by Willa Okati
Harper hoped he was doing this right and attempted to flood his aura with gratitude, love, and a few raunchy promises.
“Ooh.” Rory whistled. “I’ll take you up on those.”
* * * * *
True to his word, Rory waited until Harper turned the corner to pounce him. Harper had had to circle around the building to find a corner, but who cared about the technicalities? Not he, when he had a muse enthusiastically backing him into a wall, pressing hungry kisses down his neck.
“Not bad, huh?” Rory exulted, nosing under Harper’s chin. His hair was damp from his exertions. If he’d had a tail, it would have wagged, and as it was, Harper had to work hard not to rub his tummy.
Actually, on second thought, why not?
He had slid his hand under Rory’s resumed shirt and splayed his fingers wide over the taut muscles when an annoyed, female “Ahem!” interrupted him.
“Just so you know?” Janie said with an ironic twist. “I still don’t want to know. Anything. Ever.”
Rory held up two fingers. “Cross my heart. You won’t.”
“Good.” Janie jerked. “Who the hell is that? Is it Invisible Creep in New York Day now?”
What? Harper twisted sideways. Oh, no.
“Don’t mind me,” the Clerk said. He twirled his pencil, drew an elaborate, defined checkmark on his clipboard, and disappeared.
Janie blinked several times in rapid succession. “You know what? Don’t tell me about that, either.”
Rory’s grasp on Harper tightened near painfully. “Harper…”
Harper made another instant decision. “Janie, think you’ll be good to get to Wells Fargo alone?”
She hesitated, as if she wanted to question him. In the end, she pressed her lips together and nodded.
“Okay. I’ll explain later. Or not, if you still don’t want to know.”
“I’m not so sure anymore,” she said, swinging a long, measuring glance between he and Rory. “Do what you have to. Go home.”
Harper took his muse’s hands, fine tremors vibrating under his skin. An awful taste of dread clung thick and sour to the back of his tongue. “Rory, I want to go home.”
“God, yes.”
For what, Harper didn’t say, and Rory didn’t ask. They both knew, anyway.
* * * * *
Home. Quiet. Dark.
Harper pushed Rory away from the light switch and crowded body to body, never separating their mouths for longer than it took to breathe, and only when he ran out of air.
Rory moaned, working uselessly at Harper’s fly and tipping his head back. “Bedroom?”
“Uh-uh. No time.” Harper caught the back of Rory’s neck and held him as they reached the wall, coming in for a crash landing that rattled the windows. “Want you now.”
“You’ve got me.” For now.
Don’t think about it, Harper ordered himself. Don’t think; don’t think; don’t think.
He caught the tails of Rory’s collarless green shirt and hauled them up, over Rory’s head, hating every half second he and Rory weren’t pressed together. Then, though, it was skin against skin, and so much better. He thrust his hands down the back of Rory’s jeans and kneaded his ass. “Going to fuck you so hard.”
“Yeah?” Rory canted his hips so that he trapped Harper’s hands between himself and the wall and he could thrust his obscenely swollen groin at Harper, putting it on display. “What’s in it for me?”
“Wait and see.” Harper jerked Rory’s fly open and pushed in after for the handful of hot, silky flesh he craved more than breathing. He swallowed Rory’s desperate hiss.
When they parted, it was only long enough for Rory, naked as he ought to be, to turn and slam the flats of his hands against the wall, above his head. Harper kicked off his Converses and his jeans. He stroked his cock through and down the cleft of Rory’s ass, precum slicking the way. “Think this is enough?” he breathed over Rory’s temple. “Say yes.”
“Even if it wasn’t, I would,” Rory grunted. Harper understood him perfectly. He spread his legs, his balance awkward and his ass raised. “Want you in me. No more waiting.”
Harper wasn’t that guy, no matter how horny. Hurting Rory was not allowed. Still, nothing in heaven or on earth could have budged him from Rory now, with Rory a mewling, writhing temptation in his arms. Lucky them, homemade lube would suffice.
He stroked Rory’s urgent, leaking erection, shushing him when he cried out and clawed the wall with his blunt nails.
“Stop, damn it, stop,” Rory panted. He shuddered, releasing a spurt of precum. “Don’t want to shoot before you’re fucking me. Please, Harper.”
“Okay. I’ve got you,” Harper said soothingly, licking Rory’s throat. He gathered enough slickness for three fingers and tugged Rory’s balls to calm him down.
When he tested the stretch of his fingers, Rory choked on a spasming breath and bore down on them. Tight, but willing, hot and silky.
God help him, Harper couldn’t wait. He withdrew his fingers and grasped the base of his cock, lining up. “Hold on,” he murmured, wrapping his free arm around Rory’s waist to hold him still.
Rory’s groan, deep and tortured, lasted as long as Harper’s long, slick slide home. His sac slapped Rory’s ass before he stopped. “Fast and hard or slow?” he asked, breathless.
“Are you kidding me?” Rory clamped down around his cock and chortled at the pained noise Harper gritted out. “Fast. No time for slow. Want it hard. Want to know you were here every time I breathe, want you pounding me so deep I can taste you ‑‑”
Harper bit Rory’s shoulder, almost breaking the skin. “Don’t say things like that if you want any kind of ride at all.”
“So fuck me quiet.”
“I can do that.”
Took him a few strokes to find his rhythm, bound and determined to time the slam in and drag out with his fist around Rory’s slick, throbbing hard-on, but when Harper found it they both shouted. Rory’s inner muscles quaked around Harper, who licked up the drops of sweat rolling down Rory’s back.
Rory rocked forward, letting the wall support him. “Almost there.” He panted. “Harder, c’mon, I know you can… Right there, right there, don’t stop ‑‑”
Harper’s toes curled. He took Rory by the hips, knowing he’d leave bruises, and slid deeper. The rhythm he’d worked for crumbled away, too needy for finesse. Rough bucks and shallow rabbit thrusts were the best he could manage. Rory begged for more, deeper, faster.
“Love you so much.” Harper breathed, setting his teeth and getting it together for a brutal snap of the hips. “Rory ‑‑”
Rory howled, the thrumming vibration of the roar going deep to his bones. He squeezed Harper’s cock, at its deepest. When he shuddered and came, splattering the wall with creamy ropes, Harper followed him over.
Rory’s body took all he had to give and fluttered around him, demanding more until Harper had to bite him again to make him stop and pulled out.
He draped his weight over Rory’s back, the pattern of his breathing slowly syncing with Rory’s. From somewhere, he found the coordination to spread his hand over Rory’s chest so he could enjoy the rapid pounding of Rory’s heart.
Neither spoke for a long time. The sweat had mostly cooled on the bare expanse of Rory’s back when Harper made himself say it. “The way the Clerk showed up… There’s no chance he was just trying to scare us, is there?”
“Harper.” Rory turned, letting the wall hold him up, and cradled Harper’s face in both palms. “Don’t. It’s soon. I’ve been around long enough to know. Just let me enjoy what time I’ve got left. It’s at least until we hear from Janie, right? And that could be days.”
“Actually, no. It won’t be.”
Harper didn’t want to look. Couldn’t look. “Get out.”
“Can’t do that, pal,” said the Clerk. “Time’s up, you crazy kids.”
Chapter Eighteen
The Clerk, heard but not seen, pulled out one of the ki
tchen chairs, its legs screeching across the floor. “Is that your turtle? Cute.”
“What do you want?”
“Him.” Harper could so easily visualize the Clerk’s smirk, oily and self-satisfied. “Time’s up, Rory. Pack your bags.”
“No.” Harper withdrew as carefully as he could and covered Rory’s body with his own. “Rory, stay where you are.” He glared over his shoulder. “Get out. Get out now. We have time. Janie hasn’t gotten any word about the job yet.”
“Nope, but she will in, oh, five or ten minutes. You’re hired. Congratulations.”
Harper borrowed the choicest of phrases from Rory’s most colorful vocabulary set. It didn’t help.
“Do you even know what that means, or realize that you were speaking Ancient Etruscan?” the Clerk scoffed.
“Nope, but I do,” Rory interrupted, pressing his forehead to Harper’s chest. “And he’s right. You are a herpes-riddled pestilent son of a goatfucker.”
“Goats have more discernment and taste.”
The Clerk’s chair squealed and his shoes thumped on the table. “For God’s sake, this is what I get out of matching a muse to an author? Note to self: Refine the screening process. Quit stalling, both of you. Let go of the muse and finish it already.”
“No.”
“Cute. You think you actually have a choice. I’m a patient man ‑‑”
“Bull,” Rory muttered.
“You’re not a man at all,” Harper shot back.
“And neither is he,” the Clerk replied, unruffled as a pool covered in green algae. “If you’re feeling dainty, I can turn my back while you put some clothes on.”
Rory had imparted more than one lesson in his time. Nudity threw everyone for a loop and gave a guy the upper hand. “No.” Harper turned, shielding Rory, and let it all hang out.
The Clerk looked down, and then back up, doing a bad job of pretending not to be impressed. “Once again, this isn’t a multiple-choice question. Rory comes with me. You stay.”
“No.”
The Clerk huffed out a slow, long-suffering sigh. “Look… it’s not that I don’t get where you’re coming from. I do. But the rules are the rules for a reason. If I let Rory stay, then the next time some artist got a little too attached, I’d have to give in. And the next, and the next, until suddenly there’s several thousand extra people crowding the earth and endangering the sugar cane crops.”
“NutraSweet. It’s the wave of the future.”
“Nice try.” The Clerk dropped his feet, planting them solidly on the floor. He leaned on one arm and gestured at he spoke. “Sugar’s the least of my worries. Rory is made up almost totally of inspiration. The flesh is a bonus and it’s metaphysical in ways that’d make your head explode. The chemical essence of a really good brainstorm.”
Harper frowned. “So?”
“So, if there are a gazillion Rorys running around lighting creative bonfires, how long do you think humanity would be able to take it? You’d go insane, one after the other. A world full of inspirationally toppled dominos twitching in their own drool, their brains burned out.”
Harper’s throat tightened. “I can’t argue with that.”
The Clerk blinked. “You can’t? No, wait. You’re still going to, aren’t you?”
“I love him.”
“No, really? I hadn’t noticed.”
“You can’t make an exception for love?”
“Technically, I could. But I won’t. It’s not as uncommon as you might think, kid, the lucky winners falling head over heels for their muses, especially when they’re horndogs like that one.”
“Heartless bastard.”
“Yes, I am.” The Clerk shrugged. “I’m also fairly immune to insults after being on the job this long. If it’d help you, though, take your best shot.”
He wouldn’t waste his breath. The way Rory loved him deserved better than bickering. Harper caught at the first, separate thread he could and asked, “How can I write without him?”
“Kid, you’ve got enough inspiration to last a lifetime. See, it’s not just the stories you’ve written. There’s a psychic signature in your brain. You reach for your muse ‑‑ the spark ‑‑ it’s there.” He blipped in front of Harper, close enough to thump his forehead with thumb and forefinger, then blipped away before Harper could grab him.
“I’m still not letting him go without a fight.” Though he’d been quiet and Harper worried about Rory’s state of mind, he reached behind himself with the intention of taking Rory’s hand in his, and ‑‑
And encountered nothing. Empty air, colder than it should have been. He slapped the blank wall, panic rising, all in vain. The space where Rory had existence was now devoid of life, essence, or warmth.
“I really am sorry, kid,” the Clerk said quietly, standing.
“He’s gone?” Harper didn’t want to look, but did, at the absence of Rory behind him. He shuddered. There was nothing to see, and the nothing was horrible. “You sick ‑‑ when? When did you take him?”
“Not that it’ll help you to know, but right about the time you flashed the goods.”
“And you just let me keep thinking I had a chance?”
“As rants go, yours are mostly entertaining. And I had to keep you distracted somehow during the energy transfer, or this could’ve gone on all day.” The Clerk shrugged. “Time of cessation, twelve-thirty-two p.m.”
Harper’s ears roared with the rush of his rising wrath. “Bring him back, or I swear on my life you’ll wish you had.”
“How? You can’t hurt me.” All the same, the Clerk kept the table between himself and Harper. “Take it up with a higher authority if you want. See how far that gets you. And oh, hey, you might want to answer your phone.”
His BlackBerry shrilled when it should have vibrated discreetly. Human nature drew Harper’s eyes to it in response, and when he looked back, the Clerk had winked out of sight.
* * * * *
Harper didn’t answer the first of Janie’s calls. His fingers were too numb to manipulate the BlackBerry’s buttons.
The second time the caller ID flashed, he managed to step forward, but deviated at the last moment and crouched, sore as an old man, to retrieve his jeans. One leg at a time he tugged them on.
He reached for his discarded shirt and found Rory’s favorite green Henley lying crumpled underneath.
Harper decided he didn’t care if anyone would call it stupid, and pulled the shirt over his head. He inhaled deeply, holding each breath of cloves in his lungs until they burned.
When his cell rang a third time, he tapped the speakerphone button. “Janie,” he said, and nothing else.
She seemed to know, or at least to guess, or didn’t understand but knew not to push. “Heard back from Rialto,” she said neutrally. “Their pet writer begged off. You’re in. All you’ve got to do is sign the contract, and the job’s yours.”
Harper pressed his lips together. He couldn’t thank her.
“Come to the set tomorrow,” she suggested. “Take your mind off things.”
He shook his head in silence, not caring that she couldn’t see him.
“Harper…yell or pitch a fit at me if you want, but say something before I think you’re in trouble.”
“Janie.”
“Damn it.” Pause. “Congratulations, I guess.”
Answering her tasted bitter and foul, and saying it out loud at all tore at Harper with the sharpness of knives. “Thanks.”
He staggered away from the phone and made it to the sink just in time, emptying his stomach in sour heaves. Rory’s gone.
Chapter Nineteen
Harper hadn’t figured he’d be able to face getting up in the morning, much less get to the set. But he did. Remembered his keys, wallet and phone, navigated connecting subways, bought coffee without paying much attention to the pleasant red-haired woman manning the kiosk, and flashed his ID card at the new guard.
Lisa did a double-take when she looked up from a sheaf o
f breakdowns and caught sight of Harper ambling in. “Hi!” she said, fumbling a couple of thickly printed sheets. “I, uh, didn’t think you’d be around here. For a while at least. You know. And then you’ve got the new job, so ‑‑”
“So, you think I’d forget you so soon?” Harper tried for an amiable smile.
He guessed, from the slight widening of Lisa’s eyes, that he’d achieved a psychopathic “Heeeere’s Johnny!” grimace instead. Jack Nicholson, eat your heart out.
Not for Lisa the squeak of alarm nor the soothing pats of a Florence Nightingale. She tweaked a cigarette from a pack stashed in her cherry red hoodie and twirled the unlit cylinder. “Actually, I heard Rory hadn’t been seen since he ran out of here after Patrick. I figured you’d be weeping into your Cheerios right about now.”
“Lisa, don’t.”
“Shut up and let me distract you while I figure out something comforting to say. This is why I don’t usually hang out with high-strung guys. You’re like women, and I’m here to tell you we’re all crazy. When a guy’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown, the servos need adjusting.” She twirled her cigarette hand at her temple. “Not to say I won’t give it a shot, if you need me to. That’s what friends are for, right?”
“Thanks for trying, but nah. Wouldn’t help.” Harper plucked the abused menthol light 100 from her hand and tucked it in his jacket pocket. “It’s the thought that counts.”
“Yeah.” Lisa caught her lower lip between her teeth. “About Rory…hell. You know how gossip runs on any set. Everyone figures he’s missing in action. And not coming back.”
“They’re pretty much right.”
“Crap.”
Harper shook his head. “Don’t try and comfort me. Okay?”
“You want I should try and shut down the grapevine so you can have some peace, at least?”
Harper shrugged. Gossip was lifeblood in the entertainment biz; he hadn’t expected anything different even if it did set his teeth on edge.