by Clancy Nacht
Lance nodded. What sort of business had Mikey been in? He needed to know more, things Kate couldn’t tell him. “Thank you for talking to me. I’ll pull a few strings here and see what I can find out.”
“Just keep me in the loop.” She gave him a sad smile. Then she tilted her head. “Hey, do I know you?”
“I live in Austin... Maybe you’ve seen me there.”
“No, I mean… Lance Gatsby. Hey, you’re that PR guy for Senator Swardswhatever, right? Am I right? Wow, Mikey was dating some high class men, huh?”
Lance’s face felt hot. “I need to get back to things. I’ll let you know, all right?”
“All right. Night.”
Lance quit Skype and frowned, not sure what to do. On the bright side, Mikey’s shady job might’ve gotten him killed rather than Elliot’s jealousy. On the other hand, Lance’s uncertainty left him upset enough to duck his head out of his room and tell security he had a stomach bug and would see Elliot in the morning.
Relief filled Lance. The night was over. He’d worry about the Elliot situation tomorrow.
A long, hot shower helped wash away the grime and weirdness. Lance’s pale skin turned bright red under the unending supply of hotel water. He stayed in long after he’d lobstered and pruned, then emerged in a fluffy terrycloth robe to find Elliot sitting on his bed.
Elliot held out a can of ginger ale with a straw bobbing from the opening. “Nerves?”
Lance closed his eyes to steady himself. It was kind of sweet that Elliot, potential leader of the free world, sat around waiting for him with a can of ginger ale, but this was terribly invasive. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Come here.” Elliot patted the spot next to him. “When I was young and my tummy got sour, my mom gave me ginger ale and rubbed my stomach.”
Lance stared, contrasting the jealous rage with the sweetness. The security guards outside were supposedly to keep people out, but sometimes it felt like they were keeping Lance in.
“What’s wrong? I’m sorry about…” Elliot gestured ineloquently. “I was out of line. The pressure’s getting to me, I guess. I’ll be honest; I didn’t expect to be the frontrunner. Part of me isn’t sure I even want to be.”
“Yeah.” Lance gave in and sat next to Elliot. “I didn’t expect this much scrutiny.” That was true and worrisome for other reasons, but Lance was decidedly not going to think about that.
Elliot scooted over and eased Lance down onto the mattress. As promised, Elliot undid Lance’s robe and stroked his belly. “It’s because of you, you know. Before I met you, I dreamed of the White House, but it was a boy’s dream. I wanted my name out there. I wanted the power. Now I’m inspired. I see how I could make a difference in people’s lives.”
Lance gazed up at him. “That’s all you. I don’t tell you what to say.”
“I know you don’t think you do, but you do. You challenge me and tease me. You’re the reason everyone’s calling me a RINO.” Elliot leaned down to press a gentle kiss to Lance’s lips, then sat back to continue his stroking.
“A what?”
“Republican in Name Only. I’m not conservative enough.”
“There are worse things to be called.” Lance stretched out, relaxing into the touches. Like this, Elliot seemed so soft, not like the sort of person who’d order someone killed. “You’re only slightly left of St. Reagan on most issues.”
“Yeah, seems like the Republican party has radicalized itself into exhaustion finally. That said, I’ll be pushing on guns pretty hard.”
“What, like a chicken in every pot and two guns per adult?” Lance smirked.
“People like guns. I like guns.” Elliot tickled Lance’s side playfully. “Guns are cool.”
Lance sighed. “And when children are caught in the crossfire of everyone’s cool toys?”
Elliot stopped rubbing and slipped from the bed. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate.” Lance pulled his robe closed and frowned. “That’s what I don’t get. For a political party that calls itself pro-life, it gets pretty callous when it comes to guns.”
“We can’t base every law on who might be caught in crossfire, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to live in a world where everything is childproofed. Children are used as wedges on multiple fronts, but it’s intellectually dishonest on both sides, isn’t it?” Elliot grinned down at Lance. “See? I listen to you.”
“Fuck. You do.” Lance sat up and slid his hands under Elliot’s suit jacket and pulled him closer. “Hey, congratulations, by the way.”
Elliot cupped Lance’s face and stroked his cheeks. “Thank you. Anyway, I know it was rude of me to intrude when you were asking for a break.”
Lance closed his eyes and stroked Elliot’s back. The bulge at Lance’s chin level was noticeable, but Elliot didn’t make any moves. “It was.”
“I’m sorry. I know I was out of line this week. I’ve never cared for or wanted anyone as much as I do you. I’m not dealing with it well; I can only beg you to forgive me.” Elliot knelt on the floor so that they were face-to-face again. “I’ve fallen in love with you, Lance. It couldn’t come at a worse time for me or probably for you, but there it is.”
Lance froze. Was he terrified or happy? His stomach fluttered. He’d never heard those words said to him, not in such seriousness.
He accepted and returned Elliot’s kiss, letting the smell of Elliot’s cologne, the taste of champagne envelop him as Lance sank back onto the bed.
Elliot was in love with him. Elliot was going mad with it.
It was clearly not a healthy love, and with the power Elliot was accruing, there was a real edge of danger to his devotion. This could go so wrong for Lance. So, so wrong. He could be Mikey someday—fucked, strangled, face down in the water, nothing but minnows and water plants for company as he waited for someone to discover him.
That’s how he felt now, underwater, sunk deep beneath this powerful man who practically owned him already. Lance hadn’t planned to let Elliot fuck him, but here Lance was, sliding Elliot’s clothes off, revealing his shoulders as Elliot took down his pants.
Lance rolled back, hooking his legs over Elliot’s shoulders as Elliot rubbed lube into Lance’s body, his fingers teasing, pushing, thrilling him. And then Elliot was inside him, and Lance clung, adrift in his emotions, brought back to reality with every thrust. His legs burned as he matched each movement, twisting and flexing as Elliot gasped above him.
Reaching between them, Lance pulled his cock as sweat prickled from every pore. The deep discomfort of fucking slowly evolved into the satisfaction of being stretched, of containing Elliot—this man, this beautiful man, who was in love with Lance.
Shame flooded Lance. He harbored such doubts about Elliot, still thought this man might have ordered Mikey dead. There was something thrilling about that idea, as if such psychotic behavior might be love or obsession. It made Lance hard.
Elliot’s thrusts grew wild and erratic as he came. Lance jerked himself harder, grinding his teeth as he chased his orgasm. It shook from deep within him, flexing through his balls as he finally released onto his chest. He squeezed Elliot in a sick imitation of how hard Mikey might have been strangled. He didn’t know why, maybe he thought he could reverse the course of his waning feelings for Elliot.
Once his orgasm subsided, he let his body go limp against the bed while Elliot kissed him. “I love you. No matter what, I’m going to keep you.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Lance woke alone to the sound of the phone’s alarm. He took a quick shower, dressed, and packed his bags. In under twenty minutes, he was ready to go. There was supposed to be breakfast on the bus, but he made coffee in the room’s tiny coffeemaker and filled the portable cup.
He dragged his bags after him down the hall, nodding to the security people who closed in behind him, letting Lance know he was the last on this floor to leave. Or had been the only person on that floor.
The cost must’ve been crazy, but then, everythin
g about the situation was crazy.
Two guards accompanied Lance on the elevator and then out through the lobby to where the bus was rumbling. Bellhops helped load the big bags. Lance took his laptop from his luggage and let them take the rest. It wasn’t until he was on board that he saw Jeff, sitting not far from Lance’s usual seat.
“Jeff?”
Jeff grinned, but he tilted his head slightly. “Yeah. I’m coming along to help you. Corey said you asked for me?”
“Oh.” Lance exhaled slowly. He’d asked no such thing. He didn’t need help. Lance had little actual work, and what he was really doing Corey couldn’t want outsourced.
No, this kid—gay, straight, bi, whatever—was going to be presented as Lance’s partner. A distraction for the media. “Right, of course. Sorry. It’s so early.”
Lance held up his cup of coffee with a weak smile. “Gotta have a few of these before I’m functional. So great. Glad to have you on board.”
He sat next to Jeff and pulled out his laptop. The bus had WiFi, and Lance planned to catch up on as much news as he could along the way.
“This is really exciting,” Jeff confided. “So I’ll start collating the returns versus what issues he’s highlighted, see if I can get some of those basic facts put together about what pushed him over the edge.”
Jeff’s face was puffy, probably from drinking too much and sleeping too little. Lance gave him two hours before he started snoozing.
“Sounds good.” Lance put in his earbuds, a clear signal the conversation was over.
The bus’s doors slammed shut, and the driver got them underway. Soon New Hampshire would be behind them.
Though Lance tried to concentrate on the news, the talking heads seemed to just move their mouths as he wondered about the future. If Elliot had Mikey killed for a one-night trick, how was he going to react to Jeff being presented as Lance’s lover?
✽ ✽ ✽
The trip to South Carolina took around sixteen hours. Since they’d gotten up at six and stopped briefly to grab food and stretch their legs, it would be midnight by the time they got to the hotel.
Lance had napped in the early afternoon, figuring that would be a good break between catching up on the overnight news and watching early reports tracking Elliot’s gains and losses from the overnight polling data analysis. The WiFi didn’t always hold strong on the bus. Each time it went out, staffers groaned, which would wake Jeff long enough to get a couple more things done.
At least he didn’t get car sick.
In the evening, Lance started to worry. There wasn’t nearly as much coverage about Elliot as he expected, which meant either that the press wasn’t covering him or that Elliot wasn’t performing well. Or at all.
At ten, he’d received a text from Elliot. “Where are you?”
“A couple hours out from you.”
Then nothing.
Next to him, Jeff was reading and making notes. Across from them sat a female staffer whose name kept eluding him, but she smiled, pointed at Jeff, and gave Lance the thumbs up. Lance grinned back weakly. He should put on more of a show, but it creeped him out that Jeff wasn’t, as far as Lance knew, in on it.
Jeff turned to smile at Lance. “Something about road trips always knocks me out. My family took them all the time when I was a kid, and there was nothing to do but sleep. I guess it’s my Pavlovian response. Did you take many road trips?”
“With my family? No.” Lance stared hard at his computer, willing the conversation to turn.
“You didn’t miss much. A bunch of siblings arguing, smell of tuna going bad, light rock or talk radio…”
Lance shrugged. “I don’t have siblings.”
“No siblings?” Jeff sounded as if that were a singular tragedy, the way people with siblings often did, just before it occurred to them how little they enjoyed having siblings. “That’s lucky.”
Lucky for them.
Lance smiled wanly and shrugged.
“You weren’t lonely?”
Lance looked up at the ceiling. Two more hours at least. He liked Jeff better when he was asleep. “Loneliness is the condition of childhood.”
There, he left it philosophical.
“I wish I’d gotten to be lonely once in a while.” Jeff laughed. “I’m the youngest of four boys. They said Mom cried for three days that I wasn’t a girl.”
“Maybe in her case, loneliness is the condition of motherhood.” Lance tilted his head and shrugged.
“What about your mother?”
These were normal questions that normal people could answer with ease. Lance preferred the nostalgic recollections of uncomplicated people to anything his memory could conjure. This, at least, was a simple enough answer. “I never knew her very well.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Lance nodded and let him think what he would.
“So just you and your dad?”
“For a while.” Lance grabbed his earbuds and gave Jeff a weak smile.
Jeff offered a quick nod and wave and resumed his work.
By the time the bus stopped outside of the hotel, Lance had checked his phone countless times for more word from Elliot or anyone. Elliot had been absent from the evening news while other candidates had at least a flash of screen time. So Lance wasn’t entirely surprised by Susan standing outside of the bus when he exited.
She grabbed his arm. “Security will bring your bags up. Come with me.”
Jeff followed a few steps until Lance waved him off.
“Thought you might want to get a drink later?”
Lance was too far away to respond without shouting, but he looked pointedly at his watch and shook his head. A drink in the middle of the night sounded a lot like a booty call, though maybe Jeff wasn’t aware of that.
But how could he not be aware? He was young, but he wasn’t twelve.
Susan dragged Lance through the ice-cold lobby. Her heels clicked on the marble as they went straight for the bank of elevators. She leaned in close as she pressed the call button. “Someone texted him a picture of you and Jeff asleep like puppies on the bus.”
“Corey must’ve been thrilled.”
The look she gave Lance chastened him. “I’ve never seen him like this, Lance. Never.”
By the look in her eyes, Elliot must have raged and that must’ve been difficult for her to see.
The elevator doors rolled open. Lance trailed Susan as she slipped her key card into the reader and punched the button for one of the top floors.
He leaned against the wall of the cabin, not sure what he was meant to do about Elliot’s rage. He thought of Mikey. Somehow Lance could no longer differentiate between their faces and physiques, instead picturing Elliot in that lake.
“I’m sorry. This is a lot, isn’t it?” Susan wrapped her arms around Lance, and he hugged her back.
It was strange to be so close to her. She’d gone from initially frosty to touchy-feely. Lance would like to pretend that she cared about him, and maybe she’d grown to, or perhaps it was more expedient to keep Lance here.
Susan had her eyes on the prize to have committed to this in the first place. He couldn’t ignore her motives in this gambit, but at the moment, Lance had few people he could confide in. In that way, perhaps they could forge a fragile truce.
“I’ve never… I don’t know how to deal with this.” Any hint of possessiveness usually made Lance run like the wind. This time he wasn’t sure he could, even if he wanted to.
She pulled back to look into Lance’s eyes. “I was jealous before. Your relationship with him seemed romantic, I guess. It seemed like he was giving you all of this passion that I’d never gotten.”
Lance pushed her hair back from her face and gazed down sadly at her. “And now?”
She tucked her head under his chin. “He’s self-destructing.”
That was the crux of it. Like him or not, Susan knew that they needed Lance to keep Elliot on course.
The elevator rang, and the doors rolled op
en. Lance led the way down the hall.
Guy ducked his head out of one of the rooms and pointed to his eyes and then to Lance, which Lance assumed was meant to be a comforting gesture. Great, he was being watched. All it did was ratchet his dread a notch higher.
Susan slipped ahead of him and opened the door to the suite.
Within, Corey overwhelmed a club chair on one end of the room, while Elliot sat alone on a uncomfortable looking couch. His back was to Lance, and he was hunched over, facing a wide-screen television. The sound was off, but the logo at the bottom of the screen indicated CNN.
He looked over his shoulder at Lance and then turned away again. “Corey told me Jeff wasn’t your doing.”
Lance looked at Susan, then slid his computer bag off his shoulder. She took it but didn’t enter the room.
“No, having him come along wasn’t my idea, but it’s smart.” Lance swept past Corey and took a seat next to Elliot. “Jeff says he’s not gay anyway, so…”
Elliot snorted. “Yeah, neither am I. I see how he looks at you.”
“You think everyone looks at me that way.”
Had Jeff? Lance hadn’t noticed, he hadn’t cared.
Lance placed his hand on Elliot’s back tentatively. Elliot set the bottle of whiskey he’d been holding onto the coffee table and cuddled under Lance’s outstretched arm.
Lance kissed the top of Elliot’s head. “How do I look at him?”
Elliot sighed contentedly. “You don’t.”
“So there you go.”
“That picture of you two, though…”
Lance squeezed Elliot. “I was dreaming of you.” He didn’t remember what he’d dreamed, but that hardly seemed politic to mention. If he had dreamed of Elliot, it might’ve been of him in the lake, or being strangled by him. Elliot’s jealousy was becoming more of a reality by the day.
“When we go to Nevada, you’re coming on the plane with me.”
The chair complained as Corey moved forward. “If we go to Nevada. We can’t afford to take a whole day off like this, Elliot.”
Elliot waved a drunken hand in Corey’s direction. “We’ll pick up tomorrow. It’s fine. It’ll be fine.”