Shiny! (13 page)

Kenny’s mouth went dry, and he fumbled for a drink of milk, knocking his glass over and sloshing milk all over his plate, and he still didn’t really notice until his lap grew chill and clammy.

“Uhm, is that
you
? Because, uhm, Will, most men aren’t built that way.”

Will looked up from a contemplation of his fingers, because apparently his approximate cock size was not close enough to real-life for him, and frowned. “Kenny—man, you’re getting milk on your nice clothes. Here, forget about my stupid question. You go change and I’ll clean up and serve you again, okay?”

“Oh—oh
shit
! Okay.” He stood up and sopped some of the milk with the napkin and then dropped it in his plate and fled.

He spent the next five minutes going from old jeans to second-date outfit to yoga pants and a T-shirt and then back again, asking himself what in the hell he thought he was doing. Of course, every time he thought he had a handle on the fact that he was having dinner with a
friend
,
he’d remember that suggestive hand and his milk glass and start looking for his
really
good dating clothes, because…
dayum
.

“Don’t dress for me!” Will hollered down the hall as though he knew
exactly
what Kenny was doing. “I promise not to scare you with any more penile questions!”

Kenny buried his face in one of his big, fluffy hypoallergenic pillows in a three-hundred-thread-count blue-and-gold pillowcase, and screamed. Oh God.
This
was his life? He should just go out there, make his apologies to Will, and explain that he couldn’t hang out anymore because he needed to get back into the dating scene
right the fuck now
.

But… but he
couldn’t
.
He was having so much fun!
They
were having so much fun! He hated to admit it, because it sounded so lame, so syrupy, but he was having a better time with Will
sans
sex than he’d had with Gif
with
the sex. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d put himself out to cook for Gif; Gif would prefer to go out and dance. But Will—he really liked that table setting and the fresh sauce. He’d stopped and gotten the good bread and the real butter and garlic. Gif would have brought home the sliced stuff, probably not even sourdough, and margarine. And Will didn’t
expect
Kenny to do anything for him—but he was damned grateful for what Kenny did.
God
,
it was the best relationship Kenny had ever had—now if only Kenny could stop fantasizing about what William Lafferty looked like naked!

He finally picked yoga pants and an old T-shirt and went down the hall feeling irritated, embarrassed, and
hungry
.
By the time he got back, Will had washed off his plate, run the garbage disposal, and replated his meal. To Kenny’s surprise, he’d opened a bottle of wine Kenny had out on the counter and poured Kenny a glass of that as well.

Kenny sat down (there was a spare dishtowel on his seat to sop up any extra milk) and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry—I’m not usually so clumsy.”

Will shrugged, also a little sheepish. “I was being inappropriate at the dinner table,” he said gravely. “Didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“No, no,” Kenny said, actually talking through his food because he didn’t want anything to happen to it before he ate it. “My bad. I just hope you don’t think all men are, you know, made like, uhm,
you
are, apparently.” Good—only one “uhm”—he was improving. And he’d managed to take a few good bites of dinner too!

Will laughed a little and shook his head. “Yeah, well, it’s not a gift if it doesn’t get used,” he said wisely. And then he pinked like he’d remembered that he
had
used the gift. Kenny was glad. Maybe all he’d done was give the guy stroke material, but he seemed happy about it, and that was sort of wonderful.

Kenny turned the topic to other things, and after they washed up, they sat down at Kenny’s wooden coffee table. Will got out his laptop and spent time on the story, making comments to Kenny when he changed or added or wrote more in the arc. Kenny did the preliminary sketches for the next few pages in the comic, and Will filled in the dialog for him. The two of them worked so fluidly, Kenny had difficulty believing he’d never worked with the guy before.

They looked up after two hours of solid work and laughed, then stood and stretched. Princess made one of her rare appearances, coming out from between the couch and the end table so she could rub against Will’s calf.

Will reached down to scratch her under the chin, and Kenny turned toward the kitchen. “You stay there and keep her happy—I’ll be right back with dessert.”

“Dessert?” Will said happily. “What are we having?

And again, Kenny was swamped with a wave of gratitude. Gif had whined about dessert and the weight he put on and how long he had to work out to get it off. Will knew he was big—he worked out—but by God, he ate
pie
.
For all his self-deprecating geekdom, Will Lafferty knew how to
live
.

“Cherry pie,” Kenny said primly. He could be the only one who knew that there was a dirty joke in there somewhere, but that was fine too.

“Ice cream?” Will asked hopefully, and then he grunted, which told Kenny without turning around that he’d hefted Princess into his arms, long white hairs or no.

“Vanilla,” Kenny gloated. Oh, yes. It was nice to cook for a man who liked to eat, and Kenny’s man liked to eat!

And then he realized what he’d just said in his head, and wished he had a time-out so he could kick his own ass. He busied himself with pie and cream (heh) some more, and Will called to him from the living room.

“Hey, Kenny!”

“What?”

“What are we going to do with this when it’s done?”

And that reminded him, he had something he wanted to talk about!

“Actually, did you want to start posting it on the web?”

“Uhm, money?” Will said, and Kenny returned with two dishes of pie and ice cream. God, the cherry pie had turned out perfectly—actual cherries, not canned, and every bite was tart and sweet and basically an orgasm on a fork. Kenny was ready to come!

“Well, have you seen Kickstarter? Or any of the other websites that ask for money?” Kenny carried the pie into the living room and set it down on the coffee table, then gestured Will to put the cat down and enjoy.

Will grunted when Princess dropped on his foot, and then complied. “Does that ever work? I mean—”

“Well, yeah.” He took his own bite and closed his eyes. Mm-
mm
! “But we don’t even have to do that. Look, we’ve got two chapters done here. I’ve got a server and some space already—we use that, you design the website, and we post the first chapter. We do some promotions, we post a few pages regularly every week, and if we get enough interest, we start selling merchandise and ad space. When we get done with the first volume, we find a printer and sell the book—”

“So Internet self-publishing?” Will asked, sounding impressed. Kenny wanted to pat his cheek. All of this creative impetus, no marketing savvy whatsoever. Well, it was nice to bring something to the table.

“Exactly. And, you know—we won’t make Sac Horror in September, but if we get enough interest, we can design enough merchandise to sell at SacAnime in January.”

Will looked embarrassed. “I… okay, those web clients were helpful, and I
may
be able to pay my rent, but… but I can’t front you any money for that, Kenny. God… I mean, it sounds
great
,
but I hate going into business with you when I don’t have anything to offer—”

“Besides the story idea?” Kenny asked, at a loss. “Come
on
,
Will! I can write most of this stuff off on my taxes! I
know
people who’ve done this before. Hell, I know people who quit their day jobs to do this before!” Bless James and Rebecca of Lunasea Studios—their Little Vampires should be on every lunchbox in the country. “Not that I want to quit my day job, but… you know. We’ve spent our whole lives looking at this stuff from the outside and going ‘Oo!’ Wouldn’t it be great if we could take an idea to the inside and see it from there?”

Will grinned, looking uncertain. “Well… I mean, I do. I’d
love
to do this and see it to the end and see something happen. But….”

“You’ve got the whole arc written, baby,” Kenny said with a reassuring smile. “I mean….” Oh God, the thing he was most afraid of. “You know, unless you think you might find a girlfriend and want to drop me as a friend—”

“
No
!” Will said with gratifying swiftness. “No. For starters—girlfriend? I know you spilled your milk, but if nothing else, wipe the girlfriend idea off the board. Not gonna happen. And….” He looked away and wiggled like a schoolkid, then took a bite of pie and ice cream like he was covering his discomfort. “I
like
hanging out with you,” he said, peeping shyly at Kenny from the corners of his eyes. “You’re… you’re like the friend I always wanted and never thought I could have!”

Kenny grinned, so pleased he could only celebrate it with another bite of pie. Okay, who needed a boyfriend? For the first time in his life, Kenny was enjoying the journey with another human being with no carrot attached at the end. That didn’t mean he couldn’t date someone else, right? He could have everything—this person he could share his day and his passion with, and a warm body in his bed. Hell, he’d had offers ever since Gif had bailed.

Of course, none of them were
Will
,
but….

“You’re my best friend too,” Kenny said seriously. “Okay—I know someone at work who does contracts. He can draw up some no-muss contracts for us with each other, and I’ll get you the domain name, okay? You can start designing the website, and we’ll keep working together a couple of nights a week, but only now, we’ll have an endgame in mind. You think?”

Will nodded and took another bite of pie. He spent a few minutes rolling a cherry around in his mouth before crunching down on it, and Kenny spent those few minutes watching him in agony.
And I can spend at least one night a week looking to go out and get laid
, he told himself.
Because I’m going to have to pound spikes for most of the night to get rid of this wood.

Will finished torturing Kenny with unconscious food porn and nodded. “Okay. Excellent, in fact.” He smiled gently, and Kenny almost moaned. Gentleness. God, since
when
had he looked for gentleness in a lover? “I’m glad you thought of the contract thing. Those make stuff really cut-and-dried—I don’t want to ever lose you because of hurt feelings and the business.”

Kenny took a bite of ice cream and thought mournfully that he might not be able to finish his piece. “Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Hurt feelings would be a shitty reason to lose a friend.”

C
ARA
SNORTED
inelegantly. “Well, weren’t you two dumber than a bag of diapers?”

Kenny looked at Will and rolled his eyes. “Most oblique come-on
ever.
”

Will blushed and grimaced at all of them. God, they didn’t have to act like it was
all
his fault that he hadn’t read Kenny’s signals right!

“Hey—in my defense, I’d never had to come on to a guy before!” he protested. “The girls just sort of—”

“Followed you home,” Kenny supplied, his voice more arid than the outer reaches of space. “I know.”

Will stuck out his tongue. “Well, yeah—I was sort of thick. But hey, I was
not
the idiot who—”

“Oh no,” Kenny said, all playfulness dropping from his shoulders. The look he sent Will was now profoundly apologetic. “This part—God, Will! It’s so
embarrassing
!” he complained, and Will took a
little
bit of pity on him and leaned over to kiss his cheek.

“Only a little,” he said soothingly. “And you have to admit, it makes me look like sort of a hero.”

Kenny’s smile held no cynicism at all. “You
are
my hero,” he said sincerely.

Will preened. “Well, you know. That’s how we’ll tell the story.”

“Wait,” Nina said like she’d just done some math. “Was that the graphic novel
we
bought when Anne took us to the convention?”

Cara did a double take. “
That’s
what you’re worried about now?”

“Here.” Kenny reached into his pocket before Will could even think about it. “I’ll bet you Will forgot to give you one of these, didn’t he?”

The two women glared at Will reprovingly.

“They’re family!” he protested, blushing, and Cara shook her head while she took the business card with the little oversexed fuzzy alien on it.

“We’re
fans
,
honey. Give us the skinny!”

“Check the website for dates and times—we’re scheduled to do three more conventions in the next two months.” Kenny looked at Will and waved his hand. “Well, go on, hero! I want to hear you tell it like you were meant to shine!”

Aw, geez. Who could resist with an invitation like that?

Dick of Steel

W
ILL
’
S
MOTHER
had these impeccable Old World According to June Cleaver manners—it drove him bugshit.

“Mom, I can pour—”

“No, hon, you just sit there and relax—I’ll get the iced tea.”

“But you didn’t let me clean up after—”

“But I like doing dishes!”

“
But you worked all day
!”

His mother just smiled at him beatifically as he balanced on the wobbly bench at the picnic table she kept in her tiny backyard. “Oh, honey—don’t worry about it.”

He gritted his teeth. It was a holdover, he knew, from the days before she owned her own business, when his dad was alive. In those days she’d gone and worked full days for an insurance company and then come home and taken him to whatever sorry excuse for an extracurricular activity he’d been trying that year, and
then
come home and made dinner while his father pouted in the living room with the news. Will had been their only child, and they’d gotten married right out of college, and the whole sexual revolution seemed to have passed his parents right by.