Chapter 7.

Monday was housekeeping and shopping day for Jon, and if he’d rather have spent it in bed, or anywhere, with Ed, that was just too bad. Life had to go on. He didn’t have any trouble at all imagining what his life would look like if Ed just moved in with him, but he hadn’t met the guy’s family or even seen his apartment yet. Really, he didn’t know much about the man, but that would come in time.

He knew the important stuff. The beginnings of the laugh lines around the dark eyes, the way those eyes focused on a four year old earnestly explaining how to grow a radish, the way he apologized to a cat that he had almost rolled over on top of. The way he gasped and arched up under Jon, and the noises he made just before he came, and the happy sighs when he was pulling Jon in close to him for a cuddle afterwards. The fact that he was a cuddler, and that he cleaned up after himself around the apartment, and hung up his towels, and said please and thank you very nicely to little old ladies at the Garden, in a variety of languages.

The old ladies loved him, and Jon was pretty sure he was headed down that path himself. There were obviously a few things about relationships that spooked the big guy, but nothing they couldn’t work out. And if the guy really hated that job he hadn’t wanted to go to on Monday morning, Jon didn’t have any problem with taking care of the man, although he didn’t want to bring up the issue of money just yet. If the guy was a salary slave, he might get spooked by how much Jon was worth.

He had a pleasant fantasy about the two of them growing old together working side by side down at the Community Garden - and just about vacuumed Myrtle, who was not impressed. Okay, that was perhaps a bit much after only a weekend together, but life was short and uncertain, and if he’d learned anything it was – what? To hold on to big smiling guys when you found them? Connie would have agreed with that, he thought. She’d lost her husband in the fighting that had driven them out of Guatemala, but didn’t regret a moment of the time they’d had together, and now she had their two boys to love.

He went from smiling about Ed to worrying about Rafe and Miguel. There was something going on with those two that they weren’t talking about, and if he knew them they were protecting someone else. He was going to have to talk to some people, make some enquiries, maybe call in a few favors. The two teenagers were at that awkward age where they thought they could take care of everything for themselves, and that they had to. Adults just wouldn’t understand, right? He sighed.

If what was going on with the two of them had something to do with Dreamers, DACA or illegal immigrants they might need a bit of help. At the Garden they didn’t ask any questions, and a small group of the adults discreetly helped to facilitate sanctuary for anyone who needed it, especially children caught up in the middle of things they didn’t understand. The boys couldn’t help but see this as an example, and their own father had died a hero. But who were they trying to help?

That reminded him that he had to call his father, who had put up with him for all these years, and now lived alone on the east coast. Jon had good intentions, he always did, but now his evenings were tied up with long phone conversations with Ed, lying in bed stroking himself, talking the kind of silly talk that new lovers did. The fantasies were so much better with the reality of the weekend to look forward to, and memories of the very real body that he was going to be tangling the sheets up with very soon.

He made it through most of the week in a happy fog, right up until his father called him on Thursday evening.

“So, what are you up to that people are checking on you?”

“Nice to talk to you, too, Dad. What are you talking about?”

“My people got a few enquiries, someone not being not too subtle wanting to know who you are. They didn’t find out anything, of course. Who you sleeping with these days?”

His father was joking, but still, seriously? What the hell was that about?

“Um, Dad? Who was doing the asking?”

“Someone working for some fancy guys that I could buy and sell, call themselves the Renfield Group. Second generation West Coast real estate money, apparently think they’re something special, have a family foundation for a tax break. Ring any bells?”

Damn damn damn. “Um, maybe. When was this?”

Please, let it have been a few weeks ago, a background check before they made the award ...

“Tuesday. Do I need to do anything about them?”

“No, you just need a smarter son.” Jon sighed, but not quietly enough.

“Jon? You okay, boy? Maybe I need to come out there for a vacation.”

“Thanks, Dad, but that won’t make me any smarter, and I’m pretty sure a big chunk of the economy back there would collapse if you took a day off.”

Now it was his father’s turn to sigh. “You know I love you, right?”

“Yeah, love you too, Dad.”

He didn’t answer the phone that evening, even though it rang half a dozen times and the text messages from Ed were increasingly puzzled and worried. He went to work on Friday not as bright and smiling as he had been. Seriously? His dream lover had decided to check into his background?

Some of the hints and hesitations were starting to make sense now. His sweet Ed didn’t want to get involved with some gold-digger, some broken down old soldier who was just getting by from day to day? The penguin suit wasn’t an aberration, some left-over from a friend’s wedding or something. It was who the man was, and he thought that the best Jon could do for getting dressed up was an old pair of cotton slacks with cat hairs all over them. Dream lover indeed.

He had himself worked into a fine state of mixed pain and anger by the time he got home late on Friday evening, and the last thing he wanted to see was a large man with long dark hair and worried eyes sitting in his doorway. 

“I think your phone is broken.”

“Something is. Like maybe trust? Like, if you wanted to know anything about me you could have just asked?”

Jon’s anger evaporated at the look of confusion on Ed’s face. He clearly had no idea what Jon was talking about.

“Jeez, come on in, no point in putting on a show for the neighbors.”

“Sweetheart ...”

Jon reached down to pull Ed up, and instead ended on his lap, sitting on the floor in the hallway.

“What the hell is going on, sweetheart? I think I missed something. I missed you, and you didn’t answer your phone, and Connie threatened to kill me if I made you unhappy, and now you’re unhappy and I’m sitting here on the floor like a love-sick puppy ...”

Ed sighed, and sank his head into Jon’s neck. “I’m not too good at playing games, not this kind. Can you just tell me?”

This was confusing, and not at all how he’d thought this argument would go.

“Um, I talked to my Dad ...”

“That’s nice. Does he live out here? You’ve never talked about him, but if we ever get off this floor I’d like to meet him sometime. I mean, if there is a ‘we’. What’s happening, sweet man?”

Right. Off the floor. He managed to get to his feet and Ed came up with him, and then he was pinned against his door, and Ed’s lips were on his, and he forgot about a lot of things for a while.

“Key. Door. Come on, sweetheart, we can do this. As much as I’d like to get naked with you in the hallway, I think maybe we have to talk, and in the apartment would be better.” Ed suddenly looked worried. “Are you okay? Did you get hit on the head?”

The concern on Ed’s face made him laugh, for the first time since he’d talked to his father.

The logical discussion he’d envisioned went by the wayside when he ended up sitting on Ed’s lap on the sofa with those strong arms around him, and he was beginning to forget what he was mad about. Ed’s body felt so damn good under his hands, and he loved that soft hair like silk running through his fingers, and the lips opening up under his ...

“Um, no, not hit on the head, maybe just smacked alongside it.” He didn’t know how to ask any way but straight out. “My Dad called, he said that someone from some Renfield Group was making enquiries into my background and who I was. I didn’t know you were a group?”

It was Ed’s turn to sigh, and the big man tucked his face into Jon’s soft hair. “Fucking family. Excuse my language. My brothers. Older brothers, they’re the group, the gang of two, and they think they have to take care of me since our parents died. That wasn’t me, sweetheart. I already need to know everything I need to know about you.”

Jon nuzzled into that sweet soft neck, and began to breathe easily again.

“Really? Damn. I’m sorry. I heard that, and freaked out, thought that you thought I was some kind of leech or something ...”

“How about I wait until Monday to kill them? Would that be okay? I had other plans for this weekend ...”

“Hmm, really? Did your plans have anything to do with getting naked on my bed? Maybe silk ties and feather dusters and whatever else we can think of?”

“I’m impressed that you have silk ties, sweetheart. I brought a couple of my own, just in case we needed them ... although I had no idea that I was the one who was going to need to be tied up.”

“You’re a lousy sub, did you know that? Telling me what to do ...”

“You’re a great everything, sweetheart. My everything, and I’m sorry my family is so stupid.” Ed sighed. “I don’t know why they did that. It’s none of their business who I’m involved with. How did they even figure that out so fast?”

“Babe?”

“Yeah?”

“Where are those ties?”