6
It was Friday night before they made a serious attempt to get into the Pocket; Auggie had gone by twice to scout it out, and Theo had gone once, and both times, the building had been swarming with activity, morning, noon, and night. Football season might have ended last semester, but you couldn’t tell by looking at the Pocket. But Friday evening, when they passed it holding hands and occasionally stopping for Auggie to snap selfies—fodder for the Instagram hopper—the Pocket looked abandoned.
The night was cold, the January air sharp enough to cut you on each breath, but that hadn’t thinned out the crowd on campus. Guys and girls passed Auggie and Theo in both directions—two guys laughing as they sprinted in some sort of race; a girl trying to apply eyeliner while she hurried in heels, which seemed needlessly dangerous to Auggie; a cluster of girls carrying books and boxes and a rolled-up poster, talking in a steady quiet, rush. Auggie would have sworn he heard the word dragonlance more than once.
In contrast to all of that, the Pocket was dark and still. A wall of windows on the front looked in on the lobby, where emergency lights gave an impression of space while leaving everything plunged in deep shadows. Another light was on, that one in a second-story window, but as Auggie watched, it went out. Then the light went on in the next window. Cleaning crew, he guessed.
He looked at Theo. Theo grimaced, but he nodded.
Auggie started up the sidewalk toward the Pocket’s front doors. Then, through the windows, he saw a door open, and a heavyset older man in a uniform emerged into the lobby. He crossed toward a door on the other side and went through it, making his rounds. He was the guy who had caught Auggie and Theo in the locker room; there was no way Auggie would be able to talk him into letting them look around.
Taking Theo’s hand, he led him down the side of the building. They passed fire doors, which didn’t have exterior handles, and they passed maintenance doors that did have handles but, when Theo got out his debit card, a woman on the other side said, “If she thinks I’m working a double that weekend, she’s out of her mind. I’ve got Kayla’s dance recital.” Theo put his debit card away, and they hurried on.
When they came around the back of the building, the bulk of the stadium rose ahead of them, and it, too, was dark. Then a light broke the shadows ahead of them. It was just a star-speck of blue, and Auggie was ninety-nine percent sure it was a phone. It bobbed, moving toward them, but it was slow. Then Auggie caught the sound of voices—campy voices. Theo opened his mouth, and Auggie shook his head, straining to listen. He grinned.
“It’s Trixie.”
“What?”
“Trixie Mattel. The guard is watching Trixie Mattel.”
“Who or what is Trixie Mattel?”
“Oh my God,” Auggie said. “How are we even dating?”
“You stalked me and wore me down.”
“Ok, technically.” He eyed Theo. “How gay can you be?”
“There are degrees?”
“See, this is when I don’t even understand it. I mean, you’re hot, and you’re smart. Ok, maybe I do understand it.”
Theo sighed. “Was that a compliment or an insult?”
“A compliment, obviously. And you know how to do these devilish things with your mouth—”
“He’s coming, Auggie.”
Kicking off his Jordans, Auggie nodded. “Can you take this stuff and meet me, um, on that side?” He pointed to the end of the building closest to the stadium, which was the only side they hadn’t inspected yet. “But go back the way we came because I don’t want him to see you.”
Theo blinked as Auggie shoved his coat into his arms, then the Jordans. Then, hopping, he stripped off his socks. The jeans went next.
“Why are you getting naked? We have rules about nudity, Auggie. We’ve talked about this.”
“Dad,” Auggie coughed into one hand; it made getting his sweater off more difficult, but it was worth it for the way Theo narrowed his eyes.
In nothing but a white undershirt and his trunks, Auggie moved gingerly from foot to foot, trying to keep from losing skin to the frozen cement under him. He cropped the undershirt and knotted it in the front. Then, looking down at himself, he tried to decide what was missing. He lowered the underwear until a hint of his well-manscaped trail appeared, and then he practically gave himself a wedgie making his ass look better. He pinched his nipples a few times. By the time he was done, he couldn’t feel his toes.
Theo was staring at him, jaw slack.
“I like the attention,” Auggie said, “but if you don’t hurry, he’s going to see you.”
Theo’s tongue touched his lips.
“Theo!”
“Right, yeah, but—”
“Oh my God, go!”
He gave Theo a shove to get him started. One of the Jordans started to fall, and Theo caught it, still staring. Auggie rolled his eyes, waved for Theo to hurry, and danced from foot to foot on the frozen walk. As soon as Theo was out of sight, Auggie turned toward the blue glow of the phone screen. Then he started hopping forward, pitching his voice higher—femme and outraged—as he squealed, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!”
The guard looked up, but Auggie was too close by then, and they went down in a tangle. Auggie made sure that disentangling meant a lot of mishaps where the guard’s hands ended up on his bare abdomen, or on his bare thigh, and once he got the bullseye and maneuvered the guy’s hand right onto his dick. By the time they had gotten free of each other, the guard’s face was pink in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.
He was cute, in a plain-faced, earnest fashion that made Auggie think of farm boys and haylofts and, well, Missouri. He gaped at Auggie for a moment. Trixie was saying something, and then the audience laughed. His gaze darted to the phone, and he scooped it up and began tapping the screen frantically. It didn’t matter that he had a gun and pepper spray and a nightstick; Auggie knew which one of them was on the defensive.
Chafing his arms, Auggie said, “God, I am so sorry. I am going to kill those assholes! Are you ok? Oh my God, is that Trixie?”
The guard managed to stop the video, and he looked up.
“I love Trixie,” Auggie said. “Are you watching Drag Race? Can I see?”
The guard put the phone in a pocket, but he didn’t shake his head. He barely seemed to have heard Auggie. He was still drinking Auggie in. God bless closeted boys, Auggie thought. And God bless drag queens. God bless us every one.
“Did I hurt you? Oh! Let me see your hand.”
Auggie took the guard’s hand before he could draw back. He turned it in his own, studying it. It was perfectly fine, of course, but it didn’t hurt to get some more physical contact.
“Sir—” The guard began. The word had a scratched-record quality to it.
“Shit, shit, shit, I should have been watching where I was going, but I’m just so mad. Have you seen them? Trace and Chevalier and Andre, those assholes? Did they come this way?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but—”
Now for the big guns: Auggie started to cry. It wasn’t his best work, but to be fair, he was probably getting close to hypothermia, and he wouldn’t have any toes after tonight, and he had no idea how Theo felt about a boyfriend without toes, although true to form, Theo would probably be unbearably supportive about it.
“Hey, hey, hey—” The guard reached to pat Auggie’s shoulder.
He grunted when Auggie turned the movement into a hug, and Auggie pressed his face into the guard’s chest. Is that a police baton in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? His arms came together around Auggie in an awkward hug.
“I—I—I—just want to get my clothes back.”
“What’s wrong? Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“They told me they were looking for male cheerleaders. They told me I could do a routine, you know, like this because they didn’t have any male cheerleader uniforms.”
“We do have guys who are cheerleaders. A couple of them—”
“But not any uniforms,” Auggie said. He upped it into a wail: “And I believed them!” He did some more crying before he got out more words. “Then they pushed me outside and locked the door!” He pulled back to look up into the guard’s eyes. Normally, the height difference would have bothered Auggie, but in some situations—certain Theo situations, for example, and now this—it came in handy. “Do you have keys? Do they even let you have any keys?”
“Oh, sure.” The guard’s chest puffed out. “I’ve got keys to pretty much everything in the building—”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you! Oh my God, thank you!” Auggie stretched up and kissed the guard on the cheek. “You are so sweet.”
“Come on. And I’ll talk to those guys, tell them they can’t be horsing around in the building after we’ve closed down for the night. It’s my ass if Mr. Yorty hears about it. And I’ll tell them something about—about playing tricks on people.”
Auggie definitely couldn’t feel his feet at this point, but he dug in his heels. “No! Oh Christ, no, you can’t!”
“They need to learn—”
“No, they’ll be in so much trouble. I know guys like them. They’ll be so mad. And then they’ll make your life hell, and they’ll—they’ll find me. Please, I just want my clothes.”
The guard, apparently, had also known guys like them, because his face showed fresh concern. After a moment, he nodded. He held Auggie’s hand—very gentlemanly of him—as he led him to a metal door set into the wall. He unlocked it, and then he swung it open. When he took a step, Auggie squeezed his hand and dragged him back.
“Please don’t. I don’t want you to get in trouble. You’ve been so sweet.”
The guard got a little pinker, and he didn’t seem to know where to look. “Uh, my name’s Chuck.”
“Thank you, Chuck.”
Auggie tried to get his hand free, but Chuck was surprisingly tenacious. “What’s your name? Could I—I mean, if you wanted to—I mean, like, a beer, or maybe just coffee—”
“Oh my God, I couldn’t. My boyfriend is insane.” The look on poor Chuck’s face was pure brokenheartedness, so Auggie added, “But I’ve got a friend who would eat you up. Give me your number.”
Auggie wasn’t exactly sure that Orlando would eat up Chuck the security guard—Orlando’s tastes seemed to run to smaller, prettier boys. But Orlando was also a sweetheart and, more importantly, going through his sexual omnivore phase and, to judge by the noises, pretty good in the sack. All three of those things would be in Chuck’s favor.
Chuck scribbled his number on the back of a Chick-fil-A receipt, which seemed like some kind of irony, and Auggie accepted it as he pulled the door shut behind him. He pretended not to hear when Chuck asked, “If your boyfriend isn’t treating you right—”
Fortunately, Chuck didn’t open the door and finish the question.
Shivering uncontrollably, Auggie took in his surroundings. He stood at one end of a cardio workout room, with treadmills and ellipticals lined up to look out on the stadium. Auggie watched the wall of windows to make sure Chuck didn’t come back to check on him. After a minute of gulping in warm air, flexing his toes, and chafing his arms, the guard hadn’t appeared, so Auggie stumbled off toward the locker room.
He followed a darkened hallway, orienting himself. He spotted the press room, the single-user restrooms that were obviously meant for visitors, and ahead of him, an open, echoing space that he vaguely remembered as a kind of juice bar-café-lounge. The doors to his left, marked TRAINER, were shut and dark. To his right, an opening led into the locker room. The emergency lights limned everything in red-glare streaks, and they left deep pools of shadow between the lockers. A man loomed ahead, and Auggie bit the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming. Then he spotted the helmet, and he remembered the mannequins in the different Wildcats uniforms. He gave himself another ten-count, just so his heart wouldn’t rip its way out of his chest. Then he moved forward again.
He followed a hallway that extended off at an angle and had a gentle downward slope. On their first visit, when Maria had authorized them to look around, someone had called this the tunnel, and Auggie could see why—a cinderblock shell with steel fire doors at the end. He passed another set of doors marked EQUIPMENT, and he thought he heard something—a single sound that made him think of air. He paused, listening again. The furnace. Or loose ductwork. Sometimes in Theo’s house, when the heat kicked on, it sounded like that. But he didn’t hear anything again, and he moved forward after a few more heartbeats.
When he wrestled open one of the doors at the end of the hall, the cold made his skin needle and burn. He’d lost his night vision, so he glanced back and forth and whispered, “Theo?”
A moment later, Theo was close enough for Auggie to make him out, including the bundle of clothes. Auggie backed up, and Theo followed him into the tunnel. There was a series of soft thuds as Theo dropped the clothes and shoes, and then he wrapped Auggie in a hug. For an instant, he was cold, his fingers frozen where they were threaded through Auggie’s short hair. Then, slowly, body heat made its way through the clothing.
“Are you ok?” Theo whispered. His voice would have passed for normal if you didn’t know Theo.
Auggie nodded. “Cold. Well, more like a popsicle.”
“I want to look at your fingers and toes. Come on, we need more light.”
Theo wouldn’t let go of Auggie, so they made an awkward pair as they followed the tunnel back to the locker room, carrying Auggie’s clothes between them. They passed through the locker room to the section of the restrooms with urinals and sinks. Theo slapped the counter once, and Auggie hopped up to sit while Theo found the lights. When the panels came on overhead, Auggie shaded his eyes.
Kneeling, Theo took one of Auggie’s feet. He separated the toes, inspecting each one. His fingers were rough, and although Auggie had thought his feet were numb, he was surprised to realize that he could still sense texture and, then, warmth. He giggled as the heel of Theo’s hand grazed the arch of his foot, and he giggled again when Theo’s knuckles scraped his sole.
When Theo looked up, Auggie said, “What? I’m ticklish.”
“You’re crazy is what you are.” Theo switched feet. “Auggie, you could have gotten frostbite. Hell, you might have gotten frostbite; I’m not done checking. And on top of that, what if that guy had been some nutjob homophobe, and he decided to take it out on you?”
“Nutjob homophobes don’t watch Trixie when they’re supposed to be on duty.”
“They do if they’re closet cases, and those guys, they hate themselves, and they want to take it out on somebody else.” With a rumbly noise, Theo moved up to Auggie’s hands and checked his fingers. “What if he’d dragged you inside? What was I supposed to do?”
“Crash through the wall like Mr. Kool-Aid.”
“This isn’t funny!”
It wasn’t a shout—or it was, but compressed and controlled, in Theo fashion—but the words were loud enough to bounce back from the tile.
“You’re hurting me,” Auggie said more calmly than he felt. His pulse fluttered in his throat.
With what looked like tremendous effort, Theo eased his grip and, a moment later, peeled his fingers away from Auggie’s wrist. He kissed the inside of Auggie’s arm. When he looked up, his eyes weren’t like wildflowers. They were wild in another way. The savagery of that expression ran through Auggie, his system still slick with the oil-fire of adrenaline.
“Where did he touch you?” Theo asked. The words came from low in his chest, vibrating with that pressurized fury that Theo kept so carefully compartmentalized.
“He didn’t hurt me. Besides, the Street Queens taught me how to protect myself, like you use your fake nails to poke out their eyes, or if you don’t have fake nails, you improvise and use your keys—”
“Where,” Theo asked, the word a shadow of a growl, “did he touch you?”
Auggie shivered. He touched his thigh.
Theo kissed him there. His beard scraped and stirred up sparks. When he pulled back, his eyes found Auggie’s.
Auggie touched his abdomen.
Theo rose up on his knees and kissed him there. The pleasant scritch-scratch kindled something low in Auggie’s belly.
Auggie let his hand drift down, fingers curling under the hard length of his dick, bouncing it once.
A shadow of a smirk passed across Theo’s face. He bent, his mouth hot and wet through the cotton. The rough scrape of the fabric, combined with everything that was already ricocheting through Auggie, meant that a moment later, it was too much.
“Theo.” He breathed heavily. “Theo!”
Theo pulled back. His lips glistened. He was breathing hard, and for a moment, he wavered like he might go down and finish the job. Then he closed his eyes, and Auggie sank back, the mirror cool against his neck, trying to take a few normal breaths.
When Auggie felt sure of his voice, he said, “Actually, I think he’s called Kool-Aid Man.”
Theo pressed his face into Auggie’s knee. He laughed once, soundlessly, his body shaking. Then he sat back on his heels. “Sorry,” he said. “That got out of hand fast.” A blush ran up his neck. “I don’t know what that was all about.”
I do, Auggie wanted to say. It was about being scared. And it was about hormones. And it was about how you still don’t want to let yourself have what you want, but you sure as fuck don’t want anyone else to have it either.
But all he said was, “It’s ok. I was kind of, uh, feeling it too.”
With a ghost of a smile, Theo slapped his thigh and stood. “Yeah, well, it doesn’t take much. You were kind of, uh, feeling it the other night because I leaned over to turn on a lamp.”
“You have these crazy back muscles.”
Theo rolled his eyes.
“And it was a very sexy lean.”
“Uh huh.”
“Don’t sex shame me.”
“Get dressed,” Theo said, squeezing Auggie’s thigh. “If you can stuff that thing inside your jeans.”
Only half frozen now, Auggie dressed, pausing between articles of clothing to give Theo a series of dirty looks. He had to escalate, progressing from displeased boyfriend (when that didn’t seem to have any effect) to it will take some seriously good sex to make up for this and then, pulling out all the stops, you are sleeping on the couch. For some reason, that one made Theo laugh and kiss the side of his head.
“Are you going to growl at me next?” he asked, ruffling Auggie’s hair.
Auggie snapped his teeth, missing Theo’s fingers by inches.
That only made Theo laugh more. He was still laughing his quiet, Theo laugh, when he caught Auggie’s hand and led him out into the locker room.
They moved up and down the aisles until they found Trace’s locker. It had the usual assortment of jerseys and pads and cleats, body spray and deodorant, a picture of Trace and Imogen, the girlfriend—nominally, at least—whom Auggie had met at the Varsity Club house. On the upper shelf sat the small, rectangular safe. It had a small brass plate with the words SECURITY SOLUTIONS on it and a number pad for the digital combination lock.
“Bobby said the captains,” Auggie said. “He didn’t say Trace.”
“Trace is one of the captains.”
“But so is Chevalier. And, more importantly, so is Andre.”
“Uh huh,” Theo said as he continued to sift through the contents of the locker.
“And Andre is the one we saw with Jenice. He’s the one who attacked us.”
“And Trace—” Theo said, producing a screwdriver from his back pocket—he had planned ahead, based on what they’d seen on their last visit. “—is the one who drugged you.”
“Trace didn’t drug me.” Auggie shifted his weight. “He barely even touched the drink. Andre was carrying the drinks; if anything, he did it, but it could have been anybody else who had access to the drinks at the party.”
Theo made a noise that was impossible to decode. With the screwdriver, he set about removing the screws in the nameplate on the front of the safe.
“I just don’t think it was Trace,” Auggie said. “He was kind of sweet, actually.”
Theo didn’t say anything, but his lips compressed into a line.
“Uh,” Auggie said. And then, for lack of anything better: “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I think I do.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
“Drop it, Auggie. We’re starting with Trace. Bobby said he saw the drugs inside the captains’ safes; let’s see if he was telling the truth.”
With a small, tinny noise, the nameplate came free and landed on the steel shelf. Behind it was a small X-shaped opening. Theo returned the screwdriver to his pocket and brought out a lockpick set.
“The debit card won’t work?”
Theo didn’t laugh. Instead, in a distracted tone, he said, “It’s called a cruciform lock. Or a cross-lock.”
“And you can pick it?”
“Well, as you like to point out, I’ve got all that experience from my misspent youth.”
“And experience from, you know, all the other parts of your life.”
“Uh huh.”
“Years and years of it, Theo.”
Apparently lockpicking required too much focus for an eye-roll, but something in Theo’s face suggested he wished otherwise.
“All that experience, concentrated and distilled and compounded by decade after decade after decade—” When Theo reared back and turned to look at him, Auggie cut off. Then he tried for a weak smile. “What was I saying?”
“I think you were being appropriately and considerately silent while I try to pick this piece of shit lock.”
“That’s right. I was.”
Theo did roll his eyes that time. He went back to work on the lock, and after a minute, he began to swear under his breath.
“How do you know how to do this?”
“Pick locks? I don’t. I mean, not well. But you know, I needed to know a few times, and the basic principles aren’t that complicated.”
In the distance, Auggie thought he heard a door open and shut, but when he strained to hear more, only silence came back to him. He had the feeling that someone was watching him, and he craned his head, then turned around in a circle. Nobody. Nothing. Even the uniformed mannequins were lost in the shadows.
He heard himself talking, trying to fill the quiet. “But it’s got to be more than that, right? I mean, you went right for that nameplate, and you knew what you were doing.”
Theo grunted. “One of the timber companies I worked for, they rented out trailers to the guys. Godawful single-wides. Barely big enough to turn around in, just some bunks and a bathroom and something you probably couldn’t legally call a kitchen. They had safes like these in there.” He did something with the picks and muttered another swear. “In theory, if you have the mechanical bypass key, you stick it in here, and voilà.”
“Title of your sex tape,” Auggie said.
Theo paused—dramatically—and then let out a long breath. As he resumed picking, he said, “But the bypass locks are cheap; these things are mass produced, and they’re more like a feel-good kind of security, not, you know, actual deterrents.”
“They look like the kind in hotels.”
“Yep, same thing.” Then Theo let out a sharp, satisfied noise and turned the picks. The door swung open. “So, there you have it: another gem from my life—look out!”
Auggie turned in time to see something swinging toward his head. He ducked, but not fast enough, and it caught him on the temple. The blow itself didn’t hurt, which in a very distant part of Auggie’s brain, surprised him. The force of it, though, and Auggie’s instinctive movement away from the attack put him off balance, and he stumbled sideways. He hit one of the lockers, and his knees folded, and he fell inside.
Someone was shouting—not Theo, but a voice Auggie thought he recognized, although the words were slurred and unintelligible. Tangled in a jersey and caught in the narrow space of the locker, Auggie struggled to get back on his feet and extricate himself. Then Theo shouted, and there was the distinct sound of a punch landing. Auggie twisted, got his hips free, and slid out of the locker.
He connected with a body, and arms went around him. He could see Theo in front of him, which meant that someone else had a hold of him. Theo’s jaw was set, and his knuckles were split, blood running down the back of his hand. On the floor between them lay Chevalier. He was naked, and he was still clutching his weapon—literally, not euphemistically—what Auggie now recognized as a foam roller, the kind physical therapists used. Chevalier was moaning, not quite unconscious, and mumbling.
In an instant, Auggie took all of that in. Then he thrashed, trying to get free.
“Calm down, calm down, calm down! Just chill!”
It took a moment for Trace’s voice to penetrate Auggie’s frenzy. He sucked in a breath, and then, prying at Trace’s hand, he said, “Let go of me.”
Trace released him, and Auggie spun around. Trace was naked too, his chest and shoulders dappled with sweat except where Auggie had been pressed against him, a flush riding his collarbone and climbing his throat into his cheeks. He had a hard, muscled body, and the hair under his arms and running down his flat belly to his crotch looked silky.
“What the fuck?” Auggie asked.
“Gonna kill you!” Chevalier mumble-shouted.
“Everybody, calm down,” Trace said. “Chev’s just messed up right now; he’s not going to hurt anyone.”
“Kill you!” Chevalier muttered.
“What is this?” Auggie asked. He was starting to tremble, the voltage of too-late adrenaline running through him. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Trace said. “We were working out—”
Theo made a disgusted noise, cupping his hand, trying to keep the blood from dripping onto the floor.
Trace grimaced. Then he rubbed his eyes. “Oh fuck. Fuck it.”
Auggie looked at Theo, but Theo just shook his head.
“I am so fucking sick of sneaking around,” Trace said, dropping his hands to look at them. “We were fucking. There. Are you happy?”
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