And that other guy who needed a shave-Tim. He'd been driving the truck.
Tim's apartment, that must have been where he'd ended up. Because, clearly, Javier would be living in a much sexier apartment. Not that Nelson expected portholes in the walls and gauzy mosquito netting hanging from the ceiling...well, maybe he had. A guy could dream.
The two of them, Javier and Tim, were focused on the computer, which at first looked like some piece-of-crap, patchwork job. At first. But Nelson saw how quickly the page refreshed when Tim hit the enter key. He took in the cluster of cables linking...what? The monitor might be old, but it was functional, and it wasn't connected to a home PC designed for composing Christmas letters and surfing YouTube. That was a big, fat server. And a redundant server. And another redundant server.
Nelson's gaze swept back up to the back of Tim's head. What was his deal? Computer geek, obviously. But charging into the middle of a riot to grab everyone-what was up with that?
"Let me see..." Javier whispered, louder than whatever he'd been saying before, now audible. Tim, seated, shoved the keyboard over and Javier bent and typed. Their upper arms pressed together. Weird-they went together, somehow. A couple, that would've been Nelson's first idea, although Tim didn't really register on the ol' gaydar. Maybe they were close friends. But how could that be, if Tim had thought Nelson was Javier, back there in the riot?
Unless Nelson had slept a hell of a lot longer than he usually did, and the two of them hooked up while he was out. He touched his chin. Rough, new stubble. No weird sleeping patterns; it was still the same day.
Curious...in the way that Nelson enjoyed. His brain, even as serotonin-saturated and dopamine-deprived as it now was, made a grudging attempt to interpret what he observed, and how it fit with what he remembered. Yellow truck, red bandanna. A visual clue, one they would have needed to arrange beforehand. They had known each other. Just not on sight.
Tim bent in to look harder at the screen. Javier shifted his arm, not so that Tim didn't need to touch it-rather, so that their bodies could fit together more closely. And all Nelson had gotten was a brush of Javier's fingertips when he tried a similar move, back at the job fair with the puzzle pieces.
Tim whispered something and slipped his hand through Javier's so he could hit a few function keys. A cascade of stuff flashed on the monitor. Major geekage...and it took one to know one.
"No, no, it's a video...where's the volume?" Javier was losing his whisper.
"That's print."
"Then where...?"
"Stop it, I've got it."
"Wait-not that message."
The wicked-fast computer lit up with a video on the big dinosaur of a monitor. Bodies. A mob. And the sound of screams and sirens, loud and sudden in the hushed room.
Randy snorted awake. "Shit, I thought I was back there at the...what time is it?"
Tim turned to look at Randy while Javier jabbed at the keyboard. The video went mute. The churning mass of bodies was even weirder without volume. Tim spotted Nelson and jumped away from Javier as if they'd been caught surfing porn at the office. Nelson shifted and felt the big sweatpants he was wearing slip down over his hip. He caught them by the waistband and hiked them up, but the elastic was stretched out, and they drooped again the second he let go.
"Hello?" Randy said. "What time is it?"
"Three," Javier snapped. He was pounding windows closed for all he was worth.
"You're awake," Tim said to Nelson.
Nelson hiked up the sweatpants again, then folded the waistband in a few inches and rolled it a couple of times to encourage them to stay put. The pants rode low on his hips now, but they'd hold as long as he managed to keep from stepping on the cuffs and pulling them down. "Can I get some water?"
"Yeah. Sure. Here, let me-" Tim jumped up and rounded the kitchen island. "I'll wash out a mug. They're both dirty."
Nervous, or just twitchy? Nelson couldn't tell, not yet. He didn't know Tim well enough. Javier-now he was definitely acting shifty. It wouldn't do any good to make him feel cornered, so Nelson sidled up next to the hulking behemoth of a twenty-year-old laser printer and made it clear he was not looking at the monitor. Because who gave two shits what was on the screen when he could be checking out Javier instead?
Javier's jet black hair had a messy, windswept look to it, his tie was gone, and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone. No undershirt. Chest hair. Nelson allowed himself to gawk, since Javier's eye was fixed on the screen. "So, anything fun happen while I was tripping?" Nelson ventured.
"You seem awfully laissez-faire." Javier glanced at Nelson briefly while he spoke, then focused again on the computer.
"But I'm crying on the inside." Damn. Another dollar for the cliche jar. "Really, though, what happened? Why are we all camped out here?"
Randy answered. "No phone service, no news coverage, and the lower east side's gone all Lord of the Flies. That's what."
Tim handed Nelson a mug of water. He was a close-stander. Nelson backed up a step and drained the mug. The water was cold and tasted like the inside of a refrigerator, though Tim didn't strike Nelson as the type of guy to be into the whole fancy water filter craze. He looked more like the type of guy who'd stick his head in the sink and drink straight from the faucet to avoid getting a glass dirty. If he bothered with filtration, it was probably because the plumbing in his old building made the water taste funky.
Nelson tipped the last few drops into his mouth. Still dehydrated. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Javier hit a final key, then relax...until Javier noticed an orange light flashing on the printer. "What's that?"
Tim took the empty mug from Nelson, big-handed, clumsy. Practically groping it out of his grasp. "More?"
"Yeah, thanks." Nelson had worked with a similar printer model before, in a lab with no money, testing residual levels of DDT on alfalfa. He scanned the buttons and lights, letting the configuration ease its way through his hazy post-pill head.
All at once, he remembered. "It's just on bypass," he said, and flicked a lever in back.
The machine clunked and shuddered, and made a sound like a jet engine preparing for takeoff as the rollers heated up. Javier shot out of his seat and spread his hands to catch the print-but the machine had been set for outputting labels on a straight path, and a cascade of paper shot from the back instead. The sheets fluttered, and fanned out to cover a daisy chain of patched-together power strips.
"That's a fire hazard waiting to happen," Randy said. He grabbed a handful of papers that had landed within arms' reach of the recliner.
"Give that to me," Javier said, and Randy automatically shifted it farther away, to his opposite hand, and peered down the length of his arm to get a look at it before Javier had a chance to grab it from him.
Nelson couldn't resist, either. He snagged the final page as it slid from the back of the laser printer. Whatever the big secret was, Tim didn't seem to be in on it. He stood there with a mug of water in his hand, blinking at the confusion.
Nelson glanced down at the page he'd caught.
-6-.
to the nape of your neck. I press my teeth against it.
VoR: Yeah.
J: Should I bite you? You like that?
VoR: Yeah.
J: You feel my teeth, hard against your skin. I hold them there while I'm pumping your cock. Do it. Good and hard. That's my hand. And press your neck into the back of your chair so you can feel my teeth on you while I bite you. Stroke it fast.
VoR: Yeah.
J: You're doing it fast? I have no mercy-I want you so hard you BEG me to bury my cock in your ass.
VoR: Fuck. Do it.
"Ho, man," Randy laughed. "This is a whole page about choad-sucking. Serious? You gay guys dig this shit? Way too close to the back door for my comfort. But I guess that's the whole point."
Schwing.
Nelson considered whether he should rearrange himself, or if it would just call attention to the fact that he'd be more than happy to participate in a page or two of "choad-sucking," as Randy so eloquently put it. Not with Randy, of course. With....
Javier snatched the page out of Randy's hand and wadded it into a ball.
"What?" Randy said. "It's not like I've never seen porn before. Although, I usually go for pictures, myself...."
"Shut. Up."
Seriously, didn't everyone have their stash? What was the big deal? Besides, it wasn't Javier's stash, it was Tim's. Javier seemed to be pretty worked up about it, almost as if he was taking it personally. What if...?
Nelson glanced down at the paper in his hand as unobtrusively as possible.
J: You like that hot, hard cock pressing into your tight ass?
VoR: So good. Do it.
Not porn. A chat transcript. And, holy smokes, this "J" dude might actually be....
Nelson enjoyed a giddy rush. Then he slowly, carefully, with just a single hand, folded the sheet of paper and slipped it into his pocket.
Javier swept by and grabbed up all the pages from the floor. "Where's your garbage?"
Tim looked baffled. "Under the sink. But the recycling...."
Javier tore the transcript into small pieces. He even unwadded the page Randy'd been reading and tore that up, too. And he stuffed it all into the garbage.
"Hey." Randy spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Dude, who cares?"
"Not another word."
"It's really no big deal."
"Shut it."
Randy sighed, and shrugged, and settled back into the recliner.
Chapter 11.
Tim stood, holding the mug two-handed, and waited patiently for Nelson to take it like he was bearing an offering. If Nelson had looked good in his medicated sleep while Tim dressed him, he looked super-good now-because it wasn't exactly his features or his body that made Tim stupid with want. It was the way he held himself, and the shrewd light in his eyes. He was busy watching Javier and Randy bicker over some printout, and Tim? Tim was busy watching him.
Nelson tucked his hair behind his ear and hiked up his borrowed sweatpants-Tim might never wash them again-which just slipped back down over the crest of his tattooed hipbone. Tim wet his lips. Javier stuffed something into the garbage, then announced that he needed some air, and stomped out onto the fire escape. Nelson noticed Tim standing there with the water, took it, and said, "Uh, thanks."
"You're welcome."
Nelson raised the cup to his lips, turned and walked around Tim, and drank. God. Tim felt like such a spaz.
Nelson approached Randy. "You got a hell of a shiner."
"Damn straight."
"Well, you'll have a good story to tell."
"That's not all. Asshole nearly knocked my tooth out. Look, it wiggles."
Nelson crouched beside the recliner. "Hold on, lemme see that."
"Why-you're a dentist now?" Randy asked, his tone indicating he thought it was just as likely that Nelson was CEO of Canaan Products, Inc.
Nelson was unfazed. He adjusted the reading lamp behind the recliner, leaned over Randy and peeled back his lip. "That's just barely hanging in there, but I think it's still got its blood supply. You need to stop messing around with it."
"Oh, fuck me."
"You should stabilize it 'til you can get to the dentist."
"How?"
Nelson turned to Tim and asked, as if he wouldn't expect a "yes" in a million years, "You wouldn't happen to have any emergency dental cement, would you?"
Tim ran through a mental catalog of his first aid kits. "No." Obviously, he'd need to add some the next time he gathered supplies.
"Super-bond Glue?"
"No." Tim felt ridiculously unprepared.
Nelson thought for a moment. "Okay, where're my clothes?"
Tim pointed at the neatly folded clothes on the kitchen island, slacks stained, dress shirt torn and bloody. While Nelson shook out the pants and went through the pockets, Tim realized he'd blown the opportunity to look at Nelson's drivers' license. Though he already knew Nelson's birthdate. Had even pictured himself taking Nelson out for coffee. Picking out a card. Maybe a gift. He hadn't quite figured out what would be inside the box...but something that would make Nelson Oliver see what a great person Tim was.
Nelson rifled through the pockets. He ignored his wallet and grabbed, instead, a pack of gum. He chewed a piece while both Randy and Tim stared. Then he pulled the gum wad from his mouth and said to Randy, "Consider yourself lucky you've got someone willing to chew your gum for you."
"Dude, you're not gonna...sick."
"You want to save your tooth, or not? 'Cos I guarantee you'll rip it right out of your head if you try to chew it yourself."
"Does this seriously have a chance of working?"
"It might. All they'd do at the dentist is wire your teeth together so the loose one stops moving until it tightens up in its socket. This'll hold until morning-as long as you don't keep poking it with your tongue."
Randy gave an "Oh, all right," eye roll.
"Lay back."
Randy pushed the recliner to full-sprawl, and winced as Nelson slung a leg over his lap to get in good and close. The sweatpants rode down in back, dragging at Nelson's boxers. More tattoos. Butt cheek. Crack. Tim's pulse roared in his ears and he wondered if he might actually faint-and whether he could claim dental phobia with any plausibility if he did.
"Don't worry." Nelson braced his elbow on Randy's shoulder. "I'll still respect you in the morning."
"Ha ha."