Chapter 16
Wallace
Wallace felt like he floated through the rest of the week. His father’s disappointment couldn’t touch him. Benedict Curran’s manipulative antics were merely a distraction.
Wallace’s department was doing fine, and that was all that mattered when Wallace had a virtual cart full of lacy things waiting on his secret second phone.
He hadn’t quite ordered them. He might need a little bit more time to build up his courage.
But he felt sure that Volt would know that when they met again. Maybe Volt would like to help him choose. Or maybe Wallace should pick something out as a surprise?
He’d managed to order some lounge wear, though. Just for around the house. Nothing overtly feminine, but… kind of?
And he was wearing something called boyshorts today, soft and silky under his clothes.
The company was still on the lookout for the Maxamillion virus, and Wallace had even assigned a few folks to keep at it, while maintaining his own monitoring. Upper management was searching, with more intensity but fewer productive ideas, for a secret knowledge.
How ironic, that Wallace, the “disgrace of a man,” was the only one who’d actually spoken to the spark. Take that , he’d thought viciously at his father after the latest round of familial humiliation. Dear old Rick had even accused him of lying about Maxamillion to get attention.
As if Wallace had ever wanted any more attention from the two of them.
He stopped by the cafeteria to grab a wrap for lunch, intending to combine his meal with his daily walk and photo for Daddy. There’d been a few cold and rainy days this week, when he’d had to choose between huddling under his umbrella or wandering through other departments to the consternation of the resident employees, but today was beautiful.
He started down one of the paths that had become his favorite. It led to an artificial pond with water lilies that were just starting to bloom. There turned out to be a lot of beauty on the Orbit campus that he hadn’t noticed until Volt had helped to open his eyes.
The chicken Ceasar wrap that he’d chosen was delicious, too. He paused a few bites in to send Volt a picture.
The response was immediate, as always.
That looks tasty. Are you eating outside today?
Eating and walking, he answered back. I’m going to the pond.
I’ll be waiting for my picture, sweet girl.
Wallace could feel his cheeks warm, but fortunately there was no one to see him. Other employees occasionally walked along this path, but since there was a more direct route between the two main campuses, it wasn’t common.
He could just enjoy the spring breeze and contemplate the best scenery for a photo.
“Hello, Wallace.”
“Fuck!” Wallace practically jumped out of his skin when he heard the deep, smooth voice from less than a foot away. His heart was thumping in his chest as he turned around to look for it, but by that time he’d already figured it out. “Hello, Maxamillion,” he grit out.
“I’m sorry that I startled you,” the spark replied from a speaker that… Yeah, there it was, attached to a tree branch. “I just noticed that you’ve seemed so much happier recently, and I thought you might find it more relaxing to chat outside.”
“Nope.” He kept walking. Maybe he could get past the speaker’s range.
How closely was that thing watching him? He had been happier, but how creepy was it that the knowledge knew?
Especially since literally no one else on the planet cared. Except Daddy. Daddy cared, and that was all that mattered.
“You know, you can call me Max if you want to.”
He didn’t want to call him anything.
“Since you’re a human, I have a question for you.”
Holy crap. How many speakers were there, nestled in the trees? Did they go along the whole path?
And also, since you’re a human? Majorly creepy.
But Maxamillion, as usual, just pushed on with his upbeat chatter, now from a speaker a few yards down on the other side of the path. “I need some ideas for dates. Where do humans like to go on dates?”
Wallace full on stopped walking. “You’re asking me ? You can query the entire internet.”
“I know,” the knowledge complained. “There are just too many options. And not all of them are easy for sparks.”
Right. Max wanted to get a body. Wallace supposed that made sense. “Why are you asking about dates anyway? Like who would you go with?”
“Ben, of course.”
Holy fuck. “Uh… Does he know that you want to date him?”
Max chuckled, sounding just a wee bit like a psycho stalker. “Oh, he knows .”
Wallace really, really did not want to know about anything that Ben and a bodiless computer mainframe were getting up to together behind closed doors. But he had to ask. “Does he want to date you, too?”
“He says he doesn’t do relationships.” Max sounded woebegone. “But we’re so compatible!”
Wallace was absolutely not going to get involved with the pushy, oversharing robot’s love life. Nope. Not at all.
Or laugh. Because it would have been kind of funny if he and Max were actually friends. If they could tease each other.
This was exactly the type of conversation that he’d always felt jealous about being left out of. People never wanted to share stuff with him. They never asked for his advice. No one ever teased him, unless it was at his expense.
Just because Max was being friendly and fun, though, didn’t imply that Max was his friend. Wallace was just the only option. Their entire relationship was based on Max making sure that Wallace wouldn’t rat him out.
He kept walking.
“So where do humans like to go on dates?”
Wallace pinched his nose, right above his glasses where he could feel a headache developing. Why couldn’t Max take a hint? He’d already promised not to expose him.
Maybe it would be easier to just answer. “People choose dates based upon their individual interests.” Or so he’d heard. He’d just taken women out to expensive dinners and equally expensive events where they could show off his wealth. “So you’d have to ask Ben where he wants to go.”
God, he couldn’t even imagine what the evil little brat would say. Bungee jumping? Lectures at the natural history museum? Late-night raves, where they handed out drugs like candy? Hell, Wallace had even seen Ben come into work with a black eye for a whole week because he’d been in a bar fight. And apparently it had been “awesome.”
Wallace had barely been inside a bar. They were loud and crowded and had people in them. Drunk, obnoxious people who called him dude .
People who he knew were way cooler than he’d ever be.
“Ben wouldn’t tell me,” Max moped. “And anyway, I want to surprise him. Where does your Daddy take you?”
Wallace turned and stared down the nearest speaker. “You said that you weren’t monitoring my phone.”
“I wasn’t! I wasn’t! Seriously. I saw your screen one time, I saw that you were talking to your Daddy, and he called you baby boy, and I knew it was private, so I haven’t looked at your phone since. I swear it was an accident. As long as you’re not talking about me, I don’t need or want to know.”
Wallace forced his fingers to unclench. Volt was private . “If you breathe a word about him to anyone, I will ruin you.”
“Sorry. Really, seriously. I would never tell. Especially to the bag of dicks you call your family.”
Wallace had to snort at that. C’mon. It was funny. Nobody had ever, to his knowledge, called Charles and Rick Wollencroft a bag of dicks.
And he hadn’t realized that Max saw them that way either.
It made a lot more sense why he was trying to stay hidden.
And it… it kind of made Wallace like him more.
But not enough to let his guard down. “Make sure that you don’t,” he snapped.
He only felt a little bit of guilt that he was also using his second phone to monitor some of Max’s activity. It wasn’t like he was hiding the fact that he had his team looking for Max, so was there really a difference?
“Absolutely. Of course. I would never. But, uh, seriously. Where does he take you on dates? I need ideas.”
Wallace walked a little faster. There was no fucking way he was going to explain to Max all of the myriad reasons why he couldn’t go on a date with Volt.
Or, wait. Could he?
Wallace stumbled and then caught himself as ideas started to form.
Volt had worn that hot-as-fuck suit last time, and said he’d been outside conducting business. So clearly he knew his way around the city. He had, like, normal clothes, or at least really-fucking-sexy suits. He didn’t just wear a golden loincloth all the time.
Wallace could ask him out on a date, right? Wouldn’t that be okay?
Would he just book it like a regular appointment? Yeah, he was pretty sure that was how it worked with escort services. He could offer to pay for Volt’s time at a restaurant just as well as he could at Prism.
No, not a restaurant. Volt couldn’t eat. But… a museum? A show? Maybe even a walk through a park? There had to be hundreds of places that a spark would enjoy that didn’t involve eating.
But what would Volt like?
Fuck. He was in the same predicament as Max.
Oh, the irony.
“Do you think Ben would like to go to a concert?”
Why was Max still here? “No idea.” And he didn’t care.
“If you think of something good, maybe we could even go on a double date.”
“What?” Wallace spluttered.
“I keep telling you that you and Ben have more in common than you think. He’s a little prickly outside, but once he lets someone in, he’s very loyal. You guys would be good for each other.”
No, no, and no again. No. There was nothing they had in common.
Except, Wallace realized dizzily, that they were both submissive. Which meant that happy chatterbox Maxamillion was Ben’s Dom .
Good grief .
Wallace and Ben were both dating dominant sparks.
Or at least interested in dating them, in Wallace’s case.
Still, not information that Wallace ever needed to know about Ben’s love life. “Not interested,” he replied.
“Oooh!” Max proclaimed, undeterred. “What about the aquarium? Everybody loves the aquarium, right? Would you take your Daddy there?”
The aquarium? That hadn’t even been on Wallace’s radar. Did everybody love it? He wasn’t sure he’d ever been. But it probably had lots of brightly colored aquatic animals. People could walk around there watching them and holding hands. Talking quietly. It sounded kind of dreamy, actually.
Would that be too weird, to shell out ridiculous sums of money to take a sex worker to look at some fish?
Maybe Wallace should choose something more conventional, though. Theater tickets. Or a musical? Did Volt like musicals? Wallace loved them more than he probably should. More than his father thought was manly. Well, fuck his father.
Wallace could get them show tickets.
Maybe that and the aquarium? Or he could arrange a few options and let Daddy pick. Yes, that was exactly what he would do.
“So what do you think?” Max asked. “Ben loves mollusks, so that’s a good date, right?”
“Sure,” Wallace agreed. Mollusks were clams, right? “Could be.”
And even though he honestly didn’t care and had no reason at all to want Ben to be happy after everything that cocky jerk had put him through, when Max made a small, all-too-human sound of satisfaction over the plan, Wallace couldn’t help the small part of him that hoped it really did turn out to be a good date for the two of them.
The very, very small part.
Because mostly, he was too busy hoping Daddy would say yes…
Well, of course he would. Wallace would be paying him to. But that Daddy would enjoy Wallace asking him out on a date.
That Daddy would enjoy Wallace.
And he could spend another day pretending that it was real.