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Harry poked his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. “Um…wow. Congrats? That’s…that’s?—”
“A sign of the apocalypse, probably,” Jack said. “But yeah, congrats, Leo. Are you smiling or are you in pain?”
So much for his smile. “Smiling!”
“Are you sure?” Harry asked tentatively.
Without his fake smile to fall back on, Leo had no defences at all. “I…I really like him, but…” He lowered his voice. “His job is, well, you know.”
Harry’s eyebrows tugged together. “I mean, that shouldn’t get in the way too much. It’s not like he does it every day.”
Leo sighed and wondered how to explain without sounding like, well, his mum. “I don’t object to the work itself,” he said. “I’d never judge Tristan’s choices. It’s just, it’s risky. And I worry for him.”
“I almost got punched once,” Harry said, with a knowing nod.
God. Harry was so kind and sweet. If someone had punched him, then Tristan probably got beaten up even more regularly, because Tristan was a shit stirrer, no question. Leo couldn’t imagine him ever shutting his mouth.
“And Jack almost murdered me for realsies.”
“That was an accident!” Jack exclaimed, while Leo picked his jaw up off the floor.
“It was attempted murder, babe. I almost died!” But Harry was, for some weird fucking reason, laughing.
“I didn’t know my sister was a paying client. I just thought you were an arsehole! And I didn’t know you had weird allergies!” Jack was laughing, too, and none of this made any sense. Jack’s sister?
“I thought you were gay?” The question fell out of Leo’s mouth.
“Oh, I am,” Harry said. “Well, I thought I was ace at first, but it turns out I’m Jacksexual.” He threw Jack an adoring look.
“You should just say demi,” Jack said. “Jacksexual sounds like you can only get off if you wank.”
“Oooh.” Harry nodded. “Good point.” His lips quirked. “Or maybe it sounds like I can only get off to The Nightmare before Christmas.”
“Idiot,” Jack said fondly.
“How were you an ace rent boy?” Leo blurted out. Harry and Jack stared. Leo flinched back. “God, I mean, sorry, that is none of my business—the hows, the wherefores and the actual mechanics. I mean, not that attraction even comes into it at all, right? Probably. So it wouldn’t matter if you can’t get—I mean, there are pills for that. Jesus, of course there are. I am so, so sorry for opening my mouth.”
Harry blinked at him. “I wasn’t a rent boy. I was a Bad Boyfriend.”
“You were a—a what?”
Jack sat down at the table. “Oh, fuck. You think Tristan is a rent boy.”
Harry tugged at Jack’s sleeve. “He thinks I’m a rent boy!”
Jack shrugged. “Yeah, but he thinks Tristan’s a rent boy, and he still wants to date him. Holy shit. That date last night must’ve been really something!”
Leo was at least ten steps behind in this conversation. “Is nobody a rent boy? But—but the dates. For money.”
Harry bit his lip and his brow furrowed. “It’s like— you know that thing real estate agents do, right?”
“Maybe,” Leo hedged, because real estate agents did all sorts of things. He’d never before considered that they might be charging people for sex, but then again, the Sydney property market was brutal, so who knew? Maybe a couple of hundred bucks and a really spectacular bang was what it took to get an offer and acceptance signed these days. “What thing, specifically?”
“The thing where first they show you a string of shit properties so you despair of ever finding what you want, then they show you one that’s still only halfway to what you want, but by then it looks like a palace. That thing.”
“Tristan’s…a real estate agent?” Whatever type of coffee this was, it wasn’t working nearly fast enough.
Jack sighed. “Tristan takes people out on fake dates and acts like a wanker,” he said bluntly. “He pisses off the parents so that when the real partner shows up at the next family gathering, the family loves them, because whatever their faults, at least they’re not Tristan.”
