by Lina Langley
UNDER THE RUG
M/M GAY ROMANCE
BY LINA LANGLEY
© 2017
Lina Langley
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is intended for adults only. It contains explicit sexual scenes and is not suitable for children.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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BLURB
Max Honeywell is a man of ambition.
And as the rising star of accounting at a major national corporation, he's determined to make it to the top before 30. There are few things he cares about more than his job.
Until John.
The new janitor on the job is moody. Cocky. Snarky. Hot as hell. And impossible to resist, when John sets his sights on cleaning more than Max's floors.
An office romance is risky enough for a career-obsessed automaton with no life. But when Max realizes who the new janitor really is...will he risk his future for the man he loves, or sweep the whole affair under the rug?
Warning: This story contains depictions of alcohol intake. It is approximately 12,000 words in length and contains language & erotic adult scenes. It is intended for adults.
CHAPTER ONE
Running a hand through my hair, I sat back in my chair with a sigh of exhaustion. No matter how many times I blinked, the numbers on the screen in front of me remained blurry and incomprehensible. I reached for my coffee, which had gone cold hours before. I drained what was left of it anyway.
I was just starting to think I should call it a night when my office door opened and the familiar sight of an olive green clad figure backed through it, pulling a cleaning supply cart.
It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t Edmond, the night janitor, who’d barged in without knocking. It was a younger man, one who barely looked old enough to have a job that kept him out until–I looked at the clock on my computer–ten forty-three pm on a school night.
He didn’t turn around right away. Instead, he reached for a spray bottle and a cloth while shimmying around. That was when I noticed the ear bud perched in the one ear I could see from where I was sitting. He did a twirl and that’s when he caught sight of me.
His hands went up and the spray bottle flew into the air.
“Oh, holy shit! Mother fucking, fuck!” He covered his mouth with his unexpectedly empty hand as he stared at me in shock.
“Good evening to you too,” I couldn’t help but smile at his reaction.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone after removing one of his earbuds. “I’m sorry,” turning, he looked at the name plate on my door. “Mr. Honeywell. I didn’t think anyone would be here this late.”
“You must be new if you thought that.”
Everyone knew that it wasn’t uncommon for people to work late on this floor. While the people on other floors–the ones with the normal jobs–left at six like sane people, the accountants who kept the place afloat kept late hours.
I remembered the time and amended my thought just a bit, since I was probably the last one there most nights. Being newly promoted and as young as I was, I still felt the need to prove myself to my colleagues, most of whom seem to have their doubts.
“Yeah, tonight’s my first night,” the handsome man pushed his longish, blond hair back out of his eyes as he shifted from one foot to the other, obviously uncomfortable under my unwavering gaze. “I’m sorry for the language. I know it’s not professional but you scared the sh–crap out of me.”
“It’s fine.” I looked at his chest, eyes searching for the name tag, but when it read Edmond, I knew it wasn’t the young man’s uniform. “Are you filling in for Ed then?”
“Uh…no,” he looked down at his chest. “He retired and my uniforms weren’t in yet, so I just wore one of his. I figured he wouldn’t mind.”
He shrugged before turning to retrieve the bottle from the floor, presenting me with a perfect view of his round ass. I was only able to appreciate the view for a moment before a thought hit me.
“Shit,” I muttered. I mixed up the dates again. I thought Edmond was retiring at the end of that week. Now I’d missed the chance to wish him well and give him the card I bought.
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, nothing. I just screwed up my dates again,” pulling the cream-colored envelope from my desk drawer, I shook it in frustration. “I got this for him, but now it looks like I won’t get the chance to give it to him.”
The young man cocked his head as he looked me. “You got the janitor a card?”
A small smile played at the corner of his full, red lips drawing my attention to them for a moment. They were nice lips.
“We were friends of a sort. He came in every night and cleaned and we talked. It was a nice break in the monotony of my night.”
“What did you talk to a janitor about?”
“Sports, mostly,” my eyes tracked the new janitor as he walked to the shelves on the other side of the room and began dusting them. “Do you have a name?” I thought it might not be a bad idea to know his name for future reference.
“John,” he said without turning around. “I don’t know much about sports but I’m willing to break the–what did you call it–monotony, if you want. And I bet if you give that to HR, they’d make sure to get it to Ed.”
Sitting back in my chair, I crossed my arms over my chest as I contemplated John. He seemed smart enough that having my nightly conversations with him didn’t sound like it would be a step down from conversing with Ed. “I don’t know much about sports either, but Ed loved the Bears, Bulls, and Cubs.”
“He spend a lot of time at the zoo then?” John chuckled at his joke as he stepped back and admired his work.
“Har har.”
“Sorry, it was too good to pass up.”
John walked back to his cart and replaced the rag and bottle before grabbing a trash bag.
His eyes scanned the floor as he made his way back to my desk where the trash bin sat. “I was told I don’t need to vacuum unless there’s a visible mess and since you’re in here, and I don’t want to bother you more than necessary, I think I’ll just take the trash and get out of your hair.”
“It’s no bother but, yeah, Ed usually only vacuumed once a week, unless he came back to do it when I was gone.”
John replaced the bag and stood, aiming a smile at me when his head cleared the desk. “Good to know, makes my job that much easier.” He held up the full trash bag. “I’ll get out of your hair now.”
“Okay, thanks.” I wasn’t sure what else I could say but it was apparent that he didn’t want to stick around longer than he had to. With a backhanded wave over his shoulder, he pushed the cart out the door and disappeared down the hall.
***
Over the course of the week, John started showing up at my door earlier and earlier until he was there just minutes after seven.
I told m
yself it was just because he’d learned his job and now had a schedule down, which just happened to be one that almost assured he’d catch me still in the office.
He always did, except for one day when I had an appointment and left early. It wasn’t intentional, it was just how things worked. By the end of the middle of the second week I was looking forward to his visits in a way I never had Ed’s.
I had a crush on the janitor.
It was a strange to think of it in those terms but I couldn’t think of any other that fit as well.
I wouldn’t say I was obsessed with the younger man, but I’d spent a fair amount of time thinking about him in the recent days. I wondered if the small signals I’d been picking up from him meant what I thought they did – what I hoped they did. The small things I considered flirtations, were they meant to entice me or was it something John didn’t know he was doing? Was it bad that I didn’t care which one it was as I thought about how hot it would be to bend him over my desk and fuck him until he begged for mercy? Probably. Did it stop me? Nope.
On the second Wednesday after he started, we talked about music and movies as usual as he cleaned, but that was also the night I finally learned a little bit more about John personally, which is what I wanted until it went badly. He’d finished up the few chores he had to do in my office and after stowing his cleaning supplies, he came to sit in one of the chairs across my desk from me which was new. All the other nights he’d just stood by the door for a few minutes while we finished chatting, but this time it looked like he had something on his mind.
“Can I ask you something, Max?” He called me Max because I’d told him it made me feel old when he called me Mr. Honeywell. It made him laugh and ask me how old I was and then he’d been surprised to hear that I was twenty-five – only six years older than him.
“I guess you can ask but I reserve the right to not answer.” I sipped my stone-cold coffee as I waited for him to stop rolling his eyes at my response. He’d gotten into the habit of telling me I may be only in my twenties but I talked like a stodgy old man.
“Fine, you can reserve the right not to answer, whatever.” He shifted on the chair. Suddenly I thought I knew what he was going to ask and no matter how much I wanted him, I wasn’t ready for it.
“Maybe you shouldn’t ask,” I said, but then quickly tried to backtrack when a frown marred his perfect brow. “I mean, just, I’m not sure I’m the best person to ask if you need advice or something.”
John smiled. “Oh, well I think you’re the perfect person to give me advice on this because it has to do with going to college and stuff and, well, you’re not as old as everyone else is so you probably remember going, right?”
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Yeah, I think I can remember something that happened three years ago.”
“Yeah, see, that’s what I thought.” John looked pleased with himself, and I thought the cocky self-satisfied look suited him.
“Okay, ask away.”
“I probably need to tell you a couple of things before I ask so you know why I’m asking, okay?” he asked and I nodded. “Well, I’m only working here because I told my dad that I didn’t want to go to college, and he said if I didn’t go to school, I had to get a job. He helped me get in here, and I think he thinks that working as a janitor will make me see that not going to college is a bad choice, but you know what?”
“What?” I asked because I figured I should.
“I kinda like this job.”
He said it like it was a huge secret or something to be ashamed of.
“I take it your dad wouldn’t be pleased to hear that.”
“No shit, you think?” He sighed so hard I felt his breath on my face from across the desk.
I didn’t think that was the actual question, so I asked, “So what’s your question?”
“Do you think I’d be wasting my life if I didn’t go to college?”
I shook my head but that wasn’t my answer. It was more me trying to figure out why John would ask a virtual stranger that sort of question. “I really don’t know. I don’t think I’m the one you should ask that since I don’t really know much about you.”
“What do you need to know to answer it? It’s a pretty simple question.”
“It’s not really because I don’t know enough about you to make an educated decision. I mean, were you a good student? Do you have goals for your life? Are there huge obstacles in your path to attending college either physically or financially? Lots of things go into the decision and I can’t say if you’d be wasting your life or not based on what I know of you right now. Plus, who can say what’s a waste of a person’s life? It’s your life. I think you need to make the decision for yourself.”
I hadn’t intended on giving a speech and the glazed over look in John’s eyes told me I’d probably lost him about halfway through, but to ask someone you hardly knew for life advice seemed odd to me. It made me wonder what sort of home life John had. He popped up out of the chair so quickly that it startled me and I bobbled my coffee enough to spill a little.
“Shit,” I lifted my arm to avoid the rivulet of liquid heading toward the edge of my desk.
“Let me get that.”
John was there beside me with a rag in an instant.
As he leaned in to wipe up my mess, I couldn’t help but study his profile up close and of course he turned and caught me staring at him. The blush that arose from his neck to spread across his cheeks made him that much more attractive to me, but my instinct to reach out and cup his heated cheek was tempered by our surroundings.
I was at work, and he was a fellow employee. This was not the place for such things, and I needed to remember that.
His movements were jerky as he pulled back away from me. “I should get going.”
He turned back to his cart and threw the rag into a bag hanging on the side before pushing the cart through the door.
“I’m sorry I asked you such a stupid question. Have a good night, Mr. Honeywell.”
He shut the door behind him before I could say anything in response.
He left me feeling unsettled. Sure, I was attracted to him, but he was young and our conversation had proved just how out of his depth he’d be with someone like me. But that didn’t stop my mind from supplying me with a picture of him lying naked across my desk when I tried to get back to work.
CHAPTER TWO
John showed up at the regular time the next night, but he knocked before entering.
“Come in,” I called without taking my eyes off my monitor. I had found the error we’d been looking for since Monday, and I couldn’t afford to have my attention taken away from my work at that moment.
I was already developing a massive headache which was enough of an annoyance that I had to try doubly hard to concentrate on the numbers I was scrolling through.
“Evening, Max. Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
I didn’t miss that he was back to calling me Max, but I had no time to relish the return to normal after the previous night’s awkwardness. John pushed his cart into the room and the squeaky wheel I’d never noticed before drew my ire, because as much as I’d been looking forward to seeing the young janitor again, it was a bad time for him to show up.
“I’m actually really busy right now, do you think you could come back around in a bit?”
I still hadn’t looked up at him, but I could feel his gaze on me.
“Uh, sure, sorry to be a bother.”
He sounded put out, and I wondered if it was because he’d have to double back to clean my office or if it was something else – like maybe he’d been just as eager to see me again as I was him.
The squeak of the wheel told me he was leaving but before he could get all the way out the door, I relented. “John?”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have to clean my office tonight. I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.”
It was the best I could do in the way of an apology but his heavy sigh
told me it wasn’t good enough.
“Let me just grab the trash, then.”
Even the sound of John’s footsteps across the carpet got on my nerves and the crinkling of the bag as he tied it made me snap at him. “Could you please not do that right now?”
“Fine.”
The one word cut through the air and stabbed at my aching head as I tried to ignore John, but he made it impossible when he walked back to his cart. I thought he’d leave but instead he made just as much noise when he returned to my desk and slammed a box down, then he stomped out the door before slamming it.
“Fucking teenagers,” I muttered as I rubbed my temples.
Tearing my eyes off the monitor, I checked out the pink box perched on the edge of my desk. I knew that box design. It was from the bakery down the street. Pulling it toward me, I opened it to find two cupcakes each had a candle stuck in the top – one in the shape of a two and the other a six.
Fuck me, I’d screwed up my dates again, but John must have seen the note on my desk calendar the night I’d been gone. It was the only explanation I could come up with as to how he’d known it was my birthday when even I’d forgotten.
I felt like an utter shit for treating him the way I had as I plucked one of the candles from a cupcake and peeled the paper away so I could take a bite.
It was delicious, and I scarfed it down but when I went to throw away the trash, regret hit me once again.
The bin was bag less and though I could have just left the wrapper in the box, I got up and went to hunt down the wayward, teenage janitor to get a bag for my trash can.
The halls of the office on my floor were empty because once I’d alerted my supervisor that I’d located the error, he’d let everyone else leave while I charted the exact line from the mess up to present.
One would have thought that since I found the problem, I’d be rewarded by getting to leave early on a Friday night but, no, that’s not how Mr. Harriman worked. I knew I’d get the credit at least, which was more than most junior associate accountants could say, and that was better than a night alone in my studio apartment watching Netflix.