Worth Waiting For

by Wendy Qualls

  “Still at least passably good-looking?” She bit her lip, failing to hide her smile. “You’re a guy so you probably wouldn’t notice, but I remember him being…yeah. I’ve got an idea.”

  “He’s better-than-average, I guess?” Paul absolutely couldn’t bring himself to say gorgeous to Grace. “Short hair, programmer beard, no creepy scars or missing teeth or anything. And now I’m kind of scared to hear what your idea is.”

  She swatted his arm. “Nothing bad, honestly. It’s just—you remember my friend Anne? Adjunct in the English department? She went through an awkward breakup a few months ago. Not that her boyfriend didn’t deserve to be dumped, but it was rough on her too. And better-than-average nerdy guys are definitely her type.”

  “Oh.” Paul took a too-big gulp of his water.

  “Anyway.” She took a much daintier sip of her own. “She gets free tickets to the spring play. Sounds like half her students are in it, from the way she’s been passing on second-hand stories about the rehearsals. They’re doing The Mousetrap—it’s an Agatha Christie mystery, all ‘theater in the round’ and up-close and whatnot. And it occurred to me that it would be a nice venue for a date. If you think Brandon would be into that sort of thing.”

  “I really wouldn’t know.” Paul could feel his cheeks heating, now, and prayed the lousy lighting would hide his blush before Grace noticed. “We weren’t friends all that long, back in undergrad. He was only here for the one year. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable setting him up on a blind date—”

  “See, that’s the thing.” She popped the last bite of sandwich in her mouth and smiled at him, all innocent excitement. “I agree that it would probably be weird and awkward to just shove them together for the evening. But if we call it a double date, it wouldn’t be so strange—and if they absolutely hate each other, we can just all watch the play and it won’t be a big deal. I know you’ve suffered through worse, and this play is a pretty good one. We could all go out to dinner afterward or something, depending on how it goes. They’re general seating tickets, no specific date, so we can be flexible about what night we go—I think it starts on Thursday.”

  “I …”

  “Oh, come on.” She reached across the table and grabbed his hand, squeezed it. “Worst that could happen is that you get a free night out with me and the ‘mystery’ turns out to have been the butler the whole time. You’ll live.”

  That was hardly the worst thing that could happen, but Grace’s eyes were wide and shining with enthusiasm and Paul found he really didn’t want to turn her down. Didn’t want to mention that Brandon probably wouldn’t be interested in Grace’s friend. Didn’t want to announce, “Actually, Brandon Mercer and I are kind of ‘fuck buddies’ at the moment—I think—but he’s also disappointed in me for not wanting to sign up for an exclusive relationship so it might not be that fun of a night after all. We probably wouldn’t get to that dinner.”

  Instead he squeezed Grace’s hand, pinched his lips together, and nodded. “I’ll ask him,” he heard himself promising, “but I’d say don’t tell Anne until I let you know how it goes.”

  Chapter 19

  Paul picked up Thai again that night. Cooking would have been too much of an admission that yes, he did want that “perfect family” dream, and yes, he was even willing to bend over backward to make the house (or apartment) a happy home for his partner and himself. He had done it with Christopher, for all the good it did then. Because at the time, it had felt like getting to take care of someone was the most important thing in the world. Not going to repeat that mistake.

  “Hey.” Brandon offered a tired smile this time, but no middle-of-the-kitchen kiss. “Thanks for doing dinner again—at least let me pay you back? I know I’m a lousy cook, but I want to contribute something.”

  “It’s fine.” Paul forced himself to return the smile. “I know we had a lot of takeout last week, but I didn’t feel up to cooking today.”

  “You’re already being incredibly generous by letting me stay with you here,” Brandon said. “Don’t feel guilty if you don’t want to do a whole bed-and-breakfast routine.” He stepped up to the counter and opened the brown paper sack to peek inside. “Thai tonight? You remembered what my favorites are—it looks good. Where are your forks?”

  They worked together, Paul giving occasional directions when Brandon couldn’t find something, to get the food dished out onto plates and the table set in at least an approximation of civility. Paul felt oddly formal sitting down at his kitchen table with another human being, especially with honest-to-goodness napkins instead of paper towels and food on real washable plates instead of straight from the to-go containers. Eventually the lack of conversation between them started to get awkward, but Paul didn’t know what to say.

  “I made some progress today,” Brandon eventually commented. “Proof that whoever did this was indeed using the president’s administrator account. Given what you told me about Christopher and the details I could get from HR, I started looking at the backups from right around when he was fired last year.”

  “Fired—not laid off?”

  Brandon shrugged. “Employers always cover their asses for that kind of thing, but his record says he’s ‘not eligible for re-hire’ and that sounds an awful lot like ‘fired’ to me. Anyway, I did find some discrepancies. Doesn’t prove it was him, but it does prove that this has been going on for at least that long.”

  “What kind of discrepancies?”

  Brandon pinched his lips together, then let out a long breath. “I’m probably not supposed to say. Nothing to do with you, though.”

  “Oh. Um. Okay.” There was no reason to feel bothered about it, so why did it hurt so much to be shut down? It’s not like Brandon hadn’t said right upfront that this project was supposed to be secret. Well, sort-of secret. In any case, there was no reason for a psychology professor who didn’t even have tenure yet to know the intimate details of a complicated electronic forensic operation.

  “I promise I’ll keep you in the loop on anything I think you need to know,” Brandon offered.

  “All right, thanks.” Paul pushed back his chair and stood up. “You want some more ice water?”

  “Yes please.”

  Paul took their two glasses over to the counter and set them down so he could use both hands to prod at the ancient icemaker in the freezer. It was a crappy machine, probably original to the apartment building, but it did eventually produce ice when given enough time. Which then usually melted into one consolidated lump, often with the wire thingy embedded into it. There was a ding from somewhere behind him.

  “Text,” Brandon said. “From someone named Grace? She says…” His voice trailed off.

  Crap. Paul plunked a misshapen lump of ice in each of their glasses and turned around to go retrieve his phone. Which was currently in Brandon’s hand. Being stared at blankly by Brandon.

  “Thanks, I’ll just…” Paul took the phone with a bit of a stale smile and thumbed the lock off.

  We still on for our date? Thursday or Friday work best? Having dinner with Annie tonight, so let me know :-)

  “Paul,” Brandon asked in a deceptively calm voice, “who is Grace?”

  Crap. Crappity crap crap. Paul felt his face begin to heat, which was so not helping. “She’s a colleague,” he offered lamely.

  “Is my presence here this week interfering with your social plans?”

  “No, of course not.” Paul dragged his hand through his hair and took a deep breath. “It’s not what you think.”

  “Ah,” Brandon said. “I’m misconstruing the word ‘date,’ then? There’s some other definition I don’t know about?”

  Shit. Somehow “crap” wasn’t working well enough as a mental expletive anymore. “I had lunch with her today,” Paul said. “There’s not—we’re not dating or anything.”

  Brandon’s gaze lowered pointedly to the ph
one.

  “It’s just…” Damn it. Paul sighed. “Fine, so we ran into each other and had lunch, right? She and I have known each other for even longer than I’ve known you—she was in our freshman dorm too. Plus we had a few classes together. She’s the closest thing to a friend I have in the psych department. Anyway, we had lunch and she asked me about you—”

  “About me?” Brandon interrupted.

  “About the mysterious computer consultant I was supposed to be the ‘departmental liaison’ for,” he clarified. “She wanted to know if you were attractive.”

  Brandon blinked. “You told her about us?”

  “No! Christ!” Paul tossed his phone back down on the table, the text message still blinking accusatorily between the two of them. “She asked about you, I said you’d gone to St. Ben’s with us back in the day, she said she vaguely remembered you. And that her friend, Annie, in the English department is recently off a bad breakup—”

  “Oh hell no,” Brandon muttered.

  “—and Grace had this brilliant idea of us all going on a double-date. Together. This weekend.”

  Brandon just stared at him.

  “I froze up and didn’t know what to say so I told her I’d ask you,” Paul finished, “and now I have. There. That’s it.”

  Brandon was still staring.

  “I didn’t…” Paul had to look anywhere other than that betrayed glare. “I didn’t plan to go through with it, if that makes you feel better,” he muttered. “Was going to tell her you were busy.”

  Brandon sucked in a long breath, then nodded. “I get that you don’t want a boyfriend. You’ve made that perfectly clear. You want the white picket fence and the lifetime tenure and the girl your parents would approve of. But you’d expect me to, what? Go back in the closet and pretend I’m straight for a night so you can make eyes at someone else? Someone we both know you would never feel anything for?”

  God, it sounds terrible when he puts it like that. “It wasn’t my plan,” he countered. “Just something Grace thought up.”

  “If I did say yes, though.” Brandon cocked his head, eyeing Paul. “If I said yes, you’d go through with this.”

  “I…” Paul had to pause for a long time to get his words together, but Brandon just watched him. “Yeah, I would. She’s been hinting around it for a while, but I shouldn’t keep putting it off forever. It’s kind of inevitable, really.”

  If Brandon’s eyebrows went any higher, they would become part of his hair. “Inevitable how?”

  “It just is.” Paul spread his hands, at a loss for how to explain it. “It’s not like I’m going to meet any other women, not here. The only people I ever see are my colleagues and my students. Grace and I know each other already, we’ve been friends for ages, and she’s nice. Sweet. She is that good Christian girl my parents would approve of, and if I don’t finally acknowledge her interest in me, she’s going to get bored and move on to someone else and I’ll be out of options. Once you leave, it may be time for me to bite the bullet and ask her out anyway.”

  “Once I leave,” Brandon echoed without inflection. “No qualms about fucking me and then kicking me out, I take it. Thought that was my usual thing, not yours.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Paul snapped. His flailing arm caught one of the glasses and nearly knocked it to the floor—only his quick reflexes saved it from shattering. He put it back on the counter with a deliberate calmness he didn’t feel. “What do you want me to say?” he repeated, more quietly. “That I’m in love with you? That I’ll give up my career and my parents and my life for you? We barely know each other, Brandon. I can’t announce ‘Hey, I’m gay now!’ like you did and expect everything to be fine. I thought this was just supposed to be a mutually beneficial thing. We could hang out together, kill some time, and both get off a few times while you were in town. I didn’t sign up for a relationship. Even a not-actually-dating friends-with-benefits thing.”

  “No,” Brandon growled. “No, I suppose you didn’t. I’m being unreasonable, aren’t I? I offered you a no-strings-attached fuck and that’s what you wanted.” He stood and held his arms out to the sides. “Fine—here I am. Let’s do it. Fuck me.”

  Chapter 20

  Paul froze. “That’s…that’s not—”

  “I mean it,” Brandon said. He reached up and started unbuttoning his shirt. “You’re all worked up right now, and so am I. It’s the perfect time for an orgasm or two. To get it out of our systems, since we’re oh-so-conveniently both here.” He wrenched the shirt off and tossed it to the floor, then grabbed the collar of his undershirt and yanked it off over his head. “You just going to stand there?”

  Paul didn’t really have a choice—Brandon, angry and shirtless, seemed to have short-circuited whatever higher brain function he had. He could feel himself getting hard, a conditioned response to seeing Brandon’s naked chest, and damn it, it wasn’t supposed to be this way, sex wasn’t supposed to be some sort of macho challenge.

  “Fine, I’ll do it.” Brandon stomped over to him and yanked his shirt tails out from his khakis. “Touch me,” he ordered, and bent down to suck a wet bruise against the skin under Paul’s right ear.

  Oh God. “Brandon, I—”

  “Less talking, more touching,” Brandon snapped. He rapidly worked his way up Paul’s shirt, popping the buttons without even looking, until he could yank the two halves apart and skim his palms over Paul’s shoulders to nudge the sleeves down off Paul’s arms. They caught on his hands, the wrists still buttoned, but Brandon just grabbed the shirt sleeves behind Paul’s back and pinned his arms while he slid his other hand underneath the zip of Paul’s khakis. With their bodies this close, Paul could smell Brandon’s deodorant and shampoo and a hint of sweat. It was all mixed up with the Thai spices on his breath and it was nearly too much, too quickly. He moaned aloud, unable to stop the sound before it escaped.

  “Please,” he breathed.

  “Please stop, or please do this?” Brandon slid his hand lower, cupping Paul’s balls through the fabric of his boxers, and gave them a firm squeeze.

  Paul’s breath tangled on a gasp.

  “Fuck, yes,” Brandon hissed. “You want this, don’t you? Want me? You’re trying to be all polite, all better than this, but I can tell you want to get off just as much as I do. I. Can. Feel. It.” He slid his hand up and down, pumping Paul a few times through the thin cotton, until Paul couldn’t stop his hips from nudging forward into that delicious pressure. “How do you want to fuck tonight, then?” he whispered in Paul’s ear, low and filthy. “Want me on my knees right here on your linoleum, sucking you off as you lean back against the fridge and gasp? Want me to keep your hands all tangled up like this so you can’t move, so the only thing you can do is thrust into my warm, wet mouth? It would feel fantastic—an excellent way to shut me up, just choke me with your big damn cock. Fuck my throat until you get off. That what you want?”

  Yes. No. Paul gulped in a deep breath and closed his eyes. This was Brandon feeling hurt, he knew, but the combination of sensations and those filthy words were practically melting his brain. Brandon had such an advantage over him, in this arena—he clearly knew precisely what to do, where to touch, what to say. It was too much and not enough all at the same time. But—and it took another two deep, gasping breaths to identify the problem—everything was all wrong. He wanted to feel Brandon’s mouth on him again, of course, but not like that. Not without the kissing and the touching and the snuggling in bed at two in the morning and the slow slide of wet skin against wet skin in the shower and damn it, none of that was his to ask for. None of it. This was supposed to be about biology and one last round of experimentation before setting down with a nice innocent partner like Grace who would never think of offering anything like an after-work against-the-fridge blow job.

  “Oh, I get it,” Brandon murmured against Paul’s earlobe, interrupting his rapidly d
erailing train of thought. “We’ve done that already. I’m supposed to be teaching you things you’ve been missing. Isn’t that what I’m here for? Let’s try this, then.” He let go of Paul’s erection and tugged at his khakis instead, managing to work them down to mid-thigh even with just the one hand free. Paul was now pinned up against the door of his refrigerator wearing nothing but his undershirt and boxers, his pants and shirt both half-off and useless. Brandon looked amazing wearing only his work pants, but Paul felt more rumpled than sexy.

  “What are you—”

  “I’m getting you out of your clothes, obviously,” Brandon growled. “Might keep the shirt like this. I like that your hands are tied. It stops you from trying to take control. Lets me show you exactly how this is supposed to go.” He ground against Paul again, the zipper of his trousers an unpleasant intrusion into what would otherwise have been a seriously hot maneuver. “I’ve been gentle with you, on account of your lack of experience, but clearly that’s not what you want. So merry fucking Christmas, you’re getting your wish. I’m going to take you back to your room and lay you out on that bed of yours and bring you almost to that peak. Right like you are now, boxers on and all. And then I’m going to stop, and I’m going to make you wait, and I’m going to strip us both the rest of the way. And then I’m going to go dig the lube out of my bag and I’m going to sit across your thighs so you can’t buck me off. Positioned just right so your cock is crying out for my mouth or my ass but you can’t do anything about it because your hands are still all tangled up in your shirt and I won’t let you up. And I’m going to push up to my knees and finger myself for you, right there on your bed kneeling over you, right where you can watch. You liked what we did in my shower back at my apartment, didn’t you?”

  Yes. No. Paul whimpered something that could have been either assent or rebuke.

  Brandon must have interpreted it as agreement, because he delivered another long, delicious glide of his hips against Paul’s and this time the zipper wasn’t in the way at all; it was just a fantastic hard pressure on the other side of those thin layers of fabric. Brandon groaned too, this time, a truly obscene noise.