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Seeing Leo spread out like that, all fresh-fucked and rumpled, Tristan was struck by a wave of affection that was closely followed by an overwhelming urge to wrap Leo up in a soft blanket and take care of him, which Tristan could honestly say was a first. He racked his sex-addled brain for some way to show this new, caring side of him. “Did you want a glass of water or some juice or something?” Leo shook his head, eyes drifting closed. “What about, I don’t know, some toast?”
Leo opened his eyes and scrunched his brow in confusion. “Why the hell would I want toast?”
“Well, I don’t know!” Tristan said. “I haven’t done this bit before. Maybe toast is the gold standard in post-sex snacks. Although now I say it out loud, it was probably a long shot.”
Leo propped himself up on one elbow and huffed out a laugh, but it wasn’t mean. “Honestly? It’s super sweet of you to ask, but I don’t need juice, or a snack or toast. What I really want is for you to come back to bed so we can go to sleep”—he hesitated, his cheeks staining pink, and added in a low voice—“then later maybe I could, um, blow you?”
“Hell, yes.” Tristan nodded like a bobble head, and Leo laughed in something like relief, scooching over and patting the mattress in invitation. He was adorable, shy and awkward and hot as fuck all at once, and Tristan found himself thinking how lucky he was.
He dropped his kimono on the floor and slid under the covers, snuggling up behind Leo and wrapping an arm around his waist. Leo nestled back against him, and Tristan pressed a kiss to his shoulder blade while he silently congratulated himself.
He was nailing this boyfriend business.
Chapter Twelve
Leo had never thought of himself as a rebellious kind of guy. He liked to imagine that if he ever got the call to stand up against the forces of galactic evil, he’d grab his lightsaber and give it his best shot, but in his day-to-day life, he wasn’t rebellious at all. He’d never even been particularly adventurous. But on Friday night as he was listening to his mother tell him over and over that he really must sell that old house—“It’s the smart financial choice, darling”—he felt definite stirrings of something in his gut that he tentatively labelled dissent. Because the more she went on about it, with Dad murmuring his agreement, the more Leo was determined not to do it.
The house was a pain. It was a crumbling mess that at first glance was only held together by the black mould and some particularly resilient cobwebs, but none of that was important, because if what Jimmy had left him didn’t cover it, then Leo could get a loan. There was enough equity in the place to do it. What was important were the people who lived in the house—Harry and Jack, and Tris. If Leo kicked them out, where else could they go? He didn’t need anyone to tell him how obscene rents were in Sydney. Hell, he was a renter himself, in his tiny little apartment. And maybe Harry and Jack would figure something out, because they had full-time employment, but Tristan was a uni student, and uni students barely had two packets of instant noodles to rub together. Leo had been one of those once, though he’d been lucky enough that he’d never felt the same pinch that so many of his peers had. He’d had his parents to fall back on. He was grateful for that and always would be, but at the same time, here he was with a ribbon of rebellion curling through his gut, and he liked it. He wanted to keep the house because of what it meant for Harry and Jack and Tris, just like he wanted to keep the weird and wonderful sex shop because of what it meant to the weird and wonderful community of Newtown.
“You can’t rush this stuff, Mum,” he said, cutting his mother off mid-diatribe. “I still have to get in touch with Uncle Jimmy’s accountant, and sorting everything out takes time.”
Uncle Jimmy’s accountant—because he’d had one after all, who knew?—was someone named Kevin O’Brien. They hadn’t met yet, but Leo had exchanged a couple of emails with him regarding paying the bills and wages at the sex shop, and Kevin had taken care of it for him. Leo was planning to sit down with the man and sort out the labyrinth of Uncle Jimmy’s holdings, but he hadn’t felt up to it yet, with the house—and one of its occupants, specifically—taking all his focus.
A smile crept onto his face when he thought of Tristan, who was out on a bad date right now and doubtless horrifying someone’s parents, but who had promised he’d be done in time and waiting at home with a bottle of pink gin once Leo was done with dinner with his folks. Leo hadn’t had pink gin before, and all he knew was that there were raspberries involved. Dating Tristan meant he was getting an introduction to all sorts of new things and surprisingly, not all of them were sexual.
“How’s the campaign going, Dad?” he asked, steering the topic into safer waters.
“Oh, it’s going swimmingly!” his mother gushed. “It looks like your father’s a shoo-in, assuming he doesn’t have a secret drug habit or a second family lurking somewhere!” She tittered brightly at the very suggestion that Leo’s sensible father would be capable of such a thing.
“Got the official invitation to Lillian Kingsbury’s dinner,” his dad said, chest puffing out. “It’s gilded.”
Leo nodded like he thought that meant something—maybe in political circles it did. He spent the rest of dinner smiling politely and listening to talk of preferences and nominations and pre-selections and other things he really didn’t care about, while pondering how pink gin differed from regular gin. He wondered whether Tristan would be wearing his pink kimono, since it matched the colour of tonight’s drinks. It seemed like the sort of thing Tristan might do.
The evening finally drew to a close. With one final admonition from his mother that he simply must make a decision regarding selling the house, Leo made his escape.
When he got to the share house, the banging in the walls told him someone was in the shower. Since Jack and Harry were out, he surmised it must be Tristan. A quick glance into Tristan’s room revealed a pile of wet clothing on the floor that gave off a faint smell of beer, which told Leo that Tristan’s date had gone according to plan.
Leo was still getting used to the idea that Tristan having a drink thrown in his face was the desired outcome, but as ridiculous as the whole Bad Boyfriend concept was, Leo preferred it to his earlier belief that Tristan was a rent boy.
When he’d discovered the truth, he’d struggled for a hot minute with what it said about him as a person that he didn’t want to share Tristan with anyone else, but in the end, he’d decided that all it meant was that he didn’t want to share his boyfriend, and there wasn’t actually anything wrong with that. If Tristan had been a rent boy, Leo would have wanted to date him anyway—hell, he had—and he was pretty sure that was what mattered.
The pipes in the walls shuddered and screeched in protest as the water was turned off. A minute later Leo found himself with an arm full of damp, towel-wearing boyfriend as Tristan wrapped his long arms around him and pulled him in for a kiss.
“Hello, lover,” Tristan said when they parted, pushing a tendril of wet hair behind his ear in that enchanting way of his. “How was your dinner date?”
Leo stole another quick kiss before answering, “It was fine. Yours?”
“Oh, it was an absolute disaster, by which I mean a triumph.” Tristan grabbed at the towel draped around his shoulders and dried his hair more thoroughly, grinning when he peeked out at Leo from under the damp fabric. “Luckily beer’s a good conditioner, so I got a beauty treatment and I got paid.”
Tristan dropped the towel on the floor with the beer-soaked clothes and ran his fingers through his hair, fanning it out so it lay in damp curls against his shoulders. He dropped the towel from around his waist and grabbed a pair of jeans from the end of the bed, and he didn’t even try to pretend he wasn’t showing off as he shimmied his long legs into them. He threw on a T-shirt and led the way downstairs, where he had the drinks chilling in the fridge.
They spent the evening curled up on the couch, an old movie playing in the background as they sipped the cocktails Tristan made them. They exchanged slow, gin-soaked kisses, with Tristan sprawled across Leo’s lap as they lazily made out until they were interrupted by the sound of keys in the lock.
Harry popped his head around the doorway a minute later and blinked. “Oh! I didn’t mean to interrupt—” He made a vague gesture between them.
Tristan shrugged and stood, leaving a Tristan-shaped space on Leo’s lap that Leo wasn’t a fan of at all. “It’s fine. We were just going upstairs, weren’t we, babe?”
Leo’s cheeks warmed, but whether it was from the gin, his arousal, or Tristan’s invitation, he couldn’t quite tell. Regardless, upstairs sounded pretty good about now. “Yeah. Please.” He went to stand, stumbled a little and okay, that was the gin.
