Bad Influence (14 page)

The house was too quiet. Eli was off on a photo shoot with Nate, so that distraction was off the table. Not getting any texts from Marco suggested that he’d lost custody of his phone, which wouldn’t be the first time. Timo treated him like he was twelve instead of someone going to college. Every time Silver thought of texting him, he worried that he’d be making things worse.

The sound of Nate’s scooter made Silver ridiculously glad Eli was back, even if he had to put up with Nate’s attitude.

He hauled the science workbook onto his lap again, opened it and muttered, “Hey,” when Eli came in.

“Hey.” Eli’s answer was distracted. Come to think of it, Eli hadn’t even bothered to ask how the lesson had gone yesterday.

Silver thought he’d find Eli in the kitchen, but it was empty. He poured himself an iced tea, and when Eli did show, he looked startled and unhappy to find Silver there.

What had he done?

Supposing Eli didn’t kick him out, Silver didn’t want to stay if he was causing problems. He pictured Quinn at the table last night. He hadn’t seemed any different. And they’d gone to bed early. Silver had stayed up with the TV blaring to drown anything out.

Still, Silver moving in like this had been too much to dump on even a mellow boyfriend. Silver hadn’t exactly been pleasant about it, and it had to be a drag for Quinn. He hoped Jamie wouldn’t take moving someplace else as Silver ignoring police orders. He’d still make his court date. He owed them all that much.

Silver didn’t know what the fuck to say. He’d never needed to come up with anything to start a conversation with Eli. It was eerie him being so quiet, looking everywhere but at Silver.

Eli took two bites out of a container of potato salad and then shoved the fork back in and stared at it.

“Something wrong?” Silver asked.

“No. I’m fine.”

“I meant the potato salad, is it bad?”

Eli shook the hair off his face. “It’s fine too.”

“Okay.” Everything was fine. Except that it wasn’t.

“I really don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to.”

“Okay,” Silver said again as he started mentally packing. Maybe he could store the GED workbooks here until he found a place. The room on Tyson Street was gone, since it had only been paid through Friday. He had a little money now, but not having ID to use was the big problem.

Eli spoke so fast the words ran together. “Does it freak you out when you hear Quinn spank me?”

“Huh?” Silver blinked.

Eli waved his hand. “Is hearing the spanking a trigger thing? Because of your coerced consent.”

Silver had been so sure this was a don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out speech that it took him a few seconds to backtrack through what Eli was saying. Coerced consent and triggers? That had Nate written all over it.

“Jesus, Eli, did you have to tell Nate?”

“It’s not a secret. The vids.”

“No, but why didn’t you ask me instead of dragging his pretentious ass into it?”

Eli hid under his bangs. “It kind of came up. We were doing a shot downtown, and Nate was bitching about how the cops are using carrying a condom as grounds for a prostitution charge for any woman. And I’ve been worried that hearing us was maybe reminding you of—”

“Enough.” Christ, Silver was glad Eli had gotten over his crush on Nate. It had killed him to try to pay attention to interpreting everything Nate said or did. But he really didn’t need Nate thinking he was some poor exploited piece of ass.

“Listen to this and you can tell Nate the exact same thing. I consented. To all of it. No one made me. No one came after me. I answered the ads and I knew what the deal was and I signed off on forms.”

“Illegally.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter. I knew what I was doing. I could have stayed at the shelter with you.”

“But your parents?”

“They probably never even looked for me. So it’s fine, Eli. You guys can fuck however you want, your daddy can beat your ass purple every night if that’s what gets you off, but would you please talk to me next time before getting your sainted ex-whatever involved?”

Eli laughed.

Silver was so not in the mood. “What?”

“You realize that’s what you called your ex? Saint Zebadiah? No wonder Nate gets on your nerves.”

Yeah, it was a laugh riot. Except Nate saw what was wrong in the world and used that to look down on everyone. Zeb wanted to fix it. As long as when what was wrong wasn’t underage and at his door in the middle of the night.

“Hey, I forgot.” Now that all was spanky free in his world, Eli was back to himself. “How did your lesson go yesterday?”

“It was fucking peachy. Now I gotta go study.”

Silver didn’t do anything the next few days but go to work and drag himself through that lame science book. Living in Mount Washington with Quinn and Eli was easy on the budget. Sometimes he didn’t have to take the bus, though he could have done without the ride in Jamie’s cop car when he worked late that one night. If he didn’t end up in jail, he’d have enough money for a place that wanted a security deposit. Gavin’s lawyer was working on how he was going to get ID in his real name.

Since the lawyer had told him the easiest way was to ask his parents for his birth certificate, Silver didn’t like thinking about that too much. He’d thought about saying no, that he didn’t have any idea where they were, but he also really didn’t want to go to jail. Bile burned his throat as he spat out the names, address and numbers, including old Thomas’s office number.

At least he didn’t have to contact them.

When he’d texted Zeb about some more GED practice, they’d set up a meeting at the Pimlico Branch Library before Silver went in to work on Monday. Not great for seduction, but a cool break during the ninety-minute bus ride.

Silver dropped the science book in front of where Zeb sat at one of the tables. Ignoring the way he was trying to get Silver in the seat opposite using the power of the Force, Silver dragged over a chair from another table and sat beside Zeb.

“Guess you decided to skip facing Eli today. He threaten your nuts?”

“No. In fact, I was surprised when he called to invite me to the opening of his gallery exhibition on Thursday.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty pumped about it. He’s probably called everyone in his contacts. Just saying.”

Zeb nodded. “Right. Are you going?”

Silver hoped like hell he still had that night off. Eli would have a cow, a cat and a litter of cow-kittens if anyone missed it, but Silver had a job he didn’t want to lose. “If I don’t have to work.”

“Speaking of work.” Zeb opened the science review book.

So they were all business today? Zeb was full of praise for everything Silver had worked on, but it was from that safe teacher distance. Like Zeb had never groaned and glanced back over his shoulder, begging Silver to fuck him harder.

The jump-cut flashback had an annoying effect on Silver’s concentration. His stupidly exact memory skipped through dozens of moments, his first taste of a man’s mouth, his skin, his cock. The first surprising shift in muscles when the cock inside him stopped burning and felt like it belonged there.

Adjusting the fit of his black slacks around the heaviness of an unwanted semi, he tried to get his attention back on the lame workbook, since that was all Zeb cared about.

It was a short reading passage and questions on cross-species imprinting. Baby ducks following humans like they were their momma ducks. Was that all it had been? All those feelings, nothing more than that Zeb had been the first cute, available guy in Silver’s life? He’d sexually imprinted?

If that’s all it had been, then why was what he wanted most right now a hug? A big solid Zeb hug, the kind that felt like there was nothing in the world but the two of them, Zeb’s breath easy and slow, his heart strong and solid against Silver’s chest. A kiss wouldn’t be bad either. Fuck, any kind of attention he couldn’t have gotten from a well-meaning guidance counselor. Something that proved what they’d been to each other.

Maybe that was the reason behind meeting in the library, the arrangement of the chairs so none of them were on Zeb’s side of the table. Maybe he wasn’t all serenely immune to the fact that it probably wouldn’t take much more than a hug as a reminder of what they’d been so very good at before.

Silver might not have liked studying science, but he knew how to test a hypothesis. The next couple questions were on chemistry. Stuff about covalents and electrons did not stick in his head. It wasn’t faking to lean closer and shove the book over the top of the one Zeb was reading, working one arm in between Zeb’s to point out the issue.

“I can’t get this shit to make sense for me.”

The contact was only in two spots. Knees, though they were both in slacks, and the inside of their arms where they met over the book, also shielded by a layer of cloth. Still, tension flooded into Zeb’s muscles, and the sun-bronzed hair on his forearm prickled and stood on end. That wasn’t very teacher-like.

The final data in the experiment was when, after a long breath, Zeb said, “Just a second.”

He extracted himself gently, but completely, then stood before walking over to the reference desk. When he came back with some scrap paper, he sat on the opposite side of the table.

Yup. Experiment supports hypothesis: Zeb was avoiding contact. Too bad Silver couldn’t quite set up an experiment to prove why, though slipping off his shoe and curling his foot over Zeb’s junk ought to have a measurable effect.

“Okay.” Zeb started to draw a circle. “Now an oxygen molecule—”

“Wait.” Silver put his hand over the circle. “That’s what’s in the book, and the circles just look like Mickey Mouse’s head to me.”

“Okay.” Zeb reached into his pockets and spilled out a bunch of change. “This quarter is the oxygen nucleus. Eight is the atomic number so…”

Silver had done a foot-job customer once. A repeater, so he must have gotten it right. He slipped off the back end of the black Chuck he wore for work. It might be entertaining to watch Zeb’s face as he got hard right here in the Pimlico Branch Public Library.

Just when you thought it was safe to sit back at the study table…

There were a lot more coins now. Circles of pennies around the quarter and two nickels. Silver wiggled his toes in his shoe and flexed the sole while Zeb went on talking.

“So when the water molecule forms, the hydrogen electrons attach on the ring of oxygen electrons.” He replaced four of the pennies with dimes. “See? But there are still eight oxygen electrons.”

Silver could see now how to answer that next bunch of questions, yeah. But it was still what-the-fuck-was-the-point stupid. “I see that with three more bucks you can trade your water molecule for a cup of coffee at Starbucks.”

Zeb’s brow lowered. “Well, molecules do tend to be—”

“Relax. I got it. Thanks.” Silver couldn’t figure out why he wanted to try to make Zeb feel better. He wasn’t the one stuck learning high school shit out of a lame book instead of having it all done with years ago. But Silver found himself saying, “You’re pretty good at this.” Because it
was
easier to see with the money to move around rather than the lame circles in the book.

Zeb smiled. There was something besides the potential for a foot job to be said for sitting across from each other. Silver got to watch the way Zeb’s smile crinkled and sparked in his gold-green-brown eyes. Lots of gold today. Silver used to try to figure out if it was mood or the background colors that made the color shift so much. He’d never been completely sure it was based on how Zeb felt, but gold was a good sign. It had been around a lot back then. And Silver had come to think of it as happy in the Zeb’s-eyes-as-a-mood-ring game.

Silver finished up the last few chemistry questions then stretched his arms over his head and behind his chair.

Zeb leaned back, his legs encroaching on Silver’s side of the table. Did that mean teacher mode was done?

“What are your plans, Jordan?”

He didn’t think Zeb meant the seduction plans, though he wasn’t sure Zeb didn’t see through the tutoring excuse to implement them. And then Silver remembered. “You mean after you head off to summer camp?”

“I mean for your future. The rest of the life that’s ahead of you.”

Assuming his meds worked and he stayed out of Linwood and didn’t get bashed or killed in jail. Those scary things almost bubbled out of his mouth, despite the tight clench of his jaw. He could barely think past the next few hours, and Zeb expected a plan for life?

“Why? You worried you might be surfing for porn someday and end up having to relive a night with me?”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

Was it anger overriding Zeb’s patient tone? Good.

“Oh, I forgot. You probably don’t watch porn. Guess you’ll be safe from me for good once June twentieth rolls around.”

Zeb glanced away, like he could find patience somewhere over by the reference desk. And he did because the anger was gone when he said, “You could work with kids.”

“Are you fucking nuts?” Silver heard his words echo and lowered his voice. “First, I hate kids. Second, with my history no one would let me anywhere near kids. And third, thank God because I hate the little shits.”