Chapter 4 #2
Wall doesn't look at him. "It allows eight business days."
"We need twelve."
"Ten, tops."
"Based on what?"
"Reality."
Around the table, pens stop moving. Becker slowly closes his own laptop.
Patrick clicks to the next tab. "Your timeline is naive."
Wall looks at the projection for the first time. "Your font is."
"That’s...What?"
Mama Paws rises, collects her cookie tray, and backs toward the office without turning around.
I should probably be worried. Co-chairs at war is bad for the campaign, bad for the dogs, bad for—
"You scheduled the calendar shoot before securing the photographer," Patrick says.
"The photographer is secured."
"There's no contract."
"Verbal confirmation."
"So, unsecured."
"They've worked with us before."
"Sentimental and naive."
Wall's jaw ticks. Patrick's half-smile arrives, the exact one I've personally chased across a mattress. And then Wall leans forward and starts dismantling Patrick's transport budget line by line, and Patrick lets him.
Their bodies have turned toward each other. Neither pays attention to anyone else now. Patrick knows exactly how long to let the silence sit before prodding again, and Wall responds every fucking time.
Wait.
Wait wait wait.
I look at Patrick. I look at Wall. I look at eight years of shootout insults, the save-percentage feud, the mic'd-up fiasco, the junior final Patrick keeps on a hard drive labeled ARCHIVE.
Oh no.
Oh, no.
They're flirting.
They've been flirting. For eight years.
These two enormous, emotionally constipated disasters invented a professional rivalry as foreplay and got the entire league to buy tickets.
I press both hands over my mouth.
Petrov leans toward me. "What?"
"Nothing."
"You gasped."
"I…saw the budget."
At the head of the table, Wall says, "Your transport tab has duplicate costs."
Patrick spins back to the screen so fast the projector cable yanks tight.
I bite my own fist.
Unbelievable. And nobody in this room can see it but me.
***
MAMA PAWS ENDS the spreadsheet war by assigning labor. Patrick gets sponsor packets with a volunteer coordinator. Becker and Petrov get sent to sort donated dog food, which I choose to believe is punishment.
Then: "Wall, Theo, the new crates are in the storage alcove. Big job, two people."
I look at Wall. Wall looks at a point four inches to the left of my head.
Cool. Great. Totally normal. Just me and the man who watched Patrick jerk me off on a desk, alone, in a closet, having acknowledged it with a grand total of zero words. What could possibly go wrong?
The alcove is genuinely tiny, metal shelving stacked with towels, a bag of dog biscuits leaking onto the floor, one bare bulb. The crates lean flat-packed against the back wall. Wall has to duck through the doorway and then keep his head bent under a shelf bracket.
He picks up the instruction sheet and reads it, sleeves pushed up, and I watch his forearms because they're right there and I'm only human. There's a vein running up from his wrist that disappears under the cuff.
And still, nothing. Not a word about the video room. He watched. I came. And now he's standing six inches away, studying assembly instructions, treating me with the warmth he'd extend to office furniture.
You know what? Fuck that.
If nobody's going to name the thing, I'm going to poke the thing.
"Hold these panels," I say sweetly. "Steady. I need to work the latch."
He takes both panels with one hand. One. The panels are nearly as wide as I am.
“Spread them wider.”
His gaze lifts from the instructions. “The panels?”
“Unless you have another suggestion.”
A faint flush reaches his ears.
He moves the panels apart while I crouch to attach the bottom latch. His thigh ends up beside my shoulder, solid beneath black sweatpants.
I am one bad decision from biting a Chicago Wolf in a supply closet.
“You need to hold it steady while I work down here.”
“I am holding it steady.”
“Tighter.”
The metal bars creak beneath his fingers, and my cock attempts to join the project. “You have excellent hands.”
Wall doesn’t move. His jaw does.
"It helps if you breathe," I add.
"I'm breathing," he says.
"You sure? Seems like you've been holding that same breath since the doorway."
The muscle in his cheek jumps. Which doorway, he does not ask, because we both know I didn't mean this one.
I snap the first latch and rise toward the second, slow, letting my shoulder drag along the panel. And his hand.
"Angle it toward me?"
He does.
"More."
He does.
"Little more."
He lets out an audible exhale through his nose. When I glance up, his face is twice as taut as before.
"See, this is nice," I say, thumbing the latch. "Teamwork. You hold things in place, I handle the delicate mechanism, everybody gets what they need."
Nothing.
"You're very tense for a man doing charity."
His ears have been climbing toward maroon the entire time, and honestly, I could do this all day. He's stone everywhere except those two body parts that keep snitching on him.
So I go for the throat. I look up at him from the latch, big-eyed, summoning my most innocent expression, and say, "You know, if you want a better view, you can always come closer."
Wall looks down at me, and doesn’t avert his gaze this time. Instead, he holds my stare for a moment that drags toward infinity. Then, "I didn't need one last time."
The latch snaps shut on my thumb.
"Fucking— Son of a diseased moose—" I yank my hand back and jam my thumb in my mouth.
He said it. He actually acknowledged it. Days of institutional silence and he chose now, in a closet, with a comeback so dry I need lotion.
Wall turns the panel upright. "Careful with the latches."
I stare at him. He looks exactly the same as thirty seconds ago—stone face, red ears. Except his eyes have narrowed a little at the corners, a self-administered standing ovation.
I've got nothing. For the first time since juniors, somebody chirped me and I've got nothing.
We finish the crate in silence. The second goes faster.
By the third, he's stopped checking the instructions, and I've stopped pretending I'm not watching those hands work the latches, thumb and forefinger, zero effort, and if I don't get out of this alcove soon, I'm going to say something that gets me banned from charity as a concept.
When we carry the last crate out, Mama Paws clasps her hands. “Perfect. You make a wonderful team.”
“He’s excellent with his hands,” I say.
Wall walks into the doorframe.
God, I love charity.
***
THE SHELTER DOESN'T so much end the workday as slowly forgets about it.
Mama Paws disappears into the office with two volunteers and an armful of donation receipts. Everyone else drifts off in search of unfinished jobs until even Hendrix runs out of obscenities and tucks his beak into his feathers.
Which leaves the three of us scattered around the folding tables. Wall is pretending to be busy with his laptop. Patrick is pretending to review sponsor forms, which I know he isn't doing because he hasn't turned a page for ten minutes.
Oh, good. We're all being extremely normal.
I rearrange three clipboards and a stack of blank name tags, busywork so convincing I deserve a salary. Across the room, Patrick lifts his gaze.
We lock eyes.
The nod he gives me is tiny. Barely there. Anyone else would miss it. I know every version of Patrick's face, though, including the one he wears right before he takes charge of a situation and the one he wears right before he takes charge of me. This is both.
It's time.
My pulse kicks hard enough to shake the clipboard in my hand.
Patrick sets down the sponsor packet and stands. No rush in his movements. The man could walk toward an active bomb and make the bomb feel dramatic for ticking.
Wall sees him coming. I know that because his shoulders lock while Patrick is still six feet away, but he keeps his attention on the laptop
Patrick stops right beside him. “Wallace. A word.”
Keeping his expression carefully neutral, Wall lifts his gaze and waits.
“Privately,” Patrick adds.
Wall studies him. The light catches the pale gray of his eyes, but there isn't a damn thing in them I can read. His face has gone concrete bunker. Even his ears have stopped betraying him.
For one horrible second, I think he may refuse. Then he closes the laptop and gives Patrick a tiny nod of his own.
Patrick walks first. Wall trails him toward the narrow hallway, three steps back, the distance exact enough to look casual if a person has recently suffered a head injury. As Patrick passes me, he plants another clipboard against my chest without breaking stride.
“Keep the hallway clear.”
Wall's gaze lands on the clipboard, then on me. I arrange my face into the trustworthy expression of a campaign volunteer who has absolutely no additional agenda. He follows Patrick into the hall anyway.
My heart thumps against the clipboard.
Hallway security. Vital charity work. I take my position beside a tower of paper-towel boxes and peer around the corner with what I’m hoping is dignity and subtlety.
The supply room is barely large enough for both of them. Patrick leaves the door open several inches, and through the gap I can see a narrow slice of him beside the cabinets and most of Wall, because there is no architectural feature on earth capable of reducing that man to a narrow slice.
Wall has to angle one shoulder away from a shelf. Patrick stands close enough that the toes of their shoes nearly touch.
I know the plan. Technically. It has several possible endings, and Patrick refused to predict which one we'd get.
Patrick reaches into his pocket, and Wall's eyes follow the movement. So do mine.
The puck appears between Patrick's fingers, held in front of his chest like a card he's about to toss onto a table.
Wall looks at it for a beat.
Then he reaches.
His fingers close around the puck. Patrick doesn't release it.
The tips of their fingers brush along the edge, Patrick's thumb near Wall's knuckle, both hands attached to six ounces of rubber neither of them needs help holding. My mouth goes dry.