Bad Influence (11 page)

Fine. Laying low.
That was an understatement right now.

Want to go out?

No, Silver did not. When he’d hit the bed, he’d realized he was tired. The idea of actually falling asleep and staying that way was a sweet promise. If Marco’s car didn’t work, it was three bus transfers to meet him on West Eager Street—and then the same crap back up, assuming there were buses running. No one had told him he couldn’t go out. Jamie’s warning had only extended to skipping out on bail, not being chained up in Mount Washington.

And even if this soft bed in a nice house was just an illusion of safety that Silver shouldn’t learn to count on, it was good enough for right now.

Silver propped himself up on one elbow.
Can’t. No ID. Don’t want to get picked up again.

No club. Party.
Carro bien.

Silver was hesitant to rely on Marco’s description of the car as fine.
Laying low.

Aguafiestas.

Silver wasn’t sure if that was a spell-check disaster or a description of the party being wet, so he sent a question mark back.

Rain on the party. Always.
Marco sent a pouting emoticon.
No go alone.

Silver sighed. He felt like a giant wet blanket, all right. Supposing Gavin’s lawyer got him off, Silver couldn’t hide out in Eli’s spare bedroom for the rest of his life.

He tapped out his answer.
Ok.

Chapter Seven

As soon as they stepped off the elevator, Silver smelled disaster. It wasn’t only the burnt-carpet reek of a meth pipe and some overly pungent sex. There was an overlying reek that raised the hackles on the back of his neck.

If it wouldn’t have been a cliché of epic proportions, he would have leaned down and muttered
I have a bad feeling about this
in Marco’s ear. Silver knew all his friend could see was the gleaming chrome and modernist leather and steel Bauhaus furniture of the loft space, but Silver had been raised by snobs, and it only took a quick glance to tell that Mies Van Der Rohe and Lilly Reich hadn’t been anywhere near the rent-by-the-week living room set. And the clothes were trying a little too hard.

Going to so much effort to sustain a lie was warning enough. When a guy with a rug barely covering his balding scalp threw an arm around each of them and claimed, “I didn’t know Heaven delivered, but you are the answer to my prayers,” Silver figured even Marco would have seen enough to start backing for the door.

Instead, Marco ducked and patted the guy’s arm. “My prayer is to have a Cuba libre. You can help me?” Marco batted his thick-lashed eyes.

Silver rolled his as the guy went to get Marco’s drink. “What the fuck? Did you look at him? You liked him pinching your ass?”

“Free drinks,
cuate
. Not all of them can look like that,
si?
”

“Get your own rum and Coke.” Silver pointed at the bar.

“Aw yeah.” Marco’s accent disappeared under a perfect imitation of a Chesapeake drawl.

Silver grabbed his arm. “If you put it down, get a fresh one, and don’t drink anything someone hands you.”

Marco shook him off. “You are not my brother
.
O mi novio.
Am ‘just your ride’.” He gave Silver a shove. “
Vete a la chingada.
”

Silver wanted to follow him, but the pain and longing that shook Marco’s voice when he said Silver wasn’t his boyfriend kept Silver glued to that spot. He couldn’t be. Not only for Marco, but anyone right now. In fact, Silver couldn’t imagine a scenario where he didn’t end up dying alone. And per Marco’s instructions, Silver would be glad to fuck himself rather than look as pathetic as that future made him feel.

He hoped his expression was more aloof than worried as he leaned against a support beam near the bar. He caught glimpses of Marco’s curly black hair, but his friend was too short to keep a close watch on in the dim light. The next time he spotted him there was cloud of smoke around Marco’s head, but after an initial burst of anxiety, Silver realized it was only a blunt between Marco’s lips.

Weed didn’t worry Silver, the idea of a crystal pipe in Marco’s hands did. And not just because Marco would be too fucked up to drive him home. Silver had seen enough tweaked-out hustlers; he didn’t want to see Marco dropping down that hole. It had never held any allure for Silver. His life was fucked enough without dragging drug addiction into it.

For all Marco’s pretended hood-rat bad-assery, his overbearing brother had seen to it that Marco was about as streetwise as Silver had been when he got off the Greyhound down on Haines Street.

Rather than dealing with a come-on from a guy way older than Quinn and nowhere near as hot, Silver took out his phone and pretended to text. When he realized it had been a good fifteen minutes since he’d caught a glimpse of Marco, Silver was tapping at the keyboard for real.

Despite the streaming ambient music in the main area, Silver would have heard Marco’s antique-car-horn text tone if he was there. His phone was never off.

Silver searched around every partial wall, finding two not-Marco twinks getting felt up—and down—by some creepy guys. On the back deck, Silver spotted a thick neck and gunmetal brush cut above a yellow polo collar. Party like this, that could only be Todd Pike, the producer from the spanking website. Knowing that guy was here doubled the urgency to grab Marco and get the fuck out of here.

When no one answered a pounding on the bathroom door, Silver dug out an old hotel room key he kept in his wallet and used it to push in the cheap door lock.

Marco’s jeans were falling around his hips, shirt up around his neck, as the douchebag who’d greeted them when they walked in licked his way down Marco’s chest.

“Hey, sorry. Gotta take a dump. Like now.” Silver reached for Marco.

Toupee guy scrambled to his feet. “Get the fuck out.”

“Sure, okay. I’ll just do it in the kitchen sink. I think that’s what someone else did. Smells like it.”

“What the hell?” The guy yanked his own pants over his hips and charged out of the bathroom.

Marco blinked, eyes unfocused as Silver grabbed his arm and shook him.

“We have to go. Now.”

Marco pulled free. “No. You run out on the party alone this time. Some
hijo de puta
ex-
novio
make you cry again?
Vete a la mierda.
” Marco shoved Silver toward the door. “I wanna get laid.”

“Do you want to be raped?”

“Not rape when I want it.” Marco draped himself on Silver’s side, planting a wet kiss on his neck.

Like Marco was able to know what he wanted now. Sometimes his brother Timo’s protectiveness did more to risk Marco than it did keep him safe. Silver was sure Marco’s sisters weren’t innocent enough to take drinks from skeezy guys.

Silver peeled Marco off but kept a grip on his shoulder, tipping his chin up to study his face. “What did he give you?”

“Rum.
Amigo
make Cuba Libre
a todo dar
. Not taste the diet.”

“I bet. That’s the same asshole who grabbed our asses when we got off the elevator. You want to fuck him?”

“He is…nice.”

“He’s a…” Silver searched for one of Marco’s favorite insults, “
…pendejo.
” Silver dragged Marco out of the bathroom. “Look around. Fifteen minutes ago, was there anyone here remotely hot?”

“Mmmm. I get to pick?” Marco cuddled up against Silver’s side.

Jesus. Even fresh out of New Freedom, Silver hadn’t been this stupid. “Marco. He drugged you. You ever hear of a roofie?”

Marco looked at him blankly.

Senorita Kaminski’s Spanish class had never covered date rape drugs on a vocab sheet. Maybe she saved it for senior year.

“Liquid X,” Silver explained.

Marco smiled. “
Si. Bueno.
”

“No. It’s bad. Gimme your keys. I’ll take you home.”

“No.
Arrecho.
” Marco wrapped his arms around a support post.

“Huh?” Senorita Kaminski should have spent more time on the slang and less on the conjugations. Sure as fuck would have come in handy right about now.

“
Arrecho.
” Marco whined. “Need to come.
Que necesito para ser agarrado.
” The grind of his hips against the beam was all the context Silver needed for translation.

Fear and desperation were tying knots in Silver’s intestines. He could make it out of here no problem, but he couldn’t leave Marco.

Silver placed a soft kiss behind Marco’s ear. “Okay. You come with me.” Kissing him again, Silver fished Marco’s keys from his jeans. “And I’ll blow you when we get there.”

“
Realmente?
”

“Yup.” Silver threaded him through a few predators lurking near the door.

One of them was Pike. He might have been a bottom feeder, but he had charm, and even sober, Marco might fall for a play.

“Behave now,” Silver murmured when Marco winked at the
Bad Boys Real Tears
producer. Pike might decide Marco would rather be here. And Silver didn’t know if he could fix that mess.

Marco came to a halt, eyeing the stretch of yellow polyester across Pike’s shoulders. “
¿Tu prometes?
” He demanded of Silver. “
Besa
me.”

Silver made not-kissing an art form in his hustling days. Kissing still felt more intimate than sex. Avoiding it hadn’t been difficult. That wasn’t what they wanted his mouth for. Hating himself, he turned Marco’s face toward him and kissed him.

Marco’s tongue drew his in, hungry, desperate. Silver doled out calculated encouragement, firm pressure, a few sweeps of his tongue between Marco’s lips, and a hand stroking his back.

At last, Marco giggled and relaxed. “
Andando.
” He grabbed Silver’s hand and pulled him toward the elevator.

Marco was still handsy in the car, but as they got closer to the address Silver remembered from their last fucked-up car trip, he subsided. When Silver stopped the car on the street in front of the row house, Marco was snoring. He’d probably be safe enough in the locked car—his brother would come out looking for him in a few minutes—but Silver couldn’t leave him like that. Even if Marco started yammering about the blow job Silver supposedly owed him.

He came around to the passenger side and tried to shake Marco awake. The way Marco’s head flopped set off a three-alarm fire under Silver’s rib cage. He lightly slapped Marco’s face.

“Hey, c’mon. I don’t want to have to go get your brother. I don’t even know which is the right house.”

Marco’s eyes moved under his lids but didn’t open.

Silver bounced on the balls of his feet, the timer in his head ticking down toward disaster. “Marco.” He leaned in and whispered in Marco’s ear, letting his lips and breath tease the skin. “I’m going to get off without you if you don’t wake up.”

“Mmmm.” Marco made that purring sound again, hand wrapping around Silver’s neck. “Silverrrrrr.
Argénteo.
” Marco’s fingers played with the hair that covered the collar of Silver’s shirt.

The skin there prickled in warning, but he couldn’t extract himself in time. A rough arm yanked him back.

“What the hell are you doing to him?
Puto.
”

It wasn’t the first time Silver had been called a whore, and he was glad the accompanying shove moved him out of range of the gob of spit Marco’s brother aimed at him.

“No, Timo,” Marco whined. What followed was some extremely rapid exchange of Spanish that Silver only caught a few words of. Unfortunately, one of those words was
novio
. And Silver had a feeling that he was being labeled the boyfriend in question. Whore yes, boyfriend no.

Timo spun around, anger and disgust twisting his face, and Silver remembered Marco telling him that Timo was still on parole.

Well, Marco was out of the car now. Silver was done. He put his hands up and took another step back.

“I’m not his, uh,
novio
. I swear. I just drove him home.”

Marco leaned against his brother. “Not drunk. Drugs.”

Silver took another hasty step back, hoping Marco’s dead weight would slow Timo down if he decided to eliminate the blond part of his problem. He wouldn’t drop his brother onto the sidewalk, would he?

“I didn’t drug him. He was drinking soda. At a party. Someone put something in it. I saw he was messed up so I got him home safe.”

“He safed me.
Mi argénteo novio.
”

“Not his boyfriend,” Silver repeated when it seemed like Timo was thinking that dropping his queer brother to the cement so he could beat the fuck out of the guy who’d corrupted him was a good plan. “He’s only fucked up. He’ll be fine in the morning.” Christ, and he’d thought his own coming out had been a shitstorm.

“No,” Marco said, and there followed another stream of Spanish and English, and of course the one thing Silver heard as loud as a fart in church was “blow job”.

At least that focused all Timo’s attention on Marco again. A female came out of one of the doors and joined in. Curtains were twitching. An audience. Timo couldn’t hurt Marco now, Silver told himself as he backed away.

He was getting ready to kick it into another gear when Timo yelled in barely accented, perfectly understandable English. “Hey, you. Not-his-boyfriend. I see you around him again, I’ll kill you.”