7. Merrick
Merrick
Merrick went home and got in the shower.
He did not jerk off, even though he wanted to.
He’d been sporting a perpetual hard-on since Wilder put the gag into his mouth, and his body showed no signs of settling down.
He did sit down to paint, though, trying to pull in some color to get the gradient on the sunset the way he wanted it.
Watercolor was a forgiving media when it wanted to be, but it also took patience to perfect. Merrick was far from perfect, but he did have patience, especially for art. He painted right up until it was time to leave, not bothering to rinse his brushes before darting out the door to work.
Sitting down across from Holden wasn’t even enough to run his mood.
Things were still a little weird at work with Holden sleeping with Bryce, but Merrick managed to talk his way through it.
He’d said his piece to Holden after he found out and put it behind him, but sometimes he would look up from his station and remember the man working twenty feet away from him had fucked his younger brother.
Was actively fucking his younger brother.
That was fine.
Bryce was happy.
Merrick was also happy, even though he didn’t know how long that would last. He tattooed a guy’s throat, another guy’s calf, and the top of a woman’s back, and decided to call it a day.
Normally, if he didn’t have appointments at the end of the night, he would hang out and take walk-ins.
That wasn’t something his boss, Riggs, required, but Merrick liked money and he liked conversation.
He finished cleaning up his station and said goodbye to Riggs and Holden before slipping out the door just after nine.
He’d exchanged a few messages with Wilder earlier in the day, namely trading phone numbers so he could get out of the app but also letting Wilder know they had drastically different work schedules from each other.
Wilder promised him nine-thirty wasn’t too late, and so with five minutes to spare, Merrick rang the other man’s doorbell and waited.
Wilder opened the door in a pair of plaid pajama pants and a hoodie.
His feet were bare, his hair damp, and his mouth set into an easy smile that Merrick decided he very much wanted to kiss.
Wilder gave him a quick appraisal, starting at his face, passing over the shipyard supply shirt he’d thrifted over the summer, his torn jeans, and ink-splattered Vans before gliding back up to his eyes.
“Hey,” Wilder greeted, stepping aside to let him in. “Good to see you.”
Merrick laughed awkwardly, wondering why the thought of kissing someone else was giving him so much anxiety. He toed off his sneakers and kicked them toward the door, tapping his thumbnails together nervously while Wilder closed the door behind him and rested against it.
“How was your day?”
“Pretty usual,” he answered.
“May I be bold?”
Merrick scoffed. “I think we’re past that.”
“Not yet we’re not.”
“You may,” he rasped.
“Did you jerk off in the shower today?” Wilder asked.
Merrick’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth like he’d eaten a spoonful of peanut butter. His eyes went wide and he managed to find the answer. “You told me to paint.”
“And did you?”
“Yes.”
Wilder eyed him again, a deeper level of focus and scrutiny crawling across his skin. He wasn’t sure yet if he loved the attention or hated it, but when Wilder spoke to him next, Merrick’s dick leaked.
“Good,” Wilder said softly. “That’s…that’s good. Are you hungry?”
“Not really.”
“When did you eat?”
Merrick shrugged, because he honestly I had no idea. “I think I had some popcorn between my three and four o’clock.”
“Popcorn,” Wilder repeated. “Do you have any allergies?”
“No, but I hate cilantro.”
“Good man,” Wilder said, and heat flared at the base of Merrick’s spine.
Wilder had called him good boy before and he…hadn’t hated that. Merrick was sure Wilder was about to say it to him again about the painting, but for some reason, he’d stopped himself.
“Why don’t you make yourself comfortable on the couch. I’m just going to grab a couple things out of the fridge.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Wilder waited until Merrick nestled into the corner of the couch, tucking his legs up beneath him.
He did hesitate before getting comfortable, not sure if he had any lingering globs of ink on his clothes that would ruin Wilder’s couch, but Wilder didn’t move until he did. So, Merrick did what he’d been told.
He felt a new sense of pride at the way Wilder had nodded approvingly at him before disappearing into the small kitchen at the back of the house.
Merrick listened to the fridge open and then some cabinets, and while he waited, he busied himself with taking his first real look at Wilder’s house.
It had been so dark the night before and they’d barely spent any time at all in the living room to begin with.
Against the far wall was a mid-century-looking entertainment center with a flat screen TV in the center.
There were a couple candles, some framed photos scattered across the surface, a discarded pen, and a crumpled gum wrapper.
For some reason, the wrapper was the most telling part of the whole scene.
He would have put money Wilder didn’t even realize it was there.
He seemed like the kind of man who liked things to be in a certain order and trash on the entertainment center didn’t feel like order.
Sure enough, Wilder returned with two water bottles and a plate with sliced meats and cheeses in hand.
He set the water on the table, grabbed the gum wrapper and shoved it into his pocket before joining Merrick on the couch.
Wilder left enough space between them for the plate to rest on the cushions.
“Eat,” he said simply.
Merrick was hungry.
He plucked a slice of ham and rolled it around a slice of Swiss cheese before popping it into his mouth.
As soon as he swallowed, his stomach growled.
He wanted to hate that Wilder had been right, but the feeling never came.
Instead, Wilder picked up one of the bottles from the table and twisted the top off. He handed it to Merrick.
“Thank you,” Merrick mumbled. He drank half the bottle. He’d been thirsty too.
“Do you drink water at work?”
“Not as much as I should.”
Wilder took the bottle back from him and set it on the table, even though Merrick could have set it down himself.
“No self-preservation, then?” Wilder asked. “Dehydration until nine and then free use until one?”
Merrick’s cheeks burned at the call-out, but Wilder was a little too close to the truth for comfort.
“It’s not like that,” he said quietly.
Wilder made another meat and cheese roll, handed it to him.
“No,” he said back. “I imagine it’s not. Tell me then, how is the sunset coming?”
Merrick’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. “Huh?”
Wilder said nothing until Merrick took the food and put it into his mouth. “The sunset. You said you were painting a sunset.”
He chewed. Swallowed. “I…I say a lot of things.”
“Were you lying about it?”
Merrick was many things, but he was not a liar. “What? No! I just meant…I say a lot of things. I’m used to most people not even listening, let alone remembering.”
“I’m not most people.” Wilder handed him a rolled-up slice of capicola.
“It’s coming along,” he said after swallowing. “I’ve been struggling to get the gradient on the sky the way I want it.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s…it’s boring, really.”
“You think painting is boring?” Wilder raised a disbelieving brow and leaned against the back of the couch, bringing one leg up and resting his forearm on his knee.
“Most people do.”
“Again,” he began.
“Not most people,” Merrick repeated Wilder’s claim from earlier, then decided he had no real choice other than to take the man at his word.
“When I started it, I thought a graded wash was obviously going to be the right way to paint it. You probably don’t know what that is.
A graded wash is like…graded. I don’t know, more color at first and then less.
But it looked too choppy when I layered different shades in, so I thought wet on wet might work, but that’s like…
you get the paper wet, and I can’t re-wet the paper with the paint because it’ll make everything run.
This morning I tried to pull some color, which is where you use a separate brush with just water to drag the color down.
That worked a bit and the colors started to bloom, so I think that might be the best way to get it right.
It’s all pretty technical and hard to understand. ”
“Graded wash into wet on wet into dragging and then blooming.” Wilder leaned to the table and grabbed Merrick’s water bottle, handing it to him. “Sounds pretty simple to me.”
It had been years since anyone had listened to Merrick talk about art.
Sure, Holden listened when they were at work, but that was because he was a captive audience.
Bryce had never been really good at art, at least not as good as Merrick was.
It wasn’t something the two of them had ever been able to commiserate on because Bryce would get so frustrated when things came easier to Merrick than to him.
Merrick understood, but he couldn’t be anything other than who he was.
He couldn’t be bad at something just to make his brother feel better.
“It’s always been simple for me.”
“Do you have pictures of your art on your phone? I’d love to see some if you feel comfortable sharing.”
It was hard to breathe, impossible nearly. Wilder set the plate on the table, took the water back from Merrick’s hands. He moved closer until their knees touched, Wilder’s eyes bright and expectant.
“Is this okay?”
The question snapped Merrick out of his frozen haze, and he moved around to get his hand into his pocket.
He had a message from his brother, a reminder that Bryce worked at Rapture Thursday through Saturday of that week.
Frowning, he swiped it away and opened the gallery on his phone.
He’d actually taken pictures of the sunset and that was the one he brought up first.
“Holy shit,” Wilder said under his breath, taking the phone from Merrick’s hand to bring it closer to his face. “You painted this?”
“I’m painting it,” he corrected.
Wilder handed him back the phone and Merrick waved him off. “That album is all art, you can scroll freely.”
Wilder did, moving slowly through the photos of Merrick’s most recent pieces.
He took his time, and Merrick watched him carefully.
The way his brows furrowed, the way he zoomed in on tiny details scattered through each piece.
Wilder asked him about every single one, and Merrick answered his questions with as much detail as he wanted.
Wilder never once looked bored or bothered, and he asked Merrick to elaborate, to point out places he’d used what technique.
Almost an hour passed before Wilder finally gave up his phone, and Merrick had never felt so seen.
The air in the room crackled and shifted.
Merrick exhaled, his shoulders sagging as he set his phone face down on the table beside his empty water bottle.
“I don’t think you invited me over to talk about painting,” he said.
“Didn’t I?”
Merrick rolled his eyes.
“Not entirely, no,” Wilder conceded. He held his hand out, palm up, and Merrick tentatively touched their fingertips together before giving Wilder more of his hand to hold.
It was easy to sit on the couch with him like this.
Merrick was relaxed, he was at ease, but most of all he was ready for whatever Wilder had to say next.