Shiny! (4 page)

“Look, I’ve got to go, okay? I just hit some guy’s trash can and I need to pick shit up.”

“You said ‘shit’!” Denise shrilled, and Will hung up.

No shit he said shit—it was all over the road!

Or, well, something was all over the road.

Will pulled over and parked his car in front of the bright little house right across the street from the school. He’d noticed this house before—
liked
this house, because it seemed well cared for in the middle of this very working-class, run-down neighborhood. He hopped out of the car and regarded the somethings all over the road, dealing with the thing he recognized first. Something that looked like a big flowered curtain, which he gathered in his arms and shoved in the can first. Then he turned to the other somethings.

Wait. What were those?

A plastic bag skittered over his foot in the hot wind that blew across the brown playground of the school, and he bent down to start shoving stuff in it.

Without thinking about it, he closed his hand around a reflective gold-plated phallus with a black plastic dial at the bottom.

“Shiny….”

He stared at it, mesmerized, wondering exactly what it did. Of course he
knew
what it did—he’d been with women before—but this thing… well, there was a flexible ring around it that didn’t look like it belonged there. It was sort of stretchy and had another attached loop sort of flopping off the bottom, and for a moment, Will just stood in the middle of the road, holding the big gold-plated phallus and staring at the stretchy thing attached.

“Uhm….”

Will yanked his attention from the glittery thing.

“You, uhm, may not want to touch that.”

Will looked up and saw a young man with a face that featured a thin nose, sharp cheekbones, and a pointed chin—and a pair of pretty blue eyes surrounded by black lashes.

They stared at each other, and then Will realized that the young man’s paisley boxer shorts were also a pretty blue and green. And that he was standing in the middle of the road surrounded by—well—

“What is this?”

“It’s a gold-plated vibrator and a cock ring I wrapped around it because I use them both together.”

Will blinked. “But you’re not married! We
never
see a woman over here.” Because Will had just remembered that he’d seen this young man with his pleasing, pointed face leaving in the morning as he had been arriving. There’d been another man with blond hair that Will hadn’t really noticed, but this one… well, even when he wasn’t in his boxer shorts, he was something to pay attention to.

The young man’s eyes grew round and his eyebrows arched. “No, precious, there
isn’t
a woman around here. There used to be a
man
around here, but we broke up.”

Will squinted at him in confusion and then looked at the thing in his hands. “But then, what’s
this
for?”

The young man just looked at him, blue eyes wide. He didn’t even blink. “I’d give you three guesses, precious, but you only have one.”

Will’s eyes narrowed and his jaw dropped and he looked at the other detritus scattered at his feet. His shoulders jerked and he thought about dropping the thing in his hand, but it was so round… so
cylindrical
,
so hard, and he found he was stroking it as he tried to assimilate the scenario.

“But… but… that’s
personal
!” he said, and even
Will
couldn’t have said what he was referring to—the toys or their intended orifices and staffs. “Why would you throw them away?”

The young man shook his head and the spell was broken. With a sigh, he bent down and looked around, wandering in a circle in his bare feet on the badly paved road. He came up with a box of what looked to be sanitary wipes. He reached in and grabbed a few and then very gently shoved them in the hand not holding the big metal thing (
dildo
? Was
that
what this was?).

“Because, precious, I just caught my boyfriend cheating on me, and I don’t know where that thing’s been.”

Will dropped the dildo like it was made of napalm, and the man thrust another handful of sanitary wipes into his hand before he could start dancing like a fool screaming, “Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!”

He wiped his hand silently instead and then took a cue from the other guy and grabbed a plastic bag. Gingerly, he started using it like a glove to pick up the other toys off the road and throw them away again, on top of the curtains.

“Thanks,” the other man said dispiritedly. “You didn’t have to do this.”

Will forgot what he was picking up for a minute (but they were turquoise and there were three of them and they came in graduated sizes) and looked at his car parked on the side of the road. “I was the dumbshit who knocked over your trash can. It’s the least I could do. It was the—”

“Perfect end to the perfect day,” they both said synchronously, and then stopped and looked at each other, and then looked at the last of what even Will had to admit was a vast array of unusable sex toys.

“Look,” he said, “uhm—”

“Kenny,” the young man supplied.

“Kenny? It’s Friday, I just lost my job, you just lost your boyfriend and your—” He struggled for a word. “—accoutrements.”

Kenny grinned tiredly and nodded for him to continue.

“How about we get this squared away, you go put some pants on, and I’ll take you out for a beer?”

Kenny gaped for a minute and then stood up straight and waved his hands. Will had a moment to realize that the shorter man’s body was small and wiry, and his stomach was defined, and his lightly hairy chest was rippled too, and he’d never noticed those things about a man before, but that wasn’t his focus right now.

“But… but…,” Kenny sputtered, “I’m
gay
!”

Will laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, but at least you’re not a witch,” he said and reached down to gather the rest of the weirdness from the road.

Kenny let him into the house to wash his hands (thank
God—
he didn’t want to face what else might have been on that big glittery thing he’d picked up from the trash), and while Kenny went to put on some clothes, Will stood in the kitchen area and looked around. Like the blue stucco exterior, the interior was pleasant, colorful, and unassuming. A white tiled floor needed a light mopping, and the battered standard-issue maple table still had three days’ mail and a place mat with crumbs from breakfast.

But it also held a vase with some flowers that were still fresh, and the tweed-covered furniture in the living room looked used but clean. The wide-screen was set back in an entertainment center that had a colorful throw on top, with some abstract sculptures set up on it. A large framed print of José González’s
In Our Nature
album cover sat on the wall over the fireplace next to Loreena McKennitt’s
Book of Secrets
and Mumford & Sons’
Sigh No More.

It was a nice, clean space, Will decided, not too cluttered, not too spare. The carpet was a surprisingly bold blue, and there was a bookshelf opposite the television. Will wandered over and looked at some titles, surprised that he had some of the same ones. Actually, he had a lot of them in the trunk of his car.

Harry Potter and Harry Dresden were well represented, as were Simon R. Green,
Isaac Asimov, and Robert Heinlein.

“Wow,” he murmured, pulling out
Stranger in a Strange Land
,
the special edition.

“I haven’t read it yet,” Kenny said, wandering in from the bedroom. In his arms he had a stack of sheets that looked like they’d just been pulled from the linen closet. “I was waiting to treat myself after work slowed down.”

“Want help with that?” Will asked sunnily. He hated doing housework.

Kenny cast a disbelieving look at him and shook his head. “That’s okay, precious—I’ll do this one on my own.”

Will wrinkled his nose, trying to figure out what sexual innuendo he’d missed
now
,
when he heard the rapid spritz of the Febreze bottle. About ten seconds later, a cloud of chemical freshness roiled down the hallway, and Will grimaced.

Okay, time line.
Today.
He’d caught his boyfriend cheating, ditched the boyfriend, ditched the sex toys, washed the sheets.

And then some bozo knocked over his trash can.

Will was all caught up now. Okay, good.

Kenny came back out and grabbed his phone, wallet, and car keys from the charging station on the bookshelf, and Will put the book back.

“You can borrow it if you want,” Kenny offered to Will’s surprise. “I mean, I see your car every day. You work across the street, right?”

Will grimaced. “Not. Anymore.”

Kenny blinked. “Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“Hence, beer.”

Will smiled. “You ready for that?”

“You go out drinking much?

Will didn’t even have to think about it. “Never,” he said promptly. “Not even in college. I lived at home—who wants to go home to your mother shitfaced and puke on her shoes?”

Kenny’s laugh was semihysterical. He covered his mouth with his hand and tried to push it back. “Really? Lived with your mother?”

Will shrugged, not particularly ashamed. “Hey, my mom’s amazing. After my dad died, she started her own business doing publicity for
other
small businesses. And seriously, it wasn’t like I was going to just…
lunge
off the leash, you know? Not in my nature.”

Kenny seemed to remember something. His face softened for a moment, and when he looked back at Will, one corner of his mouth curled up. But other than that, he seemed thoughtful. “Nothing wrong with knowing yourself,” he said as though he was thinking about it. “Do you
still
live with your mother?”

Will shook his head and thrust his hands in his pockets self-consciously. “I’m sort of a night owl when I don’t have work in the morning. Mom’s an early bird. We used to have the most fearsome fights when I’d stay up until five and she’d get up at four.” He sighed. “And unless I can find another job, we may have those fights again real soon!”

Kenny grimaced in sympathy. “And hence, beer,” he said again, and Will smiled again, because at least Kenny knew how to banter.

“Absolutely. Your car or mine?”

“Here, let me make sure Princess has enough food and water, and we’ll take yours. I know myself too—I’m going to drink until I puke. You good with that?”

Will grinned. Why wouldn’t he be? He could spend more time with this energetic man who liked the same geeky music and the same geeky books Will did. The alcohol? That was just an excuse to talk, right?

“F
AMOUS
LAST
words,” Nina said drily. “You notice we’re serving punch and not champagne.”

“That’s probably a good idea.” Will’s nod had nothing in it but earnest intention, but he didn’t miss the way Kenny patted his knee sympathetically. Yeah, turned out beer wasn’t one of Will’s strengths after all.

Straight-up Friends

“B
UT
…
BUT
…
but I don’t understand where it
goes
!”

Kenny laughed at Will outright as he sat at the bar, chin resting in his hands, looking mournfully at the second long draft glass on the table in front of him. Oh, sweet baby boy—Kenny couldn’t believe a drink had been his idea.

Kenny knew a basic watering hole on Greenback, one of those places in strip malls that looked too seedy to stay in business but that had enough cars in front of it to
never
go broke. It wasn’t a gay bar, but it wasn’t a redneck bar either. The interior was dark, windowless, and subdued. People were there to drink someplace not alone, and not to get in anyone’s business. Yeah, there was some picking up, and probably some drugs in the bathrooms, but nobody wanted to make trouble.

Will had known enough to ask for house draft but not enough to stop after one, but Kenny hadn’t minded. He’d nursed his cosmo and engaged in a whole new kinky and unexplored form of intercourse that he and Gifford had never really gone in for.

Talking.

Will Lafferty could really talk.

Not in an obnoxious way either—in an
interested
way.

“So you’re a graphic designer,” he’d started as they sat down—because Kenny had given out that much on the drive over in Will’s vast sailing ship of a grandma car. “That’s awesome. Do you design games? Logos? Do you make cartoons? Because that would be
cool.
Do you ever go to the anime and sci-fi conventions?”

For a moment Kenny considered being overwhelmed, but then he realized that not only did Will speak his language, he apparently lived in Kenny’s home country.

“Yes!” Kenny exclaimed excitedly. “See, that’s why I went to design school. Not, like, you know, a real BA—like a three-year course in graphics. Anyway, they were all about how to get a job in the real world, and all I wanted to do was draw comics and stuff. But I could never think of a storyline, you know? I have these
great
scenarios for like, three frames, but I could never put them together for an arc, you know?”

“Oh my God, I
do
know, and I’m so jealous. I can
write
the arc—not the detail stuff, but I’ve got these, like, ten-page short stories, and I have catalogs of world-building details, but I just… it’s like if someone could, like, film the story in my head or something, I’d have enough for an entire work, but I don’t have any patience for the prose, you know?”

Kenny grinned at him delightedly. “I know! Think we’re too spoiled? I mean, I remember teachers complaining about that for the longest time—that we were spoiled for visual details and the words were the hard thing.”

William took a long draft of his beer and nodded. “Yeah, well, maybe we should just consider it an emerging art form and get over it. People love it, right? It… I don’t know, fills a need. It’s
important.
” Will’s mood changed suddenly then, and he grew morose and a little hurt. “Just because it’s new or fantastical, that doesn’t mean it’s not important.”