Shades of Henry (The Flophouse Book 1) Page 4

  The guys all nodded respectfully and reassembled, draping themselves over the couch, the recliner, and the inflatable mattress that had apparently been brought out to accommodate sheer numbers.

  But they didn’t leave Henry alone.

  “Deployment?” Billy asked. “When’d you get back?”

  Henry finished chewing his first bite of meat-lover’s special and swallowed. “About two weeks ago.”

  “You turn in your papers?” Billy grimaced. “I tried to enlist, but I failed the physical.”

  Lance arched an eyebrow, and Billy gave him a barely perceptible nod. Oh, sweetheart. No. The weight of their shared secret seemed to press on Lance’s chest—or his stomach, which was where most of the pizza they ate would not be by the end of the night.

  “That’s too bad,” Henry said, and his sincerity made Lance dizzy with relief. And then, blessed, blessed Henry… he didn’t pry. “It’s hard when you want to serve but they won’t let you.”

  “Is that what happened to you?” Lance asked and then had to not clap his hand over his mouth.

  Henry gave him an inscrutable look. “What happened to me was… complicated. And in the long run, it wasn’t something I did so much as something I had coming.” He twitched his lips at Lance.

  “And it’s something you don’t want to talk about. I’m sorry.”

  “No worries.” Henry munched doggedly on his pizza. “What are you aiming for now?” he asked Billy.

  Billy bit his lip in what looked like hope. “A degree in engineering. I’ve got another year—”

  “He’s been head-hunted,” Cotton blurted, wide-eyed.

  “Dude, that doesn’t mean nearly what you think it does,” Zeppelin said with a smirk, and Cotton flat-out ignored him.

  “No—two firms, right, Billy?”

  Billy nodded. “Yeah. I may get to do a paid internship next semester.”

  “And then you’ll move out of this dump and we can visit you in a real house?” Curtis asked hopefully. Curtis—African American, skin of pale bronze, as clean-cut as an ROTC cadet—was going to school to study kinesiology so he could get into sports medicine, and he seemed to need examples of guys who got out of porn and moved on to other things. He volunteered his spare time at a children’s shelter, and while Lance wanted to point out that if he waited tables with that time instead he might be able to afford a different living situation, he got the feeling Curtis was there for the same reason Lance was. And it had less to do with money than with not being able to buy family.

  “Absolutely,” Billy said, his voice ringing in sincerity. Sometimes guys meant that. They kept up with their buddies at Johnnies, made friendships. Sometimes guys were in and out. Lance recognized that this was probably like a lot of jobs, a lot of living situations, but still, it gave him hope to think of Billy becoming like Reg and Bobby. Reg’s house was a dump—that was a given—but damned if every two weeks or so, somebody didn’t go visit them and end up having a beer and some dinner and TV in a different living room. Of course, they might also get co-opted into helping Bobby restore Reg’s beloved dump, but it seemed a small price to pay.

  “Engineering,” Henry said with respect. “Those are tough courses. I looked into that.” He knocked his skull with his knuckles. “Too thick.”

  Billy laughed, but he looked pleased. Well, yeah. They were all pretty here. Being praised for your brains, your drive—that was unusual, and Lance felt a teeny bit of relaxation seep into his stomach. Henry had promised, and apparently he was going to live up to his word. Lance was relieved.

  “Anybody else got a surprising major?” Henry asked, and he seemed to have relaxed as well. “Rocket science? Economics of underdeveloped countries?”

  “Personal trainer, dude!” Zeppelin hammed. “The better to surf when the surfing’s good!”

  “You live in a valley, Zeppelin,” Fisher said patiently. “This isn’t the place to be a surfer bum.”

  “Cheaper here,” Zeppelin said, nodding, as if he could get the rest of them to believe him. “And this way I can go surfing on the weekends.”

  “He spends his weekends as a yoga instructor,” Fisher told Henry. “I know this because we both work in the same gym. Asshole hasn’t taken me surfing once.”

  Zeppelin grinned at the guy he’d been fucking not more than an hour ago, and Lance looked at them both curiously. Fisher was a recent addition to the Johnnies stable, and while he seemed undecided about porn, he’d been Zeppelin’s guest more than once, and that was unheard of. “You haven’t asked me to take you.”

  “That’s not how it works,” Fisher explained, a note in his voice telling Lance that he was pretty sure Zep didn’t know this already. “You say, ‘Hey, Fisher! I’m all fucked-out this weekend. How about we go surfing instead!’ and I say, ‘Yeah, Zep, it would be great to know you liked more about me than my cock!’ See how that works?”

  Zeppelin looked abashed. “I don’t got a car, dude. Neither do you.”

  “Oh God,” Billy muttered. “I have a car. And a week off school. Let’s go.”

  “Or a wetsuit,” Zeppelin said, looking embarrassed. “Or a surfboard. You guys, I’m all talk about surfing, and you know it.”

  “We can still go,” Billy said. “I’m sure there’s places to rent.”

  “Yeah?” Zep perked up. “Let’s plan!”

  “Good for you, guys,” Randy huffed. “Can we see the end of the movie first?”

  “You can come too,” Fisher offered.

  Randy arched his almost transparently ginger eyebrows at him. “I go poof in the sun,” he said. “That’s sweet, but I prefer pasty and sad to surfing and peeling. Really.”

  Henry let out the most amazing sound, but Lance was the only one to notice. The guys went back to their movie, with the addition of pizza, of course, but Lance couldn’t help staring at Henry, wondering if he could get him to laugh again. Just once. Just for real. Because that had been like rain after a long dry summer, and Lance yearned to feel it over his body again.

  Old Habits

  SOMEONE WAS having sex again.

  Henry rolled over on the couch and covered his head with the pillow, thinking he could probably manage another hour of sleep if they finished in the next five minutes.

  When he’d first heard the idea—him, crashing with a bunch of oversexed porn stars—of course he’d been outraged and morally horrified. Because his father would have been outraged and morally horrified. But after that first night, eating pizza with all those sweet young men, he’d gone to sleep with memories of his first leave after basic training. He and Mal had ended up with a bunch of their fellow sufferers in a bar in Georgia—because there was seriously nothing else to do—and they’d bullshitted and played pool and swapped life stories and given one another a ration of crap. Even though he and Mal had been hoping for some time together, the camaraderie had made him so happy. It was almost more important than friendship—it had been the knowledge that he could fuck up and somebody would have his back.

  To a point, of course. Because if anybody had known about him and Mal, well… well, he would have ended up on somebody’s couch anyway, except now he was twenty-seven and not nineteen.

  But at the time, that sense of belonging had empowered him, and he’d reveled in it. Watching those young men drape themselves over the furniture, over one another, and talk about their futures with such hope, he’d remembered his promise to Lance that he’d be kind to his “little brothers,” and he remembered his own brother’s kindness and had been determined to make good on it.

  It was the least he could do.

  And as for the sex?

  Sometime after the third night, when he’d been sleepless and as on edge as a traumatized cat, he had a flashback to his first week in the barracks, when everybody had been waiting for the guy next to him to stop snoring so he could jerk off. Mal had been the first to pretend to snore, and then Henry, and then they’d been surrounded by relieved privates, doing the private under the cov
ers. Henry and Mal had caught each other’s eyes and giggled, then shivered, and then nursed their own hard-ons, quietly, waiting for the noise around them to subside.

  The minute it did, they’d closed their eyes and came, and it had been just the two of them in spite of the twenty other men and the overwhelming smell of spunk.

  Yes, they’d been surrounded by guys getting off.

  None of it was for them.

  And in spite of the absolutely open sexuality of every guy in the apartment except him and Lance, this was the same situation.

  From the bedroom with the queen-sized, he heard Zeppelin’s low moan and Fisher’s strangled cry, and the banging of the headboard slowed down, then stopped. Henry gave a sigh of relief, until he heard another sound, this one from the air mattress next to him, where Cotton curled up in a tight, defensive little ball.

  For a moment, Henry groaned, thinking he was going to have to wait for Cotton to get his rocks off before he got to sleep, but then he heard the actual sounds Cotton was making.

  Tiny sobs, the kind that sputtered because the body wanted to do more but the mind was trying to do you in. Cotton was crying.

  Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

  Henry got up, not sure what he was going to do—he was not cuddly—but knowing that he had to do something.

  Lance. Lance would know. Lance deftly managed these hyperemotional, high-strung post-adolescent hormone bundles with the sweet touch of a mother—except Henry’s mother would have turned her kids over to his father for the strap, when all the poor kids needed was a hug.

  Henry stood up quietly and leaned over to squeeze Cotton’s shoulder, as if to say, “Help is coming,” and Cotton seized his hand, hard enough to overbalance Henry and pull him onto the air mattress. Henry ended up on top of him, wriggling around and trying to escape, while Cotton just clung to his shoulders, sobbing on his chest.

  Oh Jesus. They were both sleeping in their briefs, and he was almost naked with another man for the first time since the time he wasn’t going to think about.

  “Cotton… uh, buddy….”

  The kid was warm and smooth-skinned, stringy with muscle, and hysterical. He looped his arms around Henry’s neck and held on so tight, Henry couldn’t breathe—and Henry’s libido started tugging on his shirt.

  Uh, Henry. Buddy. ’Sup. Been a while, right?

  No! He’s a freaked-out kid. Chill! Dammit!

  Cotton felt it—of course he felt it—and he started to grind, his sobbing easing infinitesimally, his hips apparently doing what came as natural to him as breathing.

  “No no no no,” Henry mumbled, scooching to get away. The mattress was pretty well constructed, but Henry was a solid guy, and Cotton followed him across. When Henry got to the end, the side collapsed just enough to send him tumbling to the ground, bumping the cheap coffee table and sending it over on its side. A still hysterical, mostly naked Cotton landed on top of him, and Henry couldn’t seem to wiggle away without making things worse.

  “Cotton, man, c’mon. Let’s go get… coffee. Or ice cream…. Buddy, you’ve got to get off me. Come—” Oh God. Cotton’s groin caught Henry’s right where things counted, and the stroke against his shaft was unmistakably arousing. “On. Oh Jesus, dude, this isn’t what either of us wants!”

  Henry tried to sit up, pushing his arms behind him, and suddenly Cotton’s mouth, his briny, wet, sobbing mouth, was on his neck, and it was all Henry could do not to tilt his head back and yield.

  God, he’d been here for a month, and it felt like a year, and his body was whining that it had been so long.

  “Cotton!” he barked. “No!”

  Cotton pulled back, the hurt etched clearly on his face. “But you want it,” he said, hiccupping and palming Henry’s aching erection without shame.

  Henry caught his hand. “Even if I did, you don’t. Not really. Man, let me get Lance, okay? You’re a mess.”

  Cotton’s lower lip started to wobble again, and Henry let out a groan of frustration. “You can hug me,” he muttered, needing that face with the eyes and the chin and all the sad things to stop. “But no sex.”

  “O…o…okaaaaaayyy….”

  And then they were back to square one, except Henry was leaning uncomfortably against the shambles of the coffee table while Cotton lost his shit.

  Eventually he fell asleep on Henry’s chest, and Henry managed to get him situated on the air mattress again. He was picking up the coffee table groggily, wishing for actual coffee, when Lance wandered in, dressed for rounds.

  “What happened?” he asked, frowning.

  Henry squinted at him. God, he looked good, his tawny skin aglow, black hair water-combed, full lips quirking up. Did he know how beautiful he was? Well, he apparently bared that beautiful body to the camera every so often, let people stroke it and invade it and kiss it for money—so maybe he did. But he was so pretty. Even at gawdawful a.m.

  “There was crying,” Henry mumbled. “There was crying, and then there was groping, and then there was ‘no, Cotton,’ and then there was crying.” He closed his eyes and opened them again and shoved his hands through his hair. “I never got to the why there was crying. But there was crying.”

  Lance quirked his mouth in sympathy. “You can sleep in my bed if you want. Randy’s alone for once, thank God, and I think Zep and Fisher are finally quiet.”

  Henry shook his head. “No. I need to get Galen to the airport in an hour. Need to get up and coffee and bus.”

  Davy had made good on helping him find work, and part of that promise led to Henry driving for Galen. Galen was John’s boyfriend—John being the owner of Johnnies—and he’d been injured badly in a motorcycle accident a few years back. He could drive, but it hurt, and he’d confided to Henry in a rare moment of vulnerability that he lived in fear of his legs going out when he was behind the wheel. Since Galen was mostly a sarcastic asshole whose every word dripped with disdain, it had been a rare moment indeed.

  “I can drive you,” Lance said easily. “Go shower. What are you doing after airport duty?”

  “Mm… since I have John’s car, I think I’m on for taking Frances to school. It’s a little late for before-school day care and apparently her second-grade teacher is a real bear about tardies. Kane was writing a paper last night, and Davy said he was leaving early so he could go talk to his professor.” Kane apparently had learning difficulties, and part of Henry—the part that was like his father—wanted to sneer at him for being a big dumb gorilla. But the part that watched Kane play with his niece or work until the small hours of the morning trying to read and write way above his education level, thought that maybe he should have a little fucking compassion.

  God. Learning. Henry certainly needed more of it.

  “You mind nanny bus duty?” Lance asked with a smirk.

  Henry shrugged, embarrassed. “I like kids,” he mumbled. “My brother Travis’s kids are sort of fun, and Mal—” He swallowed. This had never been so hard to say before. “Mal and Debbie’s baby was super cute.”

  Lance tilted his head. “I keep forgetting—was Mal your brother?”

  Henry shook his head vehemently. “No. He’s my sister’s husband. Me and him were in the service together.” God, he wanted to clap his hand over his mouth. He wasn’t going to talk about that—no matter what Davy said about them needing that conversation.

  Lance must have sensed something was up. He straightened his shoulders and frowned. “There’s a story th—” At that moment, the coffee maker started hissing, and Henry backed away.

  “I’ve got to get ready. I don’t want to make you late. Back in a few.”

  “Hey, Henry—”

  He ignored Lance’s softly called entreaty and hustled for his duffel bag of clean clothes and the bathroom. He thought rather wistfully that he wished he had something besides jeans, a T-shirt, and a hooded sweatshirt and denim jacket, but as he soaped his hair with Lance’s shampoo—because the guy had offered, dammit, and not because he loved th
e scent—he couldn’t imagine what else he’d wear. He’d seen the guys go out clubbing in slickly cut trousers and button-downs, tight cashmere sweaters and low-waisted jeans, but he’d never actually stopped to think about what he’d wear outside the military when he’d been in it.

  He and Mal had never dressed to impress each other, just in case people noticed who they were trying to impress. Hell, everybody had given Henry shit for being Mal’s babysitter, keeping him on the straight and narrow. Having a club shirt would have blown Henry’s cover.

  But now, as he got ready for his day of running errands and trying to pick up a shift waiting tables at a local restaurant, the idea was a low-key rumble in his gut.

  Who was Henry Matthew Worrall without Malachi Daniels and the U.S. Armed Forces behind him?

  Well, apparently, he was a guy who’d hug a stressed-out kid in his sleep and not take advantage of the poor kid even when he offered him a sobbing hand job. At least, that was a place to start.

  He and Lance got situated in Lance’s car—a used CR-V, colored silver like every other car on the road—and Henry sipped his coffee appreciatively from a Johnnies travel mug. He could admit to himself privately that he rather loved the stylized line drawing on the side.

  Then he asked the real question of the morning. “So… Cotton.”

  The boy had been sleeping when they’d left, but Henry hadn’t been able to resist pulling the blanket up to his chin and tousling his hair before he’d walked out the door. Cotton had smiled a little in his sleep and snuggled in deeper, and Henry’s heart had broken.

  God, he looked about twelve.

  Who said this kid got to fuck on camera for a living?

  Henry couldn’t help thinking about him now as Lance made his way down Howe Avenue toward J Street.

  “Yeah?” Lance said, turning the radio down.

  “Cotton,” Henry said again. “What’s his deal?”

  Lance made a sound. “It’s bad, Henry. Do you really want to know?”

  “He’s fragile. He’s… I don’t know if he should be making porn. I don’t know why his parents let him out of the house.”