by Amy Aislin
"Ready?" Elias asked.
He didn't wait for an answer. And he didn't fuck Ty hard like he promised. He pumped his hips so agonizingly slowly that Ty thought he'd explode from frustrated desire. His knees went liquid, and then it was all he could do to keep himself upright when Elias slammed home and went to town, nailing his gland with every thrust.
"Yes, yes, yes," he chanted in time with each of Elias's thrusts. "Yes, yes, yes, Eli."
Ty grabbed his dick and squeezed...and he was done, body coming undone, shooting onto the wall in front of him while Elias continued to do him hard, the hot water showering down onto their heads. Behind him, Elias stiffened, growling in his ear as he came.
Breathing hard, Elias buried his face in Ty's neck, still holding onto Ty with that one hand on his stomach. For some reason it made Ty feel cherished and safe. He turned his head, seeking Elias's mouth. Apparently, Elias could read his mind: he lifted his head from Ty's neck and took Ty's lips with his own, the hunger in them doing nothing to settle Ty's racing heart.
The loud rriipp almost had Ty pitching sideways. Elias caught him before he could go down with the curtain, steadying them both in the slippery bathtub. He reached around Ty to turn the water off, preventing it from pooling onto the tiled bathroom floor.
"Shit," Elias said.
"Oops." Ty chuckled.
"You would think that's funny," Elias said.
How could it be anything but?
They spent a few minutes cleaning up—throwing away the destroyed curtain, mopping up the small puddle that had formed. Ty couldn't stop laughing the whole time, which made Elias smile at him indulgently.
Man, his guy was hot, squatting there naked, using a towel to soak up the water on the floor. Well-defined chest, hard thighs, that big dick dangling between his legs, and those arms...those arms had held Ty up when the curtain had fallen.
"You going to just stand there, or do you feel like helping?" Elias asked.
Ty cocked his head, gaze at Elias’s nimble fingers turning the towel around to use the dry side. Fingers that had recently been in Ty's body. He shivered.
"Don't rush or anything," Elias said, a slight smile on his face. "I'll just clean up your mess all by myself."
"My mess?" Ty raised his eyebrows, enjoying the game. "This is all your fault, you know."
"You were the one hanging on to the curtain," Elias pointed out.
"You were the one who fucked me so hard I couldn't see straight."
Elias's chest puffed out.
They fell into Ty's bed minutes later, the wet towels in the washer in the basement, the floor clean, and the useless curtain in a bag by the front door, ready to be taken out to the trash cans in the garage.
"I'll get you a new curtain," Elias said.
Ty snuggled closer and slung an arm around Elias's waist, letting his eyes fall closed. "Don't worry about it." He patted Elias's chest. "I'll go to the store later."
"Baby, you're not going anywhere."
"Am too."
"You're about to fall asleep."
"No," Ty said, and did just that.
Ty woke up alone twenty minutes later, ready to have another go at Elias. But the smell coming from downstairs had him rifling through his still-unpacked suitcase for a pair of boxers and a hoodie and heading to the kitchen to find his missing man. Who, it turned out, was making grilled cheese in a buttered pan instead of using the electric grill like any other self-sufficient male adult.
Elias smiled at him over his shoulder. "Hey. Sorry for invading your kitchen, but my stomach started making noises ten minutes ago."
"It's fine." Ty hugged him from behind and stood on tippy toes to peek over his shoulder. The bread was perfectly browned on both sides, and he was using cheese he'd sliced from the block of cheddar Ty had bought earlier instead of the individually wrapped slices he'd also bought.
"I was going to make pasta," Elias was saying, "but you don't have any canned tomatoes or tomato paste."
"I have a jar of pasta sauce in the pantry."
Elias's nose wrinkled.
"Ah," Ty said, stepping away. "I see."
"What do you see?"
Ty took a couple of plates out of the cupboard. "You're a food snob," he joked.
"What?" Elias looked briefly offended, but then he appeared to think about it. Finally, he shrugged. "Actually, you're probably right."
Ty laughed, loving that Elias was unapologetic about who he was and what he liked.
Since Ty didn't have any tables yet, they took their grilled cheeses and bottles of water to the basement, where they sat next to each other on the couch under a warm, fuzzy throw and watched an episode of Legend of Korra on Netflix while they ate.
"Hey," Ty said mid-episode when something occurred to him. "Can I see the pictures you took today?"
"Oh, um…" Elias fidgeted and looked away, picking at the crust of his sandwich.
"You don't have to—"
"No," Elias interrupted. "It's just that I actually didn't take that many."
Ty would've sworn he'd heard that schwick sound of the shutter button quite a few times today. Maybe Elias didn't like sharing his images with others. That was fine. Ty wasn't going to pry.
"How long have you been into photography?" he asked instead.
"A long time," Elias said, polishing off his meal. "I got a camera as a gift for my eighth birthday, a fake kid's one that didn't even take real pictures. You'd just point, shoot, and click, but it didn't produce an image. I've been taking pictures ever since."
"How come you don't do it professionally?"
Elias frowned. "That's not a real job."
"How so?"
"Establishing yourself as a photographer is hard, and there are so many out there that any one of them could come along at any time and snag your job away from you. There's no job security."
"That could be said of every job, though," Ty argued.
"Not really," Elias countered. "Take my job now, for example. I'm really good at it. If somebody better than me came along, I wouldn't automatically be replaced unless I sucked at my job. With photography it's different. You can be replaced even if you're great."
That was some fucked up logic, there. Ty didn't even know where to begin ripping that apart. And he didn't think Elias being good at his job of assessing organizational "reorganizations" was necessarily a good thing.
"How about you?" Elias asked. "What did you want to be when you were younger?"
"A vet," Ty said. "But then my brothers told me that sometimes it would mean having to euthanize animals and—" He gave a rueful smile. "—I changed my mind right quick."
"Do you ever think of going back to school?" Elias said. "Doing something else?"
"No. Why would I?"
"If you got your GED, you could go to college. It would open up a lot of opportunities for you." Elias took a sip out of his water bottle, as if the force of the words he'd so casually spoken hadn't slammed into Ty's chest like well-aimed bullets.
"What makes you think I don't have an education?"
Something in Ty's voice must've given him away, because Elias froze in the act of recapping his water bottle. He set the bottle on the floor by his foot and turned to Ty, brow furrowed.
"Am I wrong?" he asked, looking for all the world genuinely perplexed by the daggers Ty was sure were shooting out of his eyes.
"I graduated high school when I was eighteen," Ty said, voice tight. "I have a Bachelor of Science in biology from U of T and a post-grad certificate in ecosystem restoration and another in waste and environmental management."
Elias blinked at him. "Oh."
When nothing else was forthcoming, Ty gestured at Elias's empty plate. "You done with that?" Not waiting for a reply, he took it out of Elias's hands and walked it back up to the kitchen with his own.
God, he hated being made to feel small because of his job. He liked his job, liked knowing he was making a small difference in keeping the city he'd been born and
raised in clean. Sure, replacing garbage bags in city trash cans and hauling full ones to the detainment centre wasn't what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. But it was a foot in the door that would eventually lead to one of the city's jobs in waste and environmental management. And getting his foot in the door had been hard—the city had a rigorous screening and interview process. He was damn lucky to be where he was.
Elias obviously hadn't meant to, but he'd hit one of Ty's hot buttons with his careless words. Just because he didn't work in a corner office in a downtown high-rise didn't mean his job wasn't beneficial and fulfilling. In fact, he could argue that, compared to Elias's, his job was more valuable. Keeping streets clear of trash and having comprehensive waste management systems in place to ensure proper waste prevention, recycling, and reusing was arguably more critical than assessing the needs of a company going through a reorganization.
One of the plates slipped out of his hands as he was depositing it in the sink to wash, splintering into thirds. It did nothing to help the irritation already pushing at the back of his throat, and he huffed in annoyance. Grabbing the largest piece, it again slipped out of his hands and back into the sink, leaving a two-inch gash on his palm.
Fuck. Seriously? Now he had a physical wound to add to his emotional one, and he so wasn't in the mood.
"Here."
Elias appeared next to him, turning on the cold water and maneuvering Ty's bleeding hand underneath the stream. Ty didn't need to be looked after. He could take care of himself. He didn't need Elias interfering in something he already had under control and wrestled his hand out of grasp.
"Stop," Elias said, voice firm.
Stilling, Tay stood tense while Elias let the cold water rain down on his hand, teeth grinding craters into each other, purposely averting his gaze from the sight of Elias's brown hand holding his own lighter one. Elias only held Ty's hand under the water for thirty seconds or so, and though the cut had stopped bleeding, Elias wrapped a dish towel around his hand anyway.
And he didn't let go. No, he cupped Ty's hand between his warm ones and ducked down to catch Ty's eyes.
"I'm sorry," he said, squeezing Ty's hand gently. "Truly, I didn't mean to offend. My only excuse is that I'm ignorant of the skills and education required to do your job or to get hired by the city."
"So, what?" Ty said. "The successful businessman thought he'd slum it with an uneducated shlump who hauls garbage around all day?" He regretted the words as soon as he said them. They were mean and vindictive, and his only excuse was that he was hurt and he wanted to hurt back.
But instead of getting angry and pulling away like Ty expected, Elias only squeezed his hand again and said, "Did I say that?" cool as you please. Ty sort of envied yet also hated his ability to remain logical in the face of an argument.
His sigh was miserable. "No, I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry, too," Elias said. He dropped Ty's hand and held out his own. "Friends?" His eyes were teasing, a slight smile on his lips.
Ty wanted to be more than friends, but, "Friends," he said and shook Elias's hand with his unhurt one.
Elias framed Ty's face in his hands, his eyes a curious mixture of tentative, teasing, and serious.
"More than friends?" he asked.
Ty smiled and rested their foreheads together. "More than friends."
"I'm sorry, but...are you firing me?"
The woman sitting across the desk from Elias was the third person he was letting go today. She was in her mid-forties with curly brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her brown eyes glared at him so hard he half expected laser beams to incinerate him at any moment.
Elias had done enough firing in the past few years that he could tell the cryers from the take-it-lying-down types from the can-I-stay-on-in-a-different-capacity types. This woman was none of those. Despite her musical name, Melody Harwich was a fighter.
"Why isn't Johnson doing the firing?"
Elias schooled his face into impassivity, so the regret he was feeling wouldn't show all over it, and held up a folder. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm not at liberty to discuss that. I can, however, discuss the severance package Sander's has put together for you—"
"Severance package? Who the hell do you think you are?"
"I'm—"
"I mean, I know who you are," she corrected herself.
The entire staff at Sander's Printing knew who he was. The management had insisted on introducing Elias and his staff when they'd first been brought on two months ago. Let me introduce the team that's going to recommend which of you stays and which of you goes.
That was always fun.
"Did you recommend he fire me?"
Elias had, in fact, recommended the opposite.
"No, ma'am, I—"
"I have been with Sander's for twenty years. Twenty. Years. Sander's and I had an unwritten agreement that I would do whatever the company asked of me, and in return, I would have a job for life." The tears came then but she blinked them away and pointed a finger in his face. "Then some new fuckwad owner comes along and decides that a system that was working perfectly well and successfully, I might add, needs 'reorganizing'?" She made actual air quotes.
Said new fuckwad owner was Dick Johnson—and yes, Elias got a kick out of the name every time. Johnson was in the process of acquiring several printing companies across the country. He'd bought Sander’s from a retiring Glen Sander almost three months ago, and despite the business's success—Melody was right about that—he wanted to let almost everyone he'd inherited go to be replaced by a new, younger demographic.
Elias had fought for Sander’s’ employees until Johnson had stopped taking his calls. Explaining to the man that keeping his current employees would ensure not only success but also loyalty and commitment went in one of Johnson's ears and out the other. Why had Johnson hired Top Line, Ltd if he wasn't going to listen to any of their recommendations?
Elias was still trying to figure out the answer to that question.
"You know what?" Melody stood and took the folder off his desk. "You can tell Dick Johnson to stuff it. And you can stuff it, too." She slammed Elias's office door behind her.
Elias tried not to take her words personally, but it wasn't easy. Having to let people go was the worst part of his job and always succeeded in making him feel like total shit. It wasn't technically part of his job, and Top Line never signed a contract that specifically stated they would coordinate and perform any letting go. But sometimes the top brass—in this case, Dick Johnson—negotiated with Elias's higher ups for exactly that, because they were “too busy.”
Translation: We want to stay on the remaining employees' good sides, so we need Top Line to do the firing for us.
It was both pathetic and cowardly.
He sagged back in his chair and rubbed his temples with a shaking thumb and forefinger. Once he made VP, this part of his job would go to someone else. That day couldn't come soon enough. If only the board would make a decision on who was going to be awarded the position.
A knock on his door drew him out of his thoughts. Rachel entered without waiting for an invitation. She wore a cream sleeveless shirt tucked into a navy pencil skirt despite the day's return to a temperature of minus forty. Sitting in Melody Harwich's recently vacated seat, she crossed her legs at the ankles and arched an eyebrow.
"So?"
Elias swallowed an irritated sigh. "So?"
"Do we have to do this every day? What did your horoscope say?"
"Oh."
God, he'd been so distracted by thoughts of Ty on his walk to work this morning that he hadn't thought to grab a newspaper and check his daily horoscope for Rachel. What he had remembered? Ty's hot chocolate and apple turnover, which he'd bought before remembering that Ty had the week off.
They sat now on the end of his desk, an arm's length away. Elias could've consumed them himself, but they reminded him of Ty and he liked the constant reminder of their unexpected weekend together.
"Hello."
Rachel waved a hand in front of his face.
"Sorry," he said. "Got a lot on my mind."
"Yeah. I passed Melody Harwich in the hallway. She was pissed," Rachel sing-songed.
"Can you blame her?" Elias asked, not appreciating how Rachel made light of the situation.
"Not one bit. You enjoyed firing her, didn't you?"
What the hell had he ever said or done to make her believe that? Was it his resting douchebag face at work?
Rachel didn't wait for him to reply to a question she thought she already knew the answer to. "Are you going to tell me about your horoscope?"
"No,. I didn't grab the paper this morning."
"You could've looked it up online."
He could've, had he thought of it. He shrugged at her, wishing she'd go away and let him stew in the misery that always hit after firing someone.
"Anyway," she carried on. "Steve headed back to Montreal this morning. You missed your chance there."
Steve was the cousin she'd wanted to set him up with. But considering he hadn't wanted a chance in the first place...
"You two would've been perfect together." She sighed dreamily, or...lustily? Rachel was one of those women who got turned on at the thought of two guys together. But the thought of her getting turned on by him and some other guy? It totally freaked him out.
"A Capricorn and a Taurus. Couldn't get any better."
"What about a...Capricorn and a Capricorn?" he asked before he could think better of it. It'd occurred to him on his walk here this morning that both he and Ty were Capricorns.
Rachel sat up straight in her chair. "Did you meet someone?"
"No," Elias said, managing to keep a straight face. "Just curious."
"Well...Capricorn and Capricorn…they’re not the best match. Two Capricorns probably wouldn't satisfy each other sexually, both too practical and rational to let themselves go like that."
Given Elias's thoroughly enjoyable weekend with Ty, Rachel's point was debatable.
