  Elliot used his thumb and forefinger to encircle the younger man’s wrist and lifted it off his chest and away from him. Between the bare minimum contact and what Elliot was hoping was a look of disgust on his face, he wasn’t sure why the kid didn’t run away screaming. “I don’t dance,” he snarled.

  It didn’t deter the guy, though. He clung even tighter and whispered into Elliot’s ear. “How about we go to the bathroom, then? We can do a different kind of dancing,” As he listened to the slur in his voice get heavier with each word, Elliot tried to estimate how many beers the man might have had.

  “Maybe later.” Elliot regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Why was he offering any hope? He had no intention of going anywhere with this guy.

  “That sounds promising.” The young man somehow managed to ooze into a chair beside Elliot without loosening his grip at all. “I can do later.”

  Sheri was all but dissolving into laughter across the table from them. Elliot kicked her.

  “Shut up, you.” He glared, but she giggled even more.

  “Your drapery is still talking, Ellie.” She laughed, gesturing toward the twentysomething blond leech. Elliot tried to move away enough to look the kid in the eye but couldn’t manage it, so he simply listened.

  “I’m Daniel,” he was saying. “What’s your name?”

  Elliot wasn’t inclined to answer, so Sheri answered for him. “Oh, that’s Ellie.”

  “Ellie?” The kid was definitely drunk or stoned or both, and was having a hard time wrapping his mind around the female name attached to the decidedly male body he was draped over. He seemed to feel the need to assure himself of the gender of said body and ran his hands down Elliot’s chest and into his groin. He smiled insanely when he found what he was after, and Sheri laughed uproariously as Elliot squealed in surprise at the personal intrusion.

  “Darrell!” Elliot screaked. “Do you mind?”

  “Name’s Daniel. And no. I don’t mind at all.”

  “I did not invite you to put your hand there. Could you kindly move it, please?”

  Daniel started doing exactly that.

  Elliot groaned. “I didn’t mean like that.” He tried not to let his voice get husky as his body responded to the way Daniel rubbed his palm firmly into Elliot’s crotch. It had been a long time since anyone but himself had massaged that particular part of his body. “I meant move it away from….” Elliot moaned again and unconsciously scooted down in his chair to provide room in his rapidly tightening jeans. “Oh God.”

  “Where would be the fun in moving it away?” Daniel leered, and Elliot suddenly wondered if the young man was as wasted as he had first assumed. “You seem to like what I’m doing now.”

  “Stop that.” Elliot tried to be forceful. He really did. But at that moment, not even he was convinced that he wanted Daniel to stop. It had been a long, long time. “Shit. We’ll be right back,” he told Sheri as he grabbed Daniel’s hand and practically sprinted toward the bathroom, dodging writhing bodies and waiters bearing trays of drinks.

  ELLIOT HIT the bathroom door with such force that it bounced off the inside wall. He virtually dragged Daniel into one of the stalls on the far side of the room. No sooner had Elliot closed and locked the stall door than Daniel had slipped to his knees and exposed Elliot’s considerable erection.

  “Been a while, huh?” He smirked up at Elliot.

  Elliot didn’t bother to answer as he stared at the graffiti-covered door of the john and willed himself to stay in control at least long enough for the kid to start the blowjob. He put his hand on the back of Daniel’s head and pulled him forward. “Stop talking, Darrell.” Elliot kicked a stray piece of toilet paper out of the way and spread his legs a little wider, dropping his pants to the red and gold tiled floor.

  “It’s Dan−”

  Elliot rammed his hips forward and Daniel got busy with the sudden mouthful, not bothering to correct Elliot on the name, or much of anything else.

  ELLIOT THOUGHT that would be the end of it. He’d be rid of the kid now. Surely that’s what Daniel had been after. He had gotten it, so he’d go on to greener pastures and leave Elliot alone. Right?

  Wrong.

  Daniel followed Elliot back to the table, where Sheri was now kissing a dark-skinned man while sitting on the lap of a long-haired blond. Both men had a hand up Sheri’s skirt and on the bulge in the front of each other’s pants.

  “Ah geez, Cher.” Elliot sighed as he slid into his chair and quickly contemplated the swirled pattern of the fake wood grain on the tabletop. “At least I had the decency to go to the bathroom.”

  Sheri flipped him the bird, which he saw out of the corner of his eye, and continued what she was doing.

  Daniel took that as permission to grab Elliot’s chin, pull his face around to look at him with brilliant blue eyes, and start kissing him.

  “Ah, to hell with it.” Elliot grumbled, scooting his chair around so he could get a better angle, and kissed him back. The DJ changed the music from one loud song to another, and bodies writhed in tempo, with no regard to what was happening around them.

  SHERI DIDN’T take either man with her, but when she and Elliot got up to leave, Daniel followed.

  “No way, Darrell.” Elliot pushed him back a little. “I go home alone.”

  Daniel clung to Elliot’s neck and asked, “Why would you want to do that? And it’s Daniel.”

  Sheri brought the car around while Elliot tried to disengage himself from the kid who, he could swear, had more arms than was usually allotted to human men, even horny ones. When Elliot opened the passenger’s door, Daniel slid in and refused to get out. Elliot dropped his head in defeat and slid in beside him, pushing him to the middle. Sheri giggled again and drove the two to Elliot’s house.

  Elliot struggled to find his keys and open the front door. As soon as he got it open, Daniel pushed Elliot inside. He got a sudden pang of wrongness at the thought of having a stranger in this particular house. But he had no idea how to get rid of the man at this point, and since Elliot had endured Daniel’s tortuous hands all the way home, he wasn’t about to stop their progress now. He’d deal with any guilt that might come from it later. Elliot struggled to get to the upstairs bedroom with Daniel clinging to him every step he took. No sooner than they were in the room did the young man start taking off Elliot’s clothes.

  “Darrell—”

  Daniel kissed him instead of correcting him, and backed him to the bed, stripping Elliot of his shirt and belt. The frayed bedspread wrinkled around him as if welcoming him back, and as Daniel pushed him to his back, the scent of aged mattress and new linen assailed him. Elliot felt another fleeting sense of wrongness but tuned it out. It was a tight fit for two grown men in the smaller-than-normal bed, but at that moment Daniel was more blan
ket than bed partner.

  “Oh, hell no.” He grabbed Daniel’s wrists and flipped them over on the mattress. “If this is going to happen, I sure as hell am not going to be on the bottom.” He quickly slithered out of his jeans and underwear and fell back on the gorgeous, naked morsel waiting for him on the bed.

  Daniel leered up at him as if this had been his plan all along. “Good.” He went limp. “Fuck me.”

  Elliot had Daniel writhing beneath him in no time. He held his wrists in one hand while he rolled his balls around with the other.

  Daniel whimpered. “Get on with it.”

  “My bed, my rules.” Elliot continued to tease Daniel. He was ready to start prepping him but thought of something. “Shit. I don’t have any lube or condoms. It’s not like I was planning on this. I was only going to be here for a couple of days.”

  Daniel had a hard time catching his breath. “Left… back… pants pocket.”

  Elliot let go of Daniel’s wrists to retrieve the kid’s slacks with one hand while still rolling his testicles around in the other. It took longer to find what he wanted that way, but it was worth it to watch Daniel come apart with his ministrations.

  “Hurry.” Daniel was panting now, and Elliot hadn’t even started the hard stuff.

  He got the top off the lube and managed to get some on his fingers. He circled Daniel’s entrance and didn’t even breach him before Daniel cried out and squirted streams of come over his belly. Elliot chuckled and continued his preparation.

  “I hope you can get it up again. Because I’m not done yet.”

  “I’m good for another round,” Daniel panted. “Give me a minute. I’ll be right back with you, old man.”

  Elliot withdrew the hand he was using for stretching and slapped Daniel hard on the hip. “Who are you calling an old man?”

  Daniel groaned and his spent penis twitched. Elliot laughed and smacked him once more before going back to the stretching.

  Soon he had two fingers scissoring Daniel open, and Daniel started to writhe again. Elliot removed his fingers and barely had time to register Daniel’s disappointment before he rolled a condom onto himself and slid into Daniel’s body.

  Daniel’s cock jerked over and over, and probably would have issued stream after stream of come if he hadn’t already ejaculated so recently. It didn’t seem to keep him from enjoying the sensation immensely, though, so Elliot continued doing what he was doing. He didn’t worry with slow and easy. He set up a punishing pace right from the beginning, and Daniel was thrashing and moaning beneath him as he finally came inside him.

  He removed and tied the condom, dropped it on the floor, and then collapsed on top of Daniel, whispering in his ear, “God, Darrell. That was so good.”

  He barely heard Daniel say something as he fell asleep on top of him, but he couldn’t have said what it was.

  DANIEL WOKE to an unfamiliar bed. The moonlight entering the window was at the wrong angle. In fact, the window was on the wrong side of the bed. He was not in his own house. He turned to face Elliot and couldn’t help but brush back that gorgeous lock of chestnut hair out of his eyes. As much as Daniel would have loved to merely lie there and look at the man who had brought him to orgasm more frequently and more completely than he ever remembered, he had to go to the bathroom.

  It was becoming an emergency.

  He smiled and pulled the covers over Elliot’s shoulders, then slipped out of bed and padded to the bathroom next door that he’d vaguely noticed on the way to the bedroom. He fumbled around for the light switch and finally found it. Lifting the toilet seat and leaning against the tiled wall, he took care of business. He was wonderfully sated and lazy and felt barely awake; he wanted nothing more than to go back into that grand old bedroom and crawl in beside that gorgeous hunk of man, who seemed to be fine with him staying the entire night.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel saw a bottle on the sink wiggle.

  “What the hell?” he mumbled under his breath and leaned over to take a closer look.

  The bottle of mouthwash jiggled again. He reached toward it, and it suddenly lurched two inches toward him.

  Daniel startled and threw himself backward, away from the bottle that was coming to life just in time to get royally pissed at him and attack. He realized at the last moment that he had no idea what was actually behind him.

  He found out soon enough.

  Not much.

  He recognized too late that his calves abruptly hit the sides of the porcelain tub. He grabbed at anything he could find to stop his descent. What he found was the shower curtain.

  It declined to help him.

  As Daniel fell on his ass in the tub, he could do nothing but watch the bottle of mouthwash sail through the air and land beside him on the porcelain.

  “What the ever-loving shit!”

  He scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could, only to find the can of shaving cream joining its fellow toiletry in flight toward the tub. It was a train wreck—Daniel couldn’t look away. The top of the toothpaste was unscrewing itself and eventually fell into the sink, as the tube itself inched forward, leaving a trail of green-and-white-striped goo in its wake.

  By that point, Daniel decided he desperately needed to get out of the room before he discovered even more possessed bathroom items.

  The hot water turned on—by itself—and steam covered the mirror. The screech on the glass was deafening as words appeared.

  “Ou-ou-out,” Daniel stuttered. “Says ‘get out.’”

  Daniel was happy to oblige whoever—or whatever—was writing the message, but he found his legs had turned into Jell-O. He could only stare wide-eyed as the comb flew toward his head, closely followed by the toothbrush and razor.

  He finally found control of his recalcitrant lower limbs and scrabbled out of the bathroom as quickly as he could. Stumbling into the bedroom, he managed to get to the bed without face-planting and grab Elliot’s arm.

  “Come on, man,” he gasped. “We have to get out of here.”

  Elliot weakly pulled his arm away, trying to catch up with current events as Daniel grabbed his clothes. “What? What’s going on?”

  “Your damned house is haunted or something.” Daniel frantically grabbed at his clothes while periodically shooting glances toward the hallway to make sure the contents of the bathroom weren’t following him.

  “What do you mean?” Elliot appeared to be struggling to wake up as he watched Daniel practically fall on his ass trying to get his pants on.

  “The, the… the water… and the steam… and the words… and flying shit. Well, not actually shit, but… but flying stuff. Shaving cream, and toothpaste, and… and….”

  Elliot shook his head. “Come back to bed. You’re still half-asleep.”

  Daniel headed back out toward the hall carrying his shirt. “Come on. Take me home or something.” He looked back at Elliot, but Elliot had already turned over and started back to sleep.

  With what appeared to be his last reserves of consciousness, Elliot mumbled, “If you want to leave now, call a cab. Otherwise, I’ll take you home in the morning. Come to bed.”

  “I’m not staying here. The damned place is haunted.” Daniel looked at the bathroom door suspiciously. Were the items able to leave the bathroom and fly out into the hall? Or was the bathroom the only place that was haunted? Daniel didn’t know. He only wanted out of the house.

  Elliot droned, “You’re drunk and half-asleep and imagining things.” And then he pulled the cover back over his shoulders and closed his eyes.

  “I’m leaving.” Daniel turned to run toward the stairs by the time Elliot said, “Night,” and pulled the covers over his head.

  Chapter 2

  THE NEXT morning, Elliot woke to a cell phone ringing. He stuck his arm out of his blanket cocoon and smacked around blindly, trying to find the damned thing on the bedside dresser. When he finally located it, he pulled it under the covers with him.

  “What, Cher?” he snarled. He h
adn’t been sleeping well for several months and didn’t appreciate being awakened so early on the one morning he was actually getting some rest.

  “How was twink-boy?” an overly cheerful voice said.

  Elliot reluctantly peeked out around the blanket to glance at the other side of the bed. Daniel wasn’t there, and it took Elliot’s sleep-addled mind a few moments to remember why. When he finally did remember, he figured it was safe to talk about him. “He was in his twenties. Not a twink.”

  “Close enough. Half your age.”

  “You’re the one who was pushing him at me,” Elliot growled incredulously, trying to decide whether to get up or hide under the covers.

  “Not once the whole night did I ever physically push him at you,” Sheri teased.

  “You know what I mean.” Elliot flung the blankets back and sat up. Now that he was awake, his bladder was insisting he actually get up and take care of its needs.

  “Details, Elliot,” she said in her stern voice as he padded toward the bathroom, phone in hand.

  “It was good,” he admitted, “but he’s nuts.” In the bathroom he tried to figure out the etiquette concerning relieving oneself while talking on the phone. He decided he didn’t care after all, so he continued talking. “He left in the middle of the night because he said the house was haunted.”

  “Is it?” Sheri asked in a singsong voice.

  “Yes, Sheri,” Elliot snarked. “Of course it’s haunted. That’s the easiest explanation here.” His voice made clear his disgust as he pinched the phone between his ear and shoulder and turned on the water to wash his hands. “No, of course it’s not haunted. He said that everything on the sink threw itself at him. I’m at the sink right now and everything is right where I put it. Now I’m not sure about you, but if stuff started to fly through the air at me completely unbidden, I wouldn’t stop to pick the damned things up and put them back. Would you? So the fact that they weren’t moved tells me he was either seeing things or making shit up. Or maybe he really was using drugs. There was a time last night that I thought he might be high as well as drunk. I kind of decided later that he wasn’t, but… I mean, ghosts?”