Chapter 25
LAURIE
Laurie’s ego was doing just fine. Nobody was in danger, nobody was watching—no brothers to rescue or Hirams to interrupt!
—and Chary Wright was kissing him in nothing but a hotel robe.
Even better, he seemed frantically invested in uncovering Laurie—already down to shirtsleeves and trousers—to a similar state.
Laurie was fully on board. He had never gone into a fuck with so much forethought. Anticipation. With as much experience of the other. It was a thrill.
There was just one potential problem.
Trade sometimes did what he asked, like Irving had; sometimes not. He paid anyway. Men picked up off the street plain didn’t understand. He looked normal, but wanted to be held down and spread? They laughed and went off to find a slighter, more fairy prey, to bolster their normalcy. Queer who?
Laurie didn’t know what Chary saw in him or where his expectations lay.
He knew only what he looked like and that Chary wanted him for it.
He was pretty sure Chary’s expectations matched Laurie’s wants as well as any others’: that they probably didn’t.
He was also pretty sure it wouldn’t matter so much as long as Laurie was honest with him.
Chary Wright, as usual, would surprise him.
When Laurie was down to only shirt, socks, and sock-suspenders, Chary stared at him. Studied him like he would disappear, would blink out in a stutter of film.
“Hiya, Chary.”
Chary swallowed visibly. “I don’t know if this is—is—is the proper question,” he said. “Or perhaps it is the question. An answer to it. You…” He took a deep breath and tapped his berobed thighs with all ten fingers. “You know you can have all you want from me. Don’t you?”
There he goes, Laurie thought fondly. “What d’you think I want from you?”
“It doesn’t matter. Anything.”
Laurie tugged his shirt off. “Faith,” he said. “That’s what I want from you.”
“Worship?” Chary’s head tilted. His gaze hovered around the sock-suspenders, of all places.
“No, you Catholic,” Laurie teased. “You want honesty, yeah? And so, I want you to believe something when I say it. Faith.”
“Oh.” Chary paused. He stepped closer. “Like f-fuck my throat and gag me?”
Laurie sat on the right-side corner of the mattress. He put one hand on the carved bedpost. “Got it.”
“What is the equivalent this time?”
Laurie’s turn for a shaky breath. He usually didn’t say it aloud but got there with gestures and implication and hand jobs aplenty when that didn’t work.
Most of the time, he wanted to be fucked without making it known that he wanted it.
Maintain the illusion. But that didn’t apply there. It had no bearing whatsoever.
He wanted Chary’s faith, but the truth was Chary already had his.
“I want you inside me.”
Chary didn’t look puzzled, or taken aback, or even like imagining it caused him to hitch. No halting disbelief. No jests about secret womanishness.
Surprise, maybe. His eyes widened. Awe. Wonder. “Yes,” he said. “Yes,” he said again, much deeper, and removed his robe. Holy god.
Then he was before him. He caged Laurie with arms and legs and a golden, intent stare and pressed-firm lips and flaring nose. He leaned in.
Laurie didn’t flinch. He inhaled. Chary’s lips were a shove away from his own, parting and pressing flat in gasps.
“Chary,” he said sternly.
He watched as Chary shouldered faith like a yoke. Like a tool.
Chary kissed him. Pulled his face in with two hands and bit and licked and slid his tongue where he wanted and then—
—pulled back. Covered his hard-breathing mouth with a hand.
“What’s wrong?”
“I always forget I want to eat you, as well,” he said, through spiderlike fingers.
Laurie laughed. “All right, Dracula.” He slipped his thumb past Chary’s hand ’til it touched his lips. “That your secret?” Chary opened obligingly, tentatively, and Laurie felt along the sharp canines, right to left. Chary’s breath was hot and fast. “Mine, too. It’s mutual. Eat me.”
Chary pulled his hand down and Laurie’s with it. Tossed them aside. They were in the way.
Chary kissed him again. This time, he barely left them space for air and, soon, no space between their bodies.
He grunted something like “Up,” and hauled Laurie to a stand against him.
His hands were everywhere. They flattened Laurie in, like gaps were to be eradicated between their flesh forevermore.
Zero finesse. All smother. But if Laurie died, he died.
“Up, up, up,” Chary growled, high and breathless. He did something architectural and braced with his limbs. Laurie had a second to remember trust and faith before he was lifted high.
“Criminy.” He stared down. “I’ll tell you I’m afraid of heights. And heavy.”
Chary gave a breathless laugh. “We’re of a weight,” he gasped—and then tilted forward and dropped him.
“Jesus!” Laurie exclaimed, but had no time to cringe about the near-miss of their foreheads, or their of-a-kind weights upon the poor four-poster; he was laughing too hard into his hand.
Chary’s lips were on his neck, and he had stretched himself out, plastered Laurie flat and pliant with everything he could reach, hands, knees, elbows, feet.
Then, with delighted giggles hissing through his teeth, Chary shoved knees between Laurie’s legs, pushed them wide, and sank in close. “I want you. Lord. I want to eat you and fuck into you. You smell delicious.”
“Christ.” Laurie groaned. Nobody’d ever dared push him around like this.
He wasn’t Flatiron-tall like Chary, but he wasn’t short, either, and not built sparse.
He’d been fucked lots but at the same time also barely been touched outside his prick.
And he’d never been moved ’round just because someone wanted him some-way else.
Driven by gleeful hedonism, Chary had no such external consciousness.
He pushed up Laurie’s legs and put his hands on the four-poster headboard.
He ground himself down and rocked forward in jerky thrusts, prick-to-prick, in the crease of Laurie’s hip, between his legs, then prick-to-prick again, the rub almost painful.
It was like clinging to an incubus seeking constant novelty, who was maybe not merciful.
Laurie again wasn’t sure he’d survive.
He was sure that if Chary let his weight up at all, he was going to come very fast.
Maybe even if not.
He gritted his teeth. “Chary.”
Chary peered down. “Sorry, oh, lord. Sorry. What’s next, what’s next?” he gasped. He sounded frantic, manic.
Laurie couldn’t respond anyway because he was kissed again. Devoured.
“No, wait a moment. I think I know,” Chary whispered, breaking free. He reached down. “Frotting?” he muttered. “Frottage? Why are they all fricatives?”
“Chary.” Laurie laughed. “No.”
“I know; I promised. Flip over,” Chary whispered, and giggled.
Absurd that it made Laurie shudder and comply, covered in gooseflesh. His prick was slightly unhappy about being trapped. Oh, well for him.
Knees settled snug and familiar between his own.
Then silence.
He looked back. “Cherry?” He added preemptively, “My ankle’s fine.”
The downside about being twenty-nine in a Gotham increasingly full of unmarried men was that fulfilling his desire had become another kind of quotidian.
Sex was rote, even with new partners, in new places.
And he didn’t know what sex with women was like, but sex with men who didn’t think giving it to another man made them any queerer than the next lad had become a matter of efficiency. Effectiveness, less so.
“No—good lord,” Chary whispered. A single finger came down onto the meat of Laurie’s ass and pressed in, then retreated lingeringly.
Not at all quotidian. In fact, Chary’s gaze was so full of wonder and hesitancy that for a moment, Laurie wondered if he’d somehow got into this with a virgin. His ass wasn’t that amazing. Just ample.
But then Chary’s knees widened, splaying Laurie’s own, demanding vulnerability and access. Laurie groaned. Thought, surely not, surely not, like a prayer.
“Do you need…?” He heard Chary swallow. “Fingers? I-I’m not very experienced—” No laugh this time. Uh-oh.
Laurie exhaled. Faith, faith. “Nah, I’ll be all right. Go slow.”
The cork-on-glass squeak of a Vaseline jar. A soft, slick noise of hand hasty over a prick. Laurie turned to watch.
“Chesebrough,” Chary muttered to the Vaseline. He was shaking, holding the jar tight to seem like he wasn’t. “Hmm.”
Feeling bizarrely protective, Laurie turned back around. “Subpar glass?”
“What?” Chary put one leg warmly over one of Laurie’s, pushed up the other. “No, it’s perfectly… perfectly…” His breaths were short and panting. He carefully placed his cock. “Oh, god.”
Laurie’s forehead thunked into the sheets. “Yeah,” he groaned. “Perfect.”
As five o’clock came sleepily around, neither August nor Hiram had appeared to their hotel rooms. In their place came a telegram: GONE TO MAINE.
That was all, the unfeeling bastard. Not even a salutation.
He and a dejected Chary left the Algonquin to meet again at a Raines hotel—rooms sold by the hour, usually situated above a saloon—being that there was no convenient place Uptown to chrysalis from tailored suit and hat to overalls and cap.
There, Laurie helped Chary put on one of his false beards, and Laurie had a mustache and a few extra hairs—dyed black—between his brows put on himself.
They set aside their suits and rode the El to the docks.
Chary led him through the iron gates of Wright Glass at seven o’clock shift change, and then Laurie was officially in. He’d done it, undercover as never before: exploited a man’s trust and intimacy to infiltrate one of the most notorious industries in America.
“You’ll be a threat no matter where you’re put,” Chary explained, “unless you are completely incompetent.” He shook his head. “If I’d known... I would’ve taught you something at Berryfield. But you can’t muddle through this,” he stressed. “You’ll observe only, all right? Someone could get hurt.”