Promise Rock 03 - Living Promises (MM) (20 page)

Collin: Going Out

C
OLLIN
knew he was hot. In high school, he'd been hit on constantly and he'd played it up. He wore his hair parted in the middle and hanging down the sides of his face because he knew it made the most of his bone structure, even when he pulled it back in a queue. He knew that some guys really liked the long hair thing, and he kept his healthy and shiny. He knew his eyes were unusually light—he wore lots of gold-brown and dark green, lots of navy blue, which made them look lighter. He had free weights at home and worked out when he wasn't playing rec-league and indoor soccer, and he took his soccer with brutal seriousness, so
that
kept him pretty fit too. He knew his frame was more rangy than big, although his shoulders were wide because of his height and the amount of time he used his arms and upper body in the shop.

Tonight, he did more than just
know
he was pretty. He blow-dried his hair back so that it was shiny and full away from his face. He used the slightest bit of eyeliner to make that fringe around his eyes dark and mysterious. And arrogant—mustn't forget arrogance. That was a turn-on. Hell, he even put a little bit of Vaseline on his lips to make them shiny.

His factory-faded black jeans were low on his hips and so tight someone looking hard could see that he was circumcised. His white belt was studded with silver, his black loafers (no socks, and fuck the fact that it was November and fucking cold outside) were spiffy shiny, his tan T-shirt spanned snugly across his chest, and his fashion-friendly, doublebreasted cropped jacket was right out of GQ. Who gave a damn if it was the spring issue? Nobody in Sacramento really followed that crap, did they?

He looked fantastic.

He was the only one who had to know he felt like total and complete shit.
His loft room was pretty big—living above your mom's garage didn't have to be masturbating over Nintendo in a small, sweaty room. He'd done it up right with hardwood flooring, a nice area rug—sort of a cool one, done in olive, navy, tan, and brown, looking like shards of a mirror scattered over an earthen surface. He had furniture—a real couch/loveseat corner sectional, in olive and burgundy, and a little wooden dinette unit by his refrigerator and stove. His queen-sized bed was in the corner, made up, because when his sisters or their kids visited, it became furniture and/or a playground. It was a nice place and not, as his mother had openly worried, a den of sex and iniquity. Collin had brought a few men up there in the past three years, but none on the first date, or even the third or fourth.
He had, in fact, been living respectable, and he'd liked it.
But that didn't mean he didn't want to go out and fuck the shit out of something until it couldn't stand up anymore.
That's what he told himself, and every time he did, he hoped it would wash the disappointment of Sunday's family dinner away.
He'd been close—he'd felt it. He'd sat next to Jeff and saw those sly, almost
shy
looks that Jeff had given him from those sweetheart eyes. He'd bumped Jeff's knee under the table a couple of times just to watch the blood wash under that deceptively fair skin. He'd heard the apology in Jeff's voice when he'd tried to hint about Martin, and he'd seen that Martin had actually been happy when Jeff had run into Collin on the way into the door. Everything was going so well.
It was just Collin's luck that his second dinner at The Pulpit would be the night Crick and Deacon dropped an anvil on everyone's head.
Andrew had told him later about Deacon's poor health, about his surgery, about pulling the rug out from under everyone's feet when they'd learned to depend upon that man to center their world around him and Crick and the way they took care of the people around them. Collin hadn't known that when he'd dragged Jeff into the mudroom. If he had, maybe he would have just hugged the guy into submission, but he hadn't known, and so he'd taken the dumb-arse-wrong approach and given the guy a chance to run away.
But run was exactly what Jeff had done, and Collin had been left, in a room full of devastated strangers, until Mikhail had pulled him aside.
“You just let him go?” The man's accent was thick, and his face was working visibly to keep steady, but he seemed to be incredibly tough, because it was working.
“Crick followed him out.”
“Yes, but
you
just let him go?”
Collin scowled. “I'm not some sort of stalker. I do have my pride.”
Mikhail lifted one shoulder up in absolute disdain. “You have your pride, yes, but you do not have Jeff. I am not impressed.”
“Well, what do you expect me to do, dammit!” Collin snapped, and Mikhail lifted that shoulder up again and this time curled his lip for good measure.
“At the moment, I expect you to do nothing, because that's what you have
been
doing. It is not for me to judge. All I know is that Jeff is damaged. I was damaged like that once.”
“Yeah, and what did you do about it?” Collin sounded hostile. He knew it, but he couldn't seem to do a damned thing to fix it.
Mikhail shrugged again. “I did nothing. I was damaged. But my big stupid cop? He is too strong for pride. You are obviously not strong enough to hold a man of worth. Do not concern yourself. We will care for him.”
Collin closed his eyes and counted to ten, and when he opened them, he saw that the little man he'd been about to deck was standing with his arm around his “big stupid cop” and a look on his face of such incredible tenderness, such besotted concern, that all of Collin's irritation seeped into the battered tile at his feet.
Too strong for pride? Was a look like that what being “too strong for pride” got you? It might be worth it, maybe, to lay his pride on the line and go outside and make the man with the big, hurt brown eyes look at him with that sudden shyness again, and maybe make him blush, and then, maybe, make him scream a little, in a good way, and worship Collin forever, just the way Mikhail seemed to be doing to Shane.
Then Collin saw the look that Shane bent on Mikhail, and his heart stopped in his chest.
Oh no. He couldn't do that. That look was as open as a child's. How long had it been since Collin had the sort of faith to look at another human being like that? The last time he'd looked at someone like they could carry the weight of the sun and the moon and the stars on his shoulders had been….
The morning his father was taking him to school, and he was happy because he got to bring snack.
Oh God. Collin's shirt was suddenly too hot, and his breath was coming too fast, and his eyes sought out someone, anyone in the room that wouldn't make him remember that moment.
Who he saw was Deacon, one arm around the guy who was his best friend, the other arm around the little girl, Crick's niece, as she balanced on his hip. Deacon looked happy, serene, content in all things, and from what Collin had heard before he walked in, this was a man who could very possibly leave the people he loved in the same abrupt, merciless way that Collin's father had, a thousand years ago at least, when Collin had been very young.
Crick strode inside from the front door then. Collin, who was actively sweating by now, saw him bend down and say something to a rather oblivious-looking Martin, who was watching television unnoticed by the other people in the room. Martin looked up, nodded amicably, and then Crick's eyes had, apparently against Crick's will, sought Collin out in the crowd. The look he'd given had been half sympathetic and half guilty, and Collin's face flushed hot-red, then white in anger.
Even Collin could tell he was about to get the brush-off.
Crick strode toward him, and Collin said, “Don't bother. I get the hint. I hope Deacon's okay, sincerely, but I'm going to call it a night.”
He'd blown through the living room and grabbed his jacket with the car keys right before he slammed the door.
As he'd crunched his way to his car, he saw a dark figure in the front seat of Jeff's Mini Cooper, head resting on crossed arms on the steering wheel, and for a moment, he let his purpose flag. And then his pride came roaring out at him.
Screw it. Jeff wanted to handle this on his own? Well fucking let him.
And Collin peeled out of there in a spray of gravel and, yes, wounded pride.

T
HE
next evening, he drove to the Galleria after work and bought the outfit. The day after that, he called one of his old club buddies and asked him if Gatsby's Nick was still gay and still happy. Club buddy said yes, but he and his husband didn't go anymore—they were too busy preparing the nursery for their soon-to-be adopted daughter, and that sort of thing had fallen by the wayside.

“You're twenty-nine, Desmond. What the hell are you thinking, trying to be a parent?”
“I'm thinking that I'm too old to go around getting banged in alleyways wishing Prince Charming would kiss my wing-tips. Aren't you?”
Collin hadn't answered, and he'd hung up shortly afterward. He really couldn't shake the idea that twenty-four or forty-four, what he was planning on doing was still really fucking childish, and he should know better by now.
Whatever part of him felt that way was still up and running by Friday night, because when he was walking down the outside stairs to open the garage, his mother saw him as she was pulling in from work with a bag of groceries in the car, and he found that he couldn't actually look her in the eye.
“A hot date?” she asked, with nothing more in her voice than pleasant inquiry.
“Clubbing,” Collin mumbled, looking at his shiny loafers. Maybe he should have gone with the Burkes; those seemed so much more comfortable.
His mother's entire demeanor seemed to change, right? Where she was usually warm and welcoming, she was now cool and stiff—she had to be. Collin grimaced inwardly.
“I thought you had someone in mind,” she asked carefully, and Collin's answering shrug felt hostile and defensive, and he couldn't seem to make that change.
“He didn't want me,” Collin mumbled, and suddenly, Natalie's arm was balancing groceries on her hip and pulling him in for a hug with the other arm. Maybe he'd imagined the cool and stiff thing—maybe that had been his own condemnation smacking around in his head.
“I'm sure that's not true,” his mother murmured. “Maybe, he just needed some space—and maybe he's going to need you to be the persistent, bull-headed pain in the ass that you're good at being, and you're going to need to run him down.”
She backed up and looked him square in the face, and this time he
knew
he didn't imagine the reprimand.
“It's hard to look someone in the eyes, Collin, when you're feeling guilty as hell. Go out, have a good time tonight—you deserve it. But don't do anything you can't feel good about the next time you see him. That never works. I've seen you try it with other boyfriends, and it hasn't ended well, remember?”
But that had been different. He'd been trying to make it a clean break. He didn't tell his mother that, though—but he did nod, because if nothing else, she'd made her very painful, very sharp and shiny, point.
Three hours later, as the cab pulled up to the condos and Collin slopped his signature on the board after the guy had taken his card, he tried to remember what that point was.
“Thank you,” he said somberly to the cab driver. “Thank you. You're a gentleman. You've been very kind.”
“Kid, are you getting out here?”
“Yesh… yes. Absolutely. Twenty-five hundred Elknorm, Elfhorn, Elkhorn road, number thirty-seven.” He'd memorized that from Jeff's paperwork. Oh shit—had that part come in yet? Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope… because honestly? (And really, he was too drunk
not
to be honest.) Honestly? If that part had come in, and he'd been able to call Jeff and had an excuse to see him? He probably would not have walked into that club tonight.
He was halfway down the walk to Jeff's ground-floor condo when he realized he'd forgotten to say goodbye to his cab driver. Too bad, so sad, the guy had been a prick anyway.
“Jeffy?” he called while pounding on the door. “Jeffy? You in there?”
He heard Jeff swearing from the window where he thought there was a bedroom, and then a light came on, and then… he pictured Jeff running around in purple silk boxers, trying to find a bathrobe, and when he came to, Jeff was throwing open the door in a holy-God-are-youshitting-me? Crimson silk dressing gown. His sweetheart brown eyes were wide and irritated, and his hair… oh holy shit… his hair was a
mess.
Oh my God—in his wildest dreams, Collin had not imagined that Jeff's hair was so unruly. It stuck out of his head like an uneven pincushion, without rhyme or reason….
It was awesome.
He grinned and ran his hand through it as Jeff was still standing in the doorway, looking completely dumbstruck.
“Hey, Jeffy. I like it. And it's all soft. It's not all stiff and hard, like your bitchy black heart. Maybe you should stop mousse-ing your heart.”
Jeff's eyebrows rose about three, four hundred feet. “Oh. My. God. How much did you drink?”
Collin's smile was proud. “Only three shots. Two when I was going to get me a BJ in the bathroom, and the other one when I couldn't follow through.”
Jeff tucked one hand under his arm and raised the other to his mouth, covering what looked to be a giggle. “Well… if this is what happens to you on three drinks….”
“My meds,” Collin said with wounded dignity. “When I was in high school? I could frink like a dish! But now?” He shook his head sadly. “And he was pretty, too, Jeffy. You should have seen him. Blond. Blue-eyed. Damn near farm-fresh. And he wanted me. God, he practically groped me when I walked in the door, you know? Almost went down on me on the dance floor. Had the sweetest little mouth.”
Collin sighed theatrically and noticed that Jeff wasn't giggling anymore. He wasn't hostile, either. He was… oh, shit. He was hurt.
Collin thought maybe he should explain a little more. He reached out to ruffle Jeff's hair, and when Jeff raised an arm to block, he leaned forward, stumbled, and somehow ended up pressing Jeff against the wall.
“His eyes were the wrong color, Jeff. That's what was wrong. They weren't brown. He was almost on his knees, and he looked at me, and his eyes weren't brown. I didn't want blue eyes. I didn't want twenty-two and farm-fresh. I wanted you. You weren't there. You just walked away and left me, and you weren't there, and he wasn't going to do it for me.”
They were inches apart. Ohmigod, they were just inches apart, and Collin had just blathered on and on, not noticing that Jeff's eyes were big dark whirlpools in the light coming in from the soda lamp in the parking lot. Collin himself smelled like Scotch, but Jeff? Collin closed his mouth and then closed his eyes and took a breath. Jeff smelled
expensive
, like skin products and nice bath smells and things that probably made his skin soft over those stringy gym muscles, and maybe hairless, and
oh God, he felt so good.
And all the hostility was gone too. “I'm sorry I left you,” Jeff said breathlessly.
Collin nuzzled Jeff's cheek with his lips and then gently bumped noses with him. “Why'd you leave me, Jeffy?” Collin asked plaintively. “That wasn't nice. I just wanted to help.”
Jeff's breath caught—Collin could feel it because they were just that close. His dark eyes seemed to search Collin's in the darkness. “You're a nice kid,” Jeff said, and Collin was stunned by the sudden hotness in his eyes.
“Don't start that shit again,” he muttered, resting his forehead against Jeff's. They were the same height—he liked that. He liked classic bottoms and being on top, but he liked the equality too. He liked that Jeff was older and Collin was bossier. It was push and pull and it could be… God. It could be so perfect.
“You're not thirty-two,” Jeff said archly, and Collin blew a boozy raspberry.
“You're not either,” he said, absolutely sure of it. “You're like a little kid with laugh lines. Where'd you get the laugh lines, Jeffy? How come you're strong enough to laugh but you got to run away to do anything else?”
It was almost like a steel wall, Jeff's scowl. It clanked down like a bank vault door, and all the softness Collin had seen was locked away behind it.
“See,” Collin sighed. “Running away.” He sagged into Jeff's arms again, because he was pretty sure Jeff would catch him, and he'd missed out on his chance for a random blow job from a random stranger. He wanted contact, and warmth, and if he had to be drunk to get it, well, lucky him. He was drunk already, right?
Jeff didn't disappoint him—not in this. Those angular arms were surprisingly strong. Probably all elbows and shoulder bones in bed, but strong now, and they supported Collin and wrapped around his shoulders and hauled him to the couch, which was fine, because the floor was being a bitchy mistress and trying to throw him over with every step.
They fell into the couch—a lush, white fabric thing, and Collin sighed. “If I wasn't drunk, I'd be greasy,” he mumbled. He'd had to spend an hour on his cuticles and nails, trying not to look like a mechanic. “It's like not even your furniture wants me, Jeff.”
“My furniture's too covered in cat hair to object,” Jeff said dryly. “Collin, you didn't drive here, did you?” A sudden panic in that voice— it was sharp, and Collin felt cut to the quick.
“I'm resphonisple… responsible now,” he said, with as much sobriety as he could manage. “I'm not stupid. I know why you run. I took a cab.” Those things didn't really go together, did they? Shit. “I probably need some water,” he muttered, feeling surprisingly lucid for a whole nanosecond. “And ibuprofen, so I can maybe move tomorrow. Christ. 'S'been a long time since I was driven to drink.” He glared at Jeff, because he wanted the man to know damned sure who was responsible.
Jeff's mouth quirked up. “Yeah, yeah, Sparky. I get it. It's all my fault, right?”
“Damned straight,” Collin agreed. Then he whimpered. “I hate this jacket, you know that? It looks good, but it's not comfortable. Should probably rip it up to work on the engines, you think?”
Jeff made a sound of disbelief. “Are you kidding me? This? This is
suede.
Double-breasted, cropped, ohmigod, Sparky—lookit you!” Jeff continued to make little tsking sounds as he unbuttoned the jacket and helped Collin out of it. He had to lower his head and slide his palms against Collin's stomach to do that, and Collin smiled a little, running his hands through that wild, wild, oh-so-soft hair. Jeff jerked up, the lapels of the jacket in his hands, and Collin's smile grew wide and lazy, because they were close again. He got to see Jeff's eyes widen and his mouth part softly, and Collin extended his tongue a little and licked his lips.
“You've been drinking,” Jeff said, because maybe it wasn't obvious enough. He carefully slid Collin's jacket off his shoulders, and Collin, feeling like a tipsy cat, made sure to press his body up to the feeling of Jeff's hands on his shoulders.
“I've been
dancing
,” Collin corrected him. “Did you ever go dancing?”
Jeff's eyes closed for a second, and an expression… oh God. Collin didn't know if he'd ever seen that kind of pain. “I was fabulous,” was what Jeff said. His voice was crisp and arrogant and held just the right amount of trill to convince Collin that he absolutely didn't need to go again.
Collin was too drunk to buy it. “Aw, shit,” he muttered. “One more thing, isn't it? How am I supposed to compete? It's not the age thing, or the mechanic thing, or the temper thing, is it? It's the dead boyfriend thing! How do I match that? I can't dance as well as he could or kiss or talk…. I'm just never going to get a chance to prove that I'm not second rate, am I?” Collin sighed mournfully and undid the snap of his damned tight jeans. “I should have taken that kid up on that blow job, shouldn't I?
“No,” Jeff muttered, and then he was crouched in front of Collin and working the zipper to the jeans, and Collin was looking at him mutely.
“Are you offering?”
Jeff's narrowed eyes were practically a shouted “Oh
fuck
no!” but Collin couldn't figure out why he was down there.
“I've worn jeans that tight, Sparky. If you try to sleep in them, you're going to wake up with blue balls and the worst crotch rot of all time. Now lift up, and you can sleep in your underwear.”
“'S'what
you
think,” Collin told him perversely. “I'm not wearing any!”
Jeff backed up so quickly he fell over on his ass and made a clatter bonking his back on the coffee table. Collin started giggling and enjoyed it so much not even a deep voice—but still a young and puzzled one— cut through the nice foggy haze Collin had swirling in his brain.
“Jeff, man, what the hell is all that noise?”
Jeff's irritated scowl was actually starting to charm Collin—which was a good thing, since it didn't look like Collin would be seeing less of it.
“A friend of mine drank a little too much,” Jeff muttered. “You remember Collin?”
“The boyfriend?” Martin asked dubiously, and Collin muttered, “Oh I
wish
,” with a decided roll to his eyes.
“A friend,” Jeff said firmly. “Martin, go back to bed. I'm going to get him some sleep pants, and he's going to crash on the couch for the night.”
“Good,” Martin mumbled, his voice receding. “Maybe that furry thing will sleep on
his
head tonight.”
“Katy, you slut!” Jeff murmured, but he sounded indulgent—and tired. “Here, baby, let me go get you some PJs and you can sleep it off, okay?” He clambered up from his awkward position on the floor and stood, stretching. He went to tousle Collin's hair on his way out of the room, but Collin caught his hand.
“Don't,” he said roughly, and maybe it was the dark, but Jeff pushed gently against Collin's hand and Collin felt a touch, down his cheekbone, down his jaw, then cupping his cheek. Collin captured him there, not wanting to let him go the way he had at Deacon's.
“I'm sorry I was a coward,” Jeff said softly. “I didn't know how hard it would be on you. That's my fault.”
“You're an awful lot of trouble, do you know that?” Collin asked, stroking the back of Jeff's hand. Jeff had been turning away, and the position was awkward, so Collin was relieved when Jeff conceded a little and turned back around and knelt again, so they were eye level.
“I keep telling you that, Sparky,” he said, his voice low in the darkness. “I'm too much trouble, and you're too young, and too good a kid, to get caught up in all my bullshit.”
“Your bullshit isn't the problem, Jeff,” Collin muttered. “It's that you think the only way to do it is alone.”
Jeff pulled his hand away, and Collin let him go. “I'll be back in a sec.”
“Can we talk tomorrow?” he asked wistfully.
“I work tomorrow, Sparky—and so do you!”
It was true. Saturdays were busy days for a mechanic—people brought their cars in on weekends because that was when they had time. The shop was usually closed Sundays and Mondays. Collin hadn't thought about it, but he guessed Jeff was sort of in the medical profession, and those people didn't get a lot of regular time off either.
“Sunday, then?” he persisted, but Jeff was already down the hall and probably out of earshot, because there was no response.
Collin sighed, still very, very drunk. Not too drunk to have sex, he thought mournfully. No, that would have been convenient, but alas, not the case. His body was buzzing from Jeff's touch, and, yes, if he didn't take these damned pants off, he was going to be in some serious pain.