“Do you think we’re vanilla?” he said.
Hu, who had been drying his hair, paused. “Vanilla?”
“Yeah. Like, sexually.”
Stephen immediately knew it was a stupid thing to say, because the only thing he should have been saying to Hu at that moment was ‘You look amazing and I want you.’ Hu ran a hand through the damp fluff of his hair, baring the dark tuft beneath his arm and showing off the new sinewy muscle that had come from working on the apartment. “Why?” he said. “Are you bored in bed?”
“God, no. With you? Never.” Stephen reached out and grabbed the towel around Hu’s waist. It fell to the floor, revealing Hu’s half-hard dick, with its sexy bush of jet-black hair. “You know I love our sex. It’s hot and tender and beautiful and…everything.”
“Then what?” said Hu, climbing onto the end of the bed, his knees either side of Stephen’s lap. “Why do you think we’re vanilla?”
“I don’t know. I don’t…not really.”
Hu pushed and Stephen fell back onto the bed, his brains already puddling out of his ears the way they always did when Hu turned seductive. This new, slinky, sexy Hu was a recent development, borne out of the necessity of keeping quiet in the tiny, paper-walled stopgap apartment Hu had rented for him and his aunt. There was very little room for privacy, so they sneaked around and stole kisses, and sometimes Hu would smolder and hook two fingers behind the fly of Stephen’s jeans, pulling him into the bedroom, where they could lock the insubstantial door and fuck in breathless, heart-pounding silence.
“Is this about the cockring in the sink?” Hu said, his fingers combing through Stephen’s wet hair.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” Stephen wrapped his arms around Hu, pulling him down. “Ignore me. I’m an idiot.”
Hu moved his hips, flesh and fur sliding between Stephen’s legs, making him swell to meet it. “That’s because all your brains are in your balls right now,” he said, the words warming the inside of Stephen’s ear. “You want a quickie?”
“Only if it’s a long one,” said Stephen, and Hu laughed and shushed him with a slow, liquid kiss. Hu’s knees dug into the mattress. He was already moving the way he did when Stephen was inside him and he was riding Stephen’s cock until they both came loud and hard. That only happened when they were alone in the apartment these days, which wasn’t often.
“Do you know Bunny has a safe word?” Stephen said.
“Nope,” said Hu, sitting up and wrapping his long, beautiful fingers around both of their dicks, tugging them gently together.
Stephen reached up and pinched Hu’s hard, dark nipples. “Do you think we should have a safe word?”
Hu stopped moving his hips and sighed. “Steve, no. We are not getting into a sexual game of Keeping Up With The Joneses with those two. Or three. Or however many they have in the bed this week.”
“You’d tell me if you wanted that, though, right? If you wanted us to be kinky or adventurous?”
“No. I want us to make love. Like, now. Can we please have this conversation afterwards? And keep doing that thing with my nipples…oh yeah, like that…”
Stephen thrust up into Hu’s hand and moaned. One of them – or both – had leaked, so that the friction turned slippery, immediately delicious. “I just worry that I gave the impression that I had a lot of hang-ups,” he said. “But I don’t. You know, if there’s anything you want to do, sexually…”
“Sex,” said Hu, bending over him. “I want to have sex. Without talking.”
“Sorry. I’m hopeless, aren’t I? Come here.” God, what was wrong with him? He had the hottest, sweetest, most loving boyfriend in the world and he was worried about the lack of buttplugs and safewords in their relationship. Stephen rolled Hu over, spread his legs and headed south.
And that was as far as he got, because Bunny let out an unholy shriek in the kitchen.
“Oh shit. Now what?” said Stephen, raising his head from between Hu’s thighs.
Hu sighed. “It’s Bunny. He’s dramatic. Maybe we ran out of milk.”
But no such luck. Stephen heard Bunny hyperventilating in the living area. “Come on,” he was saying. “Oh my God, don’t do this. Don’t do this now, for fuck’s sake.”
Stephen groaned and retrieved his robe from the back of the door. “I’m sorry,” he said. It wasn’t ‘ketchup’, but it sounded pretty serious all the same. “What is it now, Bunny?”
“The internet’s out,” said Bunny, frantically waving a tablet.
“Oh. Good. I’m glad it was something important.”
“It is important. All I saw was the headline and now it’s loading like molasses on dial-up.”
“Headline? What headline?”
Hu – who was also unable to hear the words ‘internet’s out’ without panicking – emerged from the bedroom, doing up his jeans. “Oh shit,” he said. “Did Trump finally piss off the wrong nuclear superpower?”
“Nooo,” said Adam, looking frantic. “It’s the prison.”
“What prison?”
“That’s just it. I don’t fucking know. All I saw was ‘Pittsburgh prison riot’ and then it threw up on itself.” Adam shook the tablet, as if that would do anything. “Come on, you electronic asshole.”
Hu grabbed his phone. It took Stephen a moment to realize what the panic was about, but when he did he felt queasy. Luis could handle himself up to a point, but if it was suddenly all Attica in there…oh God.
“Mine’s working,” said Hu. “You must be having Bluetooth issues again.”
“I’m not having Bluetooth issues,” said Bunny. “I told you. It’s hysterical.”
“Electronic devices do not – by their very definition – get hysterical.”
“You say that,” said Adam, jabbing at the tablet. “But what about that AI they released on Twitter? And it like, turned into a Nazi in the space of about two hours.”
“Fuck Nazis and fuck Twitter,” said Stephen. “What does it say?” He peered into Hu’s phone and exhaled, his spine sagging with the sudden relief. “Oh, thank God. It’s across town. It’s not Riverside.”
Adam’s ass hit the kitchen chair with an audible thud. “Jesus. Oh my God.” He ran a hand over his eyes. “You don’t think it’s going to spread, do you?”
Stephen stared at him for a moment. “Spread? What? One riot in one prison is somehow going to spread to the other prison on the other side of town?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. They’re probably rioting for the same reasons I wanted to riot in Riverside – overcrowding, shitty food, personality disordered guards, and that cheap-ass toilet paper that doesn’t so much wipe as redistribute.” Bunny ran his fingers through his pink-tipped hair. “Whole Pennsylvania penal system is a fucking powder keg, I swear to God.”
“Bunny, it’s a prison. They’re not going to have much in the way of communication with the outside world, let alone other prisons. They tend to keep things under…you know…lockdown.”
“Yeah, I know how a prison works, Helena,” said Adam. “Ask me sometime about how to cook ramen in a potato chip packet.” He pushed the tablet across the table and sighed. “I just…I worry.”
“I know,” said Stephen, drawing closer. Adam put an arm around his waist.
“He’s so young. And so little. And so pretty.”
“I know. I worry, too, but he’s gonna be okay, Bunny. He’s got, what? Five months left on the sentence? He’s passed the halfway mark.”
“And it might even improve conditions,” said Hu. “You never know. If they see them rioting across town the officers at Riverside might take some measures to prevent that happening there.”
“That’s true,” said Stephen. “I never thought of that, but they might. Extra privileges or something.”
“More mashed potatoes.”
“Yeah. I guess. That’ll help, right?”
“No,” said Bunny. “It really won’t.”
3
The trouble with Instafame was that people
gave you things. Ever since he’d dressed up as a goddess and hijacked Venus Envy’s massive Instagram following, Adam had found himself inundated with stuff – mascara, face masks, hand lotion, lash serum – all offered on the proviso that he occasionally endorsed these things while wearing lipstick and a wig. At first it had seemed like manna from heaven, but before long there was no space in the bathroom cabinet and the apartment was starting to look like it belonged to one of those people who got suckered into sorta-but-not-quite pyramid schemes, selling unpalatable health shakes or shapeless clothing with prints like a Vegas casino carpet.
And here was Ryan, making less than vague noises about how Adam should move in with him. “He has no conception of what he’s asking me to do,” Adam said, staring into the abyss of the bathroom cabinet and once again thinking about how fast Ryan was going to reverse that decision when he saw the monstrous tsunami of crap that would come pouring in on his high maintenance Honeybunny’s heels.
Having only one face and one body, Adam could only use so many beauty products at once. He’d given away a lot of the Instagram stuff, but he was still expected to use it, which was why he was now slathered in a bright green avocado face mask and trying to find a corner of the apartment tidy enough to take a selfie in.
“Who the fuck would want to share an apartment with a drag queen?” he muttered, carefully navigating a pile of ruffled organza. Helena loved the stuff and was always using it, even though it was a bitch to sew and cutting it left flecks all over the rugs no matter how many times you vacuumed. “I don’t want to share an apartment with a drag queen, and I’m a drag queen…”
“Adam?” Helena called from the stairs.
“What?”
“Adam, can you come down here for a moment?”
“Ugh. Okay.” He shoved a dress form out of the way, briefly noticing that something drastic appeared to be going on with its nipples. “You know, I’ve been avoiding this, but we might need to do some kind of organza intervention on you. And what the hell is going on with your dress form? Is it lactating or something?”
Helena didn’t smile. “There’s a cop downstairs,” he said, and gestured to his face. “And you’re…green.”
“It’s avocado,” said Bunny, descending the stairs. “Last I heard avocados weren’t illegal in the state of Pennsylvania. Did they say what it’s about?”
“Only that she wanted to speak to you, as the owner of the premises.”
Oh God. That sounded serious. Like ‘we found human bone fragments in your drain’ serious. Maybe someone had finally given into temptation, murdered Venus and tossed her insipid pastel corpse into the dumpster out back, secure in the knowledge that at least two people at the FuBar would have been happy to see her pushing up daisies.
“Maybe you should…” Helena started to say, but Adam was already on autopilot.
“This is it,” he said, pushing open the door. “This is what I’ve been talking about the whole time. The Curse of Christmas. ‘Tis the season for shitty things to be five times as shitty as usual, because it’s fucking Christmas.”
He walked into the bar. The cop had blonde hair tied back into a tight ponytail, and immediately Adam thought there was something off about her, something that didn’t fit with his mental picture of a police officer.
She briefly double taked at his green face. “You Adam Berkovich?” she said, in a flat, Pittsburgh accent.
“Yes. What’s going on?”
“You’re a friend of Luis Valdez?”
“Oh my God,” said Stephen, in an undertone.
The bottom seemed to drop out of Adam’s stomach. “Yes,” he said. “Is he okay? Has something happened to him?”
“No, he’s fine,” said the officer, and Adam sagged against the side of the bar. “I’m a Community Corrections Officer…”
Ah. That was it. She was wearing khaki pants. Obviously a different division.
“…I don’t know if you knew, but the Department of Corrections has been under some…uh…pressure, lately.”
“I heard ‘riots’,” said Stephen. “But yeah. Pressure.”
“What’s going on?” said Adam. “Is Luis okay? You’re not transferring him to another prison, are you?”
“No, nothing like that. But to ease the overcrowding situation we’re looking at non-violent offenders with fewer than six months on their sentence. And the possibility of early release.”
Adam went from fear to hope so fast it knocked the breath out of his lungs. He raised his fingertips to his mouth, hardly daring to think about what might be coming next, because if those hopes were dashed again…
“Obviously he’ll be electronically tagged, and this was the only address he could give us, but I need you to consent to having someone under house arrest in your home…”
Adam nodded, his eyes already wet. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, yes. I consent. Completely. Absolutely. Just get him out of there.”
Stephen hugged him, ignoring the mess of tears and avocado facemask. “And her heart grew several sizes that day,” he said, laughing.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe it,” said Adam. “Where are we even going to put him? There are like five people wandering in and out of that apartment already, and it’s chaos…”
“If you can’t handle it…” said the probation officer, but Adam shook his head.
“No, we can handle it. Chaos is nothing. Chaos is normal, for us. Just…just bring that baby home. Please.”
*
The new kid showed up ten days before Christmas, and Justin kept a low profile on purpose. He lurked and listened behind the door until the correctional officers were safely out of the way.
“Here she is,” said Bunny, when he peeked out. The kid was smaller and paler than Justin remembered – just a mop of dark hair and a pair of enormous eyes. “Miss Riverside Correctional Institute 2018.”
“Excuse my beauty,” said Luis. “And my prison pallor.”
“Oh, honey,” said Helena. “Little San Tropez, Fake Bake – we’ll have you back to your gorgeous brown self in no time.”
Bunny swooped in for another hug. “I can’t believe you’re here at last.”
“I know, right? It doesn’t feel real.”
“I feel like I should be buying you a drink…”
Luis pulled away and lifted a foot. “Uh uh. Ankle monitor. Also kinda underage.”
“Like that ever stopped you before,” said Bunny, and took hold of his shoulders and turned him towards the bar. “But it’s only four more months, then we can hand you over to Justin and let him work his magic on your taste buds.”
“Custom cocktail,” said Justin. “I do ‘em for everyone. Except Ryan, who’s boring and drinks his vodka neat.”
“Cool,” said Luis, but Bunny was once again steering the kid around like he was a new toy Tonka truck.
“Until then, keep a safe distance from Justin, because you gotta do piss tests and if you touch him you’ll get a contact high. It’s always four-twenty somewhere with that boy. Come on – let’s go rinse the prison stank off you.”
“I bought so much new Lush stuff,” said Helena, as they headed for the stairs. “You must be dying to take a bath.”
Justin heard Luis’s voice as they disappeared out of view. “Right now, taking a shit behind a door is a luxury.”
“So what’s the new arrival like?” Devan – AKA Sheila the Dealer – asked that night, when the bar was closed and the bed was warm and they were both glowing from a buzzed, cuddly fuck that was mostly hands, but no less satisfying for that.
“God, I don’t fucking know,” said Justin. “I’ve barely said four words to the kid. He’s just this little thing with big eyes. Bunny and Helena are all over him like he’s their new doll – doing his nails, making him hot chocolate, making him watch old Bette Davis movies…”
Dev laughed. “Oh my God. Maternal Bunny. This I must see. Pure Mommie Dearest.”
“Oh, they watched that, too.”
“I b
et they did.”
“They’re so happy to have him here. It’s nuts.”
“Not really. A year in prison when you’re that young feels like forever.”
“You say that like you know,” said Justin, who had never been inside, which shouldn’t have been an achievement, but was for a Barrow. Even his goody goody sister Cher had done six months for her part in a valet parking scam with their brother Jordan, although Cher being Cher she’d done like three months of her sentence and come out of it with a zeal to reform the entire fucking prison system.
“Credit card fraud,” said Dev. “I was a naughty boy back in the day. Not that I’m not now, I suppose…” He ran a hand over Justin’s hip. “And you don’t help, you little sex beast. Sometimes I think you were put here to keep the whole of Pittsburgh naughty.”
Justin rolled onto his back and spread his legs. “That’s the trouble with having a reputation, I guess,” he said. “It kind of turns into a responsibility.”
Dev looked up, his spit glistening on Justin’s belly button. “Wait – this isn’t a duty fuck, is it?”
“Hell, no. Keep right on going where you were going. You know I’m always better the second time round.” He hitched his ass higher, shivering as fingers found the guiche piercing and tugged.
“Can I fuck you?”
“You’d better,” said Justin. “And get the cockring, before I get too hard to put it on.”
They fucked hard and slow, but for some reason Justin’s mind kept wandering away, to Bunny’s bed. Which wasn’t weird in itself, because it was hard not to think of Bunny while horny, but was weird because Bunny wasn’t even in his bed right now. He’d gone round to Ryan’s place, and surrendered his bed to the new kid. Almost a stranger, really, and right now he was curled up – reeking of beauty products – under the fake fur comforter of Bunny’s queen sized bed.
After sex, Justin usually fell asleep, but tonight it wouldn’t come, and he lay awake for a while, until the rumbling of his stomach alerted him to another different appetite: sex made him hungry. He lay there in the dark, listening to Dev breathe and wondering if he could be bothered to go downstairs and get something to eat. Then his stomach roared and gurgled and Dev moaned and said, “Jesus, did you swallow a fucking bear?” so Justin took pity on him and crept on down to the apartment.
Seven Deadly Queens (The FuBar Book 3) Page 4
