by Jet Mykles
“Hey, just remember I’m Danny Champion.” He said the name that he’d always liked with particular emphasis, making sure Cash heard and acknowledged his pride. “I’m the lead singer of the soon-to-be-world-famous Indigo Knights, and don’t you forget it.”
Cash watched him with mild amusement. “I can’t. You don’t let me.”
“Damn straight.” They shared a laugh as Danny dropped onto the mattress with the second bag. He began to transfer things he’d be checking instead of carrying on. “And this stuff is nothing. Back in LA, I knew plenty of guys who make me look totally butch.”
“‘Totally,’” Cash teased in his very worst California drawl. Chicago-bred was Cash.
“Dude,” Danny threw back with his best surfer-boy impersonation. Helped that he had been, for a time, a surfer boy.
Well, at least Cash found him amusing. Two months after relocating from Los Angeles to Chicago, Cash had moved in with Danny when it became clear that even with a job waiting tables at a pizza parlor, Danny couldn’t pay the rent and utilities on the crap apartment he’d inherited from his friend and bandmate Rabin. Money was tight since the album Danny was there to record with his new band was not yet contracted to any record company. What the Indigo Knights did have was the faith and backing of their producer, one Brent Rose, the lead guitarist of the megapopular band Heaven Sent. So things looked really good for them. Unfortunately, one must live and pay bills while working toward fame and fortune. Although Danny’s bandmates—all better off financially than he—had offered to help, he had opted to take a part-time job at a pizza joint and leave the help from his friends for when he might really need it. Besides, he and Cash had already become acquaintances, meeting at the mailbox, and then Danny had him over a few times for dinner when he’d brought food home from work. At some point, Danny had asked Cash if he was interested in moving in together, to save on bills. Cash was a college student, living off a scholarship and an allowance from his parents for one more year. After graduation, he was supposed to put his bachelor of computer sciences degree to work to make his own money. This didn’t concern him, because he already had a number of companies interested in his skills. Only reason he wasn’t working for them now was because of a deal with his parents where he promised to get a degree first. So, even though Cash didn’t really need to save money, he’d accepted Danny’s offer, and they’d become friends of a sort. They both kept odd hours, so they didn’t see each other much, but they got along well when they did. Cash was personable and friendly although not outgoing. Danny had liked him from the moment they’d met. The only way Cash could be more perfect would be if he were gay.
Unfortunately, he was not.
Not that Danny wasn’t quietly hopeful.
Danny looked at the three sweaters that lay between the bags. “What am I thinking? You’re right—I don’t need all of these.” He grumbled as he started to repack just the first case again. “Wish I’d figured that out before spending all my extra cash on clothes.”
“You gonna be okay for rent? I could probably help if you need it.”
Danny’s heart swelled at Cash’s effortless sweetness. “Thank you, but no. I put aside next month’s rent already.” So he was okay for January. He’d have to see about February. He hadn’t gone home for the holidays, so he’d saved all that money for travel, and his ticket to New York for the wedding was already paid for, but he still hadn’t figured out what he was going to do in the next month or so when the Knights went on their first club tour. Worry about that when you get back. Danny was an expert at compartmentalizing his worries. He smiled for Cash. “Besides, all my expenses are paid for the next five days.”
“Must be nice.” Cash watched as Danny sifted through the clothing in the suitcase—T-shirts, underwear, slacks, and jeans, together with the last sweater Danny really wanted to take. “Been reading about this wedding on the net. It’s a big deal.”
“Fuckin’-A.” Danny took the jeans out. He’d wear a pair on the way there, and it’d just have to do. “Luc wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Cash scratched at the mess of his hair, making Danny’s fingers itch to smooth it out for him. “Still weird to think it’s such a big deal that two guys are getting married.”
“These aren’t just any two guys. This is Luc Sloane and Reese Schulyer.”
“Uh-huh.” Cash’s enthusiasm was tepid at best. He wasn’t exactly up on the music scene. “But what’s the point?”
Danny stopped considering his clothing to give Cash his full attention. “What’s the point in what?”
Cash gave him a fully sincere look. “I don’t get why two guys would get married at all.” He shrugged. “What’s the point?”
Danny blinked. “What’s the point?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re in love.”
“Okay. So they live together. But why spend all this money and shit and get married? They’ve been living together for years already, haven’t they?”
“Well, yeah, but…” Danny blinked again. “You can say the same thing about a man and a woman.”
“That’s different. They can have kids and stuff.”
Danny raised a brow. “Ever heard of adoption? Besides, having kids isn’t the only reason to get married.”
Cash flushed and dropped his gaze. Danny might have been more offended, but he could see Cash was sincerely struggling to understand. “Yeah, okay, but…” Another shrug. “I dunno. I always thought that weddings were a girl thing.” Danny happened to know Cash was an only child, so he wasn’t sure where Cash thought he was an expert. “Girls grow up picking out dresses and flowers and stuff. Guys don’t.” His brow creased in thought, and he looked back up at Danny. “Gay guys don’t do that, do they?”
Danny had to smile. “Some do.”
Cash’s mouth fell open. “Get out.”
“Dress, flowers, the whole shebang.”
“No way! A dress?”
Danny laughed. “Okay, maybe not the whole thing. Some forgo the dress. But there are plenty of guys who dream about their weddings. Gay and straight.”
“The ones that’re into fashion and stuff, right? Or the cross-dressers?” He said it like they were a different breed. No doubt, in Cash’s mind, the classifications of gay men were as cut-and-dried as the code he studied for his degree.
Danny hoped he’d been changing that opinion little by little. “Okay, I’ll grant you that traditional weddings are more of a girl thing, but there are plenty of guys who dream about the pomp and party of a wedding. Especially the party.”
“Do you?”
Danny shrugged. “I haven’t really. I never saw myself as the marrying type, even before I knew I was gay.”
Cash chewed on the inside of his lip, nodding. “Yeah, I know what you mean. About the marrying type, I mean.”
Danny concentrated back on his suitcase dilemma to keep himself from cupping Cash’s face to do a little lip-nibbling himself. He couldn’t take offense at Cash’s assumptions. Cash simply had no point of reference. He didn’t even realize Danny was crushing hard on him. “But Luc and Reese are different. They want the whole spectacle, and they’ve put a lot of work into this wedding. The GLBT groups are coming all over themselves about it.”
“I’ll bet. Those were the sites that had the most hits.” Cash cocked his head to the side, considering. “How much does it cost to buy out an entire ski resort for a long weekend, anyway?”
“Buttloads. Not to mention feeding everyone.”
“And it’s over New Year’s.”
Having culled a third of what he’d originally packed, Danny shut the lid and tried the zipper again. Hopeful. Now there was only about an inch of space between the two sides of the zipper. “Heaven Sent needs to come out with their new album real soon so Luc can pay for it.”
Cash leaned atop the suitcase, Danny knelt on the floor at the foot of the bed, and together they wrestled the zipper into place.
“Ha!” Danny found hi
s face disturbingly close to Cash’s, so he sank back on his heels to gain some needed distance. “Success.”
Cash sat up, glancing at the pile of clothes Danny had created beside the discarded second case. “I hope you got everything in there and don’t have to open it again.”
“I think I’m safe for the night.” He was meeting the others at the airport tomorrow morning.
Cash glanced around Danny’s bedroom. Not much to see. Danny hadn’t bothered to decorate, since the apartment was pretty much just a place to sleep and eat. He’d almost been living at the studio for the last few months. “Gonna be quiet around here without you.” Cash spent the majority of his time at home in his bedroom on the computer. Danny wondered sometimes if he’d even come out if it weren’t for school or for Danny prodding him occasionally to talk.
“Don’t you have plans for New Year’s?”
Cash snorted. “Right.”
Danny grinned. In the whole time he’d known Cash, he’d met two other friends. Both computer nerds, both fellow students, both geeky males. He hadn’t gotten the impression they were bosom buddies, more guys with common interests who passed some boredom together. He’d never seen Cash with a girl, but then, Cash seemed strangely asexual. At least in his own mind. In Danny’s mind, Cash was quite the sexual being, on the receiving end of a number of Danny’s favorite fantasies.
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’ll probably spend the night with my parents. My mom likes to watch the ball drop, then wake up early, make breakfast, and watch the Rose Parade.”
Danny’s eyebrows flew north. “The Rose Parade? I didn’t think people really did that outside of California.”
“She likes to pretend she wants to move there.” Cash shrugged. “And she likes roses.”
Grinning, Danny declined to point out that the parade was a hell of a lot more than just the roses. He had a sister who was a Rose Parade fanatic. Gazing at Cash, he didn’t much think about the next words that came out of his mouth. “You should come with me.”
Cash startled, the jerk of his head dislodging his fringe of hair to obscure his eyes. “What?”
“Yeah!” Danny grinned, aware he was making an invitation he wasn’t allowed to make, but sure he could work it if Cash accepted. Which he wouldn’t. Which didn’t stop Danny from trying. “Sure. Why not?”
“Uh, not invited?”
Danny waved a hand in the air, brushing the objection aside. “I bet I can figure something out. There’ll be a couple hundred people there. What’s one more?”
“Right.” Sarcasm dripped from his lips as Cash pushed himself to his feet. “That’s gonna happen.”
Danny followed him from the room. “Why not?”
“Where do I start? How about: no plane ticket.”
They passed through the hall that separated their bedrooms and into Cash’s room. Or, as Danny liked to think of it, Cash’s lair. Very little natural light ever made it into the shrouded ten-by-fifteen space. The blinds on the single window were always shut and half hidden behind a solid wooden-framed bunk bed. An actual bunk bed. The bottom bunk served as a clothes hamper, although clean clothes were known to hang out with the dirty on occasion. The top bunk sported X-Men sheets underneath a thick black comforter that had seen better days. Two bookshelves were crammed full of books, comics, and action figures, and all sorts of computer paraphernalia cluttered most of the floor except for the corner that served as Cash’s command center. The L-shaped desk supported two monitors and space for at least one laptop on the surface. There were two keyboards, but one was almost never used, as Cash used both monitors for the same main system. A tower and a few backup drives were on the floor and shelves underneath the desk.
Cash dropped into his ultramodern chrome-and-leather swivel chair, jiggled his mouse, and looked like he planned to ignore Danny, but Danny wasn’t having it. “We could probably get you a ticket.”
“The day you leave?”
Danny dug a space out of the—thankfully clean—clothes on the bottom bunk and sat facing Cash’s profile. “Okay, it might be expensive.”
“You think?” Cash ripped off his glasses and stared at the twenty-seven-inch screen two feet in front of his nose.
“I think you just don’t want to go to a gay wedding.”
“There’s that.”
“You admit it?”
Cash spun to face Danny. Danny had to catch his breath at the sight. Cash with his glasses was intriguing. Cash without was just fucking gorgeous. Not that he knew it. He didn’t see the appeal of his almond-shaped eyes with those gold-tinted lashes. He didn’t know the stubble that would never be a beard was a turn-on. He wasn’t aware that his thin, long jaw and sunken cheeks created a whole that Danny longed to explore at length with fingers, lips, and tongue. “There’s no way in hell I’m going.”
Danny knew it was a losing fight, but he fought it anyway. “Would you go, if you could?”
Cash rolled his eyes and turned back to his monitor. “Don’t think so.”
“Why not? This is the wedding of the century.”
He grunted. “Depends on who’s talking.”
“Fine. Still, a shitload of celebrities will be there.”
Cash stared at his screen and shrugged. “I don’t belong there.”
Danny considered his profile. In truth, he was probably right. But Danny had never had much use for “belonging.” He was a much bigger fan of exploring different options. “That’s not a big deal to you, is it?”
“Not really.”
And in Danny’s eyes, that might be Cash’s fatal flaw. Danny would kill to go to such a party. He still couldn’t believe his luck in not only getting to go, but being a paid-for guest. Not every guest’s expenses were all paid. Some had to foot the bill for their rooms at the reserved resort. But since the Indigo Knights were Brent’s pet project, and Brent was best friend and best man to Luc Sloane, the Knights got an all-expense-paid ticket into what many were predicting to be a historical wedding. Danny was so excited, he had a near perpetual hard-on. Too bad he hadn’t been able to coax his roommate to share that with him.
Quit it, he told himself as soon as the idea occurred. You’ll find plenty to fuck at the wedding this weekend. He could hardly wait.
Danny heaved an overly dramatic sigh and stood. He knew when to stop pushing. “Okay. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me when you get back.” Cash’s wry comment followed him out the door.
Chapter Two
“That one?” Danny murmured, taking another surreptitious glance at the hottie in the corner. “The blond in blue?”
“That’s the one,” Noble acknowledged, his gaze on the other side of the room as he brought his drink to his lips.
“How was he?”
Noble might have been drinking his champagne, but his smug smile was fully evident. “Sweet and splendiferous.” The Indigo Knights’ drummer was a study of oddities. Six feet two inches tall, with a mohawk that, when properly spiked, gave him another three inches. Tonight, however, it was styled rather than spiked, so curls flowed in rich, kelly-green waves from his widow’s peak to a few inches below his nape, while each side of his head was smoothly shaven. For Noble, it worked. So did the vivid green irises that no one could possibly believe he was born with. Noble was fond of colored contacts and had them in green, purple, red, and an odd, disturbing gold. His nose was pierced with a ring through the left nostril, and a matching ring secured the tip of his right eyebrow. For the wedding, he wore a suit of a darker, more subtle green than his hair, with a soft chartreuse silk shirt. When shirtless, he displayed a bar through one nipple and a tattoo of a horned toad over the other—as he explained it, “my horny toad.” Surprisingly, he only sported one silver ring in each of his ear lobes and had no other piercings, but he wore a full array of bulky silver rings on his fingers, even when playing. His look was picture-perfect rock star, which Noble definitely was. He could hold
a beat like a metronome but make his drums produce any number of other rhythms while he was doing it.
Danny chuckled and sipped his own champagne. The blond in the dark blue silk shirt and deep purple tie was slim and model perfect, just like Noble liked them. Danny had discovered over the months that he and Noble had similar tastes in men, although Danny tended toward brunets, while Noble definitely had a thing for blonds. Thus far in their relationship, neither of them had hooked up with a redhead. Danny caught sight of a ginger-haired babe with a sexy dark goatee. Perhaps that should be remedied.
The weekend at the Genesis resort was magical in so many ways. Of course there were the wedding festivities that were due to begin any moment, but last night had been a party that had made more than one guest wonder how the wedding itself could ever top it. Drinking, dinner, and dancing, as well as assorted other entertainment, had filled the night and continued through the day. Guests were responsible for room service if they ordered it, and their ski paraphernalia if they chose to try out the slopes, but everything else—including booze—was on the house. Danny could definitely get used to this kind of living.
“So…” Danny kept his eye on the ginger cutie but didn’t pursue just yet. The guests were gathering around a raised platform set in the middle of the largest ballroom, and the wait staff was circulating to make sure everyone had champagne for the big event. An oversized clock on one wall showed it was about forty minutes to midnight. “You taking in the blond again tonight?”
Noble didn’t even glance that way. “No. I’ve already got tonight’s conquest singled out.”
Danny followed Noble’s line of sight to behold yet another blond sitting at the bar. This one was less cute and more handsome and had his eye right back on Noble. “Well, all right, then.”
“And you? Will you be with the CPA again?”
Danny laughed. “He wasn’t a CPA.”
“Are you sure? He looked like an accountant.”
“He didn’t fuck like one.”
“Mmmm. How do you know? You ever fuck an accountant?”
“Have you?”