A Little Side of Geek

by Marguerite Labbe

  Morris’s brown eyes lit up with enthusiasm. He hooked his finger in the collar of Theo’s T-shirt and tugged him closer. “You going to use me as your guinea pig?”

  “Only if you say pretty, pretty please,” Theo murmured before capturing Morris’s lips in a heated kiss. Morris slid his arms around Theo, pulling him off-balance so he sprawled over him and their limbs tangled together. They shifted, laughing softly until they found as comfortable of a fit as they could get on the small couch.

  “Pretty, pretty please,” Morris said with a sigh as he slid his hands under Theo’s shirt. He rubbed his hands over Theo like how he imagined a sculptor worked over an object of art he was making, patient and slow. Morris’s lips teased his throat and Theo groaned, going dizzy as he felt the hard length of Morris’s cock under him. Damn, the man could turn him on with a glance or a simple touch of his elegant hands.

  Impatient, Theo tugged off their shirts and kissed Morris again with urgent lips. “I have been thinking of this all night. I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.”

  “The thought may have crossed my mind a moment or two,” Morris said, eyeing Theo’s body greedily as he continued to run his hands over him. “Hence the almost wet dream you interrupted.” His gaze met Theo’s, and the heat there made Theo’s heart beat faster in anticipation. “Reality is far better.”

  Theo’s gaze traveled over Morris’s bare chest. “I have to agree with you.”

  Thudding footsteps shuddered over them as someone stomped around in the kitchen upstairs. Theo froze and glanced up as Morris’s hands tightened on him. “What the fuck was that?” Morris asked.

  Theo closed his eyes as the stomping died off down the hall. Man, he couldn’t wait until Lincoln had his first date. He wasn’t sure what he’d do yet to retaliate, but it was going to happen. “My brother. Rough night. We had to make some executive decisions about the restaurant, and I think he’s missing his other siblings who elected not to come.”

  “Oh.” Morris struggled to sit up. “No wonder you looked ragged.”

  Theo pushed him back down with a shake of his head. “Uh-uh, I’ve only managed to get half your clothes off. I have a dream reputation to live up to. Where were we?”

  “Getting naked,” Morris replied with a grin as he toyed with the button to Theo’s pants. “We’re still wearing too many clothes for the promised blow jobs.”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right.” Theo leaned over him for a kiss as the stomping started again, this time accompanied by the discordant sound of an out-of-tune saxophone. Theo closed his eyes with a soft groan. He’d thought that sax was dead and buried at their parents’ house.

  Morris stifled a laugh against Theo’s shoulder. “Well, that’s attention grabbing.”

  “Were you this much of a little shit when you were fifteen?” Theo asked with a plaintive look toward Morris.

  “I was an angel, but my sisters would argue otherwise.” Morris looked up as the stomping and playing continued, marching up and down the hall. Cassie laid her ears back with a hiss of disapproval and streaked out of the room.

  Theo touched his forehead to Morris’s with a soft sigh of regret. “I’ve got to get back upstairs.” Maybe between Morris’s door and their own, he’d figure out a way to not strangle Lincoln.

  A look of disappointment crossed Morris’s face, but he nodded and brushed his lips over Theo’s. “I understand. We have to plan to pick this up again very soon.”

  Theo rose and tugged his clothes back on. “If you have another dream of me, tell Idris Elba he doesn’t stand a chance.”

  Morris chuckled, tucking his hand under his head. “I’ll be sure to pass along the message.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  MORRIS SET the bags of groceries on the counter and eyed the clock. He had plenty of time to get everything ready before his friends showed up this afternoon for the games, and he was stoked. Wait until they got a load of this. They were going to die of surprise. Ha!

  Humming to himself, he put the beer and cider in the fridge next to the mini-éclairs he’d picked up that morning from the bakery and then began unpacking and organizing. He checked Theo’s list, amused by the emoticons he’d drawn on the margins. Okay, so not everything would be made from scratch, but it would sure beat his history. First, he needed to boil the eggs for the deviled eggs. He also needed to shred the rotisserie chicken he’d bought and prepare the ham-and-cheese rolls. Not a problem. Sexy-assed Marcus Samuelsson had nothing on him.

  Morris pulled up his music on his phone and let Beyoncé blast as he began the prep work. He set the eggs in the water on the stove, turned up the heat, then moved to clean up. Laundry was strewn liberally throughout the living room. Towels were hung on his seldom-used workout bench. Morris sniffed them and tossed them over his arm to be added to the washer. Cassie followed him from room to room to see what all the fuss and activity was about, but when he didn’t pull out the suitcases and boxes he used for a show, she sat herself down in the middle of a sunbeam and began cleaning her leg.

  He dumped all the clothes in the washer, started the cycle, and returned to the living room to contemplate his art supplies stacked in untidy heaps around his drawing table and his favorite chair where he watched TV. Well, there was no sense in organizing that. It would get all disorganized again when he sat down to work. If he ran the vacuum cleaner around the piles, that would be good enough.

  Bopping along to the music, he returned to the kitchen and looked at Theo’s notes again. The water was definitely bubbling fast around the eggs, only he had no idea how long they’d been boiling. Pursing his lips, Morris shut the heat off and set the timer. Better overcooked than under, right?

  He yanked out a baking sheet and referred to Theo’s instructions again. Starting most of this early would save his sanity later on, but he wasn’t certain he could actually do the prep now and then finish off cooking later for some of these.

  Are u sure i can make the ham thingies early? Morris texted Theo. He set aside the crescent rolls he’d bought and contemplated the next item on the list, buffalo dip. The question was, did he have a baking dish? He knew he should’ve bought more tinfoil disposable cooking ware. Then he wouldn’t have to wash dishes. They were going to make enough of a mess as it was tonight.

  While he waited for an answer, he ran the vacuum through the living room and down the hall. He checked the bathroom and declared it good enough and then prudently closed the door to his bedroom, much to Cassie’s indignation. She let out a meow of protest and batted at the door with her head. “Nobody wants to see that mess but you and me, baby girl. You can stalk that new cat tree I bought you instead of ignoring it.”

  She flicked her tail at him in response, giving him a good indication of how she felt about that, then turned her back on him. She lay down in front of the bedroom door and shoved her paw underneath. Morris shook his head at her antics and went back to work. There was no pleasing a cat.

  He sprayed a good amount of air freshener around the whole apartment and opened a few windows to let in some fresh air. It wasn’t that Morris considered himself a slob; he just stopped noticing his surroundings until something happened to make him look around. Once he got started, his cleaning binge would continue through the weekend until it was all nice and shiny from top to bottom and he’d made a dozen promises to himself not to let it happen again. A promise he’d forget within a week until the next time he needed to be sociable.

  Morris returned to the kitchen to the sound of the timer going off, and still Theo hadn’t responded to his text. Well, he was at work, probably slammed, so there would be no extra help from there. Besides, Theo had to know what he was doing and Morris clearly didn’t, so he went ahead and started the ham-and-cheese crescent rolls.

  He laid out the dough, slapped the ingredients down, and then rolled them into little bundles. They looked a little homely and awkward, and a couple of them kept threatening to unravel until Morris leaned them against another, but as long as
they tasted okay, he didn’t care how they looked. Most of his group wouldn’t care about presentation anyway. They’d just be happy to have edible food.

  Morris changed his song list to Prince and checked the time again. Yeah, he was on point. This was going to be the best game night ever. After scrounging around, he couldn’t find a baking dish for the dip, so he set that aside and turned toward the eggs. First, he had to get the suckers out of their shell. Not a problem. He’d watched his mom do it a dozen times.

  Fifteen frustrating minutes later, Morris had three mutilated eggs lined up on his counter. Instead of the freshly peeled clean look of his mom’s eggs, he had forlorn lopsided blobs with bits of shell still sticking to them, chunks of egg white pulled off, and crumbling yolks.

  Morris glared at the eggs and picked up Theo’s instructions. There was nothing in there that mentioned egg peeling, and what the fuck was turmeric anyway? He’d forgotten that at the store, whatever it was. And what the hell did he mean by piping? What had seemed simple before had now gotten wildly out of hand.

  Morris grabbed his phone and wallet. There had to be already peeled eggs at the store, and he could get the other things he’d forgotten and maybe he’d even run into somebody who could explain piping to him, because it sounded more like something Dakota would do with his marijuana instead of a cooking technique. He paused. He bet Felipe would know how to do this…. Morris shook his head and grabbed his keys. No, he was going to surprise them, and it was going to be awesome, dammit.

  As he opened the front door, Cassie streaked outside from between his legs. “Fuck me!” He glared at his cat, who stopped a few feet away and turned to look back at him. “Why do you always pick the days when I don’t have time for this shit?” Morris leveled a finger at her and then turned it back toward the apartment. “Do you want me to open the bedroom door for you? Fine, I’ll open the damn door. Now get inside.”

  Cassie took one look at his pointing finger before turning and scampering underneath his car. Morris cursed under his breath and knelt down by the car. Cassie peered out from behind the tire, regarding him steadily with an unblinking gaze. “Please,” Morris wheedled, slowly stretching his hand out on the ground. “I’ll put some dice in a box for you. You know how much you love that.”

  Cassie yawned and glanced away.

  “Something wrong?” Morris jumped at the sound of a voice behind him and narrowly missed hitting his head on the door mirror. He looked up at Lincoln, who watched him curiously from the edge of the driveway.

  “Yeah, your brother and my cat are the devil.” Morris pushed himself to his feet. “Keep an eye on her a moment.”

  “Who?” Lincoln asked as he crouched beside the car to peer underneath.

  Morris brushed off his knees and stalked toward the house. “That evil imp that impersonates a cat,” he called back over his shoulder.

  He grabbed Cassie’s favorite stuffed toy, a bear she carried around by his poor abused face, and the laser pointer. She only pulled shit like this because she knew how undignified he looked begging her to come back. He should’ve gotten a dog. You could train a dog. A cat did whatever she fucking pleased.

  “So I get why she’s the devil,” Lincoln said when he returned. “But what did Theo do? Not that I think he’s innocent. I know him. I’m curious so I can give him a hard time.”

  Morris eyeballed him, trying to decide if he’d freak out Lincoln with a bit of teasing. “You mean breaking out the saxophone to serenade us isn’t enough of a hard time?”

  Lincoln blushed, though he looked more abashed than mortified. He shrugged and shot Morris an apologetic look. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay.” Morris gave him a reassuring smile. “I’m just going to start calling you Moodkiller Base One.”

  “That is awesome and awkward at the same time.” Lincoln stood up and gestured toward the car. “So what’s the plan to get her out?”

  “Bait.” Morris dropped the bear on the ground a few feet away from the car and stepped back, motioning for Lincoln to back away too. “As for your evil brother, he left instructions that made no sense and neglected to tell me how to peel an egg. Apparently it’s not an instinctive skill.”

  Lincoln’s expression became one of pity for a clueless caveman. “You crack it and peel it,” he said in the condescending tone only a teenager could nail.

  Cassie eyed the bear but still didn’t move from her spot behind the tire. “I know that, but it won’t peel cleanly. I made a mess of the first three, and I’m going to have to eat the evidence before my friends arrive for games.” Morris directed the laser pointer beyond his cat’s reach. Cassie’s ears perked in immediate attention.

  Lincoln shoved his hands in his pockets. “What kind of games?”

  “All kinds. You’re free to take a look. You off today?” Morris danced the light a little farther out as Cassie crept toward it on her belly, her gaze fixated on the dot.

  “Yeah.” Slowly Cassie moved out from under the car and then pounced on the light. Lincoln took another step back out of her way. “Wow, she is trying to slay that thing.”

  “She is the queen of laser dot hunting. I have claw marks on my wall from where she tried climbing it once to get at it.” Morris flicked the light behind her, smiling at Cassie’s acrobatics.

  “Hey, maybe I can help you with the eggs and Theo’s instructions,” Lincoln offered. “Maybe I could borrow a game too? It’s dead boring at home by myself.”

  “Sure.” Morris led Cassie in a dizzying chase over the lawn. “I’ll do one even better. If you want to hang with us tonight, you’re more than welcome. It’s nothing fancy, board games and food.”

  “What kind of board games? Boring stuff like Monopoly?” Lincoln asked, sounding like he wasn’t sure if it wouldn’t be more fun at home alone.

  “Nah, man. There’s so much more than that. I tend to like games where you have to work together like Pandemic, or if you want something a little creepy that doesn’t take forever, Elder Sign is good too.” Morris thought of Felipe and his mood lately. “Or we could get cutthroat and play Munchkin all night.”

  “Okay, Munchkin is fun. I have a couple different sets myself. I tried teaching it to Theo, but I think he was confused. It’s not really a game you can play with two people anyway.” Lincoln dodged out of the way as Cassie streaked by him.

  “Bring them along,” Morris said, luring Cassie closer. “Expansions are always fun.”

  “Really, you wouldn’t mind having me along tonight?” Lincoln’s eyes lit up. “I was supposed to go to a friend’s house, but his parents are dragging him to a family dinner. They invited me, which was cool, but I wasn’t really feeling it.”

  The note in Lincoln’s voice said it all. The “I don’t care” when deep down he did. Morris knew Theo worried about his brother, but Lincoln would open himself up to hanging with families again when he was ready. Right now, it was a still-healing wound.

  “Not at all. We welcome geeks of all ages.” Morris directed the light to Cassie’s bear and she pounced on it so hard they both rolled over. He grinned as Lincoln laughed outright. She grappled with it, snuggling and purring loud enough for Morris to hear. “That’s my little dot killer. You go, girl.”

  Morris glanced at Lincoln, and all of his earlier irritation vanished. “Say, you wouldn’t by any chance have a small casserole dish for baking, would you? I seem to be short of kitchen supplies too.”

  Lincoln beamed. “Yep. I’ll be right down. We’ll eat the evidence and fix the rest of the eggs, and then maybe I could look at some of your games.”

  Morris gave him a thumbs-up, tucked the light in his pocket, and scooped Cassie up, bear and all. “You, my dear, are a troublemaker and a half, do you hear me? Troublemaker.” He nuzzled her. “Do you know how I’d feel if you got lost out here? Huh?”

  Cassie touched her cold nose to his cheek, still purring. “Was I ignoring you? Was that the problem? Bad Daddy, huh? Changing the house up with all the cleani
ng and not giving you attentions.”

  He carried her into the house, already feeling much better about the day ahead. Lincoln would help walk him through the mysteries of the kitchen, and in return, he’d keep the kid from dying of boredom. It was a win-win situation.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THEO GLANCED up as an order popped onto the screen. It had to be frickin’ kidding him, another six-top table. Who the hell declared tonight group date night? The kitchen scrambled as the front of the house overcrowded with a forty-minute wait for tables. No matter what they did, the flow was off, and Theo felt as if he was barely staying on top of things. At least they weren’t behind. That was an extra layer of stress none of them needed.

  “Scottie, can—” Theo cut off with a soft swear. Scottie wasn’t here. Scottie had prepped that morning and then manned the lunch crowd. They’d had a chance for a quick chat as they passed by, and that was it. He’d not had a spare minute to think since then. Fuck. He had to start remembering he had a new sous chef now and try to not feel like his right arm had been cut off.

  He rubbed his brow and focused again. “Jesse, sorry. Can you start on the salmon?”

  “You can call me Not-Scottie, if it’ll help.” Jesse pulled out a tray and headed toward the walk-in refrigerator, patting Theo’s back as she went by.

  Bless her, she would accept it with her usual good humor and grace, and Theo was profoundly grateful for her stepping up the way she had. They’d find their rhythm again. This was their first weekend with the new system. The only thing making the change at all palatable was the extra few hours he had most days now. Hours to catch up on housework and errands.

  He flashed her a distracted smile and shook his head as she passed by him again. “That’s not right. I’ll get it. It’s just years of habit.” And a friendship that stretched all the way to the start of high school.