Page 10 of Need a Hand?
Yep. Totally auspicious beginning. Fuck.
Bubbles spun on Damian, glaring at him like he could make holes in his face. “What the fuck, Rosy?” He glanced over at Mary Jane. “Miss, if he’s done something to you, any guy here’s going to help—”
“I’mgay, dude!” Damian sputtered, just as Mary Jane cut in with, “If I need help I’ll ask for it.”
Bubbles muttered something Damian didn’t catch and kind of deflated back into his chair. Poor guy. If Mary Jane was his type, he was a lot braver than Damian had thought, and that included when he ran into burning buildings and shit.
“So. Asshole. We need to talk,” Mary Jane said.
“Outside, okay?” Damian went around the desk and through the security door and gestured hopefully across the small lobby at the set of double doors leading to the parking lot. “Come on, outside.”
Mary Jane strode ahead of him and let the door swing back and almost whack him in the face. She turned right and kept going, until they ended up at the corner of the building, partly behind a potted palm tree and out of most of the light from the giant halogen lamps dotted around the parking lot. The better to hide from prying eyes if she murdered him?
“You know there are security cameras on all sides of the building.”
Damian had been given a lot of “you fucking moron” looks in his life—he had two older siblings and multiple senior officers. This one topped them all.
“Yeah, I’m not afraid of you,” Mary Jane said.
“Who says I was worried aboutyoursafety?” That actually earned him a snort of laughter. “And why the fuck do you hate me so much, anyway? I seriously don’t get it.”
“Oh, let’s see, I don’t know, you ran over my twin brother with a fire truck? And then, oh, hmm, let me think.” She put a hand up to her chin. “Maybe it was when you made out with him and got him to think you liked him so he wouldn’t sue you? You fucking son of a bitch, I can’t believe I’m the one who sent you over—”
“Shut. Up!” She jumped as he shouted, and even took a step back, wariness suddenly in her eyes and posture. “Fuck.” He really did feel like an asshole now. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Just—look, I do like him. He’s the one who told me to get lost. I was trying to work up to getting him to go on a date with me. And also? You know, for the record? A second ago, you admitted this isyour fault, so get off your high horse! You set us up by sending me over there after you stoleyour own mom’sidentity to make an account with the handyman app!”
Finally,finally, Mary Jane looked a little uncomfortable, like maybe she’d started to realize she’d fucked up nearly as much as Damian had. She couldn’t quite meet his eyes, and she was shuffling her feet a little in those totally ridiculous boots.
Damian had a sudden mental image ofPeterin those boots, and he went from wanting to laugh to dry-mouthed in less than a second. Fuck. Okay, not looking at the boots anymore. It was actually really disturbing how much the twins resembled each other—and that stupid, cute actor in his stupidly sexy corset—Mary Jane’s breasts aside.
“Fine,” Mary Jane said. “Fine. So I thought it was a good idea at the time, and I was, you know, wrong. That doesn’t mean you didn’t fuck it all up.”
“Let me get my phone out real quick. I want to record you sayingyou were wrong.”
She looked up sharply and stared him down, her little moment of not being scary passing as quickly as it had come. “I shouldn’t have sent you over there to see him, yeah, but that’s because I honestly thought you might not be a total dick and I was wrong aboutthat. So that’s on you.”
“I just told you, that’s not why I kissed him!”
“And I think you’re lying!”
Damian broke first, looking down and running a hand over his face, trying to push away the headache starting to bloom along his temples. A cool breeze rustled through the palm tree, and through a window down the side of the building, Damian could hear the faint sounds of the guys arguing about what to watch on TV during dinner.
He could walk away. Go inside, put in his vote for anything other than a cooking show, because for some reason that was all Larry wanted to watch like ever, and forget about both of the twins.
Except he couldn’t. He couldn’t get Peter out of his mind, and he’d been hung up on him ever since he’d left his house that day. Ever since he’d left him at the hospital, even. Yeah, it was the soft, wavy, shiny brown hair that Damian wanted to tug on while he…did other stuff, and those eyes he could drown in, and the way Peter looked like he’d fit perfectly as the little spoon if they cuddled after.
And the thought of everything that’d happen before the cuddling. Damian might’ve spent a little too much time picturing that.
But he also liked Peter’s sense of humor. He wanted to argue about time travel and alternate dimensions during the spooning part (and Damian had the intimate knowledge of multiple Stargate series necessary to win that argument, he didn’t care how nerdy Peter thought he was), and be able to kiss Peter’s neck in between arguing.
Damian had a crush on the guy. A serious, pathetic, write-in-my-diary crush, the kind he hadn’t had since middle school.
And the only way to get out of “I ran him over and then fucked with his head” jail would be to get Mary Jane on his side. Because maybe Peter liked to pretend he ignored his sister, or found her annoying, but really it was pretty obvious they were a team. And if Mary Jane told her brother Damian wasn’t an asshole after all, Peter would give him a chance.
Damian needed leverage, in short.
“So why did you trick me into going over there in the first place, huh? Because that’s the part you haven’t explained.”
She got that shifty look again, flicking her eyes from the concrete wall behind Damian to the flagpole in front of the station.
