Page 4 of Sean's Sunshine
“Sorry, man, it slipped out. Which is weird because nobody at the flophouse besides Henry even knows my real name.”
Oh.
“Why Henry?”
“He helps us fill out our paperwork,” Billy said. “I was going for my student loans.”
Sean let go of the grudge against Henry he hadn’t known he’d been carrying. “What’re you studying?” he managed, not sure why it was necessary he and Billy indulge in dating conversation at this moment, but too interested to do otherwise.
“Engineering,” Billy said shortly. They’d gotten to Sean’s room, and once again Sean found himself deftly handled, lifted, positioned, and cared for until he was on his back, propped up just so, and able to both breatheandsleep.
“Too bad,” Sean said, yawning as he fell into the pillows. “You’re one hell of a nurse.”
The faint sound of Billy’s bitter laughter followed him into his dreams.
Nurse Billy
OH LORD.Billy had texted Henry for, of all things, a two-way intercom to help him with his new job. Henry had dropped it off the night before, after Billy had gotten Mr. Scary Cop with the Super Scary Mom to bed, and now, as Billy enjoyed the clean sheets on the double bed in the guest room, he could recognize the sounds coming through the electronic device.
His patient was waking up. Which mean Billy was about to be on.
Being “Nurse Billy” was possibly the easiest thing Billy had ever done for room and board—or it would be if his patient was a little more excited about being a patient and less excited about being super independent immediately.
“I hear you in there,” Billy called, pulling himself upright on the super-comfy bed. “You don’t even get to go to the john without me in there to—”
Thud.“Oolf!”
“—help you, you fucking asshole.”
Goddammit. If this guy killed himself on Billy’s watch, Billy was going to be pissed.
Billy hadn’t been looking for an alternate gig from the flophouse—but he hadn’tnotbeen either. The flophouse—and hell, the porn gig at Johnnies—wasn’t awful. He’d spent twenty years under the old man’s roof; heknewawful. Rooming in an apartment with a bunch of guys was no big deal. He even liked the guys. They looked out for each other, and he may not have been the most demonstrative asshole on the planet, but he could appreciate that.
But porn was… exhausting. He’d been doing it for two years now, and he was sotired. The constant physical upkeep. The constant emotional seesaw. It felt like he’d spent alifetimejumping up and down on his emotions to keep them in the right box. When he’d been living at home, the box had been heterosexually shaped, and it not only hadn’t fit, it had beenexcruciating.When he’d been outed—and kicked out—the best part was not having to fit into that box.
Initially, porn had been sort of freeing that way. No strings—strings got messy, complicated, and embarrassing. No family. Just doing the things to make the other guy come. It had almost been a competitive sport, really. He remembered being a kid and challenging the other kids on the block to different tricks skateboarding. Porn was like that.
“Make that guy come with your hand. With your tongue. With your asshole. With one finger uphisasshole. What other tricks can you do?”
So easy but so… detached.
He’d actually tried a girlfriend, thinking that maybe he was one kind of sexual and another kind of romantic—but that had been an on-and-off disaster, so maybe it was just the porn.
And he was one semester away from moving on to Sac State from Sac City. Not a big deal inmiles,butsucha big deal in terms of his long-term plans. So there he’d been, his situation not ideal but not awful either, and some hero had to get himself shot. And the only place to hide him?
Well, apparently Billy and Cotton’s room in the flophouse.
Cotton, Billy’s roommate, had taken one look at that soldier, half-dead and out of his mind with fever, and had practically transformed. One minute he was a big sloe-eyedmesswho couldn’t film one more damned porn scene without self-destructing and had no idea what to do with his life, and the next he was almost-dead guy’s angel with a flaming sword. Selfless healer, advocate warrior, nurse extraordinaire. Cotton was going to save that hero if it was the last thing he did! Billy was all for helping with that—the guy had been running a mission to protect children, and Billy had been the oldest of six, so he got it. You did everything you could to protect the short people. But Cotton? Cotton apparently had dibs. Saving that guy had been the moment Cotton had been waiting for his whole lost life, and Billy had gotten moved to an inflatable mattress, which wasn’t a problem, except the mattress was a little rough on the back.
And then Rivers, who apparently knew all the people, called Henry, the resident den mother, and said, “Hey, send someone over here. We need another nurse.”
And Billy was so… soimpressedby watching Cotton transform himself into that angel with the flaming sword that he stepped up.
He hadn’t realized how easy Cotton’d had it.Hishurt guy was mostly unconscious and apparently hadn’t seen another gay man in a thousand years.Billy’shurt guy was a cop recovering from a punctured lung and a pneumothorax, and his ex-boyfriend had apparently stolen half his precious fucking movie collection on his way out the door.
Cotton’s guy was all moony-eyed and shit.
Billy’s guy waspissed off.
