Dreamspinner Press Year Six Greatest Hits

by JD Ruskin

  “Ethan, please, just—”

  “Shut up,” Brandt hissed, their noses touching now, their eyes connected across the breath of space that separated them.

  Donnelly closed his eyes, surrendering. He was ready for the end.

  He felt Brandt’s grip on his neck tighten, and then he felt something more.

  It was a kiss.

  Soft at first, a whisper of contact, a hint of warmth that spread like electricity through his body. And then a second, and a third, each firmer and more deliberate, until finally his mouth was completely taken, occupied by Brandt, opened to his surging pressure. He felt in that moment what he had only ever imagined—the strength, the power, of a man’s mouth on his own. He had never wanted anything more in his life.

  The kiss lasted until both men were breathless and flushed, and then Brandt pulled back.

  They looked at each other, the same way they had looked at each other across the Internet a couple of hours ago. But now they were here, and they were themselves, and this is what they were now, together.

  “Oh, fuck,” whispered Donnelly. “What the hell was that?”

  Brandt snorted, shook his head. “It was a gift from Nick tonight. I’m just passing it along.”

  Donnelly, still deeply stunned, could not form words.

  “Are you okay? Was I too—”

  Brandt’s words were lost, stifled beneath Donnelly’s urgent lips on his own. Brandt’s surprise was delicious, and he savored the thrill that coursed through him, brought about by this strange, dangerous thing they were doing.

  Donnelly, competitive as ever, was showing a craftsmanship with his tongue that Brandt had never dreamed of. He flashed back to their conversation about how kissing, if done right, is penetration. Brandt knew himself to be penetrated by this kiss, by this man. The feeling of release, of vulnerable openness, made his knees weak.

  By the time Donnelly was finished with him, he had a hard time catching his breath.

  “I think,” Brandt panted, somewhat dramatically, “I need a drink.”

  “I think I’ll join you,” Donnelly replied through a smile of pure relief, broader and more brilliant than Brandt had ever seen.

  MORNING ANNOUNCED itself by way of a truck backing up in the parking lot behind Brandt’s apartment building. Its beep-beep-beep was the universal signal of something large and ungainly having taken a wrong turn.

  Brandt’s eyes opened slowly, dulled by the fog of a Jäger hangover. He was in the process of trying to remember where he was and how he had gotten here when he felt a stirring next to him. He jumped. The number of times he had woken up next to someone—ever—numbered under a dozen. He lifted his head to look over.

  Donnelly.

  Oh, shit.

  “Morning,” came the sleepy voice from the other side of the bed.

  Brandt reached for his phone to check the time. It was eight in the morning, later than he normally slept on Saturday, which would make him late for his usual Saturday breakfast with… Donnelly.

  He sat up and noticed two things. First, he was naked. That was unusual, as he wasn’t in the habit of sleeping nude. Second, he had no idea how he had gotten into bed. Naked. With Donnelly.

  All that was needed to make this a perfectly Hollywood moment would be a trail of giddily discarded clothing leading from the door to the bed. Fearing the worst, Brandt leaned over the edge to look down. No, his clothes were simply in a pile, as if he had shucked them all off at once. He reached down for his underwear—Nick’s underwear—so he would be at least a little less naked, and found that they were torn rather badly.

  What the hell happened last night?

  He looked back over at Donnelly, who by now was awake and staring at the ceiling as if he expected it to come down upon him at any moment.

  “So,” Brandt began. He had no idea what to say next.

  “So.” Donnelly too seemed at a loss.

  “So this is a little strange,” Brandt ventured, gesturing at them, the bed, the room, the world.

  “You could say that,” replied Donnelly in a voice carefully devoid of emotion.

  “Do you think,” Brandt began, faltered, and began again, “Do you think we did anything last night?”

  Donnelly turned to look at Brandt, a quizzical expression on his face.

  “What do we even know how to do?”

  Brandt laughed in spite of himself. Donnelly continued.

  “I mean, I know it looks like we threw ourselves into bed, but really, what two guys do in bed I have no idea. So I really don’t think we did anything.”

  Brandt had to concede that his partner made a good point.

  “I’m thinking breakfast. You?”

  “You read my mind.” Donnelly, like Brandt, seemed relieved to have something to do other than trying to figure out what the hell their friendship had turned into last night.

  Brandt slipped his legs over the edge of the bed, trying to reach his underwear drawer without sliding out from under the covers. It was just beyond his fingertips. He sighed, pulled back the covers, and stepped over to his dresser. He was keenly aware of being naked now, though Donnelly had seen him naked on pretty much a daily basis for years. Now it seemed to matter.

  He grabbed a pair of his tax-accountant underwear and slipped them on.

  “Hey, can I borrow a pair?” asked Donnelly. “Mine seem to have gotten pretty stretched out last night.”

  Brandt tossed him a pair, and then padded off to the bathroom for a pee and a brush. Donnelly followed him moments later, as he stood brushing his teeth at the sink. He got out a new toothbrush and set it on the counter for Donnelly to use, and tried not to look at his partner otherwise.

  If Brandt was awkward and nervous, Donnelly was the complete opposite. He stood next to Brandt at the sink, right next to him, touching him. As he brushed, he laid his head on Brandt’s shoulder. The casualness of this contact, the warmth and innocence of it, completely charmed Brandt. A smile crept across his face, breaking through his minty-fresh angst. This morning ritual completed, the men returned to the bedroom to sort out their clothes.

  They arrived at their usual Saturday morning spot, a retro diner a few blocks from Brandt’s apartment, slightly later than usual and starving. An aging former cop who sat at the booth closest to the door every week greeted them. His emphysema forced him to take a long breath between words, but he was always a cheerful part of their Saturday morning.

  “Well, if—” breath, “—it isn’t—” breath, “—my favorite—” breath, “—couple.”

  Brandt froze, horrified.

  “Of troopers,” the man finished, breathing deeply from his oxygen tank. He smiled broadly at Brandt and Donnelly.

  “Good to see you, Sarge,” blurted Donnelly with a grin, having recovered more quickly than Brandt from the misunderstanding occasioned by the long pause in the greeting. They passed his booth on their way to their own.

  Their usual waitress was not working this morning, so someone new came to take their order. They were soon sipping coffee and starting to feel fully awake.

  Saturday morning was usually when they would decompress from the week, take some time to talk through what had happened at work, and exchange gossip they hadn’t covered by the time they left their desks all of twelve hours ago. This time, however, they didn’t have much to say, instead staring at their hands as they sat on opposites sides of a booth.

  Finally, the silence got to Brandt.

  “You okay?” he asked, knowing that Donnelly would correctly interpret this very vague inquiry as a very specific question indeed.

  “Yeah, I am. Really okay, in fact.” Donnelly smiled. “You?”

  “Good, yeah.” Brandt nodded, a little too energetically to achieve sincerity.

  “You’re acting like you’re on a first date or something.”

  Brandt blushed, looked down at his hands. “But aren’t we, kind of? I mean, things are sort of different between us since we woke up in the same bed th
is morning, right?”

  “Who had the hash browns?” demanded the waitress, her tone conveying clearly that she heard this last statement by Brandt and was not at all amused by it.

  “That’s my partner here.” Donnelly beamed at the surly waitress. “He always gets hash browns. I’ve been trying to get him to lighten up on the breakfasts, but you know men, am I right?”

  “And the bacon?” growled the waitress.

  Brandt’s turn. “That goes to my man over there. That’s how he lightens up his breakfast. And heart disease runs in his family!”

  Plates clattered onto the table, and the waitress retired with a grunt.

  “Anyway,” Brandt tried to pick up where he left off when the ogre brought their food, “I think it’s a fair question to ask where we stand. In the last twenty-four hours we’ve had video sex, almost beaten each other up, made out, got completely shit-faced on Jäger, and woken up in bed together, naked. Now I’m trying to figure out what this—” He pointed from himself to Donnelly and back again. “—is.”

  Donnelly’s response was to take a forkful of his blueberry pancakes and hold them across the table for Brandt to eat. He had never done anything like this before, and in his surprise, Brandt opened his mouth. Donnelly carefully, and probably more slowly and with a greater flourish than was strictly necessary, fed him.

  “There,” Donnelly said, as if that explained everything. He could see by Brandt’s expression that it didn’t. “Look, we are everything we were to each other yesterday. We’re just something more now, something extra.”

  “Okay, but what is that something? What do we call it?”

  Donnelly arranged his face into an expression of pure stupefaction. “You know, you’re right. There should be a word for it. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? There should be a word for what people feel when they go from being friends to being more than that to each other.” He tapped his temple with a thoughtful fingertip. “Oh, wait, there is a word for that! It’s called being in love, ya big dope. I swear, that they gave you a college degree….”

  Donnelly chewed his pancakes cheerfully, and even stuffed in a piece of bacon for good measure.

  “Did you just say you love me?” Brandt was sure he hadn’t heard correctly.

  Donnelly considered this for a moment, or at least made a show of looking that way. “Um, yeah, I did. I kind of thought that the making out last night would have made it clear, but I can confirm that, yes, I love you. I’ve told you that before.”

  “But that was just as buddies, you know—‘I love you, man!’ That was before we slept together.”

  The occupants of the booth behind Donnelly got up and moved to another table, muttering something under their breaths.

  “So, you knew I loved you, but because of last night you thought maybe I didn’t anymore?”

  Brandt shrugged. It really didn’t make any sense when one said it out loud.

  “Let’s be clear. I love you. Not in the ‘I love you, man’ way, but in the ‘I want to wake up with you in the morning’ way. It’s that kind of ‘I love you.’ Does that clear it up?”

  The waitress, who had been taking an order at the next table while Donnelly was speaking, threw their check at them as she steamed past like a battleship.

  “You know,” Brandt said as he watched the bill flutter to the table, “this suddenly doesn’t seem to be the kind of place I want to have breakfast.”

  Donnelly chuckled. “I don’t think it’s changed. We have.”

  They finished their breakfast and rose to pay the bill. They felt every eye in the diner on them as they walked together to the register. It seemed like a long journey, past tables of glaring faces. Brandt was mortified. Donnelly was angry. He reached out and took Brandt’s hand in his own. Brandt was too shocked to pull his hand away, but the blush blazing its way up his neck told the story.

  At the register, the ogre waited to ring them up. She snatched the check out of Brandt’s hand, glanced at it, and then waited, looking away from the men to a point in the middle distance, as if she were trying to pretend they weren’t there.

  Brandt handed the money over, and she pounded at the register. She gathered his change and then slapped it onto the counter and walked back into the kitchen, shaking her head.

  “I’m thinking a 0 percent tip is appropriate?” Brandt asked Donnelly as they turned to the door to leave.

  They passed the table that had been taken by the former occupants of the booth behind Donnelly. There were four older men in the booth, and they all looked at the troopers as they passed.

  “Faggots,” one growled, almost too low to hear. But Brandt heard, and he stiffened. Donnelly nudged him, and they continued out the door. They would not be returning.

  “Well, that was awful,” Donnelly remarked, his voice only slightly tinged with rancor, as they walked back to Brandt’s apartment.

  “What the hell was that? We’ve been going there for years, and now all of a sudden they treat us like shit?”

  “Let it go, Ethan. Totally not worth it.”

  They walked in silence for a block.

  “I mean, for fuck’s sake,” Brandt finally exploded. “We’ve been out in the world for a grand total of an hour since… well, you know… whatever, and already we were practically chased out of a fucking restaurant by a bunch of withered old bigots.”

  They climbed the stairs to Brandt’s apartment. At the top of the stairs Donnelly fidgeted while Brandt unlocked the door.

  “What’s up with you? Ants in your pants?” Brandt asked as Donnelly pulled at the leg of his khakis.

  “Funny. No, these dorky boxer brief things you wear are a mess. You need new drawers, man.”

  “Come to think of it, I need something for Monday. I’m meeting with the owner of the site—after the live thing, he decided he wants to talk to me. I can’t go in dressed like a cop, and that’s still all I’ve got.”

  “I guess we know where we’re headed. We can talk to the underwear whisperer while we’re there, because these things have got to go.”

  They entered Brandt’s apartment and found themselves standing precisely where they stood last night when their fury turned into making out. They looked at each other somewhat sheepishly.

  “Hey, can I shower quick before we head out?” Donnelly said. “I feel like I need to clean up before we see Bryce again.”

  Brandt smiled. “Sure, go ahead. I’ll grab one after you.”

  Donnelly, instead of going toward the bathroom, stepped toward Brandt instead.

  “You know, if you wanted to….” He looked at Brandt, an eyebrow cocked rakishly.

  Brandt felt his face burn, which confused him.

  “No, no, you go ahead. I’m good,” he said, a reaction that snapped the rakish cock right out of Donnelly’s brow.

  “Okay, I’ll be out in a few,” he said. He made a faint motion toward Brandt to peck him on the cheek, but then thought better of it. He half shrugged, and then headed for the bathroom.

  Brandt sat down on the sofa, shaking his head. What were they doing? Last night they had practically chewed on each other’s tonsils, and now, by the light of day, it was so fucking awkward. He thought back on their experience in the diner this morning, when whatever fragile thing the two of them had built last night withered under the glare of the larger world. When he woke up this morning, it seemed like his life had suddenly changed; now he wasn’t sure that anything was different at all.

  THEY TOOK their turns in the shower, carefully avoiding each other’s nudity for the first time ever, and were soon on their way to Alta Avenue.

  “Camp & Dragg first, to consult Bryce?” Donnelly asked as Brandt pulled into a parking spot. Brandt nodded.

  They walked into Camp & Dragg for the fourth time in just over a week, and the commotion they caused was just as intense as the first time. A new salesman glided swiftly to them.

  “And how may I service you gentlemen today?” he asked. It was clear that Bryce h
ad trained him.

  “We’re looking for Bryce. Is he working today?” Brandt asked, while Donnelly pondered a new display of leather-accented, anatomically correct dildos springing from rhinestone-studded toolboxes.

  “I fired his lazy ass!” screeched a voice from the back of the store. “Princess thought she was too good to drop her nail file and sell the fucking clothes!” There was probably more invective to be laden upon the memory of Princess Bryce, but it was lost in a typhoon of coughing.

  “Bryce is at Grindstone, across the street,” whispered the salesman, who was clearly crestfallen when the two men nodded their thanks and turned to exit the store.

  They jaywalked (it was a weekend, and they were off duty) and found themselves right in front of Grindstone. The mission of this retail venue was to equip the office-going man with khakis cut to accentuate his vital assets and shirts that appeared to be conservative button-downs until one noticed that the little polo player on the pocket was wielding a club of a distinctly different kind.

  They entered and immediately saw Bryce. Or rather, they heard him squeal—he had seen them first. With a dramatic, diva-worthy movement, he catwalked to their side, barely able to contain his excitement.

  “Oh, you found me!” he gushed. “I was hoping you would! I would have gotten in touch to tell you I’d made a shrewd step up the professional ladder, but as many times as I have slipped you my number”—he glared at Donnelly—“I’ve never gotten yours.” He pouted, but only for a second and a half. Then, maximum wattage on the smile: “But you’re here, you’re here. How are you? Famous yet?” He winked broadly at Brandt.

  Brandt could only smile and shrug in response. His fame was not something he would be able to talk about. Ever.

  “Oh, wait wait wait!” squeaked Bryce. “There’s someone here who will simply expire to see you.”

  The men exchanged a look of both amusement and resignation. They suspected whom Bryce meant.

  “Nestor! Nestor! Your dream is about to come true, darling!”

  “They are here?” came the calm, measured reply from the back of the store.