With a grunt Joel tripped over a free weight and landed on all fours in a pile of blankets that smelled like sex and beer. The ringing got louder, and Joel reached under the oxblood leather couch to be rewarded by the tiny cell phone buzzing in the palm of his hand.
“Jesus, Ian,” he griped, “don’t you have a house phone?”
“What?” Ian looked up from his room blankly and then turned back to the paper he was typing—something about imaginary numbers and Riemannian geometry, and Joel was damned if he could follow half of what Ian said when he was talking about it.
Joel rolled his eyes and sat on the floor, leaning against the couch, to answer the phone.
“Hello. Ian Cooper?” The voice was educated, older than thirty, and female.
“No, I’m sorry. This is his roommate.”
There was a subtle pause. “Roommate?”
“Yeah, roommate.” As if! “What can I do for you?”
“This is Florence Kohl from U.C. Davis. I was just calling to remind Dr. Cooper that he has a lecture tomorrow.”
“Does he know where it is?” Joel asked, looking around the spacious top-floor apartment a little desperately for a pen and paper. He’d already started a grocery list in his head: laundry hampers, vacuum cleaner bags, Swiffer, sponges, dish soap. He added “pen and paper” to it now, so he didn’t have to make the next list in his head.
“Oh yes.” Florence laughed appreciatively. “Just get him to the campus around ten o’clock, and he’ll probably show up by ten-thirty.”
The nice woman with (presumably) Ian’s paycheck in the palm of her hand rang off, and Joel took a deep breath and looked around. The apartment was gorgeous: oxblood leather furniture, hardwood floors, cream area rugs and a burgundy accent with white trim. And it was huge; the rent was a steal. The fact that it currently looked like a thrift store clearinghouse because of the sheer volume of clothes on the floor, in the corners, on the couches, and over the coffee table, and that it smelled like a monkey’s ass notwithstanding, the situation had potential.
But first, there had to be some semblance of order. That was okay. Joel was good at order.
“Ian,” he said, standing up and dusting off his hands, “buddy, you have a lecture to give tomorrow.”
The effect on Ian was electric. He stood up abruptly, left his computer, and started running around his room, rifling through clothes, throwing items from the pile on the bed onto the pile on the floor, and digging through stuff in the pile on the floor and tossing it to the lone basket at the foot of the bed.
“Oh fuck,” he was muttering. “I don’t have anything to wear!”
Joel had to suppress a laugh. “Then what is all this shit on the floor?” he asked with good nature, and Ian sent him a panicked look from his wild-blue eyes.
“It’s not funny, mate. All this shit, it’s wrinkled! I’ve got to do laundry! I’ve got to find a laundromat! Jesus, I’ve
got to get quarters
!”
He was so distraught that Joel couldn’t laugh anymore. “Ian… Ian…
Ian
!”
Ian stopped so abruptly that he tripped over a dress shoe and fell sprawling on (what else?) a pile of clothes. Joel was over to him before he could pick himself up, crouching down to see if he would live.
“Ian. pop… buddy… you okay?”
Ian blinked up at him like a startled child. “I’m fine,” he said softly, and a troubled version of that smile appeared. “I hadn’t meant for you to see me lose my nut quite so soon. I’m sorry. I just- I completely forgot….”
Joel looked carefully at his roommate, saw the bloodshot eyes and the dark bags, and recalled that Ian hadn’t slept the night before, he’d been so intent on his work. Joel took a deep breath, snagged a paper and a pen off the clutter that was Ian’s desk, and sat down to put his tidy mind to work.
“All right, Ee. Here. This is a list of shit we need. I can pay you back for my half…”
“No worries,” Ian assured carelessly, and Joel had rolled his eyes. He’d pay the guy back. He didn’t like being in someone’s debt. “No, really!” Ian assured him. “You’re helping me out of a jam here. Let me pay, right?”
“Ian, it’s no big deal,” Joel laughed, and he was surprised when Ian’s long-fingered hand wrapped around his wrist and stopped him from writing. Joel looked up and met those spring-blue eyes. They were intent and laser focused, and Joel’s breath had caught in his chest.
“It’s a very big deal,” Ian said seriously. “You didn’t sign up to be my keeper. I’ve made a piss-poor showing here. I appreciate it.”
There was something naked in his eyes, something stripped bare. Ian was afraid of what Joel would think of him.
Joel tried a tentative smile, although there was still something in his chest that wanted him not to breathe. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t doing anything else.” This was true. Christ, when was the last time he had a date?
“Well, if I get in the way of you getting laid, let me know, right, mate?” Ian grinned, and Joel blushed for no good reason he could think of.
“Whatever. Look, man, just get this stuff.” He had a thought. “Do not stop, do not pass go, do not get anything but what’s on that list.”
“What about some takeout for dinner?”
“And dinner. And by the time you get back, I’ll have clothes ready to go in the washer, and we can go together.”
Ian blessed him then with the widest, sweetest, most grateful smile. “Well, if I must do laundry, I couldn’t ask for better company.”
“So,” Melody said seriously while washing out the pie tin, “you keep his life for him, and he pays for dinner. Sounds like you’re his houseboy or something!”
Joel had to roll his eyes. “Not even that glamorous. And it’s not like that. He just… he loses track of the world so thoroughly, you know? All those clothes on the floor? It was just easier for him to go out and buy new clothes than it was to find what he needed in what he already had. I went through and organized, and he had, like, three pairs of the same jeans!”
Melody laughed for a minute and then looked at him thoughtfully. “Doesn’t that get old though? You know, keeping someone’s life for them?”
Joel shrugged. “He’s kept it up since I organized it. And trust me, he’s got his own life. In fact, I think he fucks anything with a pulse!”
“Oooh… lots of hot women coming in and out of your pad?”
Joel flushed. “Like I said, …um,
anything
with a pulse.”
Melody turned to him in titillation, her well-crafted eyebrows reaching her hairline and her mouth making a little moue. “
Really.
An equal opportunity kind of guy?”
Joel’s blush intensified. “Yeah, um, I can’t say much for his taste, though.”
The boy with the unbuttoned jeans and bare chest was pretty, Joel would give him that. The kid’s hair was tousled, carefully streaked, and his little heart-shaped face and brown eyes were truly charming.
Joel would have been more impressed if he hadn’t found the boy rifling through Ian’s pants and palming his credit card.
Christo! Joel had to shake his head. On the nights that Joel worked late, he would sometimes find Ian gone when he got home. In the morning there would be a stranger doing a red-faced walk of shame out of Ian’s room. Usually the stranger was female, but not today.
“Hey, you, what the fuck you think you doing,
punto
? You get the hell away from shit that don’t belong to you!” Joel’s accent—the product of being brought up in a mostly Spanish-speaking home—only came out when he was back at home or really, really pissed off.
The kid started guiltily and dropped the jeans and wallet, scattering the credit cards on the (clean!) floor. “Hey, baby, don’t get mad at me because your boy got takeout last night!”
It was probably the ingratiating smile on the kid’s face, but in about two seconds, Joel had him pinned to the pretty purple wall with his forearm at a slender, corded throat. “I could give a shit what he sleeps with, as long as it doesn’t take him on the twinkie express when it’s done.”
“Yeah?” the kid hissed. “What’re you gonna do? For all you know he liked what he got!”
Joel rolled his eyes. “Yeah? For all you know, he thinks you someone dead who was doing some sexy math in his dreams.”
In less than a minute Joel had hustled the kid out onto the landing and slammed the door in his face, ignoring his cry of, “But I don’t even have my shoes!” Then, in as quiet a huff as he could manage, he tiptoed into Ian’s room. He tried to ignore Ian’s sprawled, naked body on top of the covers as he began to quietly pick up the clothes on the floor he knew for certain weren’t Ee’s.
“Mmmmm,” Ian groaned, just as Joel was about to close the door and let him sleep, “Joel? S’that you?”
“Yeah, popp, uh, Ee. What you… what do you want?”
“What’re you doing?”
“Saturday chores?” Joel tried, and Ian sat up sleepily. God, his chest and abs really were cut! And his… never mind. Joel wasn’t going to look at that. It was huge, but he wasn’t gonna look.
“Saturday?” Ian murmured. “Don’t we usually get breakfast on Saturdays?”
Joel resisted the temptation to say something catty, like
Well, yeah, did you want to take your Friday Night Special too?
And instead concentrated on the fact that Ian seemed to have forgotten about Twink Lightfingers who was standing half-naked on the landing.
“Yeah, Ee,” he said with a sigh, “but first I’ve got to take out the trash.”
Later, over pancakes at IHOP (because it was Ian’s favorite, that’s why) Joel read him the riot act.
“For Christ’s sake, Ian, he was
stealing your cash
! I hope you at least wore a raincoat, you feel me?”
Ian blinked. “Why would I want a raincoat, Joel? I was having sex.”
Joel put his face in his hands, closed his eyes tight, and prayed that when he looked up and opened them Ian would be kidding.
He wasn’t.
“A
condom,
Ian, I hope you used a
condom!”
Oh God, he was
not
having this conversation with a twenty-something bisexual college professor. It was
not
possible.
“Why would I?” Ian asked seriously. He looked anxious. It was as though he understood he’d done something wrong, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was. “It’s not like either one of us can get pregnant, right?”
“Disease, Ee?” Joel realized he was on the verge of tears. How had this man managed to live on his own and be this innocent? “You know, HIV, herpes, shit that’ll make your dick fall off?”
Ian’s eyes were suddenly saucer-shaped, and his mouth was wide open. Oh yes, now the light bulb was on. “Oh, well, shit, mate, I never thought about that! I just….” He cocked his head, something suddenly occurring to him. “And how would you know about that? I didn’t know you swung that way, do you?”
Joel shook his head. “I want to Catholic school, where they teach you everything with a healthy dose of ‘God will hate you if you do that, but if you want God to hate you go ahead’. Or maybe that was Sister Margaret.” Joel tried a laugh, but Ian was looking more and more distraught, so he tried some kindness instead. “Look, Ee, we’ll get you tested. It’ll be no big deal.”
“Do you believe that?” Ian asked suddenly, a pinch around his eyes. “You don’t believe that God hates me, do you?”
Oh crap. Heaven save Joel from literal mathematical geniuses. “No,” he said softly, trying to do anything to take that pinched look from those Easter-sky eyes. “I think as long as you care about the person, and you’re being good to each other, God’s all fine with it. But that’s why this worries the hell out of me, Ian. You don’t even like these people. I mean
hell
, I don’t think you even remember that kid’s name!”
“Benji,” Ian supplied helpfully, and it was all Joel could do to not make gagging motions with his fingers.
“Yeah, whatever, it’s like when I’m not there, you wander out and bring back a warm body. You deserve better than that, Ee. What you’re doing is dangerous, and you could get hurt, and I don’t want that to happen.”
Ian shrugged and looked away. “I don’t know, mate. I used to be okay, but now… you’re not there. It gets lonely in the place, right?”
Joel did laugh now. “Jesus, Ian! Get a cat!”
That lost look went away, and Ian looked across the table and grinned back at him. “That’s an idea. I like cats.”
They were sitting near a window, and Joel found himself fascinated by the way the light hit that halo of curly blond hair and brought out the reddish hints in Ian’s eyelashes. He stopped himself and thought of a way to keep Ian safe.
“Okay, then, you look for a cat, and I’ll promise to call when I’m going to be late, deal?”
The look on Ian’s face transcended “pleased” and bordered on “sublimely happy”.
“Right, mate. If I must!”
Joel and Melody made it to the couch, each one sitting on the end and tangling their legs companionably in the middle. Melody was channel surfing with the sound off, listening avidly to Joel’s latest story, and when he was finished, she leaned her head back sleepily. Joel was pretty tired himself, but, well, he missed his big sister. They’d bickered, like most children, but he’d always loved knowing she had his back—bullies at school, his first broken heart (a girl from public school their father hadn’t approved of)—she was Joel’s own personal pit bull, and really, until Ian, his best friend.
“Honey, that’s sweet and all, but really, don’t you think you got enough to take care of with this Ian person? You really want a cat?”
Joel felt his expression go soft and a little dreamy. He couldn’t help it—he knew how it must look, but…
“Ee actually takes care of the cat,” he said truthfully. “Ian feeds it, and he’s the one who took it to the vet when we first got it.”