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Leo took a half-step backwards, his eyes wide, a blush crawling up his neck. “I’m not frisking you! I’m not a cop!”
“Oh? Pity. I’ve always had a thing for uniforms.” Tristan raised an eyebrow. “You could frisk me for fun?”
Leo didn’t say no, but he didn’t say yes, either, which was disappointing. Tristan was sure, if he could just get him to relax, that Leo would be a lot of fun. Leo exhaled before visibly pulling himself upright and squaring his shoulders. “Look, I’m here to do an inspection, that’s all. Now, can I come in or not?”
Could he be any more buttoned down? Tristan wondered if Leo had ever truly relaxed in his life, and he briefly felt sorry for anyone who was so easily scandalised. But he could still hear Jack and Harry scrambling around like hyperactive mice, so he stayed in the doorway and said, “Actually, legally I don’t think you can. You haven’t given seven days’ notice of intent to enter the property.”
Leo sighed, a sound dragged from the very soles of his boots, and after digging in his folder he held out a copy of the letter Tristan had received, tapping his finger on the date, which was—shit, ten days ago? Where the hell had the days gone? No wonder Harry had accused Tristan of forgetting his promise—which he had, but Harry didn’t need to know that.
“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh. Now, can I please come inside?”
Tristan cocked his head, listening. Cupboard doors were still banging, so he said, “Look, now’s not a good time.”
Leo’s face flushed pink and he swallowed as he looked Tristan up and down in his barely tied kimono. Fuck, he was cute when he was flustered. “Are you…expecting someone?”
Tristan grinned. “Only if you’re offering.” Leo just stared and Tristan sighed inwardly. “Fine. If you must know, Jack and Harry—they’re my roommates—are…in flagrante delicto, so to speak.” There. That should buy the puppies some more time.
“They’re what?”
“They’re fucking,” Tristan said bluntly. It was far too entertaining to watch Leo blush even harder.
“What, right now?”
“Well, of course. They both work during the week, so they tend to catch up on the weekends. What do you do with your Saturday mornings? No, wait, let me guess. You either go to the farmer’s market and buy revolting homemade protein bars, or you turn up on people’s doorsteps with a clipboard and interrupt them in the middle of a frankly spectacular kiss.”
Leo pursed his lips at the accusation and it should have made him look officious, but instead it somehow made him look adorable, like a terminally offended teddy bear. Tristan wondered if he should point Leo’s inherent adorableness out and if Leo would take ‘you’re cute when you’re angry’ as a compliment, or if it would go down like a lead balloon, the same way offering to blow him at Jimmy’s wake had. Probably the second one, because while the guy was cute, obviously he didn’t have a fun bone in his body.
Leo’s obvious grumpiness aside, Tristan wouldn’t have minded putting his fun bone in his body, but before he had a chance to offer, a breathless Jack appeared at his shoulder. “Hey,” he panted, leaning forward and extending a hand to Leo. “I’m Jack. Me and my boyfriend definitely were not having sex, just for the record. You’re here to inspect the place, yeah?”
Chapter Four
Leo Fisher didn’t make waves. Sometimes he wished he’d had the nerve to at least try it, but at heart he was a peacemaker, not a boat-rocker. Even when he’d come out to his parents as a teenager, he’d ended his statement that he was gay with, “if that’s all right?” That was how much of a non-rebel he was. His parents had told him that it was fine, as long as he didn’t go around making a spectacle of himself. Like your great-uncle was unspoken, but the message was still loud and clear, and Leo had somehow felt he’d gotten their permission to be gay by the skin of his teeth.
Uncle Jimmy, on the other hand, had been delighted at his coming out and had called Leo and told him if there was anything he wanted to know, anything at all, to just ask. Leo, barely seventeen, had told him he was all good, thanks, mainly because talking about sex wasn’t something he was comfortable with, but also because he knew his uncle well enough to say with certainty that he definitely wasn’t ready for any stories Uncle Jimmy might choose to share. Uncle Jimmy’s filter hadn’t just been faulty, it had been non-existent, and there were some things Leo just didn’t want to know.
In the end Uncle Jimmy had sent his congratulations in the form of one of those greeting cards that said, ‘It’s a boy!’, only he’d added the word ‘gay’ in front of ‘boy’ in hot pink Sharpie. It had come with a gift box containing a rainbow lapel pin, a feather boa, a handful of heart-shaped confetti and a hundred-dollar gift card from an adult shop that Leo had never been brave enough to redeem. Still, Leo had felt the warm glow of acceptance and a sense of kinship.
Apparently Uncle Jimmy had felt the same, because in his will he’d left almost everything to Leo. And it turned out he’d had a hell of a lot to leave, including the shabby terrace house Leo was currently standing in front of—the one that was home to Tristan, the pretty blond sex worker from the funeral who was leaning casually against the doorframe in a silk robe of some sort that was tied loosely enough for Leo to catch a glimpse of a barbell adorning one nipple, the flash of silver a stark contrast to the deep brown of the nub.
Tristan had been saying goodbye to someone Leo assumed was a client—either that, or he’d been performing a tonsillectomy with his tongue—when Leo had arrived, and Leo was trying very hard not to replay that image in his mind, thank you very much, because he was here in his professional role as new property owner. No matter how much his thoughts and gaze kept straying between that tantalising piercing, the guy’s messy blond locks, and the way he kept pushing his hair behind one ear with an elegant fingertip.
Professional, Leo reminded himself sternly. He was here to assess the property, not ogle the way Tristan’s legs seemed to go all the way to his armpits under the skimpy silk of his robe.
It was a relief when the other roommate appeared and asked him inside, even though upon seeing Jack’s tousled hair and pink cheeks, Leo had to fight back a blush when he thought of what Tristan had said Jack had been doing, although Jack had denied it. “They’re fucking,” Tristan had said, like it was no big deal. Perhaps to him it wasn’t, given his profession.
Oh God. If there was a sex worker renting from him, did that mean Leo was a pimp now? Or was it an accessory after the fact? Was sex work even illegal? He shook his head slightly to clear his jumbled thoughts, took a deep breath, and followed Jack inside.
When Leo stepped inside the hallway of the dingy little house his uncle had left him, he was hit by the smell of Domestos, the unforgiving burn of it strong enough to make his eyes water. Obviously there had been some emergency last-minute cleaning going on. As he looked around Leo wondered why they’d bothered, because the place was a shithole.
The lino was patched and uneven, there were bare patches where the paint had flaked off the walls, and there was an ominous hum coming from the antiquated light switch. The skirting boards in the hallway appeared to be in a state of disintegration, and the bottom stair had somehow warped so much that the rats, which Leo was sure were vast in number, could use it as a ski jump. Leo had been expecting something a little old and rundown, but that old saying about not being able to polish a turd sprang to mind.
A cute guy in glasses, his hair mussed up, appeared in the doorway of what Leo guessed was the kitchen. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Harry.”
Leo shook his hand. “Leo. I’m the, um, the new owner.”
Harry wrinkled his nose and his glasses shifted. “I’m really sorry about Mr. Erskine.”
