Cupidity - chapter seven
Nov. 13th, 2007 09:52 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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curious_spellsPrevious parts: Author notes, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four, chapter five, chapter six
Thanks for all the comments so far - we are very grateful indeed!
After breakfast, he had Marco drive him over to the Mercedes dealership, where he found that Robin had called the manager and told her to give Angel whatever he liked. She looked to be taking Robin seriously, and showed him all the little sporty convertibles he could ever want. She also touched him an awful lot, which Angel guessed was her own idea and not Robin's, given the Beth incident.
There were too many choices, and in the end he made Marco park the limo somewhere and come into the store.
"What would you pick?" he asked Marco.
Marco shrugged. "Not my place to say, sir."
Angel blinked at him. "Sir? I'm a sir now?"
"All of Mr Goodfellow's friends are sirs, sir. Except for the ones that are ma'ams."
"Oh." Angel stuck his hands deep in his pockets and tried to look like he was cool with that, or at least like it didn't totally freak him out.
Marco cleared his throat. "I guess I'm not really a Mercedes kind of guy."
"So what do you like?"
"Porsche Carrera GT."
"Do they sell them around here?"
Marco grinned. "Come on, I'll show you."
They were nice cars. The manager was almost as touchy-feely as the Mercedes woman, but younger and maler. Robin must've called a lot of places.
Angel almost fainted when he heard the price. He actually did get a little head rush and a minor dizzy spell and whipped his hand away from the top of car in case he scratched it or breathed on it wrong.
But Robin had said anything. Anything he wanted. And it was a hot car, Marco was totally right. Another part of his brain pointed out that he could buy a couple of houses for that. Okay, not in Manhattan, but still.
It was pretty. It was silver. It went 200 miles an hour. And it was almost easier to spend that kind of money. It didn't feel real, not like a two thousand dollar coat did.
He got the car and told them to put it in Marco's name. It was fun to see Marco's eyes bug out like that.
"You-- Sir, you can't!"
"Sure I can. He said anything I want."
"For you!"
Angel shrugged. "I can't drive a stick shift. Hell, I can barely drive. Took three tries to pass my test, and I haven't been behind the wheel once since I left home."
"I could just quit and take off with it," Marco said, and Angel remembered himself fingering five thousand in cash. Marco thought bigger than he did, apparently.
"Yeah, you could. Can I have a ride first? We could get out of the city for a couple hours."
When they got away from the worst of the traffic, Angel thought Marco might have some kind of spontaneous car orgasm. They stopped at the Frosty Freeze an hour upstate and got pizza and ice cream, which Marco flatly refused to let him eat in the car. "Over your dead body, sir," he said.
Marco turned out to have a wife and a kid on the way, and Angel wondered if a minivan would've been better.
"No way," Marco said. "She'll love this. She'll die. I am so getting lucky tonight."
"In the car?" Angel asked. Marco looked so torn he had to laugh. "You could put a towel down first," he said.
They were both quiet on the ride back. Angel guessed Marco was probably used to being quiet when he drove people around, and Angel's head was too full to talk much. He kept thinking about Marco's pregnant wife who'd go nuts with him over a totally useless (if awesome) car. It left him feeling happy and hollowed out all at once, and when he got home, he dialed Robin's number.
"Goodfellow," Robin said.
"It's me. Angel. Uh. Should I not call you?"
"No, I don't mind," Robin said. He sounded faintly surprised. "Is everything all right?"
"I bought your driver a half-million dollar car today."
"I see. I'm sure he appreciated it."
"You're not mad?"
"I'm not mad."
"Oh. Good." He swallowed. "Where are you? Are you having fun?"
"I'm here on business, not to have fun. It's tolerable, I suppose."
"You travel a lot?"
"A fair amount." There was a pause. "Perhaps I'll bring you along next time."
"I-- Yeah. That'd be cool. I'd like that."
"All right. Next time. I may be able to make it somewhere considerably more exotic than Chicago."
"Chicago's exotic."
"Is it?" Robin sounded puzzled.
"Yeah, if you've never been."
"Oh. I see." There was a short pause, and on Robin's end he heard some voices. "I have to go now, Angel. Goodbye."
"Okay. Bye," Angel said, but he'd already rung off.
***
Angel sat in front of the TV, watching ET. Or sort of watching. The little tag had come from the jeweler today. Angel had strung it on the chain without a thought, but he was thinking about it now.
He could feel the curled letters, warm under his fingertip. It was a collar. Not like he didn’t know that. He ran his fingers over it, like he couldn't stop touching it. He couldn't read the writing because it was in some weird language he didn’t even begin to recognise. It probably said 'hands off' or 'property of R. Goodfellow' or something like that.
He stared up at ET's shriveled little face and wondered what Tahiti was like. He lay back on the sofa. It was easily long enough for him to lie on it and it was wide and deep, almost like a bed. The apartment was full of light and it was pleasantly warm. He was dressed in brand new preppy clothes, down to his $60 cashmere socks. They were pale pink and the softest wool he'd ever touched.
Mrs Benoit came up at lunchtime. She didn't look like anyone's idea of a cook, not really. She wore pearls and a twinset and smoked Sobranie Black Russians with a long silver holder. Her hair was set in a sort of a high grey tidal wave on her head.
"I thought they didn't allow smoking in the building," Angel said.
"Mr Goodfellow breaks whatever rules he likes."
"Yeah, I noticed."
She smiled at him. "I'm sure you have, dear."
He watched her rattle about in the kitchen for a few minutes, getting out pans and mixing bowls and ingredients and setting them on the worktop.
"What're you doing?" he said. She was making him nervous. She clearly knew her way around, like she lived here herself.
"Cooking you lunch."
"Oh, hey, you don't need to. I can do that."
"Mr Goodfellow asked me to cook for you, specifically."
"Yeah, but, it's not like he'll know if you don't." Mrs Benoit raised an eyebrow and Angel remembered the security cameras. "Oh, okay. He might. But I'll tell him myself that I sent you back home."
"You can cook?" she said, her face wrinkled up with doubt.
"Sort of," he said. Which was true. Grilled cheese, and soup. Beans on toast. He'd made spaghetti once. "I can cook pasta."
"There's a pasta machine in the cupboard," she said, "and eggs and flour over there. If you're sure."
"Uh. Of course."
"The cookbooks are on the shelf by the bread machine," she called, as she left.
He found the book, and the machine, and all the ingredients. The pasta came out sort of lumpy, but it tasted all right once he'd boiled it. He found some tomatoes and small skinny green onions and chopped those up and ate it with olive oil and black pepper from a shiny silver mill.
It wasn't quite like anything else he'd ever eaten. It wasn't bad, but there must be a trick to non-lumpy pasta that he wasn't getting, he thought.
He poked through the fridge and the rest of the cupboards. Robin's place was sadly lacking in Oreos and Doritos and Coke. And beer. He looked three times, but there was no beer. There was a fully stocked liquor cabinet with mirrored interior, and one of those little refrigerators just for wine, but no beer.
He wondered if there were a back door to this place. It creeped him out a little going past the front desk guy every time, for no good reason. He just didn't like people keeping tabs on him. He thought about asking Marco, but surely Marco was home with his wife, or maybe making out in the Porsche.
Angel smiled to himself at that and took the elevator all the way down to the basement. He surprised a couple of maintenance guys in coveralls, but they pointed him to the exit next to the boiler room. It let him out into the alley behind the building. He bounced on his toes and felt more normal than he had since he moved in.
There was a 7-Eleven not too far away that filled all his junk food needs. He got Cool Ranch Doritos, Oreos, Coke, Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream, chocolate sauce, and a 12 pack of Twinkies. He thought about Robin and wondered if he'd expect the 7-Eleven to deliver, too. Probably.
"What's so funny?" the cashier asked.
"My boyfriend's face when he sees all this crap in his kitchen," Angel said. It made her laugh, and it wasn't exactly a lie. "Nice lip piercings," he told her as he left. He walked back to the alley entrance, wondering who his mom would hate him coming home with more; the girl with the purple mohawk, tattoos, and lip piercings, or Robin, all clean and pressed and respectable in his nice suits with just that one unfortunate accessory, i.e. his dick.
He slunk silently past the maintenance guys, pretending he was James Bond on a mission, and made it back upstairs without seeing a soul. He dumped the bags on the floor and just left them there while he played a game of Soul Caliber on the Playstation, because he could. The apartment echoed. When he turned the stereo on, the music came out of a whole bunch of little speakers embedded in the walls. He hadn't noticed them before.
Robin's music collection was almost as bad as his DVDs, and a few thoughts ran through Angel's head. The first was that he could buy all the CDs he wanted and that it would be a lot easier than trying to shoplift one lousy KMFDM album and almost getting caught. The second was that, if he had a computer, he could use that credit card and order them online. The third was that he could buy a computer.
It still freaked him out a little. He ate Twinkies until he calmed down, sitting on the counter and looking around at the empty apartment. It was Wednesday. Robin wouldn't be home for two days yet. He'd never been alone this long before. It was...kind of not horrible, actually. It was somehow less lonely than living with Andy had been, and he wasn't sure how that worked.
Although, Andy would've reminded him to put the ice cream away.
He pulled it out of the bag and found it not entirely soupy. He ate a few mushy-yet-delicious spoonfuls before he stuck it in the freezer. He found places for all the rest of the stuff too and thought about pizza for dinner. Or Chinese. Beef lo mein. General Tso's chicken, all the egg rolls he could eat.
He wondered how fat he'd have to get before Robin kicked him out. He'd never had much opportunity to get fat before. Mom's cooking had been okay, sort of. Lots of casseroles and limp vegetables. There had been enough to go around, but just enough, and no junk food allowed. Even though he was pretty sure Wonder Bread was just as bad as Doritos.
He got the Doritos back out of the cupboard and tore the bag open. If he got chip crumbs all over the floor, the silent and scarily efficient maid would clean it up.
Angel climbed up on the counter and stood there, eating Doritos, because he could. Robin might have security cameras other places. Like his kitchen. Well, it wasn't like he was wearing his shoes. His bare feet couldn't be anymore unsanitary than raw chicken.
"If I were a security cameras tape of me having sex, where would I be," he mumbled. He jumped down with an echoing thud and headed for Robin's bedroom.
Bad idea, he thought as he pushed through the door, chips in hand. But Robin could’ve locked the door. It was his own fault, really.
Robin's room was full of muted colours and expensive low furniture. Near the fire was a long rug of some dark fur, with a couple of wide low chairs. Their fabric gleamed deep green. Angel frowned. On one long wall to there was a painting of what looked like a dark and tangled forest, sort of abstract. The tree branches looked like claws and the sky was washed out and milky green. It was huge, tall enough to step into, almost. It ran the length of the wall. He turned away, with the creepy sense that something was watching him from between the dark and twisted tree trunks.
He sat on Robin's bed and ate chips and looked around, not at the painting. He couldn’t see any cameras, but he guessed they could be really small these days.
There was a remote on Robin's bedside table. One of the buttons, he remembered, turned on the fire. Oh. Easy. It had a little flame on it. He pushed it, and yeah, the fire sprang up from its bed of glittery white rocks. There was another button with an old fashioned rabbit-ears TV on it. Huh. He pushed it.
The wall above the fireplace slid away and revealed a flatscreen TV not quite as mammoth as the one in the living room. It was set to a cooking show with some crazy-haired guy making turkey. Thanksgiving, Angel thought, and immediately pushed the thought away.
The rest of the buttons were less obvious. He tried the one with the tree on it and got what looked like the view of Central Park from the balcony. The camera button got him--himself, sitting on Robin's bed, eating Doritos. There was a tiny lag between what he did and what the him on the screen did, and that entertained him a minute or two.
There were a lot of number buttons. Four made the screen go blank, and then there he was, with Beth, getting funky in high definition while the fire flickered below and cast weird little shadows on everything. Five was him blowing Robin, on his knees next to the bed.
He watched Robin’s face and couldn’t look away. He looked…crazy intense. Or maybe just crazy. Angel set the Doritos aside and rested his hand between his legs, almost without noticing. The little tag round his neck slipped as he moved, touching bare skin. Angel watched his own hands stroke slowly up and down Robin's thighs, but it was his own face that gave him a weird jolt in his stomach. He looked so into it. Did he always look like that? Jesus.
It was better if he watched Robin. Angel moved back on the bed, falling back against the neatly smoothed pillows and sheets. He turned his head and caught the scent of Robin's hair. On the TV, Robin whispered Angel's name.
He pulled his jeans open. It didn't take long to get himself off. He did it so hard and fast, without stopping to even think about what he was doing, that it almost hurt. He turned his cheek to press it into the pillow, trying to catch that scent again. On screen, Robin was moving his hips and stroking his hair, long fingers holding him just how he wanted, watching Angel's face and not closing his eyes even once, not even when he came.
Angel lay with his eyes closed for a long time afterwards, trying not to think and failing hard. Life might be easier if he just went back to sleeping rough and wearing clothes that cost less than ten dollars. At least he could fade into the background then, and not have someone looking at him like he meant something. He could go back to being invisible.
He must've dozed off, because when he opened his eyes it was dark and the screen was blank. His own come was drying on his stomach and his mouth tasted disgusting. He cleaned himself up with tissues, zipped himself back up, and switched off the TV. Its doors slid discreetly closed with a faint snap, like a mouth closing. The painting loomed, looking even more freaky in the dark. It was like a huge shadow.
He put the remote back where he found it and went back out into the main area, closing the door firmly behind him.
"I was wondering when you'd wake up."
There was a woman sitting on the sofa. Angel took three steps back before he got over the shock.
"Um. Who the fuck are-- I mean, um."
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to surprise you. My name’s Rose.”
He told himself to calm down, but something about the way she was staring at him made his skin creep. It reminded him of Robin. This had to be someone Robin knew. There was no way she'd be allowed in otherwise. She was probably another friend. He squinted at her. She had dark hair and the same pointed chin as Robin. Or sister?
“If you want Robin, he’s away for a few days. Until Friday,” he added, helpfully.
“I see. And you are… ?”
“Angel.”
“Dear Robin. He’s so good at keeping secrets,” she said, with a smile that was way too bright. “A little too good.”
Thanks for all the comments so far - we are very grateful indeed!
After breakfast, he had Marco drive him over to the Mercedes dealership, where he found that Robin had called the manager and told her to give Angel whatever he liked. She looked to be taking Robin seriously, and showed him all the little sporty convertibles he could ever want. She also touched him an awful lot, which Angel guessed was her own idea and not Robin's, given the Beth incident.
There were too many choices, and in the end he made Marco park the limo somewhere and come into the store.
"What would you pick?" he asked Marco.
Marco shrugged. "Not my place to say, sir."
Angel blinked at him. "Sir? I'm a sir now?"
"All of Mr Goodfellow's friends are sirs, sir. Except for the ones that are ma'ams."
"Oh." Angel stuck his hands deep in his pockets and tried to look like he was cool with that, or at least like it didn't totally freak him out.
Marco cleared his throat. "I guess I'm not really a Mercedes kind of guy."
"So what do you like?"
"Porsche Carrera GT."
"Do they sell them around here?"
Marco grinned. "Come on, I'll show you."
They were nice cars. The manager was almost as touchy-feely as the Mercedes woman, but younger and maler. Robin must've called a lot of places.
Angel almost fainted when he heard the price. He actually did get a little head rush and a minor dizzy spell and whipped his hand away from the top of car in case he scratched it or breathed on it wrong.
But Robin had said anything. Anything he wanted. And it was a hot car, Marco was totally right. Another part of his brain pointed out that he could buy a couple of houses for that. Okay, not in Manhattan, but still.
It was pretty. It was silver. It went 200 miles an hour. And it was almost easier to spend that kind of money. It didn't feel real, not like a two thousand dollar coat did.
He got the car and told them to put it in Marco's name. It was fun to see Marco's eyes bug out like that.
"You-- Sir, you can't!"
"Sure I can. He said anything I want."
"For you!"
Angel shrugged. "I can't drive a stick shift. Hell, I can barely drive. Took three tries to pass my test, and I haven't been behind the wheel once since I left home."
"I could just quit and take off with it," Marco said, and Angel remembered himself fingering five thousand in cash. Marco thought bigger than he did, apparently.
"Yeah, you could. Can I have a ride first? We could get out of the city for a couple hours."
When they got away from the worst of the traffic, Angel thought Marco might have some kind of spontaneous car orgasm. They stopped at the Frosty Freeze an hour upstate and got pizza and ice cream, which Marco flatly refused to let him eat in the car. "Over your dead body, sir," he said.
Marco turned out to have a wife and a kid on the way, and Angel wondered if a minivan would've been better.
"No way," Marco said. "She'll love this. She'll die. I am so getting lucky tonight."
"In the car?" Angel asked. Marco looked so torn he had to laugh. "You could put a towel down first," he said.
They were both quiet on the ride back. Angel guessed Marco was probably used to being quiet when he drove people around, and Angel's head was too full to talk much. He kept thinking about Marco's pregnant wife who'd go nuts with him over a totally useless (if awesome) car. It left him feeling happy and hollowed out all at once, and when he got home, he dialed Robin's number.
"Goodfellow," Robin said.
"It's me. Angel. Uh. Should I not call you?"
"No, I don't mind," Robin said. He sounded faintly surprised. "Is everything all right?"
"I bought your driver a half-million dollar car today."
"I see. I'm sure he appreciated it."
"You're not mad?"
"I'm not mad."
"Oh. Good." He swallowed. "Where are you? Are you having fun?"
"I'm here on business, not to have fun. It's tolerable, I suppose."
"You travel a lot?"
"A fair amount." There was a pause. "Perhaps I'll bring you along next time."
"I-- Yeah. That'd be cool. I'd like that."
"All right. Next time. I may be able to make it somewhere considerably more exotic than Chicago."
"Chicago's exotic."
"Is it?" Robin sounded puzzled.
"Yeah, if you've never been."
"Oh. I see." There was a short pause, and on Robin's end he heard some voices. "I have to go now, Angel. Goodbye."
"Okay. Bye," Angel said, but he'd already rung off.
***
Angel sat in front of the TV, watching ET. Or sort of watching. The little tag had come from the jeweler today. Angel had strung it on the chain without a thought, but he was thinking about it now.
He could feel the curled letters, warm under his fingertip. It was a collar. Not like he didn’t know that. He ran his fingers over it, like he couldn't stop touching it. He couldn't read the writing because it was in some weird language he didn’t even begin to recognise. It probably said 'hands off' or 'property of R. Goodfellow' or something like that.
He stared up at ET's shriveled little face and wondered what Tahiti was like. He lay back on the sofa. It was easily long enough for him to lie on it and it was wide and deep, almost like a bed. The apartment was full of light and it was pleasantly warm. He was dressed in brand new preppy clothes, down to his $60 cashmere socks. They were pale pink and the softest wool he'd ever touched.
Mrs Benoit came up at lunchtime. She didn't look like anyone's idea of a cook, not really. She wore pearls and a twinset and smoked Sobranie Black Russians with a long silver holder. Her hair was set in a sort of a high grey tidal wave on her head.
"I thought they didn't allow smoking in the building," Angel said.
"Mr Goodfellow breaks whatever rules he likes."
"Yeah, I noticed."
She smiled at him. "I'm sure you have, dear."
He watched her rattle about in the kitchen for a few minutes, getting out pans and mixing bowls and ingredients and setting them on the worktop.
"What're you doing?" he said. She was making him nervous. She clearly knew her way around, like she lived here herself.
"Cooking you lunch."
"Oh, hey, you don't need to. I can do that."
"Mr Goodfellow asked me to cook for you, specifically."
"Yeah, but, it's not like he'll know if you don't." Mrs Benoit raised an eyebrow and Angel remembered the security cameras. "Oh, okay. He might. But I'll tell him myself that I sent you back home."
"You can cook?" she said, her face wrinkled up with doubt.
"Sort of," he said. Which was true. Grilled cheese, and soup. Beans on toast. He'd made spaghetti once. "I can cook pasta."
"There's a pasta machine in the cupboard," she said, "and eggs and flour over there. If you're sure."
"Uh. Of course."
"The cookbooks are on the shelf by the bread machine," she called, as she left.
He found the book, and the machine, and all the ingredients. The pasta came out sort of lumpy, but it tasted all right once he'd boiled it. He found some tomatoes and small skinny green onions and chopped those up and ate it with olive oil and black pepper from a shiny silver mill.
It wasn't quite like anything else he'd ever eaten. It wasn't bad, but there must be a trick to non-lumpy pasta that he wasn't getting, he thought.
He poked through the fridge and the rest of the cupboards. Robin's place was sadly lacking in Oreos and Doritos and Coke. And beer. He looked three times, but there was no beer. There was a fully stocked liquor cabinet with mirrored interior, and one of those little refrigerators just for wine, but no beer.
He wondered if there were a back door to this place. It creeped him out a little going past the front desk guy every time, for no good reason. He just didn't like people keeping tabs on him. He thought about asking Marco, but surely Marco was home with his wife, or maybe making out in the Porsche.
Angel smiled to himself at that and took the elevator all the way down to the basement. He surprised a couple of maintenance guys in coveralls, but they pointed him to the exit next to the boiler room. It let him out into the alley behind the building. He bounced on his toes and felt more normal than he had since he moved in.
There was a 7-Eleven not too far away that filled all his junk food needs. He got Cool Ranch Doritos, Oreos, Coke, Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream, chocolate sauce, and a 12 pack of Twinkies. He thought about Robin and wondered if he'd expect the 7-Eleven to deliver, too. Probably.
"What's so funny?" the cashier asked.
"My boyfriend's face when he sees all this crap in his kitchen," Angel said. It made her laugh, and it wasn't exactly a lie. "Nice lip piercings," he told her as he left. He walked back to the alley entrance, wondering who his mom would hate him coming home with more; the girl with the purple mohawk, tattoos, and lip piercings, or Robin, all clean and pressed and respectable in his nice suits with just that one unfortunate accessory, i.e. his dick.
He slunk silently past the maintenance guys, pretending he was James Bond on a mission, and made it back upstairs without seeing a soul. He dumped the bags on the floor and just left them there while he played a game of Soul Caliber on the Playstation, because he could. The apartment echoed. When he turned the stereo on, the music came out of a whole bunch of little speakers embedded in the walls. He hadn't noticed them before.
Robin's music collection was almost as bad as his DVDs, and a few thoughts ran through Angel's head. The first was that he could buy all the CDs he wanted and that it would be a lot easier than trying to shoplift one lousy KMFDM album and almost getting caught. The second was that, if he had a computer, he could use that credit card and order them online. The third was that he could buy a computer.
It still freaked him out a little. He ate Twinkies until he calmed down, sitting on the counter and looking around at the empty apartment. It was Wednesday. Robin wouldn't be home for two days yet. He'd never been alone this long before. It was...kind of not horrible, actually. It was somehow less lonely than living with Andy had been, and he wasn't sure how that worked.
Although, Andy would've reminded him to put the ice cream away.
He pulled it out of the bag and found it not entirely soupy. He ate a few mushy-yet-delicious spoonfuls before he stuck it in the freezer. He found places for all the rest of the stuff too and thought about pizza for dinner. Or Chinese. Beef lo mein. General Tso's chicken, all the egg rolls he could eat.
He wondered how fat he'd have to get before Robin kicked him out. He'd never had much opportunity to get fat before. Mom's cooking had been okay, sort of. Lots of casseroles and limp vegetables. There had been enough to go around, but just enough, and no junk food allowed. Even though he was pretty sure Wonder Bread was just as bad as Doritos.
He got the Doritos back out of the cupboard and tore the bag open. If he got chip crumbs all over the floor, the silent and scarily efficient maid would clean it up.
Angel climbed up on the counter and stood there, eating Doritos, because he could. Robin might have security cameras other places. Like his kitchen. Well, it wasn't like he was wearing his shoes. His bare feet couldn't be anymore unsanitary than raw chicken.
"If I were a security cameras tape of me having sex, where would I be," he mumbled. He jumped down with an echoing thud and headed for Robin's bedroom.
Bad idea, he thought as he pushed through the door, chips in hand. But Robin could’ve locked the door. It was his own fault, really.
Robin's room was full of muted colours and expensive low furniture. Near the fire was a long rug of some dark fur, with a couple of wide low chairs. Their fabric gleamed deep green. Angel frowned. On one long wall to there was a painting of what looked like a dark and tangled forest, sort of abstract. The tree branches looked like claws and the sky was washed out and milky green. It was huge, tall enough to step into, almost. It ran the length of the wall. He turned away, with the creepy sense that something was watching him from between the dark and twisted tree trunks.
He sat on Robin's bed and ate chips and looked around, not at the painting. He couldn’t see any cameras, but he guessed they could be really small these days.
There was a remote on Robin's bedside table. One of the buttons, he remembered, turned on the fire. Oh. Easy. It had a little flame on it. He pushed it, and yeah, the fire sprang up from its bed of glittery white rocks. There was another button with an old fashioned rabbit-ears TV on it. Huh. He pushed it.
The wall above the fireplace slid away and revealed a flatscreen TV not quite as mammoth as the one in the living room. It was set to a cooking show with some crazy-haired guy making turkey. Thanksgiving, Angel thought, and immediately pushed the thought away.
The rest of the buttons were less obvious. He tried the one with the tree on it and got what looked like the view of Central Park from the balcony. The camera button got him--himself, sitting on Robin's bed, eating Doritos. There was a tiny lag between what he did and what the him on the screen did, and that entertained him a minute or two.
There were a lot of number buttons. Four made the screen go blank, and then there he was, with Beth, getting funky in high definition while the fire flickered below and cast weird little shadows on everything. Five was him blowing Robin, on his knees next to the bed.
He watched Robin’s face and couldn’t look away. He looked…crazy intense. Or maybe just crazy. Angel set the Doritos aside and rested his hand between his legs, almost without noticing. The little tag round his neck slipped as he moved, touching bare skin. Angel watched his own hands stroke slowly up and down Robin's thighs, but it was his own face that gave him a weird jolt in his stomach. He looked so into it. Did he always look like that? Jesus.
It was better if he watched Robin. Angel moved back on the bed, falling back against the neatly smoothed pillows and sheets. He turned his head and caught the scent of Robin's hair. On the TV, Robin whispered Angel's name.
He pulled his jeans open. It didn't take long to get himself off. He did it so hard and fast, without stopping to even think about what he was doing, that it almost hurt. He turned his cheek to press it into the pillow, trying to catch that scent again. On screen, Robin was moving his hips and stroking his hair, long fingers holding him just how he wanted, watching Angel's face and not closing his eyes even once, not even when he came.
Angel lay with his eyes closed for a long time afterwards, trying not to think and failing hard. Life might be easier if he just went back to sleeping rough and wearing clothes that cost less than ten dollars. At least he could fade into the background then, and not have someone looking at him like he meant something. He could go back to being invisible.
He must've dozed off, because when he opened his eyes it was dark and the screen was blank. His own come was drying on his stomach and his mouth tasted disgusting. He cleaned himself up with tissues, zipped himself back up, and switched off the TV. Its doors slid discreetly closed with a faint snap, like a mouth closing. The painting loomed, looking even more freaky in the dark. It was like a huge shadow.
He put the remote back where he found it and went back out into the main area, closing the door firmly behind him.
"I was wondering when you'd wake up."
There was a woman sitting on the sofa. Angel took three steps back before he got over the shock.
"Um. Who the fuck are-- I mean, um."
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to surprise you. My name’s Rose.”
He told himself to calm down, but something about the way she was staring at him made his skin creep. It reminded him of Robin. This had to be someone Robin knew. There was no way she'd be allowed in otherwise. She was probably another friend. He squinted at her. She had dark hair and the same pointed chin as Robin. Or sister?
“If you want Robin, he’s away for a few days. Until Friday,” he added, helpfully.
“I see. And you are… ?”
“Angel.”
“Dear Robin. He’s so good at keeping secrets,” she said, with a smile that was way too bright. “A little too good.”
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