Eleven

GREG

Greg happens to be closer to the bed when Julien's phone goes off. It lights up on the floral patchwork quilt Rufus dug out of a mostly disused linen closet the day Greg arrived. Weirdly, he's grown to like it even if it's ratty.

Greg didn't think twice before reaching for the device. He isn't concerned about the TikTok. They'll just refilm. He is, however, concerned about how embarrassed Julien looks when he says, "Grindr, huh?"

He didn't mean for the question to come out judgmentally. Just because he doesn't use that particular app, doesn't mean he holds some moral high ground.

Julien angles away to swipe at the notification. "Surprised you even knew what that was." He's back to being prickly.

Crap.Greg was really starting to settle into their easy interactions as they filmed the videos—playful and comfortable. But, of course, he had to go and open his big mouth.

"What kind of rock would I have to live under not to know what Grindr is?" Greg tries to defuse the newfound tension in his room by deploying a joking tone, but Julien's shoulders only ride up farther.

"I mean, you're you. You don't need the apps like the rest of us plebs."

Greg doesn't play dumb. He knows Julien's referring to his looks, and not in a very nice way. "I don't see how me being conventionally attractive excludes me from using a hookup app..."

Julien goes silent for a second. Maybe he wasn't expecting Greg to call it out for what it was so simply. Greg finds that whenever somebody boils his essence down to himbo it is better to address the matter than let it slide.

"It doesn't," Julien rebuffs. "I'm just saying you have no trouble picking up guys at work."

Greg is completely taken aback by this, becoming too hot under the lights. "I haven't picked up any guys at work."

Julien puts his phone away and shoots Greg a quizzical look. "I saw you driving Braydon home that first night, and that Yelp review was about you slipping that pilot your number."

Greg has been questioning how connected is too connected with the patrons at Martin's Place. He's not an idiot. He had somewhat of a playboy reputation in New York. How could he not? He was dating fellow underwear-shot-posting influencer Stryker Storm.

But he's been lonely since moving out here, and with his anxiety disorder it's often hard to tell if someone is looking for friendship or something more. With the pilot, Greg saw the wedding ring. He thought he was safe from advances, from jealous spouses, from Julien's accusations. But maybe his instructors at the academy were right: he is too gullible and trusting, too willing to see the good in all people he crosses paths with.

"I didn't hook up with either of them, nor did I have any intention to." Greg ensures his voice doesn't waver, so Julien knows for certain he's telling the truth.

"Oh." That's all Julien says. Oh.

The word—is it even a word exactly?—cuts Greg to the bone. He doesn't know what he was expecting, but he wanted more than that, and now they're standing in awkward silence.

"You don't believe me." Greg folds his arms across his chest, a preservation instinct. He doesn't want to be cross with Julien, but Julien is digging a deeper and deeper hole here.

"No, it's not that..."

"Then what is it?" Greg tries to remain open, keep his listening ears tuned.

Julien crosses the room and sits on the rolling chair Greg had found on the side of the road with a piece of printer paper taped to it that read FREE. He'd cleaned it well enough for it to be usable, but it still sags whenever anyone sits on it. Julien lets out a little gasp as he sinks, and then he settles. "I did the thing where I'm an ass for assuming."

Greg chuckles at Julien's moment of self-awareness. In an instant of clarity, he can see how from the outside his interactions were perceived differently. "Content creation is all about charisma, harmless flirting, letting people in. I'm still negotiating that behind the bar here. I'm not getting with any of these people or looking to cause drama."

"There's a learning curve in the service industry," Julien offers.

"Exactly." Greg drops his arms and softens his voice. "I know it's highly unprofessional to be hitting on our patrons. That pilot was not my type anyway. Braydon's... I know not to mix business and pleasure. He's a coworker."

"There's nothing concretely wrong about getting with a coworker," Julien is quick to say. Almost too quick. Greg notices the pink coloring that creeps up onto his cheeks. "I mean, rules-wise. It's not a boss-subordinate situation. Whatever. You said it didn't happen, and I believe you, so it doesn't matter."

"Good to know," Greg says, storing that tidbit away in his mind for safekeeping.

Julien swivels in the chair a bit as he adds, "And I partially said the Grindr thing because I've never seen you on the grid before."

Greg puzzles over which way to respond to this. He could circumvent the issue at heart—say something vague about not loving one-nighters or whatever—but that wouldn't be the truth. Not the whole of it anyway. And Julien trusted him with the truth about his parents' battles with alcoholism. He could stand to offer a smidge of vulnerability in return. It's not like he's sharing the ins-and-outs of his debt.

"Do you remember when I told you I have to be careful with how much I drink because of a medication I'm on?" Greg asks. He knows this is going to sound random, but he swears he has a segue.

"Yeah."

"It's an SSRI."

"Oh."

Greg smiles. "You really like that word. Oh." He shoves away thoughts of Julien crying oh under very different circumstances.

"It's what I say when I'm still processing something so the other person doesn't think I stopped listening."

Greg swears he can see the cogs whirring behind Julien's stark gaze.

"I take it for my anxiety disorder. It helps a lot, but it also comes with its costs. I have to curb my drinking, which is why you don't see me trying the cocktail at the end of every one of my TikToks."

Recognition dawns across Julien's expression, a gradual relaxation of the musculature in his forehead.

"I'm also not always able to perform at my peak. In the bedroom. I mean, yeah. Does that make sense?"

"I get it." It seems Julien registers his desire to not have to spell it out further.

"So I don't make a habit of hooking up outside of relationships because I might be in the mood, but I might not always be able to get it up or keep it up or... Shit, see? This is so hard to explain. Imagine trying to do it to a complete stranger you've only shared dick pics with?" Greg rakes a hand through his hair, but it doesn't make him feel better.

While in New York, racking up views and credit card debt in equal measure, Greg switched medications because his old one at its low dosage had plateaued. He felt his mental health slipping, and he grew scared over the sudden lack of control. After hearing about his worsening symptoms, his psychiatrist recommended a different medication at a higher dosage. He'd been seeing her for some time and knew he could trust her professional opinion. She counseled him kindly about the potential side effects. It's my belief that the pros will outweigh the cons. And they did. For a while.

"You can take your time. If you want to tell me, that is." Julien has his hands folded in his lap, sincerely attentive.

Greg appreciates that. He wishes Stryker had given him more of a chance to explain. "I was in a committed relationship when I started this SSRI."

"Stryker?" Julien asks.

"Yeah, Stryker." If Julien was the kind of name you could savor, Stryker was the kind of name you could choke on. "How did you know?"

"He appeared in some of your older TikToks."

Greg thought he had wiped his page clean of Stryker, but perhaps he missed a video or two. Who knows? He made so many. "When the sexual side effects kicked in, he started getting frustrated with me. My sex drive was slowing down and my ability to stay hard was getting, well, harder." Julien's laugh at Greg's dumb joke propels him to continue. He appreciates a man who can laugh even at a heavy topic. "He was annoyed that I wasn't satisfying him enough, and he kept saying, ‘It must be me. You must not be attracted to me anymore.' But it was never that. I tried to explain, but he claimed it was excuses. All excuses. Ever since we broke up, it's just been me and my hand."

Julien nods. "I'm sorry you had to deal with that, but thank you for trusting me enough to tell me. I've been going through a similar dry spell."

"Oh." Greg borrows Julien's phrase as he processes, and a small smirk tugs on Julien's pale pink lips.

His perfect pale pink lips. The perfect pale pink lips Greg would like to feel against his own. Feel everywhere and anywhere on his body if Julien would be so kind.

JULIEN

Julien can't believe he's going to share any of this with Greg Harlow, but Greg is looking at him in a strange way and the words are rushing out before he can vet them.

"I go on and off of Grindr like most people, but I don't use Grindr like most people. I'm not much for relationships, but I do like a friends-with-benefits situation. Actually, I need a friends-with-benefits situation if I'm going to enjoy myself, and my most recent friend-with-benefits moved away a few months ago, so I logged back into Grindr in the hopes to find someone new since there are crap few ways to find other queer men in this area, but I've been striking out left and right."

Greg furrows his eyebrows. "Surely you're not at a loss for options."

Julien can't handle that compliment right now because he's bad at accepting them in any context, so he bypasses it completely. "I have very specific standards."

"You have a type?"

"No, I mean standards for boundaries and cleanliness and what I like and don't like to do." Julien swivels nervously in Greg's desk chair, certain Greg won't judge him over this disclosure but nervous all the same. No matter how many times you say it out loud, it doesn't often get easier. "I have OCD, which means anything from a scent to a wrong touch can trigger me to lose interest. Most guys don't want to deal with all that just to get off."

Greg sits on the edge of his bed, clearly taking this in. "Guys can be really impatient."

"I don't blame them. People aren't downloading Grindr looking to receive a novel-length list of dos and don'ts just to touch a guy. I get it." Often, he wishes his mind wouldn't make him so high maintenance, but he's on a rocky road toward acceptance.

"I don't." Greg's statement is firm, and it swipes over Julien once again as if he's passed into a force field. Like now he's sitting inside Greg's protective aura. They had been keeping one another at arm's length before, but here in Greg's room, their commonalities create an impenetrable bubble of connection around them.

"Everybody wants quick," Julien notes, trying not to sound so downtrodden about it. "That's why they choose the shot or the cocktail over the wine. They want a fast buzz, an immediate good time. On the Grindr grid, I'm the merlot you have to decant for forty minutes before serving, not the tequila shot. I know that. I get it."

"Again, I don't." Greg's words are harder this time. "Before we lost touch, my grandma used to tell me that good things take time. Those people that aren't willing to invest their time don't know a good thing when it's staring right at them from their phone screen."

Julien has no choice but to register this compliment. He can't brush by it because it arrests him. It shakes him. It forces him to look at Greg—really look—and consider that his sunny demeanor is a coping mechanism (as he's mentioned before), and that the heated flirtation he felt near the bathroom on that first day might have been true after all. The ride-giving and number-slipping might've been part of his TikTok act. What he feels with Greg currently might be real.

"I could say the same about Stryker," Julien says.

There they sit, two good things finally seeing eye to eye.

"I think I've been so wound up and snippy because I lost my sexual outlet. I like being touched." In his mind, Julien catalogues all the ways he likes to be touched. Sensually. Hurriedly. Nails scratching. Kneading. Has the room gotten hotter?

"I do, too." Greg's admission turns the small space into an inferno.

Julien, nearly in a full sweat, pounces on an idea that can maybe give them both the outlet they've been missing. "So what if we were to..."

Greg interjects, eyes slipping in the opposite direction. "I'm not sure."

"Oh, of course," Julien says with disappointment washing over his skin.

"No, it's not you. It's me."

"Sure." As if he hasn't heard that one before.

"I'm being serious."

"It's all right to admit you're not attracted to me. I'm a big boy. I can take it." He realizes only after the fact that his words have an unintentional double meaning.

"I am attracted to you!" Greg purses his lips almost as if he didn't mean to say it so swiftly and with such enthusiasm. Like he's afraid he'll blurt out even more if he gives his mouth the chance.

"Well," Julien says, a newfound confidence blossoming inside him. "In that case, we could just try." He hears the pleading in his own voice. He needs this.

"Trying is the problem with me. Trying does not equal doing, and then my partner ends up unsatisfied." Greg's arms are folded again.

Julien wants those arms to fold him—in half, in a pretzel, however Greg wants him. "There are plenty of ways to enjoy yourself and be satisfied without being hard."

"I don't bottom." Greg sounds wary, uncertain. "And not because I'm one of those douches who thinks it's unmanly or whatever. My anxiety doesn't allow me to relax enough to enjoy it. It's uncomfortable for me."

"That's fine. I prefer to bottom anyway," Julien says in earnest, feeling his vulnerability bobbing up to the surface. "I was talking more about toys."

"Toys?" Greg asks, eyes snapping back, curiosity piqued again.

"Toys,"Julien purrs. "I...have a lot of them."

"How many is a lot?" Greg asks, sounding interested yet his knitted brows display hesitancy.

Julien treads lightly. "I'll show you. If we do this, that is." His cock stirs as he thinks of all the showing he wants to do with Greg Harlow. Then he remembers that they have more housekeeping to attend to. "If we do this, I have some hard boundaries regarding your hygiene."

"I'm very clean," Greg is quick to offer, hand floating up to his chest.

Julien's in the habit of inspecting people's fingernails. It's a thing he's done ever since he was little. Nail cleanliness says a lot about how well a person prioritizes their overall self-care. Greg's, even now, are trimmed and pristine. "I don't doubt that, but my mind can run away from me if given the chance. To reduce that, I'd need you to shower before. At my place. Shower there before we—"

"I get it." Greg gives that right-sided smirk. "I'll shower wherever, whenever."

"Okay, Shakira." Julien lets out a light laugh before sobering. "Oh, and this one is a biggie. No kissing."

"No kissing?" Greg's voice pitches up half an octave.

"I know it's not ideal but..."

"No," Greg says sharply. Julien sags, thinking his whole sexy plot is being shot down again, but then Greg adds, "Not ‘no' as in I don't want to. ‘No' as in I respect that and can do without it. You don't have to explain yourself."

Relief spreads through Julien. Nobody has ever said that to him before and meant it. But the force behind Greg's words assures him that he does. That he's different. "Thanks. I'd also prefer if this were an exclusive sexual arrangement. I can be amenable. We can work out an STI testing plan that puts us both at ease if that would work better for you."

"Exclusive works just fine for me." As he says this, Greg's smile, for once, takes up both sides of his face.