Change of plans — dinner for two, not dinner for three. Toni had been gracious enough to extend the invitation in person and then to bow out pleading a migraine. She set him up. Brandon wonders where she is right now. It hadn't occurred to him that two people could live that way — synchronous but separate, two people who know each other intimately and still stuck it out, together but fundamentally apart. Toni is her husband's lieutenant in matters of personal character — not his little wife, not his personal assistant. She's something different. His right-hand woman. They'll both miss her tonight.

Underneath his expensive clothes, Brandon is prickling with anxious heat. This is a situation he's never been in, the kind of social game he's not familiar with, and any other night in New York he'd be looking to Walter for an overview of the rules — or a challenge. But they're not just watching some arcane social ritual unfold — the two of them are what's on display, circling each other in a display of conspicuous friendliness.

Walter looks him over and whistles — never mind that he's seen him in these clothes before, with his hair combed back, that he was there while Brandon was fitted for this suit. It gives Brandon a prickle of pleasure.

"I can guarantee you, looking like that — you're going to get yourself into trouble tonight. Now, only time will tell exactly what that might be, but I hope I'm there for it."

"Are you sure that isn't a bet? Seeing if you can't get me into trouble?"

"Haven't you heard? I don't do that any more. It's not a bet, it's not a test, it's a promise and you're not getting out of it by stalling. Now, come on, nature boy."

Another mysterious form of sabotage. Gliding into some place where the waiters all know when to make themselves scarce and the glittering interior reflects the pair of them a thousand times over — refracting eyeless faces, shoulders, conspiratorial hands.

Walter orders something for both of them that Brandon Lang, late of Las Vegas, has never heard of, and lets Brandon pick the wine — there are some things he knows, stuff he's learned categorically the same way he knows statistics and odds, but the look Abrams gives him is a puzzle. He can't tell if he's chosen well or if he's chosen poorly in some way that's opaque to him but clear to everybody else, something provincial or showy or foolish. But he can tell Walter is looking at him after that — that he seems pleased, that it gives him pleasure to see him like this.

Brandon Lang feels at home in his body, and he's not ashamed, he has nothing to be ashamed of — he's never going to play again, and Walter has shown him that, but that doesn't have to be the end. Keeping fit has become part of treating his body like the blown-out knee never happened, in a way. Admitting anything had changed would be admitting defeat. But he knows what his body can do now, and he knows he looks good. People don't look at him and see Brandon Lang, that really nice guy with the cute drawl who trashed his shot at going pro. They see someone else, somebody healthy and wealthy and expensive in every way, and they see Walter Abrams practically in his lap. Let them look.

He's on display here — every bit as on display as a cute blonde in a fox fur wrap.

Walter makes some joke, and Brandon is laughing, Walter tells an office anecdote about the pressure-cooker operation he's running with his usual cockeyed sense of humor and all the personal regard of somebody surveying an anthill. Under the table, the side of Abrams' shoe brushes his ankle, a blade-edge of careful touch. Brandon shifts his feet apart slightly to let him in.

Dinner follows — uneventful by their standards, shop talk, Abrams razoring the competition to pieces and laying out the next week's plays. They kill a few bottles of wine and the knot of apprehension that's bound up tight in Brandon's chest slowly starts to untie itself. Walter smokes a cigarette and Brandon starts in on the college stories, which have always been a surefire hit in the past — a little funny, a little humbling, inasmuch as humility has ever been part of his personal brand. It bruises the mystique a little. But if anyone's seen him at his least polished, it's Walter and maybe Toni.

People are beginning to recognize his face — or if not his face, the sound of his voice. Women are noticing him — the vampy redhead at the next table looking up from her drink, a cluster of sober-looking named-partner types all suddenly afflicted with sticky glances.They notice the walk, they notice the way his suit fits him, they notice the way he talks. More than that, men are noticing him — the way he looks is calculated to appeal to guys, the way the kind of guys who bet on sports without playing them only wish they could look. Lean and expensive and just a little sleazy.

The two of them leave together, Brandon loping, Walter with his arm around him — they could be any two men, familiar enough not to balk at the touch, business partners or father and son. But Brandon is agonizingly aware of it, the line of contact between their bodies as they stumble out into the dark. (And when did it get dark?)

So what's all this about — the conspicuous display isn't so much on its own because Walter never does anything low-key but something is different. It'd be one thing, with Toni to keep her husband in line. It's another thing now.

Brandon looks at his face in the streetlights and tries to get a read on whatever is there.

"Listen, Walter. Whatever you're trying to do, I want in on it."

"Call it a special dispensation."

The back of Walter's hand brushes his, the bands of his rings are cold, and Brandon knows where he wants that hand to go — Brandon is blinking away spots of light, simmering with barely-realized desire. He could lead him anywhere — down a dark alley, anywhere. Brandon would follow him.

Nobody had to teach him how to talk on the phone — he's a self-taught kind of guy. The voice comes from somewhere different in his chest, it's not Brandon Lang, clean-cut college athlete gone bad. It's easy and compelling — and it comes readily to him. Actors act; John Anthony drawls and swaggers and issues proclamations from on high, he goes everywhere and knows everything.

John Anthony on the town, who knows everybody and harbors goodwill toward all men, especially men who know how to bet; Brandon Lang who knows nobody and no one, who's starting to feel like some kind of freak savant. They're not taking the Mercedes tonight, and Brandon is suddenly appreciative as to why. He's got all kinds of exciting new toys in his life right now but this has its advantages. Not least of all that he's not so sure he's fit to drive — a few drinks with Walter have his head swimming like he's just downed a fifth of bourbon. Slinking back on a leather seat, inwardly turning over what would John Anthony do, again and again. Walter's still talking, telling him what they're passing on the way but not where they're going — giving him the tourist treatment.

That's what he is, just a big tourist, a transplant. His newly-minted persona could have come from anywhere — nobody's born and raised in Vegas, they come there to work — but he sounds like a Texas hayseed and he dresses like this, he moves like a playboy, like a crown prince on vacation, like a shark.

This city is marked out in places Walter has been — he got mugged on that corner, or Toni used to work in that office complex, or there's a support group that meets in that building every Monday from which Walter is permanently barred. Brandon doesn't have to ask about that one. One day he'll chauffeur him around Vegas.

Walter's hand is on his leg, fingertips half-curled under in five tantalizing points of clear contact — outwardly he's nothing but level, animated the way he's always animated and no more wired than that, but his eyes meet Brandon's darting sideways, heavy and dark, and Brandon knows.

So this is happening. So this is something people do in New York — they choreograph elaborate trysts, they make it happen in the back seats of cars. He smells like sharp cologne and clean leather and faintly like cigarette ash — his leg pressing into Brandon's, his beard scratching his cheek, his throat.

Side by side in the backseat — John Anthony doesn't wear a tie to dinner on a night like this so there's got to be something else to fidget with — Walter's fingertips brush the hollow of Brandon's throat and startled, Brandon laughs, spasmodically.

He can hardly stand Walter's hands on him through his expensive shirt, under his suit jacket, the wiry strength of him is unsettling and thrilling in its own right — how could he ever have worried about him? How could anybody be less vulnerable than this?

Brandon's neck is a point of special attention — Brandon wants to interrupt him so very badly but Abrams is charting his own path, he can feel the breath against his throat and the brush of his mouth, close. He smells like all the things Walter has recommended for him — like cloth and cologne and money.

"Fuck," Brandon exhales, because it's what his counterpart would say, John Anthony says fuck all the time. John Anthony gets fucked wherever he wants and by whoever he wants. This isn't a special occasion or an anniversary or an event for him, it's Friday night.

Walter is smiling at him. "Attaboy. Now come on."

Brandon turns his head, and kisses him on the mouth, guiding his head back against the upholstery with one terrible hand. It's electric. Walter's hands are in his lap, and it's like being seventeen again, all that heavy petting and nowhere to go.

"Come back with me," he mutters against his mouth, except what would John Anthony do? Not invite the single most important person in his life back to his empty apartment — the apartment Walter pays for, the place he holds the keys to every other day of the week.

"You know, I've always heard hotels are the customary place for this kind of thing."

Brandon tilts his head, leaning back a little to get a good look at him. His own boldness has left him feeling hazy around the edges.

"Oh yeah?" Like he's just the picture of innocence.

In Vegas there's a hotel about every fifteen feet, but maybe they do it differently out here. This kind of thing straight-up did not happen to the Brandon Lang who wore cargo shorts and biked to work.

*

Brandon is assigned the task of hiding his hard-on while Walter negotiates their way up into a room — you'd think this was easy for him, like it's something he does all the time,

it occurs to Brandon that their room reservation may have been waiting for them here — that Abrams made the call before they even went to dinner, or worse, that Toni did — she drew the appropriate conclusions and set up her husband's love nest at some pre-appointed spot. Maybe he's taken her here, and she's spent a late night of her own discreetly sweating underneath her clothes in a hotel lobby while Walter affably negotiates with the concierge.

His heart is hammering in his chest, his hair is falling in front of his forehead, his shirt collar is wide open. He can't imagine how this must look, but it's difficult to care when Abrams doesn't — Walter does whatever he wants and John Anthony goes wherever he likes,

Walter has an arm around him in the elevator. It's nothing short of a miracle that Brandon manages to keep his clothes on until they reach their room. He's burning up from the inside out, burning away the residue of good-natured high school girlfriends and uneasy fumbles after the locker room — all the things that Walter doesn't even know about, all the things he'll never get to know. These things are incongruous with the man he is now — the past six years gone up in smoke.

He's changing by the minute, shedding the old him, like taking off an old shirt — doing all the things clean-cut blue-eyed college boy Brandon Lang would never do.

When they make it in the door there's no time to appreciate the furnishings. Walter's hands tug at his collar, hard enough to twist loose a button, and Brandon undoes his shirt with an easiness that feels unreal. The pair of them bump against the walls, stumble over the furniture in their haste, Walter telling him wicked things as they go.

Nice boy Brandon Lang wouldn't push his luck. He'd never be so disrespectful. But he does, pinning him back against the bed and muffling the sounds of Walter's amusement with his mouth. Another small show of force, head aching and mouth burning. He pulls the suit jacket away from Walter's shoulders in a single clean tug; Walter is breathing hard now, his eyes are shining. Brandon's own undershirt is riding up over the flat plane of his stomach, and Abrams' expensive shirt creases against bare skin.

The rings on Walter's hands scrape a track across the side of Brandon's neck, down to his shoulder. He kisses him hard enough to click teeth against teeth, which makes Walter jerk back laughing, murmuring distracted praises.

Brandon sinks down, past his belt, past his half-undone fly, mouthing at him through cloth — Walter makes a sharp sound like a hiss of pain and Brandon raises his head, eyes open now, blinking.

"That's sweet of you," he says, lacing a hand through the hair at the back of Brandon's head, "but I didn't say stop."

And that's the scene, to the exclusion of everything else — taking him in his mouth, his big shoulders fitting between Walter's legs, Walter's hand snaking down the nape of his neck. He's untutored and clumsy and he wants to do it right — not knowing how to move his mouth but doing it anyway with Walter's unspoken direction. He's pushing him here, testing him.

Life has provided for Brandon Lang ample opportunities to suck cock, but it's been six years since anybody thought he was anything important. All those ample opportunities he never took are haunting him now.

Brandon can hear Walter breathing, that familiar rasp. He's watching him work.

"That's good," he breathes like smoke from somewhere very nearby, "you're a natural."

Brandon sucks him off like a champ, acutely aware of that hand on the back of his neck — trying to breathe right, to do the right thing with his mouth and his tongue, and more or less managing. But for him, more or less is pretty damn good — throat hitching and mouth hollowing. When Walter finishes he falls back against the mattress. Brandon is wiping his mouth, blinking away stars.

Walter pulls him up onto the bed with confusing, compelling strength — really it's that Brandon wants it to happen, even if he goes oof on collision with the mattress and scrambles to position himself with something like dignity. He shouldn't have bothered, because Walter is leaning on him — combing the hair out of his face, off his forehead, brushing his knuckles down the side of Brandon's throat.

Brandon hauls up beside him on the bed again, slipping the suspenders from his shoulders. Abrams is old, but there's a wiry strength in his body that Brandon can admire — with his hands, with his mouth. He buries his face in Walter's shoulder and breathes in what hard-earned affluence smells like — Brandon pressing close and rubbing his free leg against him, shamelessly, Walter jerking him off through his pants with excruciating attentiveness, quick and careful. Brandon wants this very badly, and he can't show it — he can't beg, but he can lean into it.

He can't beg, but he can break away, out of breath and with the blood hammering in his ears, muscles quaking like he's had the best workout of his life and not dinner and a brisk round of grab-ass with his employer. Walter doesn't pause what he's doing; he's doing something that makes Brandon see spots.

"Man, where did you learn to do that?"

"You think I've always been a married man? Practice."

More like experience. He can't picture Walter without Toni, as a young man, he's never even seen pictures — Brandon is breathless, blinking and hitching as Abrams goes to work ruining the inside of a very expensive suit. But he'll get his own back with interest — big hands grabbing and roving at expensive cloth, ruffling his remaining layers.

There on the edge and trying to stay, hanging on by his fingernails as the inescapable momentum builds. Walter finishes him off in what can only be record time for two grown men, but it feels like forever, Brandon wants it to stretch on for hours — the two of them in a clinch, body to body, Brandon lying back panting with Walter resting on his chest. Walter is a fantastic monster, approving, admiring — if sports are Brandon's religion then Abrams is his prophet, this is the purest place to direct his attention.

He's left him breathless and a little bit stunned, too pleased to be sheepish. Brandon pushes his hair from his face with both hands, exhaling.

Walter is quiet for a few long moments, quiet and still. He's not a man who comes to a stop all that often and if Brandon weren't self-satisfiedly wrung out it would give him a moment's pause. It's hard to see his face from this angle, let alone to make out how he's feeling. Tired, probably. Even a powerhouse gets tired.

When he finally stirs it's Brandon who's beginning to doze. "Don't worry about your dry cleaning," Walter murmurs lazily before rolling off him, "I'll take care of it."

*

Walter is filling a glass with water in the bathroom; his suit jacket is left behind, like an empty skin. Brandon fumbles at the lining of the cuff, like reaching for a hand. By now he is painfully awake.

He can't sleep with him — sleep with him and stay the night, as much as he might want to. He can't be there in the morning. Brandon Lang would never leave — he's burned whole night shifts with Walter before and come out the other side, but this scenario is different.

How do you rally after all that? He needs out, before it hits him what he's done, before it can settle on him what's happened between them and the misplaced guilt swells up to meet him again.

This is how it's going to go, he can already tell. He'll sneak out of here like a guilty coed and if he's lucky they'll never talk about it and if he's really really lucky they'll get to do it again. It's too early to be thinking about again, to be thinking about next time, when his mouth still hurts from being kissed. He'll go home to an expensively empty house and Walter will go home to his adoring daughter and his razor-sharp wife — his wife who knows exactly where he's been, and will never ask. Brandon was wrong, maybe, thinking the two of them shared a mutual knowledge of each other — Toni must know her husband cover to cover. But Walter can't know her all that well.

They both have places to be in the morning, and all the time in the world for this thing between them to go sour. But there's plenty of time for round two.

It's a heady feeling, getting what you didn't even know you wanted. Brandon lies back on the bed and fixes his eye on the ceiling, and waits.