Page 27 of A Subtle Scar

Hermes tapped his phone. “If I’m so focused on fucking, then tell me why I can recite all the ingredients to a five-course meal now? Who does that for their lover?”

“Every housewife in the sixties.”

“Fine, Ronny. Which person rejecting the patriarchy and toxic masculinity does that for their lover?”

I snorted. “You? Rejecting masculinity?”

“Toxic masculinity,” Hermes said, looking smug. “I’m in touch with my feminine side, and I have cried in movie theaters. Oh! Maybe Chandler wants to go out to the movies? I hear they are great for making out.”

I said, “If you’re taking him to a dark movie theater, I’m supervising.”

“Oh, don’t be a cock blocker, Ronny.”

“Says the man who made me get myself off last night.”

Hermes hissed. “We do not talk about that!”

I indicated the room. “Everyone’s distracted with their TacTik and their Fleshbook, and no one cares that in terms of sexual encounters, you only rate seven out of ten.”

And that finally did it. That finally got ever-smiling Hermes to drop his jaw.

“You…you lie!”

I waved my right hand in front of his face. “That made me cum last night, not you.”

“You—but… That’s not fair!”

“Says the in-touch-with-his-feelings god who knows what feelings are and tears up in a dark movie theater when someone gets kicked in the balls.”

Hermes grabbed the glass with the sweet starch balls still swimming in tea slush, and it cracked. I grinned at his hand and the fingers from which a spider web fracture was eating into the glass, then at him.

“You were saying?”

Hermes didn’t speak for a good five minutes. His nostrils flared. He was looking at me as if he wanted to fuck me, or as if he wanted to throttle me. Both maybe, and if he tried either, I’d put him on his back and punch him in the nuts. And then I’d fuck him instead.

“Maybe we can come to an arrangement,” he said through gritted teeth. “What if we shared?”

“What if we shared…oh.” I looked across the street at the building entrance. “What if we…shared.”

“You get Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and I get Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays,” he said, now also turning a little more toward the building.

“That means I always have Mondays, and humans hate Mondays. I’ll do Mondays every other week, and then we alternate accordingly.” This could work out beautifully, in fact. I could travel, then rest a day. With Chandler. “What about Sundays?”

Hermes looked right at me. “Hear me out about Sundays. What if—and no one would have to know—but what if we spend Sundays together, you and I? To compare notes.”

“About Chandler.”

“Of course about Chandler.” He growled. “And if you think I’m so bad between the sheets, you can always show me how it’s done. Once a week on Sundays.”

That was actually…not a terrible suggestion, to my great surprise. And, even more surprisingly, it came from Hermes. Sometimes, he was more than just a tight shirt that showed his nipples.

“No interference on the other’s days, unless it’s an emergency,” I said.

“Or unless they are invited.”

I glared.

“What? Would you deny Chandler a threesome? Or if he does desire one, would you invite someone else instead of me? Like that freckled fucking herb witch?”