Page 26 of Shades of Henry
“That’s nice.” Lance regarded Henry through half-masted eyes. “Was there any more trouble?”
Henry shook his head grimly. “Nope. I don’t think he’ll be back.”
Lance nodded. “Good.” Was he forgiven? He couldn’t tell. “Scoot over a little,” he murmured. “I need to lean on something.”
He waited until Henry had turned and lowered his feet to the floor before he laid his head on Henry’s shoulder and made himself comfortable in the sprawl. Henry’s arm wrapping around his shoulders made him smile, relieved. Good choice.
He felt Henry drop his head and breathe softly in Lance’s hair. “You smell like river,” he murmured, so low Lance could barely hear him. “And sun and wind.”
“Mm….” Henry smelled like shower, and it was really turning Lance’s key, but he wasn’t going to say that.
Henry took another deep breath. “Freedom,” he said.
Lance closed his eyes then.Someday, Henry, you can be free.
But he didn’t say anything. Instead he ate lots and lots of popcorn and made sure Henry was fast asleep before he threw it up.
EVERYTHING WASthe same after that, but not.
Work—the insanity of the hospital was hard to quantify, but at the same time, it was a job like any other. Lance liked working with people. He’d been raised to give back to the world, and for all his parents’ flaws, that was one of the good things that had stuck.
As for family, Lance still saw his sister once a month, listened to her stories of law school, and told her about his residency. She never asked about his living situation—he was pretty sure their parents had made her afraid to, which was too bad. He wanted to tell her about home.
He wanted to tell her about Henry.
Coming home was… well, nice, as bizarre and sex-saturated as it was. Apartment 126C made him feel grounded. And coming home to Henry—
Until that day with Martin Sampson, when he thought he’d lost Henry Worrall’s good opinion forever, he hadn’t realized how much he valued it.
Which made him dread what was on the schedule for the end of May.
“Not eating?” Henry asked that night at dinner, and Lance grimaced.
“Scene the day after tomorrow,” he said briefly. Sure, there were other alternatives to fasting, but that tended to leave his breath shiny bright, as Reg called it, and gum left his mouth pasty.
Henry grunted. “You kids—it kills me. I… I mean, I was raised where you got loved with chow. I feel like you’re depriving yourselves, you know?”
Lance regarded him, surprised. “Nothing shitty to say about filming the scene?”
Henry rolled his eyes. “Have I said that to anybody else?”
And Lance felt a little ashamed. “We can feel your disapproval,” he said, regarding Henry over his can of seltzer water.
“Well, that’s not my fault.” Henry glared mulishly, and Lance’s heart melted a little more. “I just….” He grunted. “Sex isn’t… sanitary,” he said after a moment. “I… it’s one of the magic things about it. Or it was. Or it should have been. You wanted it so bad the… uh, sanitation didn’t matter.” He shrugged and fidgeted with the spaghetti on his plate, looking at Lance under his lashes. “You break out a washcloth and a towel and get on with it, you know?”
Lance wanted to ruffle that pretty blond hair. “That’s what, uh, sexshouldbe. But in sex fantasy, there is no washcloth.”
Henry blinked slowly. “You’re a sexual fantasy?” The strangest things happened then. His eyes narrowed, like he was trying to be sarcastic, but his voice… his voice got rough and smoky, and real, like Lance washissexual fantasy and he’d only now realized it.
“To some people,” Lance said calmly. “To some people, I’m the roommate who’s becoming emotionally invested in watching you eat spaghetti.”
And those narrowed eyes suddenly widened with mischief. “Emotionally invested? Or… you know,physicallyinvested?” He took a little bit of meatball on his fork and nibbled it. “Mm… like, are youemotionallyinvested in this meatball? Do youwantthis meatball?” He swallowed and grinned. “Are youfeelingthis meatball?”
Lance’s stomach gave a vicious cramp, and he was tempted—so tempted—to devour an entire plate of spaghetti and spend ten unpleasant minutes in the bathroom with his fingers down his throat. God knows, he’d done that before.
But Henry was having such innocent fun there—and Lance had kept his little bulimic secret for the last two months. He didn’t want Henry to feel bad, oddly enough. The eating and binging thing was his little problem. He couldn’t make it something Henry would hate about himself.
And he really wanted to see Henry smile. God, he was too grim most days.
