Cover Up

by L. A. Witt

  “I can’t imagine there’s enough money in the world to make that kind of crap bearable.”

  “No kidding.” Lucas flopped onto the couch like a sack of potatoes. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.” Nate sat down beside him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “We, uh, don’t have to fuck if you’re not feeling up to it.”

  Lucas met his gaze. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!” Nate pressed a long kiss to Lucas’s forehead. “My God. You’re obviously wiped out. If we tried to fuck now, you’d just be miserable. It wouldn’t be fun for either of us, you know?”

  Closing his eyes, Lucas sighed. “I’m sorry. I should’ve just gone home and gone to sleep instead of—”

  “You can sleep here.” Nate ran his fingers through Lucas’s hair. “Sex isn’t the price of admission to be in the same room.”

  Lucas searched his eyes. “But I thought this was your rebound thing. Like we were just—”

  “We don’t have to be screwing every time we see each other.” I like you. I like . . . this. I’d rather have you here than not.

  Lucas cocked his head. “But that’s literally what we’re doing—hooking up.”

  “I know.” Nate slid a hand up Lucas’s thigh. “But you said we’re making our own rules, right?”

  “Yeah?”

  “So, does there have to be a rule that says we’re obligated to get each other off any time we’re in the same room?”

  Lucas pursed his lips. “Well, when you put it like that . . .” Slowly, he started to relax. “Okay. Yeah, that’s . . .” He swallowed, and shyly met Nate’s eyes. “So, this is the ‘friends’ side of friends with benefits, right?”

  “You tell me—I’ve never done this before.”

  Lucas laughed and rested a hand on Nate’s knee. “Guess there’s no harm in it.” He paused, then sheepishly added, “Sorry, though. After we’ve been sexting back and forth all day, I—”

  Nate kissed him on the mouth to silence him. “Relax. We’ll make up for it when we’re both well-rested.” He squeezed Lucas’s leg. “So what exactly do you do at your jobs, anyway?”

  Lucas sighed. “Mostly get yelled at for telling people they fucked up their computers.”

  “Ah.” Nate laughed. “Tech support.”

  “Yep.” Lucas made a face. “Not really my favorite way to spend time, but it’s a paycheck.” He closed his eyes and pushed out a long, tired breath. “So I work in a call center at one company, and I’m one of three techs at another office.”

  “They don’t mind you working for two different places?”

  “Nah. They’re not direct competitors. One’s a database software designer—that’s the call center—and the other produces peripheral hardware.”

  “So, printers and things like that?”

  Lucas nodded. “Basically I spend one shift asking if people have tried rebooting their machines and the other asking if everything is plugged in.”

  Nate chuckled. “And somehow you don’t reach through the phone and choke people?”

  “Unfortunately, modern technology has only brought us so far.” Lucas cut his eyes toward Nate. “Unless your employer is hiding some sort of secret tech from Area 51 that might help?”

  Showing his palms, Nate shook his head. “If they are, I don’t know about it. I’m afraid my security clearance doesn’t go quite that high.”

  “Damn it. So much for my plan to fuck all those secrets out of you.”

  Nate snorted as he pulled Lucas a little closer. “You’re welcome to try, though.”

  “Oh, I will. But I’m disappointed I won’t be able to get the Roswell autopsy or something for my efforts.”

  Their eyes locked, and they both laughed. Lucas tucked his head under Nate’s chin, and though this was a far cry from what Nate had anticipated, it was nice. He liked the easy conversation. The playful banter that went from flirty to ridiculous and back. He liked how much they touched even when they weren’t fooling around.

  “You want me to put on a movie or something?” he asked after a while.

  “Nah.” Lucas sat up and stretched. “I’ll probably fall asleep on you before the opening credits are done.”

  “I won’t be too far behind, honestly.” Nate yawned. “Want to just call it a night?”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Not at all.” Nate kissed him softly. Then they got up and headed to the bedroom. As they got ready to turn in, Nate had to admit this was a little weird. It was weirdly domestic to be getting into bed next to Lucas without the lingering tingles and aches from a recent fuck. Not bad. Just weird. Different. Unexpected. Kind of . . . nice, really.

  In minutes, Lucas was out cold, snoring softly on Nate’s shoulder. Nate kissed his forehead. He had no idea what this was. What exactly they were doing. This crossed a line beyond just fucking each other senseless, but . . . that didn’t seem like a bad thing. Especially since Lucas was the one to say, “Hey, the mind is willing but the body is weak tonight.” It made Nate feel a hell of a lot better about the possibility of the same thing happening to him. He wasn’t exactly over the hill, but he wasn’t as young as Lucas, either. If a night came along where Nate just didn’t have it in him, at least now he didn’t have to worry that Lucas would decide he couldn’t keep up and take off in search of someone with more stamina.

  And above all, this felt a hell of a lot better than losing his mind over Caleb or going crazy in an empty house.

  As far as he was concerned, that made it perfect.

  Chapter 10

  “Have you restarted your computer since this problem—”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake.” The man on the other end of the line gave an annoyed huff. “That’s what you people always say to do. There’s something obviously wrong here. Now fix it.”

  Lucas rolled his eyes. Thank God he could sketch while he was on the phone, or he’d have reached through his headset and strangled someone by now. He focused harder on shading the wings of the pegasus he’d nearly finished. “The symptoms you’re describing can often be resolved by a simple reboot. If that doesn’t work, we can try uninstalling and reinstalling your browser.”

  “All right. Fine.” Something slammed in the background. Lucas didn’t ask. The man grumbled, “We’ll restart it, and then you can actually do your damn job.”

  Lucas smiled as he said, “I’ll be happy to help.”

  There was silence on the line for a moment. Lucas kept on sketching, and from the impatient breathing on the other end, he guessed the machine was still rebooting.

  “For God’s sake,” the guy muttered. “Now it wants to do updates.”

  Lucas pressed his lips together until he was sure he wouldn’t let a laugh slip past. “No problem, sir. Just let me know when—”

  A heavy sigh cut him off, but the guy didn’t speak.

  From two cubicles over, Lucas could hear Debbie trying to get a word in edgewise. He couldn’t hear the person she was talking to, but her clipped, frustrated-sounding sentences filled in the blanks well enough. The client was probably screaming at her, calling her an idiot, demanding to speak to her boss so he could get her fired—all the usual abuse, plus the bonus misogyny that all the female techs experienced.

  “Sir,” she said calmly, “I’d be happy to transfer you to one of my male colleagues, but I—” Pause. “All right. I’m transferring you now.” She paused again, then called out, “Anybody want to play dumb with a sexist?”

  “Over here,” one of the guys replied. A second later, his phone rang. “This is Chet. How can I help you?” Pause. Then Chet sucked in a breath. “Ooh, that’s beyond my expertise. You’re going to want to talk to Debbie about—” Pause. “Yeah, I have no idea. I’m new here. But Debbie is our resident expert, so if you want to talk to her again—”

  Lucas actually had to mute his headset and clap a hand over his mouth so his own client wouldn’t hear him laughing. Everyone in the call center hated when assholes deman
ded to talk to a man, so this had become an ongoing game. Chet was hardly new here; he’d trained Lucas, and he’d been here almost as long as Debbie. But if a caller wanted to be a dick just because Debbie was a woman, well . . . game on. Techies had to stay sane somehow.

  At the other end of his call, the man sighed again. “Finally. Okay. Now let me just . . . huh.”

  Lucas unmuted the headset and forced all traces of amusement out of his voice. “How is it running now?”

  Silence. Long, long silence. Then, “It, um, seems to be okay now.” Pause. “But when it starts again, I’ll be on the phone with you people, and there’d better be an actual solution!”

  “We’re always happy to help. If—”

  The line went dead. Of course.

  As soon as the call was disconnected, the phone rang again.

  “DigiBase technical support. This is Lucas. How may I assist you?”

  “Yeah, hi. My database keeps locking up when I try to enter a new order.”

  “Okay,” Lucas said, furrowing his brow over the Pegasus’s nearly finished wing. “Have you restarted your computer since this problem began?”

  And there it was—the annoyed sigh. “Don’t you think I’ve tried that?”

  “Just part of troubleshooting, ma’am. If you’ve already tried that, and it didn’t work, then—”

  “Well, actually. Maybe I should try it again. Just, you know, to be sure. Hold on.”

  Lucas smothered a chuckle. While the customer waited for her computer to reboot, he continued with the Pegasus’s wing. The drawing was coming along nicely. Whether anyone would ever want it as a tattoo, he couldn’t say for sure, but it would be a solid addition to his portfolio. And hell, he could always put it up on the wall. Not everything he drew needed to go on someone’s skin.

  His eyes flicked toward a hoof he’d had to draw and redraw several times. Most of the rejected pencil lines were gone, but a few traces lingered that he’d have to take care of later.

  You couldn’t erase a tattoo. There was no going back and redoing a line. How some artists could freehand a tattoo, he’d never know—even with a stencil, he was scared shitless about making a mistake.

  About making another mistake, he thought with a queasy feeling.

  Beside his keyboard, his phone buzzed and lit up with a text from Nate.

  Hey, just got here.

  Lucas’s heart fluttered. It was a Saturday, so Nate wasn’t flying, and he’d offered to bring lunch while Lucas was working. Grinning to himself, Lucas hit the button to log off the call system. Though his current call stayed connected, once he was done, the phone wouldn’t ring again until he’d logged back in.

  The call finally wrapped up after the reboot fixed the idiot’s issue, so Lucas set his messenger status to Lunch and left his desk. On the way down the hall to the lobby, he questioned for the millionth time if this was a good idea. It was hard to say exactly how this fit into the rules of being friends with benefits, but as he’d told Nate—and reminded himself a thousand times—they were making up the rules as they went along. Eating takeout under grungy fluorescent lights while being serenaded by buzzing vending machines hardly catapulted them from fuck buddies to boyfriends.

  And besides, when Nate brought him food, that was usually enough to give Lucas the energy he needed to get through the rest of his shift and be running on all eight cylinders when they were finally in bed later on. So it was hardly a romantic dinner—more like refueling so they could fuck each other senseless in a few hours.

  Nate waited in the lobby just outside the secure door, and smiled when he saw Lucas. In his hand, he had a bag from one of the fast-food places on the base; he’d insisted their teriyaki bowls were the best to be found in Virginia Beach, and Lucas had been willing to give them a shot.

  “I promise,” Nate said on their way into the lunchroom, “you will not be disappointed.”

  “Uh-huh. We’ll see.” Lucas tried to sound truly skeptical, but he failed miserably. He was pretty easy when it came to food, and just the fact that Nate had brought him something and wanted to eat with him was enough to make even mediocre food sound good.

  The lunchroom was almost deserted. On weekends, only tech support worked, so the place wouldn’t be crowded with everyone from marketing, accounting, and customer service. Fine by him.

  Nate unpacked the contents of the bags onto the table. “Okay, so this is their chicken and vegetables with rice.” He pushed a Styrofoam bowl toward Lucas. “It’s definitely their best.”

  Lucas’s mouth watered. He hadn’t even realized how hungry he was until now. When he popped off the fogged-up clear plastic lid, the smell of teriyaki and chicken made his stomach growl. “Well, it definitely smells good.” He freed a plastic fork from a wrapper, speared a piece of chicken, and took a bite. “Oh. Wow. Holy shit.”

  Nate grinned expectantly. “Good, huh?”

  “Uh-huh. This is amazing.” He had no idea how in the world such flawless teriyaki—not too sweet, not too dry—could come out of a Styrofoam bowl, but he wasn’t arguing. “Please tell me they have a location I can get to without base access.”

  “Nope. Sorry.”

  “Damn it.”

  Nate chuckled. “So what are you doing in here on a Saturday? I thought you were usually at the tattoo shop on the weekends.”

  “I am.” Lucas wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “But sometimes we’re short bodies here, so I get scheduled on the weekends. Which is probably good, since this is when the shop gets most of its walk-ins.”

  Nate cocked his head. “But don’t you want to be there for the walk-ins?”

  Lucas sighed. “In theory. I’m just still . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “This about the tattoo that got fucked up?”

  Wincing, Lucas nodded.

  Nate watched him silently for a moment. “What exactly happened with that, anyway?”

  Lucas took a deep breath. “The short answer is that I second-guessed myself and should’ve stuck to the stencil. I am not, and will never be, an artist who can tattoo freehand. I mean, shading is one thing, but lines?” He whistled and shook his head. “No. Stencil, all the way.”

  Nate nodded without speaking, as if to say, Go on.

  “The thing is, when you’re sketching, it’s on a flat surface. The body has contours. That’s why I trace tattoos before I cover them up—so I’m absolutely sure of the dimensions. This wasn’t a cover-up, though. It was a custom sketch, and when I put it on her skin, it looked . . . I don’t know, off. It was a hawk, and the wings looked too straight instead of curving a little like they’re supposed to.”

  He paused to take another bite of the insanely delicious teriyaki. Even though shame and embarrassment had made his mouth go dry, the food still tasted excellent. That said a lot about the place.

  After a swig of soda, he went on. “Instead of rejigging the stencil or something, I decided I could improvise a little and correct it on her skin instead of doing it on paper first.” His gut churned just thinking about it. “It was a fairly minor change, so I figured it would be fine. It . . . wasn’t. So now this poor lady is stuck with this stubby-winged hawk that looks like something in a funhouse mirror.” Lucas covered his face and groaned before dropping his hands into his lap. “And she won’t let me fix it, either. Which I totally understand, but . . .”

  Nate grimaced. “I can see how that would shake your confidence.”

  “Yeah.” Lucas dragged a piece of carrot through some sauce but suddenly didn’t feel very enthused about eating it.

  “There’s no shame in it, you know,” Nate said softly. “Losing your confidence after a mistake.”

  Lucas put the carrot down. “How do you get it back, though?”

  “Get back on the horse that threw you. Not much else you can do.”

  Lucas chewed his lip.

  “Listen.” Nate reached across the table and put a hand on Lucas’s arm. “I’m not talking out my ass here. Fuckups happen in my job t
oo, and believe me, they can screw with your confidence.” He paused as removed his hand. “In fact, a couple of years ago, when we were landing on a carrier, Jon misjudged the pitch of the flight deck. We still landed okay but came down a lot harder than we should have.” Nate gestured at his cheek. “I actually snapped my teeth together and cracked a tooth.”

  Lucas blinked. “Wow. How hard did he land?”

  “Pretty fucking hard. And he was a wreck for a long time after that because he knew that if he’d miscalculated by much more, he could’ve killed us both, not to mention someone on the deck.”

  “Wow.” Lucas looked down at his food. “I guess on the bright side, if I fuck up, I’m not going to get anyone killed.”

  “No, you’re not. And given your particular specialty as a tattoo artist, you’ve got the means and the technique to fix your mistakes.”

  Lucas met his gaze, and the sincerity in Nate’s eyes was unmistakable. “Thanks,” he whispered.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  The silence threatened to get uncomfortable. Lucas cleared his throat as he chased a piece of chicken around the bowl with his fork. “So what are you doing with your evening after this?”

  “Besides fireproofing my bedroom so we don’t burn the place down later?” Nate winked.

  Squirming in his seat, Lucas said, “Yeah. Besides that.”

  “Don’t know. Might watch a movie.”

  “Must be nice,” Lucas muttered.

  Nate grimaced sympathetically and let his knee brush Lucas’s under the table. “If it’s any consolation, I’m going to be losing my mind the whole time because I know you’re coming over.”

  “And there goes my concentration for the rest of my shift.”

  “Sorry.” Nate sounded anything but.

  They both chuckled and continued eating.

  Now Lucas couldn’t wait to get to Nate’s place tonight. No one else was turning his head these days, but Nate effortlessly turned his insides to liquid even when they were just flirting or sexting. He tried not to think about what that might mean, or if it meant anything at all beyond This guy pushes all my buttons and I can’t get enough.