Shiny! (19 page)

It was sort of a celebration.

Spaces and Hesitations

T
HE
THIRD
Saturday in July would have been such a lovely day to have a lie-in. The air conditioner was on, which meant it was going to be hot, but not yet. Kenny snuggled next to his back, and Will’s phone was tucked under the pillow with
Shadow Unit 12
,
which he’d been reading in his spare time. (He was also reading erotica in his spare and not-so-spare time, because hey, newly discovered penis here. He was pretty sure he’d be fucking Kenny raw if he didn’t keep trying for that gold medal in wanking.)

But he didn’t
have
to wank, not today, with Kenny here, except his phone kept ringing, and… oh shit.

“Kenny,” Will mumbled.

“More?” Kenny asked hopefully.

Will propped himself up on one elbow. They’d fallen asleep after round three the night before, and Kenny looked… well, debauched, really.

Used.

He had a white streak of Will’s come running down his chin and another clot matting his hair. The, uhm, “accoutrements,” as Will still thought of them, were sitting on the end table, awaiting a thorough washing, probably in the dishwasher, and the towel underneath Will’s hips was still a little sticky.

It had been a
very
good night.

And now it was over.

“Kenny, wake up. That’s your phone too.”

“Aw fuck,” Kenny mumbled, running his hand down his face. He reached blindly for the charger, knocking one of the graduated plugs on the ground and startling Princess, who slept like a furry sandbag at their feet. “God. It’s Mom.”

Which was who happened to be calling Will too.

Will’s conversation took longer.

“Hey, Mom—”

“Were you coming over today?”

“Uh, yeah. Sleeping in—”

“I noticed. Honey, you’d better get a move on. It’s already ninety out there.”

Ugh.

“Okay. Yeah. Lemme shower.” Oh crap—Will had biked to Kenny’s the night before. “Kenny can drop me off.”

There was a weighted silence right then, in which Will heard Kenny say, “Okay, Mom. Talk to you next week. Have a nice trip,” before his mom spoke again.

“So, Kenny. When are you going to bring him by?”

Will grimaced. Ugh. Sex and friendship? They’d been doing that for weeks. They’d work together, watch television, and sometime between dinner and the time the lights went out, they ended up in bed, doing all the stuff Will had been watching on porn only better, because hearing Kenny scream out his name (or, usually, just make sounds like “
Gunghhh
!”) was something that would
never
grow old.

But this whole “what is the relationship” thing. It seemed that by going from friends to lovers, they’d sort of bypassed all of the subcategories of “lover.” Were they lovers? Were they fuck buddies? (
Please, no, please, no, please, no….
) Were they boyfriends? (
Please, yes, please, yes, please, yes, please, yes, please, please, please, please, please….
)

“When he’s not busy,” Will hedged, glaring at Kenny. Kenny wasn’t meeting his eyes, though, and Will suppressed a sigh. “I promise, when it’s time—”

“So when he’s actually committing to you,” his mother said shortly—right when Kenny pulled the covers down and started licking around Will’s naked cock with delicate little laps.

“Later, Mom,” Will breathed, trying very hard to keep his voice normal. “I’ll be there in an hour!” and with that, he hit End Call.

Kenny chuckled evilly and engulfed his hard-on in one gulp, and Will’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and his conversation with his mother was forgotten.

B
UT
HE
remembered it as he was hauling on his clothes after the world’s quickest shower, waiting for Kenny to do the same.

“What kind of work are you supposed to be doing?” he asked, grabbing a clean pair of socks out of Kenny’s drawer while eyeballing the room for his other tennis shoe.

“What?” Kenny still looked a little out of it as he came out of the shower, rubbing fitfully at his hair.

“I told my mom you were working today and that’s why you couldn’t visit. I’m a horrible liar—give me a lie!”

Kenny grunted. “Is it really that important?” he asked, his gaze wandering around the room. “It’s under the bed, Will.”

“Oh. That’s better than the top of the dresser,” Will said philosophically. Which was where it had been the day before. “And yes, it’s important.
I love you.
And I’m a big whiny mama’s boy, and you need to meet my mommy!”

Of all things,
that
seemed to snap Kenny out of his postsexual fugue. (Will had nailed him until he lost the powers of speech—and yes, Will was damned proud of that.)

“You know… I’m not that great at parents—”

“Really?” Will did his best to look stern. “When was the last time you met any?” He knew the answer to this, oh yes he did.

“Six months before never?” And that the lilt at the end of his voice was a sad and obvious attempt to take out the sting.

Shocker! “Okay, you do realize my mom met Denise, don’t you?”

Kenny’s mouth dropped open. “Whatserface? The one who wanted to go wine tasting and didn’t believe you when you said you were gay?”

“That’s the one. And we went out to the movies one Saturday, and I made her meet my mother.”

Something must have been socially backward about that statement, because Kenny was getting a crafty look like Will had won this argument for him.

“
See
!” he crowed. “I
told
you that you gave her reason to—”

“I bring
all
of my friends to meet my mother!” Will growled. “Because until now, she’s been my best friend. And I know that’s stupid and I
know
it’s backwards, but—”

“It’s not,” Kenny protested. Will thought it was probably Kenny’s long habit of defending Will even from himself that made him do that. “In fact, I think it’s sweet!”

“Well, I notice you don’t want me to meet
your
parents,” Will snapped, because the part of Kenny’s conversation that he’d actually
heard
had stung.

“That’s different,” Kenny told him with a little sniff.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t like my parents as much as you like your mother.” He said it with a curled lip and a sort of superiority that made Will roll his eyes.

“News to me. Why not?” Kenny’s dresser sat under the window, and Will had at
least
remembered to put his wallet there. He retrieved it now, warm from the sunshine, and slid it into his back pocket.

Kenny had fished out his own clothes while they’d been talking, and now he slid his technicolor boxers up his moderately hairy legs and adjusted himself in them. Just watching him do that made Will horny again.

“They’re… I mean, they don’t make conversation,” Kenny said as though trying to find words. “I mean, I was sort of a failure, you know? Everyone else in their family either went into the military or did the full-court-press college, and I went to vocational school. I think they’re embarrassed.”

“Have they ever
said
they’re embarrassed?” Because
then
Will would have to get mad at somebody. He could do it too!

“No,” Kenny responded, smiling slightly. “Well, my douchey brother did, but my folks didn’t. I just… you know, folks retired, like to roam the country. No time for offspring who aren’t spawning. Besides, your mom gets your whole comic-book thing—”

Will snorted. “I never said that. I mean, it would be
nice
if she got it, but she doesn’t
really
get it. But she likes
me
,
so she tries. Just like I don’t get what her relationship with my father was like or why she won’t date again, but I like
her
,
so I try. It’s not a perfect relationship, Kenny, but it’s my
mom.
And….” He realized they’d squared off, and he hated the idea of fighting. He stood up behind Kenny and nuzzled his ear. “You’re becoming more important than she is, you know?”

Kenny grunted. “Yeah?” And he sounded interested in that, as though it mattered to him.

“Yeah! So it would be nice if you’d set her mind to rest about her baby boy before you sort of took over as front and center in his life. I mean, isn’t that what marriage ceremonies are all about?”

Kenny jerked in his arms. “We’re not getting married!” he protested.

Will sighed.

“Not when you won’t meet my mother!”

Kenny sighed too. “I can’t today,” he said. “No! Really! Princess has a V-E-T appointment”—he looked around furtively, and Princess twitched her fluffy white tail and drooled on the bed in her sleep—“complete with a meet with the groomers, and if we don’t get some of that fur off before the end of the summer, she’s going to get heatstroke and die.”

Oh—well, that, at least, was legitimate. “She wouldn’t if she’d stop sleeping in the sun,” Will muttered. It was sort of scary, actually. She’d lie in a convenient sunspot with her little pugged mouth open, panting. Kenny brushed her all the time, and every time he did, he’d have enough fur for what looked to be another damned cat. A groomer was a good idea—Will just didn’t know it had been coming. “And you should have told me last night. I would have brought the car. I’ll have to ride to my mom’s as it is.”

Oh hell.

“In this heat?” Kenny protested, turning around in his arms, but Will shrugged.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to steal a crapload of waters,” he admitted.

Kenny pursed his lips. “I’m sorry. I should have told you before you came over—you’re right. I just….” Kenny smiled shyly then, and all of the remembered tension was forgotten. “You know. Just got happy you were coming over.”

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t have to work late last night,” Will said, and he meant it. The night before, Kenny had texted him and told him to stay home because it would be a late night. He didn’t have many, but Will respected that he had to have
some
, or he wouldn’t be able to keep going in his job. He’d confessed to Will that the more productive he was, the better assignments he got—and he didn’t like the stuff on the bottom rung of the ladder.

“It’s worth it,” Kenny told him, smiling softly into his eyes.

Will lowered his mouth for a kiss, and Kenny responded tenderly. When Will pulled back, he said, “I love you,” and Kenny pecked him on the cheek.

“Mmto,” he mumbled.

Will grunted unhappily. “I’m about to ride my frickin’ bike in the soul-melting heat and that’s what you got for me?”

Kenny looked down between them like he could study Will’s thick middle for some sort of answer. “I love you,” he said, like a schoolkid with his toe in the dirt, apologizing to the girl he’d just shoved in the mud.

But he did say it, and Will knew he wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it.

“Close enough,” he conceded grimly. “Now give me another kiss and send me out naked into the inferno.”

K
ENNY
HAD
three big bottles of water in his freezer, and he shoved them
all
in Will’s backpack so Will could make the eight-mile journey without just keeling the hell over. Will got to his mother’s house hot and sweaty and irritable, and by the time he mowed her lawn, he was in no mood to discuss his boyfriend troubles.

“The vet’s?” Anne didn’t do sarcasm just like Will didn’t do sarcasm. “Really? Will, that seems awfully thin—”

Will held up his wrist, where Princess had laid into him as he was hefting her large fluffy body into the cat carrier.

“Oh,” his mom finished. “Okay. Yeah, the vet’s office was a real thing. I get it. But really, how long have you two been together?”

“About a month,” Will said. “I’m pretty sure Kenny’s surprised it’s lasted this long.”

He was sitting in her air-conditioned living room while the fan blasted his cooling BO all over his mom’s house, and he didn’t care. God, it was hot outside. Maybe he could get Kenny to meet him at the gym later—they went to the same one—just so they could swim in the pool.

“Why’s he so gun-shy?” she asked musingly. She didn’t sound judgy, because, hey, Will’s
mom
,
who had pretty much accepted “Mom, I’m gay” with a giggle and a prayer, and she didn’t judge.

Mostly she just sounded curious, but then, so was Will.

“Well, when I met him, he’d just had an ugly breakup with his boyfriend,” Will hedged, because that was about as far as he wanted to go into their meeting right now. “And I get the feeling….” It was hard to put into words, the feeling Will kept getting. The way Kenny kept looking at him incredulously when he said, “I love you!” or falling all over him when he did the dishes or helped with dinner. He was grateful, but it was more than that. It was like all of the small things that were important to Kenny—the place settings, the happy feline, the pretty house—were things Kenny had always assumed he would have to have on his
own
.
Every time Will showed an interest in them, they became somehow special. Like they were another item added to the list of reasons Will might not leave.

“I get the feeling he’s been discarded a lot,” Will said thoughtfully. “I mean, not in horrible ways—or, well, until his last boyfriend came back to try to steal his bike—but, you know. Like the things that were important to him have never been important to the guys he’s been with.”

His mom made a sudden little sound, one of complete understanding, and Will looked at her in surprise.

“Oh,” she said simply. “Okay, I get it. Well, you bring him by when you can get him to come, honey.” And then, just like that, she dropped the subject and they spent the rest of the time gossiping about how Aunt Cara’s assistant had brought Cara a big vat of fresh-squeezed lemonade when she found out Cara loved the stuff, and if that wasn’t a labor of love, Anne didn’t know what was.

“But what will Cara do if Nina’s really in love with her?” Will asked, suddenly fearful for this Nina person whom he’d never met. What if Cara rebuffed her? What if Cara really wasn’t (as Will’s mom suspected) ready to play for her home team? How awful would that be, to pine and pine for someone you were
sure
you’d be perfect with, only to find that it was never meant to be?