6. Volt #2
Relieved to be past the table, Volt still had to apologize. He waited until they reached a quieter part of the hall. “Sorry. I didn’t realize anyone would look inside the bag.”
“Is that, uh, for me?” Wallace asked, face almost crimson now.
“Yeah?” Volt asked, as if it had somehow become a question. “I got… something I thought you would like.” Something that he’d spent all week researching. That he’d blown an unreasonable amount of money on, even if it might be pocket change for his date.
Wallace looked Volt up and down, his adorable pink tongue flashing over his bottom lip.
“I, uh, do like it? I mean, well, I haven’t seen it.
And it probably won’t… On me? But if you think it’s, er, I guess, I’m sure it’s…
I mean…” He squeezed his eyes shut, cutting off his train of words.
He stepped closer. Leaned forward to whisper. “Thank you, Daddy.”
Oh, fuck. How could Wallace be so innocent and shy, and so dirty all at once?
Lust flowed through Volt’s circuits like molten lava. He wished they were anywhere but here. Somewhere where he could kiss down every inch of that blushing skin. After dressing Wallace in his new, pretty things, of course.
Wallace looked around. “But, uh, we probably shouldn’t have brought that in.”
Right. Yep. Don’t bring lingerie to the orchestra.
“I’ll hold on to the bag,” Volt promised.
“Cool,” Wallace agreed.
And now things were awkward. “Sooo….” Volt finally interjected. “Tell me about who we’re seeing tonight.”
Volt had already heard Wallace bubbling over about the composer and the Spanish guitarist who would be playing her pieces. He’d already looked both of them up and listened to their music.
But Wallace was happy telling him about it, and Volt was happy listening to Wallace’s voice as they finally found the elevators and headed up to the mezzanine and found the brocade room off to one side.
This was… not what he’d been expecting.
He’d looked up meet-the-artist events, and assumed that they’d find their seats in the concert hall, then settle in to hear the artists talk to the crowd for an extra half hour before the concert started.
He hadn’t been able to find information on this particular event, although he’d scoured the internet for the composer and the soloist, but he figured it would be much the same.
It wasn’t.
This was definitely a fancy event. There were only thirty or so patrons milling about the plush room with their drinks, and he knew enough about the human body and how clothing fit it to recognize luxury designs.
Even Wallace’s shirt tonight had a little extra pizazz, and Volt was glad that he’d worn his tux.
They’d hardly walked in the door when a pair of waiters came by, dressed in matching tuxedoes. One offered glasses of champagne with raspberries floating in the delicate bubbles and the second displayed a range of intricate appetizers that were almost artworks unto themselves.
With murmured thanks, Wallace helped himself to a glass and a small morsel that Volt thought might be a stuffed quail egg.
Volt politely declined.
He got an odd look from the waiter. Was that a faux pas? Other patrons held glasses of champagne, or sipped on selections from the bar in a range of hues, so maybe he should have taken one, too.
Everything seemed to sparkle and shine. The cocktail glasses. The women’s dresses. Jewelry that looked like the decadent chandelier in miniature.
Volt tried once more to look up the event and found it this time. Meeting the composer and soloist for cocktails was a scheduled event, but an ongoing opportunity reserved only for the benefactors in the highest tier, the Conductor’s Circle.
Wallace hadn’t just bought tickets to the performance—which were already shockingly expensive to Volt’s sensibilities—he’d made an unimaginably large donation to the institution.
Volt could have paid off a hell of a lot of debts with that kind of money. The minimum contribution in that tier was half his annual salary and a quick glance at the named donors showed that some people gave a hell of a lot more.
That kind of money was a little scary.
And it made sense, now, why Wallace was worried that he might bump into someone he knew. Someone else with unthinkable amounts of money to throw around. Like one of his money-chasing ex-girlfriends or his father’s country club buddies, just to name a few.
This whole event was way, way out of Volt’s league.
Wallace didn’t seem to notice the opulence, or maybe he was so used to it that it didn’t register. After all, he was the one who’d contributed some ungodly sum as a patron of the arts. He must have been expecting this.
He just gave Volt a little smile and made his way over to a knot of people on one side of the room, their fingers still tangled together.
Alright, Volt could do this.
He recognized the curly hair from the composer’s headshot, and they both settled into the small cluster around her. Wallace seemed enchanted, and Volt enjoyed a moment of just watching him meet someone who brought him such enjoyment.
The composer held court, telling stories from her travels that had influenced her music in a lilting accent. Her expressive hands darted around, almost like a symphony themselves as she hummed a bit of melody, but Volt couldn’t focus.
People were looking at him.
Well, not just him.
At Wallace. At their intertwined fingers and their shoulders brushing closely together.
He saw the reactions again and again. A thoughtless perusal of their bodies while scanning the room. Then a second look, lingering and assessing. Then a little sneer. A lowering of the brows and a wrinkled nose. Followed by a false smile that didn’t reach the eyes if he caught them staring.
Volt couldn’t always predict what people were thinking, but his programming made him an expert at reading microexpressions.
This was disgust, plain and simple.
What were they seeing? A sexbot who didn’t belong in a concert hall? An expensive escort who Wallace had purchased for the evening?
There was another male-male couple in the room, tittering at each other over by the bar, and several couples touching each other in the same casual ways. No one raised an eyebrow at any of them, which meant that the issue had to be Volt.
Or at least what Volt represented, standing by Wallace’s side.
Volt knew that he was attractive. It was literally what he’d been designed for, by a lot of fancy algorithms and product testing. He also knew that Wallace was considered, by popular opinion, to be less attractive.
That plump layer of fat that Volt loved to sink his hands into, that short stature that made him want to carry his sweet baby around everywhere, those adorkably clunky glasses that he had all sorts of naughty fantasies about… Other people probably didn’t see Wallace that way.
Which made them a mismatch.
One that labeled him clearly as an escort, if not a sexbot. A being whose sole purpose was to arouse and titillate. Even as a spark, he wore his origins in every line of his body and every movement that he made.
And it would only get worse as Wallace got older and Volt stayed a perpetually young man.
He knew that he looked to be around Wallace’s age, mid-thirties, in a suit.
Late forties, he could probably pull off, especially if he tinted his hair.
But he could also easily pass for twenty, or even eighteen, with the right body language and a hoodie.
He would never look eighty, at least not without a lot of cosmetic replacements, so he could expect these reactions for the rest of their lives.
Would he want to age himself to look like Wallace?
He knew some spark-human couples did that, but would they even be together for that long?
He caught another surprised glance, and pulled himself away from distant ponderings about the future. This was only their second date, and he wanted there to be a third.
Maybe before aging, he should consider… altering his appearance right now.
The thought was shocking. He’d never considered if he liked his face or not, but it was his. Would he want to make himself less algorithmically attractive so that he didn’t stand out as much?
“Er… champagne? Sir?” asked a voice on his left, sounding as unsure about the offer as Volt felt.
He scrutinized the server, trying to figure out what the man saw when he looked at him.
A sexbot? An escort? Or just a spark? He couldn’t help noticing, though, that one of the gold cufflinks that peeked out of the waiter’s tuxedo sleeve was about to fall out. “Your cufflink is loose,” he commented.
Then it hit him.
Volt had known, this evening, that people dressed up for concerts, so he’d gone full black-tie in his most impressive clothes.
He’d chosen his cufflinks with care. He’d strapped the crisp satin cummerbund around his waist. He’d been amused at the thought of his black bow tie matching Wallace’s adorable affectation.
It hadn’t occurred to him that, at a place like this, a formal black tuxedo would be the uniform for the staff.
Shit. He glanced around the room. Everyone wearing a tux like his was either serving drinks or scurrying around the room cleaning up the empty glasses.
He recalled that even the security guard, who had inspected the bags downstairs, had been wearing a black tux.
Meanwhile, the orchestra conductor, who was halfway across the room in another little knot of people, wore a crimson cummerbund and matching bow tie, the long tails of his tux cut with an artistic flair that made his jacket an art statement instead of a classic staple.
The guitar soloist, who had his own little court, wore a black shirt, the top three buttons undone, with a geometric pattern at the cuffs.
They matched his folded pocket square and one dangling earring.
All of the other men in the room wore variations on sports coats and suits, paired with smart jeans or pressed slacks.
So basically, not tuxedos.