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It was impossible to refuse when Garterbelt told him he was staying for a cup of coffee, especially with that brawny arm wrapped around his shoulders pulling him to the man’s side. Before he knew it both angels had disappeared and Brief found himself sitting at the table, hands braced tensely in his lap as he kept his head down.
He liked Garterbelt. More than liked, since he trusted the man completely and found Garterbelt was often the first person (sometimes the only one) he thought to go to for help. Garterbelt was always confidently authoritative and he was so calm no matter the situation. Even when the worst kind of ghost attacked, or Panty and Stocking wouldn’t stop fighting, he was easy to turn to. Maybe that was just part of him being a priest, but he was far more responsible than any of the adults in Brief’s life to date.
Having Garterbelt to turn to was all well and good, but being alone with him still made Brief uncomfortable. It was the way the man looked at him. No one ever looked at him like that. In fact, people hardly looked at him at all, and he was generally quite happy with that arrangement. He’d come to associate attention from someone that much bigger than him with pain.
He should know better by now. He’d already been dragged off to dinner alone with Garterbelt and come out of that long, uneasy evening without so much as a bruise. Even though he knew Garterbelt was not like that, the conditioned panic response remained.
It didn’t help that Garterbelt’s attention was different from anything else he’d ever had turned on him, so intense it was like a physical force on his skin. He always knew when there was nothing else to take the priest’s attention but him. He’d tried to ignore it, tried to cover up his uncomfortable reaction with nervous laughter and clumsy excuses to escape. He knew what the reason behind that scrutiny was, or at least what he thought it was. Usually it felt like such an insane idea that he could never say it out loud, especially not to Garterbelt himself.
When a mug of coffee was thumped down in front of him, jolting him out of his thoughts, Brief jerked up nervously in his chair. He hadn’t even heard the older man come up behind him. Was Garterbelt really that silent or had he just been completely out of it?
“I-is that for me? Ah, thanks.”
“Drink up! That’s some good shit!” Garterbelt laughed and clapped him on the back, which almost unseated Brief. At least it knocked out the thought that he was cornered by someone terribly sneaky.
“Thanks,” Brief repeated.
He took the mug in both hands and took a deep breath of the steam wafting up into his face. Just the smell of it was powerful enough to make him feel more alert. There was a split-second when it occurred to him that it would be a bad idea to drink since it would probably keep him up all night, but right now. . . He’d always known the city was full of ghosts, but since he ran into Panty and Stocking he’d seen things that sometimes made him not want to sleep anymore.
Calling that coffee ‘good shit’ was not an exaggeration. The first sip was so bitter it almost gagged him, but with half a second to acclimate all he could do was appreciate the richness of the dark flavor.
It wasn’t until he’d taken several sips, struggling not to scald his tongue on the almost too-hot-to-handle coffee, that he even noticed that there was a bottle of milk and a sugar bowl set out on the table. For a second he was distracted by the size of the sugar bowl, but it made sense when he considered that Stocking lived here.
“You like that, don’t you?” Garterbelt’s voice was a deep growl that made the hairs on the back of Brief’s neck stand up. He tensed, struggling not to shiver.
“Eh?” Brief practically squeaked, and had to swallow hard before he could answer. “Yeah.”
Garterbelt’s huge hand was on the back of his neck and he hunched forward to escape it. Nervousness was making his tongue feel uncomfortably huge in his mouth, but he had to say something. Garterbelt’s gaze was weighing him down.
“People keep saying coffee’s going to stunt my growth, b-but I guess it’s too late for that.”
“You should be thankful. You’re a good size just like this.”
Garterbelt’s hand hadn’t left him, just shifted to his shoulder, and now the man was massaging him. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, but just the fact of being touched was something he didn’t know how to respond to. Brief was suddenly reminded of the one time they’d had dinner together. Though he couldn’t recall a word of the conversation afterward, he could never banish the crystal-clear memory of Garterbelt’s foot rubbing up his leg. Apparently this touch was going to join that one, seared so clearly into his memory that he could feel it in his dreams.
It was too much. His hands started shaking uncontrollably, spilling his near-scalding coffee into his lap.
Before he could react with anything more than a yell of pain and dropping the rest of the coffee completely, Garterbelt had pounced on him from behind. In a movement that was too fast to follow he’d undone Brief’s belt and yanked his trousers down past his knees.
There was already a pink flush across his thigh where the hot coffee had gotten him. Brief tried to jump out of his seat when he was suddenly stopped by Garterbelt’s hand landing in the center of his chest, pulling him against the back of his seat and pinning him there.
Garterbelt picked up the milk bottle from the table in one smooth movement, still not letting him go, and slowly poured cold milk over the flushed area. The chill liquid felt good on his faint burn, but it quickly pooled on the chair and seeped into his pants.
He squirmed in discomfort until Garterbelt set down the milk and decided to rest his heavy hand on Brief’s thigh instead. It was almost hot enough to burn, but in a different way.
As Garterbelt started to massage his thigh, Brief couldn’t help the way his muscles quaked under the touch. He couldn’t stop staring. Garterbelt’s hand looked even more huge on his skinny leg. His own skin, which hadn’t seen the light of the sun in years, seemed pale to the point of being alien between Garterbelt’s thick fingers.
“I’ll clean you up.”
Just those four words made his mouth go dry. He had to get out of there before that hand moved somewhere less innocent. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do if that happened. The feeling of Garterbelt looming over him from behind was nerve-wracking enough on its own. His voice seemed frozen somewhere in his chest.
‘I should go home. I should just go home.’ He had to come out and say it. If he said it he could make his escape.
Rather than sliding up his leg, Garterbelt’s hand lifted off of him. Brief stared at the spot where it had rested, convinced the pink flush was somehow from the warmth of that hand rather than the scalding coffee bath.
“I should. . . phone home if I’m going to be any later than this,” was what he finally said. Not that he thought anyone would care how late he was out, but he needed to say something.
He knew Garterbelt wouldn’t be sending him home tonight if he didn’t insist, but he suddenly wasn’t sure he wanted to insist anything. After all, Garterbelt had his trust in a way no one else in the world could replicate. Maybe it was time he got over the hard-wired fear that anyone large enough to pound him into the ground would do so.
When that heavy hand returned to his leg and moved to remove his milk-soaked pants, Brief only tipped his head back to peek at Garterbelt through his insulating bangs. He couldn’t meet the smoldering gaze that ran over his body like a physical touch, but right now Gaterbelt seemed willing to just let him accept what came. At the very least he was sure that whatever Garterbelt did to him wouldn’t end in pain.