Pick Up the Pieces

by Tinnean

  “It’s empty,” Paul assured him. “It’ll just take some time to get it in shape again….”

  Wills blinked and glanced at me, his eyebrow raised. I murmured, “We own the house. One of our clients was in stocks, and he got us some great tips.” I didn’t mention other tips we’d gotten, not all monetary.

  “You have money?”

  “Some. I mean, we’re not Trump or anything, but we do pretty good.”

  “Yeah.” He got that cold, flat expression in his eyes. I’d seen that look in Vince’s eyes once or twice. Did all people who worked for Huntingdon learn that look? “Mr. Vincent, is it all right if I leave now?”

  What the…. What bug had crawled up his ass and died?

  “No. Spike and Sweetcheeks will need a ride home.”

  Wills nodded, but I could see how… reluctant he was to stay. I touched his sleeve, but he stared at me as if I were something that had crawled out from under a rock and jerked his arm away from me.

  Vince didn’t seem to notice. “I’ll most likely accept your offer. It took me a long time to find what I was looking for the first time. And DC is even more crowded now. I’ve got a place to stay in the meantime. I want to stop at my place and pack some things. You have my number if you need me. Matheson. Why don’t you display your booty?”

  “Excuse me?” His face turned red.

  My thoughts went in the same direction as his. He had a very nice booty.

  He cleared his throat. “Oh, you mean what I bought.” He’d arrived carrying bags from Victoria’s Secret and Sam Goody, as well as what I’d assumed was a doggy bag from B. Smith’s, a very nice restaurant in Union Station.

  Vince’s mouth quirked in a grin, and he walked out.

  Spike looked interested. “You went shopping? Where?”

  “Um, Union Station.” He handed him the bag from Sam Goody’s. “Here, you may as well have this.”

  Spike peered into the bag, then pulled out the CDs. “Metallica? Black Sabbath? Def Leppard? Ooh! Twisted Sister! Dude, this is so cool! I love the oldies!”

  Wills looked disconcerted, and Paul laughed at him. “Makes you feel old, doesn’t he? What do you say, baby?”

  “Thank you, sir,” Spike recited dutifully.

  “Don’t mention it,” he mumbled.

  “What else did you get?”

  He shrugged and took something from the Victoria’s Secret bag. It was a pale aqua terrycloth robe, the lapels decorated with coral-colored satin appliqués.

  “Ohh! Pretty!” Spike was trying to hide a grin. “But… I don’t know. That shade might go well with your coloring, but it’s gonna leave your legs hanging out.”

  Paul was grinning also, but I was too upset with Wills to see anything funny in this situation. He knew I was a rent boy. It wasn’t something I felt I could keep from him, but he’d seemed cool with it. Why was he…?

  “Excuse us a minute, guys.” I shoved him into the bathroom. “Okay, Wills, what’s got your shorts in a twist? I thought you were okay with my profession.”

  “If you really had to sell your tail to survive, I could accept it, really, I could. I wouldn’t like it, but….” This time the look in his eyes was resentful. “I don’t do this, Theo.”

  “Do what? Fuck rent boys?” I was starting to get pissed myself.

  “Hardly that, since you fucked me. I don’t—” He shook his head and said, “Look. This is my problem. Just… give me some space. I need a couple of days to deal with it, okay?”

  It hit me like a ton of bricks, knocking the wind out of me. He thought that while he was seeing me, I was still peddling my ass. No wonder he’d looked at me as if I were lower than pond scum.

  “No. It’s not just your problem, I won’t give you any space, and it’s not okay. It bothers you that much that I do this? Fine. I’ll stop.” I had been putting off clients since I’d met him anyway, using the excuse of Paul being in the hospital and turfing those who couldn’t or wouldn’t wait to another of the stables.

  Wills obviously hadn’t expected the conversation to take that turn. “Just like that?”

  “No, not just like that.” He’d have to ask me. I waited to see if he would get it. I could tell the exact moment the light went on. A slow smile crossed his face, and the expression in his eyes lightened.

  “Theo. I don’t want you to hustle anymore. Would you please stop?”

  “Yes.” I kissed him, sealing the deal. “I want you to know something. I haven’t seen anyone else since I started seeing you, and I never….” The sensation of the slight stubble of his evening beard as he grazed up and down my throat was driving me crazy. “Oh, God, that feels good, Wills!” What was I going to tell him? It was something important, but he was distracting me…. Oh, yeah. “I never kissed any of them.”

  “Really? Good. Otherwise I’d have had to go find them and kill them.” I froze until he leaned back, cupped my cheek, and grinned at me.

  Of course. He was just kidding.

  “COME HOME with me?” I asked.

  “I need to stop off at my place first and drop off this stuff,” Wills said. “Do you mind, Theo?”

  “Ooh! Cool!” Spike was in the backseat of the Dodge Wills drove. Something else that seemed like nothing special, but the engine purred under the hood with restrained power.

  “Did you forget we had company?” I asked softly.

  “It’s really not much to look at, Spike. Maybe you’d rather wait in the car?”

  “Is Sweets going to wait in the car too?”

  “No.”

  “Not a chance, then,” Spike snorted. “I’ve been dying to see what your apartment looks like anyway.”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  I’d wanted to see it myself. “We can always lock him in the bathroom.”

  “No. I’d know he was there, listening. It would throw me off my game.”

  I patted his thigh, trailing my fingers toward the vee that was bulging nicely. “I guess we’ll just have to practice a little delayed gratification.”

  “That’s been vastly overrated, you know that? And if you don’t want me to wreck the car, you’d better take your hand off my thigh.”

  HIS APARTMENT was in a nothing-special building in a nothing-special section of DC, but rents were high no matter where you lived in the capital. I wondered how Wills could afford it.

  There was no doorman. Wills took a key from his pocket and unlocked the entrance door. “I’m up on eight.”

  “We’re not taking the stairs again, are we?” Spike groused.

  Wills sighed. “We really should.”

  I pushed him toward the elevator. “We’re riding up, tough guy.”

  “What the hell. It’s my building. It should be safe enough.”

  Safe enough?

  I didn’t question him about it, though. It probably had something to do with the gun he sometimes carried, which was something else I didn’t plan to question him about. After I’d finally remembered to ask him about that gun, he’d gotten that flat look.

  “You know I troubleshoot computers, right?” he’d said. “Well, it’s to shoot the trouble right out of the computers.”

  “Geez, Wills,” I’d complained. “If you didn’t want to tell me, all you had to say was you didn’t want to tell me.”

  That look left his face, and he’d just grinned and kissed me.

  We got in the elevator. Spike stared up at the digital readout and watched the floor numbers change.

  I stared at Wills’s mouth, and when I shot a glance to his eyes, it was to see him staring at my mouth. If Spike hadn’t been with us, I’d have shoved him into a corner and taken possession of those lush lips of his. Wills touched his tongue to his lip, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

  The elevator gave a slight jolt as it came to a halt on eight, and the doors slid open. He led us down the corridor to a door that looked like every other door. It opened directly into his living room.

  “I’ll… uh…
I’ll just be a minute,” he said after he let us in and switched on the light.

  “No rush.”

  He left the bag from B. Smith on the breakfast bar and disappeared through a door that must have opened into his bedroom. If I went into that room with him, I knew I’d have him on his bed, even if Spike was within hearing distance.

  I turned my attention to the living room. There wasn’t much in it—a loveseat opposite a TV on an inexpensive entertainment stand, an end table with some framed photos on it.

  “Who’re these, Wills?” I called.

  “Who?”

  “The pictures.”

  “Oh. Family.”

  There was a couple with their arms around a younger Wills, who was wearing a cap and gown. The woman was too young to be his mother, but the man had to be his father. I saw something of Wills in him.

  In the center was a more recent photo of his family, all playing in a pool: Wills, his father and the woman, and two kids. They both had the woman’s coloring, and her looks as well, but the little girl, who was sitting on a laughing Wills’s shoulders, clutching his hair with one hand while the other was over his eyes, showed me how he might be with a daughter of his own one day.

  That picture devastated me. As a bisexual, he could one day move on, marry, and have children. I’d never have that.

  I also had no pictures of me with my family, although Acacia had sent me a wallet-sized high school graduation photo. She’d sent me an invitation to her graduation as well, but there was no way I could have gone.

  Another graduation photo sat off to the side—a young man who had a discontented droop to his mouth. I wondered who he was and what he was to Wills.

  The picture beside that was of a pair of cats, one calico and one with the coloring of a Siamese. I didn’t know much about cat breeds, but I could tell it wasn’t a Siamese.

  I picked up the final photo. It was of Wills and another young man. They were shaking hands, and Wills had his hand on the other man’s shoulder. Both dressed in tuxedoes with boutonnieres of plump red rosebuds, they looked enough alike to be related, but it was Wills who drew my attention. There was just something about a man wearing a tux. My mind flashed ahead to the next Escort Ball. I was no longer an escort, but….

  “He cleans up good,” Spike whispered, peeking over my shoulder.

  “Yeah. He does.” I put the picture frame down. “I’ll put your leftovers in the fridge, okay, Wills?” I called.

  “Thanks, babe. That’ll save me some time.”

  I took the bag and went to explore the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a small peninsula.

  A plain white coffee mug was on the plain white dish rack. The sink was empty and wiped dry. The cabinet above the counter held a few dishes and glasses, and the drawer below a few place settings of flatware. The fridge was small, with the freezer compartment on top. There was a variety of frozen dinners in it. In the fridge itself was a plastic bottle of milk, a container of orange juice, half a dozen eggs, and a few bottles of beer, as well as a pizza box and some Styrofoam take-out containers. I put the container from B. Smith’s next to them.

  “All set.” Wills appeared in the living room, slightly out of breath. He was still wearing those 501 jeans, and I couldn’t wait to get him out of them, but he’d washed the gel out of his hair. “Ready to go?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  WILLS TOOK me to fancy restaurants like Raphael’s, where he’d wear a Bill Blass glen plaid suit, a cream linen shirt, and a red tie, and I’d be hard the entire time, my mouth watering from the thought of what was waiting for me beneath that suit, or to family style places like Ruby Tuesday and TGI Fridays, where he’d wear more casual clothes, and I’d be just as hard, and my mouth would water just as much.

  We went to the movies. He bought me a tub of buttered popcorn and a box of Junior Mints and had his arm around me the entire time. I was kind of surprised no one ever gave us a hard time about it, even when we went to see movies that had a lot of explosions and fast cars and macho tough guys running around with big guns.

  He brought me little things: a CD by an artist he’d learned I liked; a book I’d mentioned wanting to read; software for my computer….

  For the first time in my life—for the very first time in my life—I felt like someone considered me his… boyfriend.

  Chapter 15

  VINCE HAD seemed interested in renting the apartment up in the attic, so I climbed the stairs, inserted the key, and pushed the door open.

  I’d been up there before, and I’d seen what it looked like at that time. Had I hoped the apartment fairy had arrived since then and repaired all the damage?

  I wasn’t that lucky, and I sighed and walked in. The apartment was disgusting.

  I had a pen and paper with me, and I began making a list of what needed to be repaired. It turned out to be more extensive than I’d first assumed.

  About four inches of scummy water was in the kitchen sink. The bathroom was a disaster area, with both the tub and the toilet backed up.

  All the appliances—microwave, stove, dishwasher, and refrigerator—would need to be replaced.

  Fortunately, most of the furniture Paul had taken such pleasure in selecting was stored down in the basement, because our tenant had needed the space for her studio.

  “Theo?” What was Wills doing here? It was… I checked my watch.

  Oh, shit, we had a date, and I wasn’t even ready.

  “Up here, babe.”

  He came up the stairs and into the apartment. “Spike let me in.” He kissed me. “I hope that’s o— Whoa! Not to be insulting, but I’d fire your interior decorator.”

  “Thanks for making me laugh. It’s the only bright spot in a shitty two hours.”

  “This is going to take some work to repair.”

  “Tell me about it. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize it was this bad. I was just listing what needs to be done. I’m sorry, babe. I lost track of time.”

  “Not a problem. What the hell did your tenant throw against the wall to put such a hole in it?”

  “Wills, I don’t have clue one.”

  “Mind if I take a look around?”

  “Go ahead.” I handed him the key. “Just lock up when you’re done. I need to get changed. I’ll leave the door open for you.”

  “Mmm.” He was studying the hole in the wall, tugging gently on the edge and shaking his head.

  I went downstairs and almost bumped into Spike.

  “Sweets, is it okay that I let your boyfriend in?”

  “If he’s my boyfriend, then I guess it’s okay.” I pinched his cheek, and he bumped his shoulder against mine.

  “Can you drop me off at the hospital?”

  “Sure. In about an hour?”

  “Thanks, Sweets.” He wandered into the living room. We’d recently gotten a DVD player, and he’d probably put a disc in the machine and amuse himself watching Halloween or Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street for the umpteenth time. The boy did love him some slasher flicks.

  I showered and shaved and went back in the bedroom to select what I would wear. All I had on was a pair of black boxer briefs.

  “Now that’s what I call a view.”

  I glanced over my shoulder and grinned. Wills was leaning against the doorframe. “Like what you see, sailor?”

  “Always.” He came to me, slid an arm around my waist, and pulled me up against him. I could feel his cock through his clothes.

  I leaned in as if to kiss him but paused at the last minute. “You’re done?”

  “Yeah.” He closed the distance between our mouths. His lips were soft and pliant against mine, and I licked at the seam until he opened for me.

  I hummed with pleasure at the feel of his broad palms cupping my butt over the material of my shorts. And then I shivered as he slipped the fingers of both hands under the legs and teased my balls.

  I let my fingers do a little exploring myself, running one hand through his ha
ir and the other up under his suit jacket to pet his muscled back. “Maybe we could skip dinner.”

  “Oh, no you can’t!” Spike was standing in the doorway, glowering at us. “You promised to take me to the hospital.”

  “In that case….” Wills gave me a final kiss and let me go. “I’ll just sit over there and watch while you get dressed.”

  “Humph.” Spike turned on his heel and stalked out.

  “We won’t be long, I promise,” I called after him. I took an undershirt from the top drawer of my dresser, slid my arms into the sleeves, and pulled it on over my head.

  “So what do you plan to do with the apartment?” Wills asked.

  “Which shirt should I wear?” I went through them. “I’ll have to bring in a plumber and a carpenter, I guess.”

  “How about the taupe linen?”

  “You think?” I pulled it out and held it up to my face.

  “Yep. I love the way it looks on you.”

  I could have wriggled with pleasure. Instead I put on a pair of brown socks and cocoa trousers.

  “No need to waste money on someone who’ll only do a half-assed job. I’ll take care of it for you, babe.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Sure. My dad’s an architect, and my uncle runs the family construction business. I’ve been working on jobs since I was fourteen. Aside from the appliances, which all need to be replaced—sorry, babe, but there’s no getting around that—I can ‘rock’ the walls, replace the plumbing fixtures, and clean out the traps.”

  “Okay, Wills. If you want to, and if you have the time….” I stepped into a pair of brown loafers. I didn’t know if he knew how to do any of the things he’d mentioned, but if he wanted to play handyman, I’d let him.