Christmas with Danny Fit (2 page)

The girl with the dark hair and fan
tast
ic tits looked like she and Danny had been making out in the closet right before the strength-training video was shot. It was offensive. It made him not want to pull on the big green rubber band and stretch all sorts of painful things in his chest that really shouldn’t be stretched.

Both those women should
know
that Danny was his!

So he skipped strength training and ran around in circles attached to a rubber band attached to his wall. It hurt like hell and made him blow like a busted car exhaust, but at least he didn’t have to look at that bitch with the dark hair and know she’d had his man.

At the end of the yoga session (which he welcomed, breathing hard), he fell asleep on his yoga mat in full workout kit. It had been a helluva day.

Amy Lane

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THE next day, he could hardly pick himself up off the floor and get to the shower. And the floor was drafty—he’d managed to pull his coverlet off his bed and onto his body while he’d been sleeping, but he still had a stuffed nose and a clogged head at work that morning, and lunch with Jesse was just awkward.

“You got a cold how?”

“I dob wab bu talk aboub ib,” he answered miserably.

Jesse sighed and said, “Okay, boss. Tell you what. You stay here at your desk, and I’ll be back in half an hour with lunch.”

“I’b nob thab hunwy,” Kit replied. He should have gotten some cold medicine on the way to work. There was some in his mother’s medicine cabinet, but somehow taking it just seemed to violate all the rules of self-emancipation.

Jesse patted him on the head, and Kit knew that his careful water-comb was probably a bit of a mess, but he didn’t care. He found himself looking limpidly up at his assistant as though this pretty, dynamic person held the keys to the universe.

“Don’t worry, baby. I’ll get you something that’ll work.”

Kit nodded helplessly and put his head on his desk. He had his own office, but it was small, and certainly not big enough for a couch or a comfortable chair. His whole body ached anyway—what was a cramp in his neck from spending his lunch hour asleep?

Jesse was back in half an hour, and he felt a little bit better after the nap. Unlike Friday, which had been hard and bright with sunshine, this November day was sad with fog. Jesse came in with his honey-colored hair lank from the fog and his sloe eyes bright from the cold.

So. Not. Fair.

Amy Lane

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In fact, it made Kit want to crawl under his desk for the rest of the day.

But Jesse pulled out some sort of magical soup that was spicy enough for the smell to penetrate Kit’s sinuses, and then he pulled out a cup of hot water and tea and some Theraflu, and in ten minutes or so, Kit felt almost human.

And his worship of Jesse had in no way diminished.

“God!” he said from a suddenly clear nose. “That was wonderful. What was it?”

Jesse preened. “Thai soup from La Bou. Pretty up there in calories, but nothing beats it when you’re sick.”

Kit looked stricken. “Calories. Oh shit. Calories. I should be counting them, shouldn’t I? I started the workout, but I forgot the diet.” Suddenly his time with Danny Fit seemed tainted, somehow, with this omission, as though he’d cheated on Danny with the big mayonnaise-covered hamburger he’d eaten after he shopped for furniture the day before.

Jesse looked at him, repressed curiosity radiating from every line of his fit body. “You started working out? When?”

Kit felt like a deer in the headlights. If he told Jesse about the workouts, he might have to tell him about moving out, and maybe about being gay, and all of it was just so embarrassing. He wanted Jesse to look at the new him—or at least the new him projected sometime after New Year’s, the one with his own house and the smaller waistline and the cat.

But then, if he didn’t tell Jesse, who would he tell? The lady at the counter of Barnes & Noble? It was true, they’d developed a rapport as he’d bought his sci-fi novels, but they weren’t on a first-name basis. He could tell one of the other senior accountants, Amy Lane

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but those men all had families, and he wasn’t sure they’d go for the new, gay Kit. (He wasn’t sure if they liked the old, gender-neutral Kit either, but, well, that one was at least safer.) Maybe he’d tell part of it. He’d keep Danny a secret. And Ma.

Or at least the parts of her he hadn’t wanted friends to visit in high school (which sort of explained why he had no friends either).

“Friday,” Kit said, aware that he’d sat there like a frog in the road while Jesse waited for an answer.

Jesse’s lips quirked up, and he didn’t look hurt at all. “I thought you had a dinner date Friday.”

Kit flushed. At first he thought it was some sort of by-product of the cold and cold medicine, but as his eyes got round, and his mouth made a little O, he realized it was sheer fucking embarrassment.

“I’m not graceful,” he muttered helplessly into Jesse’s amused silence. “I didn’t want to embarrass you.” Oh, and
that
wasn’t too much information?

Jesse’s amusement went away. “It was just a pickup game, boss—no worries.”

Kit shrugged and tried to smile it off. He dealt with the takeout trash in a distracted way and attempted to say something that would make it no big deal. “If the working out starts doing its job, maybe next time I’ll take you up on it.”

The grin on Jesse’s face was blinding. It made dimples pop out. It made the sun shine through the fog. It made Kit’s cock jump up and down like a horny Scottie dog yipping to be petted.

Kit managed to keep all that inside, though, and simply sit through the grin like a mere mortal sat through the searing blast of heavenly grace.

Amy Lane

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Jesse shrugged. “It’s getting cold—probably our last game for a while. You’ve got time.”

Kit managed a hopeful smile, and as he sat up straighter, that pinched nerve in his neck twinged and he grimaced.

“Ohmigod!” Jesse said it all as one word, like a college student, and Kit wondered how much younger the other man was.

“What did you do to yourself?”

Fuck. “I fell asleep on the workout mat?”

The sound Jesse made then wasn’t a laugh, really, or a snort, and if Kit had to classify it, he’d say it was a nonverbal exclamation point, with a question mark thrown in.

“For the love of…. Holy shit, boss—how long did you sleep there?”

Kit’s neck was tied up in a little question mark, too, so he had an excuse for screwing his eyes shut when he answered. “All night. It’s how I came down with the cold.”

Jesse stood up and moved behind him, and then there was a heavenly warmth, and a pressure on his neck and on his shoulders. It stroked and kneaded insistently, and Kit sat up a little straighter and made an embarrassing purring sound in his throat.

“Feel good?” Jesse asked, massaging a little harder right…

right… right….

“Nnnnhaaaahhaaa,” Kit managed. Oh God. His cock ached—

but let it. Jesse was
touching him.
Suddenly Kit understood that college word.
Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod….

Jesse chuckled a little and kept squeezing the muscles in his neck. He bent down then, and his breath tickled Kit’s ear as he Amy Lane

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spoke. “You should come work out at my gym,” he said softly. “I swear, we’d never let you fall asleep on the yoga mat.”

“Nnngg?” Oh good. A college degree and obviously some advanced communication skills.

“Promise?” Jesse said softly, and in spite of the warmth and the arousal and the
ohmigod human touch
, there was, as always, Kit’s whole problem with Kit Allen.

“I don’t know if this body is ready for prime time,” he muttered, and Jesse chuffed softly in his ear.

“You let me know.” But he didn’t move. His hands kept moving, but the rest of Jesse stayed still, inappropriately, wonderfully close.

“Besides, I’m gonna be busy,” Kit choked out, unable to stop himself. “I’m moving at the end of next week.”

“Moving?” Jesse stayed close, and Kit managed to nod. Those wonderful hands—and the cold medicine, and the craptastical night’s sleep—were beginning to take their toll all over again. Kit felt another nap coming on.

“Out of my mother’s house and into my own.” Kit was so tired. His head dropped, and he put his arms up on the desk, disregarding the crumbs from lunch, and rested it there. He couldn’t remember feeling so… so… so
safe
in his entire life.

“Wow,” Jesse breathed. “When did you decide to do that?”

“I should wake up,” he mumbled. Kit was almost asleep, and lunch hour was over, and that was easier to say than
When I saw
you play basketball and wanted to touch you
.

“I’ll watch the door for you while you nap some more. A little more sleep and you’ll be all better.” The words were real. Kit was Amy Lane

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pretty sure the words were real—but he must have imagined the kiss in his hair.

Amy Lane

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Age and Inexperience

THEY didn’t talk about the backrub.

Kit was unsure how to bring it up.

Hey, I know I’m an overweight loser who still lives with his
mother, but, uhm, you touched me, and I’m probably making a big
deal out of this because I haven’t been touched since I was, like, in
day care, but I’m thinking that it was a special, very awesome sort
of touch, but you’re beautiful, and you bring me soup, and you love
the one thing that’s kept me sane as a thirty-year-old virgin, and I
can’t help wondering if maybe you’re not straight and maybe, just
maybe, you like me a little.

And please don’t sue me for sexual harassment.

That last line was the kicker right there.

Kit was pretty sure that if Jesse was actually Jessie-short-for-Jessica, he might be able to bumble his way through a
your job
does not depend on this, I swear
come-on. It would suck, and Jessie-short-for-Jessica would probably quit out of sheer embarrassment, but he could do it.

But coming on to a male assistant, one he’d done all but bare his heart to? Uhm, no.

He slept for an hour that day, and when he woke up, he rubbed his face, reflected that, hot damn! Did he feel better!, brushed the crumbs off his desk, and went back to work. Jesse Amy Lane

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left before he did (per usual) with not much more than a wave and a “Hope you feel better, boss!” and Kit didn’t have much of a chance to do more than wave back and say “Thank you!” before he disappeared down the sterile beige hallway.

The next day, it had been business as usual—he’d tried to insist that he pay for both their lunches, since Jesse had sprung the day before, but Jesse had simply shaken his head and smiled.

“No—and we’re not eating out. Here. I brought us something.”

He’d proceeded to produce two chicken sandwiches—the kind made with chicken breasts and tomatoes and lettuce and pickles, on plain old wheat bread—and Kit had almost wept.

“These are really good!”

“Yeah—and they’re pretty low-cal. The chicken’s easy to cook….” And he’d proceeded to write the recipe down for Kit.

Kit said, “Oh crap! I have to buy pots and pans and shit!”

Jesse smiled a little. “That didn’t occur to you until just now?”

Kit’s blush covered his entire body. He was going to have to explain this now, or at least part of it. “I’m having all my furniture delivered new. All I have to move is my clothes and some other stuff. It’ll probably fit in my car. I hadn’t thought about cooking stuff—I guess I should have.”

“Okay—man, I haven’t wanted to pry, but that’s just…

uhm….”

The blush got worse. Jesse was furrowing his perfect brow at him, and Kit could only stammer through the rest.

“She’s not a nice person, but… my dad walked out on us, and she didn’t have anybody. I just”—
edit edit edit
—“reached a point Amy Lane

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where I needed my own life.” He shrugged. “I’ve got plenty in savings—I just….”
Don’t know how normal people live. Never had
enough imagination to think about a real life on my own. Was
asleep, like a giant squishy possum until you looked at me with a
basketball under your arm, and I woke up thinking I had to be a
better man.

“I just needed to get my grown-up on, I guess.”

Jesse smiled, and it was brilliant. “My home life sucked too.

You stuck around, you know, to make it better. That’s nice. I bailed. I’ve been living in shitty apartments since I graduated from high school. That’s why the assistant job—tech school got me out quicker, and I wanted to, you know, have a
life
and not just be in school.”

Kit blanched. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three,” Jesse said through a full mouth, and Kit couldn’t decide whether to blow out a sigh of relief or not. “I worked for another firm for a couple of years but….” He shrugged as he let the sentence trail off. “They moved you from person to person, you know? Sort of assistant-by-slut, right? And I had enough moving as a kid. I just wanted to find a good boss, someone I could work for and have fun with and….”

Inexplicably, Jesse blushed.

Kit blinked, transfixed, but Jesse was looking down at the desk and couldn’t see how that one moment of embarrassment started a terrible hot/cold chain reaction of hope in Kit’s chest, like a BENGAY (or Jesse-might-be-gay) poultice around his heart.

“I just wanted to make a connection, you know?” Jesse said at last, looking up, and Kit nodded, in that moment completely understanding. Their eyes met and caught, and Kit had some Amy Lane

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more trouble breathing. Christ—this was a kid, and Kit didn’t even know if he was gay.

When he heard his own voice, he thought someone might have taken over his body.