by Zimmerman, L
“Yeah. I guess I’m just not going to eat today, it seems,” Clayton muttered bitterly. Billy, and Mike (Elliot’s father and the other flatbed driver that weekend) instantly started teasing him over the radio. Clayton’s words sunk in and, drowning in guilt, Grant buried his face into his hands with a curse. He hadn't realized that he'd kept Clayton so busy that he never got the time to sit down and eat in the past ten hours.
Sighing, Grant set his pen down. He couldn’t apologize, not over the radio. That kind of thing usually had all of the drivers jumping on the chance to guilt trip him about every little thing until he’d be at his wit’s end trying to keep people happy. He’d learned his lesson back during his freshman year of college, when he had first started working at the tow company. If the drivers could take advantage of a situation, they most likely would. Still, he could do something to earn Clayton’s forgiveness.
Grant picked up the phone and dialed the number for the nearest pizza joint. He didn’t know if Clayton was picky or not, so he ordered a half cheese, half meat lovers. Whichever one Clayton didn’t want, Grant would happily eat.
With peace offering on the way, Grant sent Clayton on one last run and divided the rest of the current jobs between the other drivers. He knew Clayton had to come in to get fuel soon, which would be the perfect time to enact his diabolical plan to get back on his good side. A dispatcher dealing with a driver that was pissed of at them was a dispatcher who was going to have a miserable job.
The pizza was barely cooling on his desk when Clayton pulled into the garage half an hour later. Grant turned off vacuum when he saw him, pushing it to the side so it wasn't in the middle of the office, and paged Clayton on the intercom.
“Hey Clayton, can you come in here for a second?” Grant glanced at the clock as he set the phone back onto the cradle, taking a minute to transfer the lines to the overnight service and then returning to vacuuming. Clayton didn’t come into the office right away, and it wasn't until Grant was backing out of the utility closet that the door even opened. He hadn’t even noticed that Clayton was standing right behind him until he turned and walked straight into a disturbingly firm body that could have moonlighted as a concrete wall.
A hand grabbed his shoulder to steady him and Grant bit down on a yelp of surprise.
“Oops, thanks Clay--” Grant choked on his words the second he glanced up. One of the downsides to going so long without seeing a person face to face was that his imagination tended to come up with these ridiculous ideas of what they looked like. For Clayton, Grant had figured he was a short, chubby and balding guy with a Napoleon complex.
Clayton was most definitely not a fat bald man with a Napoleon complex. If anything, he was illegally attractive in at least four states. It wasn't often that Grant had an insatiable urge to take his own pants off and present himself like a cornucopia of potential sexual promiscuity, but this would be one of those times.
Clayton, with his perfectly chiseled jaw, pale olive eyes, sunkissed bronze skin and thick eyebrows, was still in his driver’s uniform with bits of engine grease staining it. He kind of looked like that hot Medji dude from The Mummy that had caused Grant years of grief in his childhood before he'd learned the meaning of bisexual. His hair was a rich brown with a few streaks of sun-bleached gold, bangs just a few inches short of falling into his eyes and flicking in all directions from having been batted out of his face during the course of the day. His frown was emphasized by short goatee circling his mouth and two-day stubble that peppered all the way up his jaw.
Grant liked to think he was decently fit from daily jogging and crunches, but all notions of self-confidence took a running leap out the window when he realized that Clayton was built like a brick shithouse. Grant was pretty sure the guy could headbutt him into a coma if he really wanted to. He wouldn't even have to try that hard since they were about the same height anyway.
Clayton quirked one of his eyebrows at Grant's sudden silence, amused. His hand fell from Grant's shoulder, the other eyebrow coming up when Grant struggled to remember what he was going to say.
“I bought you some pizza,” Grant‘s voice cracked at the very end, fumbling with the glass cleaner in his hand and gesturing to the desk. Food, Grant had long ago realized,was a wonderful and charismatic peace offering that often distracted men from the idea that their clothes could be suffering a mental removal-via-teeth by other men. Clayton stared for another long moment before he slowly looked over to the pizza. Grant really wasn’t sure how to feel when Clayton turned to narrow his eyes suspiciously at Grant.
Grant decided that a smile would be in order, because everyone loved smiles--babies loved smiles. If babies loved it, everyone had to love it. Babies were picky like that.
“All of it? You sure that‘s a good idea?” Clayton walked over to the box, lifting the lid while Grant meticulously folded the paper towels in his hand. He needed to make sure he had a properly distributed ratio of towel-to-hand coverage, as well as a heavy enough thickness that the glass cleaner wouldn’t seep through the paper towel and end up with a giant soppy handprint on it. He also needed a reason not to see if Clayton’s ass was as sculpted as his chest.
"Uhm…well if you want all of it. I would have liked to have half since, you know, I also haven't eaten all day, 'cuz I can't leave the office and I forgot to make lunch this morning and--"
"Thanks."
"--so I was thinking this could be a fresh sta--what?" Grant snapped his head up, nearly crunching the paper towels in his surprise. Clayton walked over, plucking them from his hand and tearing off one of the strips before handing them back to Grant and grabbing a slice from the meat-lovers half. Miffed, Grant stared at the paper towels in his hand, because he had totally just gotten them how he liked them.
"Thank. You." Clayton repeated slowly, the corners of his mouth twitching to hide a grin.
"Oh... you're welcome," taken aback at how ridiculously easy it had been, Grant couldn’t really do much more than absently rearrange the remainder of his paper towels and start to clean the windows.
Clayton took a seat in one of the extra office chairs, leaning back and watching Grant meticulously wipe everything down, chewing absently. Grant tried not to pay attention to the way he could feel Clayton’s eyes on him the entire time, finishing up the windows and the glass on the vending machine and returning into the bathroom to grab the duster.
Secretly, he may have added a bit of a sashay to his hips in hopes that Clayton would notice how nice and curvaceous it was for a strapping young man like Grant.
Clayton was halfway through his second slice when Grant walked over to the computer to shut it down. For some unknown reason, he apparently found Grant to be an endless source of entertainment. Grant was well aware at how awful he was at reacting properly when he noticed that people were staring, because people staring at him made Grant want to throw things at their faces. That was exactly why Grant firmly kept his gaze focused on the monitor, clicking around to try and shut down the programs and cursing under his breath when the entire computer locked up.
“Come on, baby, don’t do this to me. I’ve been good to you, I cleaned out your hard drive last night,” Grant whined, stroking the monitor gently. Clayton snorted under his breath and Grant glanced up in time to see Clayton using his thumb to swipe a bit of pizza sauce from his lip before sucking it off of his finger.
Who the fuck even did that?
Napkins existed for a reason, thank you.
Why was Grant even turned on right now? This wasn’t fair, he was not supposed to be aroused by stereotypically sexual actions that were commonly scapegoated as innocently human behaviors.
Grant struggled to keep his breathing even, swallowing a few times so he could get rid of the lump in his throat, and turned back to the computer.
“So…uh. I didn’t mean for you not to eat today, man. Totally my bad,” Grant grabbed a cleaning wipe, rubbing gently at the keyboard with it, “I mean, if I had known, I wouldn’t have sent you
on so many runs or anything, just so you know.”
Clayton was silent, which obviously meant that Grant should keep talking.
“Dude, just give me a heads up when you need to do something, ‘cuz, like, if I know, y’know, then I will know not to send you on a run and stuff until you’re done with all that crap.”
Grant glanced up, heart skipping for a second when he saw that Clayton had stopped eating to watch him, expression unreadable. Grant didn’t really like being the subject of anyone‘s attention for more than five seconds, it made him nervous and on-edge, waiting for a fallout or judgment. Sometimes it gave him an insatiable urge to punch things in the jugular.
He turned off the computer monitor, muttering, “So…yeah…totally my bad, I’m sorry.”
Clayton’s chair creaked as he rocked forward from his reclined position, chewing on the crust of his pizza, eyes following Grant's every movement like a wolf stalking his prey.
“You’re a twitchy little guy, aren’t you?“ Grant nearly jumped out of his skin when Clayton stood, fumbling with the paperwork in his hand that he was organizing. He frowned, dragging in a deep breath and reminding himself that he wasn’t in high school and he couldn’t get upset over every little thing that people said to him.
Instead, Grant shuffled the papers into place and shrugged. “You’re a judgmental kinda guy, aren’t you?”
With a loud and surprised laugh, Clayton grabbed another slice of the pizza, the corners of his mouth pulled into a tiny smirk.
“Goodnight, Grant.”
Clayton turned, walking out of the office without another word. Grant didn’t move for a good second, and then exhaled heavily and finished cleaning up his paperwork. He clocked out, grabbing his things and switching off the air conditioner.
With the trash in his free hand, Grant slipped out of the office and locked the door behind himself before heading to the dumpster, nearly tripping over himself on the way back towards his car (a beautiful mottled green Jeep Cherokee that was slowly making it’s descent into the throes of death) when he caught a glimpse inside of the garage. The first and only thing his eyes zeroed in on was Clayton’s sculpted-from-gods ass shifting around while the rest of him was hidden inside the engine of an old blue Firebird.
Grant forced himself to toss the trash out, hightailing it back to his jeep before he gave in to the desire to make a failed attempt at flirting. He shut the door with a loud clang, sitting inside and thudding his head on the steering wheel.
His job just got ridiculously harder.
On the bright side, when Clayton’s voice came in over the radio at a quarter to noon the next day to inform Grant that he was going to step out of his truck to eat, Grant could barely keep the smile out of his voice when he paged back to acknowledge it.
Chapter 2
Grant should have known all good things never lasted. The only good thing that actually lasted was sugar, and that was only true if the sugar was stored in a cool, dry area and away from the grubby hands of children.
Anyway, most good things never lasted, which was why he was roasting inside of his jeep on the side of the highway not twenty minutes after getting out of his Friday classes. His beloved clunker of a car had overheated and completely stalled out on his drive home, leaving him stranded. He felt kind of like the characters from Lost, except he’d never actually watched Lost, so he wasn’t quite sure how applicable his situation was to the comparison itself.
What he also felt like was a pasty night blogger forced to cook under the last dredges of the late afternoon sun.
The upside to all of this was that perks to working for a tow company included reduced tow prices, and that the drivers were often willing to do pro-bono work on his jeep in their free time. However, that also meant that he would probably be waiting for a few hours until one of the trucks had free time to pick him up.
A quick call to Alyse, who worked weekday evenings at the office, let him know that David would be the first driver available to swing by and pick Grant up when he was on his way back from a run that had taken him out of the city. Grant, doomed to another hour of waiting, was hunched in the driver’s seat with all of his windows open and the battery on his phone going lower and lower with every minute that he continued to play Centipede.
He texted his best friend, Adam, for maybe five minutes, but then a prolonged lack of response made it easy for Grant's to assume that he had gone to visit Jessica and there was now a round of hanky panky being executed in the Smith household. Grant once contemplated buying Adam a bulletproof vest, given how many times Jessica’s father had tried to shoot him, but Adam had a habit of never learning things until he was put through a grievous amount of pain beforehand.
Fifteen minutes passed before Grant glanced up for a half second and nearly dropped his phone when he saw one of the company wreckers pulling over. David, Grant knew, drove a flatbed. Even then, his flatbed was white, and the wrecker that was pulling up was black. There was only two black wreckers in the company, and even knowing that, Grant nearly had an aneurysm when Clayton climbed out of the truck and started walking towards his jeep.
It was like watching a Greek god (clothed in a baggy, oil stained service uniform) descend from the heavens. Actually, Grant wasn’t really sure where that kind of comparison came from, unless Clayton had the intention of pretending to be a swan or goose or whatever and shagging Grant until he was popping with little demigod babies.
Not that Grant could get pregnant; that was not the point.
He shut his phone off, scrambling out of the jeep just as Clayton reached the door.
Clayton stared at him, and Grant stared back until Clayton gestured to his truck, “Well? Get in the truck; I need to fuel up after this.”
“I thought David was picking me up?” Grant blurted, following after Clayton like a duckling trying to keep up with its mother. Clayton headed for his truck where the wheel lift end was pulled up to the back of Grant's jeep.
“I’m closer.“
“Yeah, but…” Grant trailed off and Clayton glanced over his shoulder, doing the same eyebrow wiggle and hand wave he always did when he expected Grant to elaborate. Grant decided that too many people expected things from him, and shrugged helplessly, “it’s four wheel drive.”
“I have dollies.”
“Very true,“ Grant agreed, hesitant to add any further comment on it. All trucks had dollies, but most of the time drivers avoided using them because they didn’t like the extra work. It was the main reason Grant tried to send flatbed trucks to pick up anything that didn’t use two wheel drive.
However, if Clayton wasn’t going to complain, Grant wasn’t going to even bother commenting. Hell, Grant was totally game for there being absolutely no complaints at all, because that meant that Clayton was mostly disinclined to violently murdering Grant on a deserted stretch of road and then leaving his body for mountain lions to devour.
Climbing into the passenger side of Clayton’s truck, Grant watched him start the task of hooking up to his jeep. Curiosity to see how dollies were used struck him hard, and Grant clambered right back out to edge his way over and watch Clayton work.
Clayton, one hand on the lever for the dollies, glanced up and gave Grant a thoughtful stare. “Have you ever even touched a truck?”
Grant, sheepish, dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans and gave Clayton an apologetic grin. “No, not really. I just dispatch, dude.”
Seriously, he sat in an office all day. Unless he suddenly gained the ability to create optional clones, he couldn’t actually leave the office to go and ask for a demonstration from the drivers on how things worked.
“Typical blond,“ Clayton muttered under his breath, shooting Grant a smirk when he got a glower for his word. “C’mere.” Clayton gestured with his free hand, crouching to check and see if the metal bars of the dollies were lining up with the jeep’s back wheels.
Grant crossed his arms, gesturing to his head. “Hey, if you want to be technical, I a
m a zebra. Do you see the black? No? What about the brown?” he tugged at the black and red streaks in his hair, because Grant was very proud of them and his hair needed more compliments for all the hell he’d gone through to get it done. Well, most of the hell had been because they had taken a lot of effort and two hours of letting Adam crack jokes about Grant looking like he belonged in a little old lady salon with all the foil in his hair.
Clayton stared, so Grant fluffed his hair with purpose. That action earned him a snort and another, more impatient gesture for Grant to come over. “Come on, Rainbow Brite, before I change my mind.”
Oh, now Clayton was making old pop culture references. If Grant wasn’t falling in love before, he sure was now.
“Do you know how dollies work?” Clayton asked when Grant reached his side.