Page 88 of College Town

Lawson feels a hollowness in his stomach: a little of wishing he hadn’t spoken about his parents, a lot of wishing Tommy hadn’t called himhoneylike that. Hadn’t gotten all sniffly over him. Hadn’t saidI love you so muchearlier. He thinks he’s holding up pretty well, but he knows that tonight, this morning, whatever, has damaged him. Added new layers to old scar tissue.

But it’s still dark, and he’s sad, now, and heavy, and hurting, and he’s already come this far.

He shifts so he’s lying on top of Tommy’s legs, and nudges the covers down with his nose. Tommy’s cock lies soft and shadowed against his leg, but Lawson doesn’t doubt his ability to get it interested again. He breathes over him, and lowers his head.

Tommy puts both hands in his hair. “What are you doing?”

“Shutting you up,” he says. “That okay?”

After a moment, Tommy says, “Yeah,” and Lawson gets to work.

~*~

The next time he opens his eyes, it’s daylight, and he’s alone.

Waking up together twice was too much to hope for, he guesses. And dangerous besides.

Sex-sore, in body and spirit, he gets up and goes to shower.

When he emerges, clean if not more optimistic, he finds that someone’s been in the room in his absence: his Coffee Town polo and khakis are laid out on the bed, freshly-laundered and wrinkle-free. The visor sits above the shirt, and even it looks cleaner, the grubby finger marks on the bill scrubbed away.

Since it’s clear he’s meant to wear it – his second day in a row of dressing up like someone’s oversized doll – he dons it, and then pulls one of Noah’s hoodies over top, because it’s there, and it’s damn comfortable, and because it gives him a nasty jolt of satisfaction to take something that belongs to the shithead.

He makes his way down to the kitchen, for lack of a better idea and a lack of direction. The sound of voices carries down the hall, and when he reaches the room, he finds all three Cattaneos standing around the island with coffee.

Lawson wasn’t sure how he’d feel once he was face to face with Tommy this morning, and his answer arrives with a clenching of his stomach and the sudden knowledge that he can’t look at him. Not yet.

He looks at Frank and Noah instead, standing together on the same side of the island, squared off from Tommy.

Lawson plucks at the front of his stolen hoodie. “I’m keeping this.”

Noah shakes his head, but says nothing.

Frank has a leather-bound, nineties-era-accounting-office notebook that he opens and moves to show Lawson. “Do you understand what you’re doing? No,” he answers before Lawson can. “Here. This is your schedule.” He goes over it until he can repeat it back by rote, and then grudgingly accepts the zippered lunchbox that Frank hands him. It feels heavier than it is; feels like a bomb in his grasp.

Frank closes the notebook and hands him that as well. And then three business cards: his, Noah’s, and Tommy’s.

Lawson takes them with a sigh and tucks them into the notebook without pointing out that he already has one of Tommy’s cards.

“Don’t sigh at me,” Frank chides. He sounds…not friendly, but not nasty, either. He sounds like a put-out uncle, and Lawson is no longer intimidated by him like he was that first day in the Town Car. “We’re cutting you a lot more slack than you deserve.”

Lawson gives him a mock salute.

“Come on.” Tommy speaks for the first time, which means Lawson has to look at him for the first time.

The needy wraith, the sniffling lover of last night, is gone, replaced by a perfectly-polished mob boss who wears his wealth in many and obvious ways. He’s in a gray suit today, burgundy shirt, burgundy tie and pocket square. Burgundy is a very, very good color on him – as is the faint blush that stains his cheeks. He’s otherwise composed, and he’s tossing a set of car keys from hand to hand.

His hair is gelled flat, and his clean-shaved jaw shows no evidence of Lawson’s mouth. If his throat boasts any hickeys, they’re covered by the high collar of his shirt.

Lawson wishes, with a sad ache in his gut, that Tommy looked like he’d crawled into Lawson’s bed last night. That there was some sign that it hadn’t all been a very vivid and crippling dream.

“I believe I was promised breakfast,” Lawson says, primly.

Tommy’s chest lifts, a visible quick inhale. He did say they would leave after breakfast – but he said it in the wee hours, with his hand tangled in Lawson’s hair, before he called himhoney, and got weepy over Lawson’s sad sack life and family situation. No matter how benign a phrase, by mentioning it, Lawson’s dragging their private moment into the daylight, in front of witnesses.

Tommy’s jaw works a moment, then he snatches an apple from the table in the center of the island and tosses it to him.

Lawson catches it, and then gestures at himself with it. “You think I keep this machine running withfruitfor breakfast?”

---