KEEP (Men of the ESRB Book 2) Page 12

  "Okay, sailor," I said, giving him a little smile to show I liked his décor. I grinned at his reaction, which was a startled blink, and gave him a little two-fingered salute. "Feel better. I'll talk to you later."

  "Yes. Um. Thank you." His gaze followed me hungrily.

  I let it. He was cute.

  I hoped he'd take care of himself. I hated the thought of him fighting anxiety that strong all the time, being a nervous wreck and huddled in a ball of misery behind his mosquito netting — or whatever it was.

  We hadn't gotten to talk at all. But I sort of felt like I actually did know him a bit better all the same. Our employers' reaction to me, Ellery's anxiety levels, and the anxious look in his intense blue eyes all added up to his having a real hard time of it. Hell, he probably needed all the coddling and comfort they could give him. I appreciated how eager they'd been to take care of me, but he probably needed it just to manage.

  I'd like to try being a good friend to him, I decided. He could probably use some more folks in his life who understood how difficult it could be to be 'talented.'

  #

  After that, Ellery and I became friends. His anxiety levels were very high the first few times we met, and sometimes all he could do was nod at me and try to smile. He felt acutely embarrassed, self-conscious, and nervous, but I could tell he wanted to be friends because he kept running into me and, despite his feelings, his eyes lit up with friendliness when he looked at me. The smile was rarely quite authentic — he was too nervous for that — but his eyes were, and they spoke volumes. He was very glad not to be the only ESRB-ranked individual here, I thought. At any rate, he was always happy to see me, despite his nerves.

  We fell into a very low-key sort of friendship that didn't involve talking to one another much at all. First it was the nods and smiles (or attempts at smiles). Then it was sitting together for a meal, eating more or less in silence, with maybe a few remarks about the food. Eventually we started walking places we both had to go together, and after a while, arranging our gym and swimming schedules so we could work out together.

  Despite his scrawniness, he was a keen exercise enthusiast. He wanted very much to build muscle and definition. He wanted to bulk up, to get bigger. I'd been around enough to know that it was a very, very difficult task for people with his body type. He'd probably get definition, but I didn't think he'd be able to put on much weight or bulk. Even eating a lot of protein and calories, he'd have to stay constantly vigilant not to go back to super skinny. He had the kind of body type that people who don't have it often think they want, and people who do often wish they could change.

  It had always surprised me that some people could literally hate a person for how they looked (thin, heavy, or anything else you care to name) without having any clue about what choice they had in the matter, or how hard it was for them to live with.

  I'd always thought I was more mature than most people, because I didn't tend to do that, but I think it was really just my empath talent manifesting — I was more aware of things underneath the surface — and my own experience with being a short guy and how unpleasant it could be to constantly be reminded of that fact by people who thought they were being clever.

  You get a chip on your shoulder after a while, but I think it also makes you not want to assume too much about other people by their looks. In that sense, maybe my height had done something good for me.

  It had also taught me to fight. Scrappy fighting from when I was a kid on up. I'd often lost, but I'd fought anyway. You have to, sometimes. Life can be a losing battle at times, but that doesn't mean you don't have to fight it.

  I thought of the precinct, wondered how they were faring without me, even kind of missed them. But I wasn't sorry for the change. It was so much safer and more insulated and calm living like this, doing work with Kevin that was easily within my mental and emotional capabilities, then relaxing and chilling out in the pleasant surroundings, and hanging out with Ellery.

  I enjoyed spotting weight for him. It made me feel very strong, being able to do so easily, and affectionate and protective of him, too. It was something to watch him lifting, straining with all his effort, his body coated in sweat, working more by willpower than anything else.

  "You're really getting some definition there," I encouraged him. I meant it. He was doing great. I just wished he wasn't going to spend years in a fruitless quest to get a different body type. It wasn't going to happen for him.

  I'd given up years ago on getting to be tall. I remember being fourteen, lying in bed awake at night, knowing I was in the lowest ten percent of my class in height (boys and girls), and that I'd have to go in tomorrow and face it all over again — the teasing, the torment of schoolwork and the torture of sitting still, the fights and laughter. And this was before anybody even knew I was gay.

  #

  I'd seen the greenhouse area when Erin showed me around, of course, but I really explored it with Ellery. It was his favorite place in the building, and it showed. His face relaxed here, and his tensed posture loosened enough that his smiles looked real, less strained and desperate.

  It was huge, warm, and wet, with lots of aisles threading between the plants. There were orchids, palms, fruit trees and vegetables, and all sorts of flowers. Some of the plants were rare, others weren't. Some of them were quite old. The ceiling was high, and some vines and the taller trees rose through it. It must have cost a mint to keep it running, but it actually had a practical use as well as being beautiful and relaxing.

  We were allowed through — all employees with clearance above a certain level were, as long as they signed in and out. And there were cameras, of course. Always cameras, keeping track of the place's security.

  Some of the plants were valuable, some only beautiful. Most had been brought in with some function in mind for medical research. Other space had been given over to growing fresh vegetables to be used in the cafeteria. The tomatoes we saw growing and ripening would be in our tacos in a few weeks. It was amazing stuff.

  The most precious plants were kept in an even more secure part of the greenhouse project and could only be accessed by a select few. These were things that were being grown and tested for their medicinal properties, for cancer research and the like. They even had their own security guard. She nodded to us when we walked past, perfectly friendly. But she'd have taken us down with force if we tried to enter that special area.

  Ellery felt happy here, and he'd chatter away as we walked or sat on one of the comfortable wooden benches under a gigantic, wide-leafed banana tree, his favorite spot. "They were talking about putting birds in here to make it closer to a living system — a tiny ecosystem. But the preliminary study they did showed the birds would make more of a mess than they wanted to deal with. And they'd probably eat a lot of the fruit."

  "Still, that would be cool," I said, thinking about it.

  "Yeah," he said enthusiastically, eyes bright.

  I could almost imagine them flittering and chirping above us in the moist air, flying high toward the tall ceilings. I shifted, getting a little more comfortable while he told me about this and that, details he'd learned about his favorite place in the building, trivia that was important to him, things he'd been bursting to share but didn't really have anyone to share them with.

  Ellery was shy to the point of painfulness, not quick to make friends or trust, but he seemed willing to make the effort with me, and I was willing, too. Having a friend had become a lot more important to me, especially now that I wasn't going to let myself fall in love anymore.

  Although I'd expected we'd spend most of our time comparing experiences with our talents, we didn't end up talking about them much at first. I was curious about how his talent worked. There hadn't been any clairs there while I was getting my training — it was a pretty rare talent. But I wasn't curious enough to ask. It was nice just hanging out.

  When he was ready, he started sharing information with me, and vice versa. He was fascinated and a little appalle
d to learn about police work, my having to be so close to the perps. When I told him it had been just as hard sometimes being around the cops themselves, he shuddered.

  "I didn't do so well with the police force, either," he admitted. "I made it through two weeks."

  I stared at him, blinking. "What happened?"

  "Nothing, just . . . you have to have a lot of proximity to have visions and impressions that are accurate when you're at my level. I'm rated four on the clair scale — which is low. It's still pretty useful because there are so few clairs around anyway. But I don't get a lot of accuracy about, like, someone halfway across the country that I don't know. It didn't turn out to be useful on the police force. I have visions only very rarely — maybe three a year. Everything else is impressions.

  "By hanging out with the police officers, I was supposed to be able to give them tips that would help with catching criminals, but I turned out to be much less use than you would've been. I couldn't tell them where a body was hidden. Visions don't come on a whim, and they don't happen often. My impressions were more along the lines of, 'You guys should be wearing scarves because it's going to get cold.'"

  He took a quick, deep breath, looking troubled. "There were . . . a couple of useful impressions. I warned a cop about . . . about an incident . . . but it was just the one. To be fair, he tried to follow my advice." He looked away, down at his skinny knees, and sat very still. "I tried. It wasn't the best match, I suppose. After a couple of weeks, they had to . . . take me elsewhere for a rest."

  He looked up, trying to smile, but his eyes were a little too shiny, and his face showed the hurt of what had happened. "So that's, um, why they take such good care of me here, I suppose. They don't want me to have another breakdown." He coughed into his fist and looked to the side, feeling ashamed of his weakness.

  "Hey, I understand," I admitted. "Something happened at the precinct, above and beyond the usual awful stuff. I pretty much lost it. I'm not really over it yet." It felt strange to admit that.

  He nodded, like he understood. "Let's hope this job works out, right?" He flashed me a brief, slightly sad smile. "I like it here, you know. I think you will, too."

  "I already do."

  A bit of color touched his cheeks. He was . . . flattered.

  I was soon to learn that as pale as he'd been when we first met, that was as tanned as he ever got. He'd spent a few weeks on a sunny tropical island, decompressing. He had to get away fairly often, even though this was a low-stress job, relatively speaking.

  His health and emotional wellbeing were such that frequent breaks and lots of fresh air were important to him. The Shardwell Group spared no expense, and clearly felt lucky to have him at any price, even with a low ranking on the ESRB clairvoyance scale, and about three visions a year. The hunches and impressions were worth a great deal all by themselves.

  He'd more than once steered them away from bad decisions and had been the catalyst for discovering hidden contract issues, shady business dealings, and internal problems like corporate espionage. Just having him feel very doubtful or concerned about something the company was working on was enough to make them go through it with a fine-toothed comb, and that was often enough for them to find out troubling details that led them to further research and discovery.

  His hunches weren't highly specific, but they were incredibly useful. His impressions carried a great deal of weight in the company. Because his talents were really only useful when he was close to someone, he had to have a certain amount of access to every single place in the Shardwell Group, whether that meant visiting labs, looking over contracts, or sitting in on negotiations. He needed to be exposed to lots of people fairly regularly to get the widespread impressions that would be most helpful and needed.

  He didn't work for one guy, the way I did. He was more of a floating employee and wandered around a lot, giving reports to Erin and others that would then be passed along. His nervous and retiring nature made it an agony to him at times. He hated disturbing people; he hated having to talk to anyone without time to prepare what he might talk about. He dreaded funny looks or people laughing at him.

  After a while, I started tagging along with him on some of his rounds, when I wasn't busy with anything for Kevin. The way he worked interested me.

  It seemed to reassure him to have me as backup, but I didn't really do anything, just followed along unobtrusively.

  He liked having me along, although I couldn't follow him all the time. If I'd met my limit on emotional energy for that day, I couldn't be around a ton of people. If I was busy, or just too tired, I didn't push myself.

  We both agreed it was nice when it worked out. I learned more about the company and he had someone with him so he didn't feel so alone.

  They would send someone with him whenever he wanted, of course, but he was no less self-conscious with most of the guards and assistants, with their brisk, quiet efficiency. He needed to wander around; he needed to linger. And every night he had to at least try to read a pile of documents. They sent along important lawyers and analysts to go over some of them with him; others were so dull I'm not sure how he stayed awake.

  If I didn't have anything to do, sometimes I stayed over and watched TV with the volume turned down low, sitting on his nautical couch sipping a beer or soda while he sat cross-legged, going over various papers, muttering quietly to himself. He looked silly but endearing like that, completely lost in the work, faintly worried by it all, scatterbrained and frizzy-haired, the curve of his back something eloquent, the movement of his long, nervous hands arresting.

  Although he looked good in a suit, he didn't in much else. He seemed to make everything look like a hobo's outfit, maybe because of the way he wore it, but more likely because literally nothing else he wore seemed to fit him. He had oversized sleeveless shirts that made him look terribly skinny, and polo shirts he tucked in and belted tightly but still looked bad because the shoulders or sleeves or something else about the cut was wrong on him.

  And don't get me started on his jeans. To start with, they just didn't fit. The legs were too long, so he ended up treading on the hems half the time, making them stringy and ragged. He couldn't keep them up for love or money, so he was always halfway holding his pants up. Belts only did so much.

  He was as likely to go around barefoot or in slippers as proper shoes, and even then, the shoes were a very battered pair of sneakers, or else his best dress shoes, nothing in between.

  Sometimes he wore board shorts that hung halfway past his knees, or ridiculous sandals, or sunglasses indoors. The man had less dress sense than any gay man I knew.

  Sometimes Ellery wrapped himself up in a ragged flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up far enough to look ridiculous. He was swallowed up in it, big-eyed and shivery. Yet the temperature never varied indoors (except for the plant room, which was warmer), and he never went outside that I could see.

  I asked him about it, and he shrugged. "I get cold sometimes. Nothing seems to really warm me up."

  "Hot cocoa? Coffee? Backrubs?" I teased, and nudged him.

  He broke into a grin and nudged me back. He liked a little teasing, as long as it wasn't mean. Sometimes, if he got really tired, he'd put all the papers down, even leaving them spread out, and climb up onto the sofa next to me to watch a little TV as well, before he fell asleep. He usually ended up leaning on me, drifting towards my shoulder as his eyelids grew heavier and heavier.

  If I was feeling affectionate, I put an arm around him or scruffed up his hair a little. He trusted me, and that was sweet. Sometimes I couldn't bear to wake him up when I had to go back to my room, so I'd gently extricate myself from his sleeping stillness and let him fall softly down onto the nautical couch. If I remembered to, I covered him with a blanket.

  Even when he drooled, he was kind of cute. There was something about the guy; you just wanted to protect him.

  I liked having a friend, and I suppose it was good for the ego to know I wasn't the most neurotic (or the shortest
) person here. Still, it wasn't mostly ego. We just got along.

  We didn't talk about it; his orientation seemed to be a subject he was shy about. But we'd taken each other's measure pretty quickly. No straight man liked Project Runway that much. And I definitely caught him noticing things a straight man wouldn't.

  There was one very handsome tech we had to pass on his rounds every day. The man often said hello, and we said it back. But Ellery was always deeply flustered by the man, with his handsome, smooth face and his perfectly fitted chinos. The man had an amazing ass, and you'd have to be dead not to notice it. Ellery wasn't dead.

  He didn't go after the tech in any sense of the word, though, and it was just as well he didn't. I could tell the man wasn't interested, that it wouldn't have occurred to him to be interested in Ellery. I was glad Ellery didn't ask me, so I didn't have to tell him that.

  Actually Ell seemed too shy to ever find a boyfriend, which was a shame, but we didn't know each other well enough for me to know if he'd appreciate me interfering. Anyway, I wasn't exactly good at the whole boyfriend game myself.

  He wasn't bi, either, because he never noticed girls. He thought of each woman as an individual who had a pleasant or unpleasant personality, or was a really nice person, or that he felt safe with her. The prettiness of a girl never really registered with him. Maybe he was distracted and unworldly, but that seemed a bit much to me. I mean, everyone notices pretty girls, even if they don't want to do anything about it, right? But not Ell.

  I was planning to go to one of the clubs I'd picked out, but somehow I kept putting it off. There was always work to do, or I was tired, or I wanted to hang out with Ellery and wind down for the evening. The hermit crab part of my nature felt healed by all this mellow privacy. I was finally in a place where not everyone hated me, and where I had a friend I could just be quiet with.

  I wasn't ready to pour myself into the mold of catch-and-release just yet. But I was getting there.