Chapter 6
“Which one of you left hair all over the bathroom counter?” Casey asked as he stomped into the living room.
Daniel looked up from his phone to where his roommate was standing with one hand on his hip and the other holding out a short brown hair.
Daniel had been sprawled out on their couch, reading through the sparse reviews on Jensen’s book and pretending it was a completely normal way to spend his free time before work.
Even in his denial, he could admit ordering the book was a strange thing to do when he wasn’t interested in building designs.
It wasn’t like Jensen would even know he’d bought it.
Especially since Daniel refused to pay for expedited shipping and it wouldn’t arrive until after the conference was over.
“Why do you assume it’s mine?” he asked and locked his phone before letting it drop onto his chest.
Casey’s bleached blond eyebrows went soaring on his forehead. If they moved much faster, he’d have to worry about them flying off and starting a nest on the roof of their house. “Well, I know it’s not mine, and unless we need to worry about body snatchers, it’s definitely not Arlo’s.”
Their other roommate, Arlo, was the reason their house was clean.
Casey had decorated most of it, bringing in brightly colored art and too many rugs, and Brody had stocked the kitchen with matching utensils and high-quality cookware.
Daniel stored his belongings in his room and kept his mouth shut when interior design decisions were being made, which was for the best. He’d lived with other broke college students before moving in, and all his furniture had been found on the side of the road or rescued from the dorm dumpsters after spring cleanout.
After leaving college years ago, he hadn’t made enough money to replace those shitty finds.
Though, if he had the funds for a shopping spree, he’d be more clueless than a blonde nepo baby playing matchmaker and falling for her ex-stepbrother.
The principals of feng shui could be surgically implanted into his brain, and he still wouldn’t understand it.
Which made his recent book purchase even more ridiculous.
But Arlo kept them all from descending into a mess of body creams, intersecting dietary restrictions, props and lube, and unknown substances that seemed to materialize throughout the house.
He was the last to move in and had taken one look at the makeup scattered on the bathroom counters, containers of protein powders taking over the kitchen, and glitter smeared on the leather couch before setting rules.
Everyone tried their hardest to keep their shit together, and Arlo picked up the rest.
The small man was cleaner than a saint’s search history and, for some unfathomable reason, liked to scrub floors.
Cleaning brought him so much joy that he moonlighted as a maid on nights and weekends.
Of course, he did so with little to no clothes on and got paid a good amount of money for it.
Daniel had been tempted to get in on the gig when he heard about the salary but ultimately decided he’d rather be used as a cum dumpster than take trash out to one.
“It’s mine,” Brody said. He came into the room with a bowl of chicken, brown rice, and broccoli, only pausing in shoveling it into his mouth to sit down on the couch. “I was going to clean it up after I finished eating.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, it’s nasty and not in the sexy way.” Casey moved further into the room and shoved the offending hair in Brody’s face. “I have to get ready, and this is in my way. You should have cleaned it up before eating. You know the rules.”
Brody pouted. “I was hungry. I went to the gym today, and I needed protein.”
“You go to the gym every day. Beard hair or pube?”
“What?”
“Am I holding a beard hair or pube?” Casey asked, dangling it upside down.
“You know, if it was my hair, it’d be a pube. That’s like a sixty-six percent chance of it not being a beard hair,” Daniel cut in. His hair grew finer on his face than it did on his ass and could be managed with a few swipes of a razor each week. Not the ass hair—that was a whole other process.
“Jesus, it’s a beard hair,” Brody said and swatted Casey’s hand away.
Still holding the trimming, Casey stalked back into the bathroom. “Clean up your shit before I tell Arlo you’ve been a naughty boy,” he threatened.
Brody rolled his eyes and continued eating.
“Where are you going?” Daniel asked, throwing his voice over the back of the couch.
Casey’s head popped out from the bathroom door. “I’ve been asked to make an appearance at a club tonight.”
“Do you need backup?” Brody asked, setting his bowl on his thick thighs.
He was big enough in height and muscle that he could deter other men from getting inappropriately handsy, not that Casey didn’t enjoy a good grope every now and then.
But with his status as a porn star for a decently well-known studio, people had a tendency to push things too far, especially in club settings.
Brody was always willing to tag along to make sure it didn’t get to that point.
“What I need is your organic potpourri off the counter, you hairy barbarian.”
“Fucking hell,” Brody said under his breath as he put his food on the coffee table and left the room.
Their good-natured bickering continued in the bathroom, spilling over Daniel, who was once again alone on the couch. Picking up his phone, he tried to swallow down the taste it left on the back of his tongue, but it wasn’t so easy today for some reason.
He was used to his roommates being closer to each other than him.
It made sense. Casey and Brody both did porn, though Brody did camming from home.
But it was still the same in a lot of ways, so they bonded over their careers.
More than that, they took to uploading the routine photo of them doing things together on social media to tease fans and help the other get more views.
Daniel didn’t have that. Sure, he got paid to have sex with people like Casey did, but it wasn’t filmed, and it certainly wasn’t legal.
He also didn’t know most of the men and women he fucked longer than the hours they were together.
Daniel didn’t have comradery and shared jokes and trips to the club to sweat out the stress of the week.
He had even less in common with Arlo, who worked full-time in tech. They rarely saw each other due to their conflicting work schedules, and the quiet man never seemed truly comfortable around Daniel, so he didn’t push it.
Overall, he was used to being the outsider in the house.
Daniel was a background character in his housemate’s lives, even sometimes in his own.
He doubted they would even realize if he wasn’t around.
Part of him wanted to stay at the hotel and see how long it would take any of them to notice he hadn’t come home.
His feelings couldn’t handle that though.
The fear of it going on for weeks was bad enough, but he’d spiral if his concerns were validated.
God, not even his coworkers would miss him.
Clarke probably wanted him gone so he was the only man available on the night shift.
The women probably didn’t give a single shit about him.
Shaking his head, hoping to clear the thoughts, he stood from the couch and went to his room. He might as well go to the hotel early to see if he could scrounge up any work before his shift at the bar started. Being on his knees for an hour would be better than stewing in his thoughts here.
But when he got there, instead of going to the staff room to see his boss, his feet took him up the large staircase in the lobby.
Passing closed doors, weak wall lights, and the sporadic scuff along the wood floors, he didn’t stop until reaching Jensen’s room.
With the momentum built from his stride down the hall, he beat the dark wood door with his knuckles.
“Oh, hi,” Jensen said, straightening his glasses after opening the door. “Hello.”
Daniel pushed his way into the room. He tried to aim a sultry smile at Jensen on his trek to the large bed in the middle of the space, but his face didn’t feel right.
Giving up, he leaned back, letting the long planes of his body make up for whatever expression he was sporting.
“I have a couple hours before I have to be downstairs, and I thought you might want to fill that time. Or fill me.”
He clumsily pulled out the desk chair and sat down. “Sure. I’d offer you something to drink, but I only have what’s in the mini bar.”
“Are you sure you don’t have anything else I could swallow down? Perhaps something that’s not so mini?”
Pink rose to Jensen’s high cheekbones. “You’re flirting with me, right?”
An actual smile finally came to Daniel’s face, and he couldn’t help but let out a deep breath, dislodging whatever was camping out in his lungs. “Yes, honey, I’m flirting with you.”
“You don’t need to do that.” Jensen cleared his throat. “I’m already attracted to you. I would do anything you asked.”
“Anything?” Daniel asked, aiming for seductive but falling somewhere between needy and desperate. Just being in Jensen’s presence again had him feeling less wrong in his skin, and he craved more. He wasn’t quite sure what it was about the somewhat awkward man that put him so at ease, but he did.
Maybe it was because of his awkwardness.
Daniel pretended for most of his life. Pretended to be more confident than he was.
Pretended he was happy with how his life was going.
At home, he pretended he didn’t mind he wasn’t close to his roommates, and at work he pretended he was interested in the people that came through the doors of the hotel.
These days he had to actively stop himself from going through his grocery list and plans for the next day while men tried to work out their aggressions and desires on his ass or throat.