Page 54 of A Hard Sell

“Here, let me.” Thomas leaned over and brushed his finger along the underside of Luka’s lip. “There. Just a crumb.” Their eyes met.

Luka’s heart was pounding so hard he was sure Thomas could hear it. “Thanks.” For a fraction of a second, his instincts screamed at him to toss his tacos and throw himself at Thomas.

But Thomas cleared his throat and turned the movie back on.

Luka took a steadying breath and focused on not getting any more of his dinner on his face.

* * * *

“You’re right, there was aBack-to-the-Future-shaped void in my life. I feel whole now.”

Luka giggled. “I sense you’re mocking me, but I’m okay with it.”

“No, really.” Thomas leaned an elbow on the back of the couch and propped his head on his hand. “I loved it.”

“Favorite character, besides Marty and Doc?”

“Hmmm.” Thomas looked thoughtful, and Luka loved how seriously he took the question. “Biff.”

“Me too. Ooh!” Luka lunged for his phone. “Okay, sorry, but you have to watch this. So the actor, Tom Wilson, actually did stand-up for a while, and he has this song he sings calledThe Question Song. It makes fun of all the people who ask him the same things over and over. You know, ‘What’s Michael J. Fox like?’ I’ve watched it a hundred times and it never stops being funny. Here…” He scooted over to Thomas and held his phone so they could both watch.

He was delighted that Thomas seemed to find the song as funny as he did. When it was over, both of them giggling, Thomas pointed at one of the suggestions. “Look, there’s a newer version from a con. Can we watch that?”

“Yeah, we can.” Luka clicked with relish and settled back, their shoulders touching.

Before they knew it, they had watched every version of the song that existed, then they were on toBack to the Futuretrivia, retrospectives and anniversary talk show appearances. Luka had folded a leg under himself, and his knee was pressed against Thomas’ thigh. When Thomas put his arm along the back of the couch as he leaned in to see better, Luka swallowed hard and let himself slump a little closer. He prayed to the YouTube gods that they never ran out of videos to watch.

Until his eyes started to burn and he realized it was almost one a.m. “Shit,” Luka rubbed his face. “What did we do?”

Thomas yawned and stretched, and Luka eyed the strip of rippling stomach revealed above his waistband. “Wow. I lost track of time.”

“Was that aBack to the Futurejoke?”

Another yawn turned into a laugh. “No…regretfully.”

Luka smiled at him. “Thanks for watching them with me. It was really fun.”

“It was.”

* * * *

“You skipped your run this morning?” Luka leaned on the counter and took a gulp of his coffee, ignoring the fact that it was too hot for gulping. He knew he looked like shit, hair sticking up, bathrobe old and faded.

Thomas was in his slacks and dress shirt, but hair was still loose and wet and he looked adorably bleary as he fumbled for a mug in the cupboard. “Yeah, I overslept. I had all these crazy dreams about time travel.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.”

“It’s fine… It’s all in the past.” He paused to look at Luka, eyes crinkling with amusement.

It took Luka a second, then he snorted a laugh. “Wow. How long were you waiting to tell me that one?”

Thomas poured himself some coffee. “For a good twenty minutes now. I thought of it in the shower.”

“What a waste of time.”

Thomas rolled his eyes with a chuckle. “We could do this all day.”

“You started it!”

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