#short term

“Not like a lot, really,” Hershel says, or Gregory, or whoever this man is who moonlights as a sex worker that brings johns back to his actual home. “I guess there’s some kind of agreement with – uh, with Western? I-I’m like an intern.”

Tom peeks down his nose, reading further through the now-obvious mock up of a contract proposal; he could… hell, why isn’t EMCO using this sort of talent? He glances at the Gregory Hirsch in the email signature. “You did this, to confirm, Julia Roberts?”

“Like, yeah?” Gregory says, leaning toward, as if he doesn’t know what’s on the paper.

“Huh….” Tom hums a low, meandering note. “And you’re in school - undergrad?”

“Yeah,” Gregory repeats, visibly swallowing, then looks away from the papers with a longing glance toward the empty coffee machine.

Tough luck. Tom is on a tear.

“You shouldn’t bring people back here, first thing,” Tom says, clearing his throat, as he throws the papers down to the counter. “I now know your name, second thing, Gregory; third thing, I could come back and murder you; fourth – ”

“I’m kind of – uh, like new at it, I’m still figuring it out,” Gregory interrupts, stepping forward, then back, reaching up and scratching  at the stubble peeking over his lip. “You’re like th-the third guy? Or sort of second? The first one was more of an accident.”

“An accident,” Tom repeats, lowly, angling with a raised brow across the counter while splaying a hand across the papers. “How does that – what?”

“Yeah, like,” Gregory says, shrugging, raising a brow high up his forehead while he tilts his head, offering this little smile like he’s made some deal. “I didn’t know until he like paid me the morning after?”

“Jesus Christ,” Tom says, rolling his eyes hard, then rocking back, scrubbing a hand up into his hair while he gestures with the other out across the apartment. “That explains your… entire approach.”

“Is it bad?” Gregory says, leaning forward with an eager pair of blinks, like he’s actually asking for a critique. His business acumen is clearly some astonishing natural level, while his street smarts are stuck languishing in a gutter.

“Chatting someone up for three hours and then saying we can fuck for a couple hundred? Yeah, no,” Tom says, dragging his teeth across his lip with a short jerk of his head to the side. “It’s not great.”

Gregory cants back on his heels with a twist at his mouth. “Is that not normal? I think I've seen it like that in movies.”

“I don’t know,” Tom snaps, hearing his voice pitch and warmth immediately, consequently flood across the tops of his ears. “But it doesn’t seem like it, Gregory? Seems like it could blow up in your face.”

“Just Greg,” Greg says, idly, while his eyes drop between them to narrow at the floor. “I guess you’re right, yeah.”

“Just Greg,” Tom mocks, then exhales a harsh breath in some attempt at a dismissive laugh. “So now I’m wondering, do I look like I have a lot of money?”

“Uh,” Greg intones, lifting his eyes to look at Tom, and he’s visibly thinking on it, but it doesn’t seem to be in a particularly vacillating way. “Sort of. I mean you always dress like pretty nice?”

“Sort of,” Tom repeats, glancing down over at his trousers, then the blazer on the back of the sofa. “Sort of? Why… Okay, explain the approach?”

Greg wets his lips, glancing in the same direction while his fingers briefly fold together. “Like, what do you mean?”

“How do you choose a mark at the bar?”

“I don’t? That makes it sound really bad?” Greg says, voice lifting, then shaking his head. “It’s just normal, really, like… if I, uh – I talk to a guy who seems like he wants to – to go to bed with me, I politely request that he pay me.”

Tom stares for a beat, then decides he isn’t going to clarify his question that he meant himself, specifically, instead moving on to a more unbelievable element. “And that worked on two people,” he says, deciding to actively repress that he is, in fact, one of them.

“Yeah?” Greg says, scratching against the side of his nose, then folding his hands back together. “It’s not like – I-I don’t have a mark system.”

Tom raises his brows while staring for a beat.

Greg rolls his lips together, looking close to a pout. “Did you not have a good time?”

Tom rolls his eyes at the absolutely transparent attempt to both change the subject and garner sympathy. “Do you see this being your future, Greg? Because yes, fine, the sex was great, which I think you know, but you don’t seem all that together on the actual work part of it.”

“I don’t, like… really know, man,” Greg says, compounding the problem with a meek mutter. “But I’ve made like almost two grand?”

“Alright, but you can make that in an hour at my job.” Tom points at the papers stacked in a mess next to them. “Those’re good. You’re at EMCO? Not to be worse at anonymity than you, but I’m contracted there for a year and these weasel words are woven better than any by the jokers I’m currently stuck trying to re-structure in marketing.”

Greg stares for a few beats, eyes darting down and the back up, shaking his head. “I – I don’t… Are you just saying that? I’m not like even into it.”

“No,” Tom says, exhaling a weak, reluctant laugh. He picks up the papers to wave more demonstratively under Greg’s disbelieving expression. “Honestly, Greg, the fact you’re not that quote unquote into it, and also a student, makes them look very bad.”

“Really?” Greg says, quietly, a touch of visible color in his face that is absolutely not interesting at all. “You think they’re good?”

“Yes,” Tom says, setting the papers back down and tapping the corner to align them. “I can’t imagine what these would be like if you tried.”

Greg visibly sucks at the inside of his lip. “That much in an hour?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tom says, rolling his eyes a little, as he tilts his head to look better up at Greg’s thoughtful expression. “I’m lined up for a job at Hong Kong next year that’ll give me a helicopter.”

“I-I was…” Greg wets his lips, then offers a weak forward roll of his shoulders. “In the beginning, I kind of was thinking more… like, I’d get this, then the postgraduate, then... work for my grandpa’s ranch?”

“Ranch?” Tom repeats, thrown for a further loop. “With horses and cowpokes?”

“It’s like a – an uh, organic product corporation,” Greg says, scratching at the back of his head with a weak shake. “But he doesn’t call it that.”

“If you’ve got a position lined up, even better,” Tom says, briefly considering, then dismissing, his own motivation here, as if he really thinks that convincing Greg to go one way or the other on this could make him any less a person who looked at Tom and broke through into his meaty center of loneliness to snatch for a pay day. “I don’t have any fucking clue how an ag corp is structured, but it’s certainly a big business.”

Greg grimaces hard, plainly disbelieving the sentiment.

“But by all means, if you really enjoy this,” Tom says, spreading his arms while offering an equally wide, toothy grin, “Continue to pretend you’re into men and give them the ol’ shocker with a price tag.”

“I wasn’t pretending – “ Greg says, voice lifting, daring to actually be offended. “Did it seem like I was pretending?”

“Oh, no, it made me feel like a real catch, thinking I was making a connection with someone only to find out they wanted money,” Tom says, widening his eyes briefly, then slapping his hand down at the papers on the island. “It all makes sense now I know you’re a business major. The cards laid right out.”

Greg looks hurt now, which… he deserves, but he also needs to stop pouting about it. It’s inspiring no less than a gross amount of unwarranted sympathy.

“It does help a bit to know you’re just a generally strange human being,” Tom amends, grudgingly, crossing his arms over his chest. He takes a breath, then another, then flicks out the lower hand. “Do some research if you keep doing this – it’s not a good idea to expose people like me to your literal home. Do you even have your license yet?”

Greg looks briefly concerned. “Do I need one?”

“No! Because this shit is illegal, remember?” Tom says, shifting his hands settle at his hips. “We just committed a felony together.”

Greg stares at Tom for a beat, then curves his brows with confusion. “Are you American?”

“It’s still illegal here,” Tom says, a bit forcefully, though now he’s not all that sure of it. He’s never thought to check – he should have, last night, the moment lanky mister here admitted he was angling for a payday.

Greg further narrows his eyes. “It’s not called a felony, though.”

“Whatever.” Tom exhales a harsh scoff though his nose. “You need to figure out how to do this right, is what I’m saying. Not everyone is as pleasant as I am – to start with, at least, change your locks and start going to hotels.”

“I mean, how do –?” Greg shakes his head, hunching up into himself. “Like, do you have anything else to suggest?”

“Do I look like a pimp?” Tom snaps, rearing back in offense and flattening his feet on to floor. “You’re the first time I’ve ever even paid for sex, buddy. It’s not my thing.”

Greg blinks, rapidly, mouth pinching to a tight moue. “Then why did you?”

“Because I… thought I had a connection, like I said, and then I figured fuck it,” Tom shrugs, forcefully apathetic, ignoring a roiling regret low in his gut every time he’s being forced to admit this mistake. Oh, it’ll be anonymous; he’ll never go back to that bar; he’ll just have a good time; he’s all fucking alone in this stupid country, anyway – look at where it’s got him? “Might as well, anyway, even if it wasn’t real, it felt… good for a minute to think it was – thanks for the lip service, Hershel. That’s what I really paid for.”

Greg looks bizarrely taken aback, as if surprised that some ruse he’s apparently worked before actually works at all. He takes a hasty step back, then another, one of his hands going up in a hasty wave. “Can you… like, wait here?”

“Why not,” Tom mutters, sarcastically, looking down at the floor with a deep sigh. “This is so fucking unsafe…” He peers down the short hall for a beat; he thinks he could take Greg, if he had to, but he is a big, bizarro of a pretty creature. “For everyone, actually.”

Greg reemerges with a wad of bills in hand and a visible bite folding the inside of his cheek. “You can take it back. I – I don’t want you to think that like there wasn’t a-a connection?” He says, shoving the money harder into Tom’s chest, and worked up enough to forget his size, apparently, as the force of it rocks Tom against the cabinet. “I really did – do like talking to you. I talked to you way more than anyone else I’ve met like, at any bar for any reason? I’m… you know, still talking to you now, even.”

Tom takes the bills, then counts out half, then slips it all back in under his thumb while holding out the bills to give back. He’s been Pretty Woman’d by an amateur; what is wrong with him?

Greg folds his arms, refusing to take it, though his eyes markedly dart to and away from the money, like it pains him.

“Greg,” Tom says, firming his voice but keeping it a bit gentle. “Just take it.”

“Can I have your number?” Greg asks, clearing his throat, then reaching out for a flip phone that’s been sitting next to the coffee maker. “Instead?”

~

Tom doesn’t know what to expect when he gets a text only a few days later, a few awkward lines that sum up an invitation to meet in the cafeteria. He anticipates overwhelming awkwardness, but Greg seems to be made of it while being absolutely immune to it all at once, because he really does just seem to want some kind of a buddy.

“And this is just like, a lunch. It’s not like a – an exchange of anything.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Tom says, slow, glancing at the spread of luxurious cart poutine that Greg is dropping out onto the table between them. “But thanks for clearing it up.”

“I did like a lot of reading on Reddit and you do have to make that sort of clear?”

“Oh,” Tom feels a swoop in his gut. “You still tricking old men into paying you?”

“Oh, I mean – No, I stopped,” Greg says, shoulders curling into his visibly flushed ears. “You kind of had a point about like my potential earning? Like. Like, the last couple days, I was thinking about it a lot. I can’t really do it long term? And I can’t, you know, ever move on, like… it’s not a transferable position to another city?”

Tom drops his head in a nod, though he’s pretty sure it is one of the few jobs that can be done almost anywhere, but.“…Alright.”

“And I didn’t even think, like, about the other thing,” Greg says, in a sudden rush, leaning over his poutine while his eyes go wide, then dart over shoulder, as if some would be killer is just outside his line of sight. “Did you know that sex workers are called the less dead – and like gay ones ar-are like even less less dead. And there’s been a bunch of guys going missing in Toronto.”

“I had heard things,” Tom admits, pinching his lips tight together for a brief pair of moments. “Did you change your locks?”

“Like, yeah,” Greg says, rolling his eyes hard, as his fingers scratches up against the outside of his lip. “I mean the other two guys weren’t… that weird, but then I thought about the ones who I didn’t get paid by?”

Tom slowly raises an eyebrow. “How many men have you slept with?”

“There? Like… eleven – or, ten, I guess, not counting you, but it’s more than none, Tom. And I’m on the ground floor.”

Tom feels a smirk pull at his mouth and quickly rolls his lips to hide it. “Have I accidentally given you a phobia?”

“It’s definitely, like – ” Greg exhales hard through his nose. “Uh, like an anxiety, maybe.”

“Sorry, buddy,” Tom says, reaching out and stealing a fry, then briefly wagging it at Greg’s pinched frown. “But not that sorry, really. Glad you’re safe.”

Greg jabs a fork into his fries with a glance upward. “So I, uh… I got like an assignment transfer to Caren Conners?”

Tom grunts an affirmative.

“…Was that you?”

“Maybe,” Tom says, looking down at the absolute shit of a bid in front of him; he should make Greg do this, as a teaching moment or some equally bullshit excuse to slack off. “She’s soft. You’ll have time for school. I told her I read some of your exceptional work.”

~

Tom raises a brow at Greg’s abruptly stunned look up from his plate. The food isn’t that good, especially not for lunch, though Tom sort of has been dragging them around looking for that unicorn. “You having a fit?”

“Uh, just – uh,” Greg looks down, shoving a piece of bread from his decimated philly into his mouth. “Like… alright, maybe one of th-the guys I’ve been with walked in.”

Tom frowns, a little, and looks over his shoulder.

Greg makes a pitchy noise. “No, don’t look – Tom!”

“Oh, is that number two or number one?” Tom asks, watching the man move across the floor behind his shoulder, chatting to the server and utterly oblivious to Greg. Somehow.

Greg shakes his head hard, covering his whole face with his hand. “Not like either, he – uh, he’s just one of the other guys.”

“Huh,” Tom intones, ignoring a little stab of bitterness, as he watches the guy settle into a seat next to his decidedly teenaged presumed-son. He is almost certainly older than Tom, if fit for it, and visibly greying further than the temples. It’s actually sort of difficult not to draw the obvious conclusion. “Do you maybe have a type, Gregory - a hard-on for the older man?”

“Like, shut up,” Greg mutters, peeking up from his plate with a wash of pink across his cheeks. “You’re like not that old.”

Tom sneaks another peek and raises his brows, as a woman joins them, waving off the man when he mocks getting to you pull out the chair for her. “Oh, starling, is someone a nasty little homewrecker?”

“Maybe it’s an open relationship?” Greg says, his low tone far more hopeful than with any sort of belief behind it.

“Sure,” Tom says, narrowing an eye, as he looks back across their table.

Greg turns a hand in an open gesture against the lacquered top. “It’s a thing?”

“I’ve heard of it,” Tom said, reaching out for his coconut water with a brief curl of his nose, looking away and then back to Greg, trying not to feel too much like he’s about to cross a line. “I just… don’t get it on a fundamental level.”

“Yeah, relationships are, like…” Greg says, mouth flattening, his eyes still fixed over Tom’s shoulder, but now with a wary, markedly fixed glint. “Already hard enough to figure out. It’s probably, like… being straight or bi or pan or whatever? Like, hey, you get it or you don’t.”

“Yeah,” Tom says, then realizes he is fully staring across the narrow bridge of Greg’s nose and forces his eyes to drop to his dwindling plate of porchetta nachos. “Something like that. Hey, who was better?”

“Tom… Did you say starling? What’s wrong with starlings?” Greg says, abruptly, his hand crawling across the table to steal off Tom’s plate. It’s honestly unclear if he’s aware or ironic.

Tom gestures at the retreating arm and the sends a flat look upward. “They’re nasty, gregarious little birds… that’ll eat anything and destroy everything.”

“Is this about Marc, too, because that was a –” Greg says, covering his mouth, as he chews, with an avoidant look and a glance toward the window at their side. “A misunderstanding.”

“You got his internship put under review and took his project,” Tom says, raising his brows, feeling a smirk curl somewhat proudly against the corner of his mouth. “I almost want to get you a certificate for sliminess.”

Greg outright scowls with a low grumble, but it seems theatric. “He wasn’t – like. He was like bad at it, Tom. You said so.”

“Uh-huh,” Tom says, smacking his lips, slow, then rolling his eyes to finish with a dry look. “You’re right, maybe he wasn’t cut out for the rat race. Does he love money so much that he’d stumble into sex work for a week?”

“I didn’t ask,” Greg says, lifting his chin, a frown flat across his mouth, but there’s a sparkle at the edge of his eyes that means he’s enjoying this little tête á tête. “I still think it – like, it was a compliment? That guy thought I was a professional.”

Tom intends for a scoff under his breath, but a laugh breaks it up. “Do you not even remember his name?”

Greg visibly comes up short, tongue pressing at the inside of his lip, then affects some sort of awful, distracting pout, all big eyes and quivering lips. “Are you, like… slut shaming me, Tom?”

“I wasn’t, no,” Tom says, honestly, feeling another laugh build at the joking tone audible in Greg’s voice. “But now I’m coming around to it. Did you just call yourself slutty?”

“I just – ” Greg drops the façade and wets his lips at the same time he drops his lashes, surely pointedly, “It’s, like… a language I can actually speak.”

“You can speak two whole actual languages, Greg,” Tom says, determinedly not thinking about pressure points and Greg’s fingers across his bare back; it’s still sore… or it should be, anyway, but he’s having unusual trouble holding a grudge against Greg. “And, as far as I know, anyway, your French is magnifique.”

Greg shakes his head, but he looks flattered, lips pinching against a wider, more candid smile.“It’s, um – sort of my first language.”

Tom raises his brows.

“Yeah, my – uh, my grandma took care of me a lot when I was a baby to like a little older,” Greg says, then shrugs, reaching out to take the last of Tom’s chips. “Like, until she died, anyway – my mom sort of had to, then.”

Tom grimaces, slightly, but Greg doesn’t seem to care much bringing it up, just matter of fact. It still has him want to make some promise to this man that he’s only known a month under the weirdest possible circumstance. “Hey, I’m just glad you learned English somewhere.”

~

“What like could I do, so we can – ” Greg gestures, absolutely inexplicably, in a spinning pair of hands across the desk. “Like go to dinner, one day, instead of lunch?”

Tom blinks and tilts his head, glancing away from his monitor and up at Greg with a raise of an eyebrow. “As in a date?”

Greg wets his lips and offers a weak, one-shoulder shrug.

“You don’t have to do anything, Greg, except…” Tom points with the pen that he’s been chewing on between his teeth. He can feel himself already regretting this, not unlike that night at the bar, but he’ll be in China in eight months, no matter what does happen; a convenient, pre-existing timer if this goes to shit. “I would like you to really tell me why you approached me at the bar.”

Greg exhales hard through his nose and rolls his eyes up, then out toward the window,

“No?” Tom questions, trying not to be too put out.

“That wasn’t like... the first time I saw you there,” Greg mutters, in a rush of breath like a confession, sweeping a few fingers through his hair. “And like you, usually, just – uh,  just watched hockey with the guy who I know is Mark, now, but then like you weren’t that night? And so I – uh, I decided to try, you know?”

“You were already watching me?” Tom asks, catching the pen as it falls from his open mouth.  

“I noticed you were there?” Greg says, evasively, glancing down, then back up, tightening an arm across his middle and tucking his opposite hand under it. “A couple times. And normally, I don’t – ” He shrugs, “I don’t actually do the approach, ever? But it kind of made it easier, if I like was pretending to be someone else and I had a different name? I was Hershel, you know, um... erudite escort or whatever. I wasn’t… Greg.”

“Tom kind of likes Greg, though,” Tom says, setting his pen down onto the desk. He toys with the idea of telling Greg straight out that he has seen little difference between what was apparently some persona more than a name and Greg, as he is, but that might come off less than helpful. “And he will go on a date with him, but they have to play by bases. He’s not getting any until the third one. So if this is some ploy to get at Tom’s magnificent cock again, he’ll have to wait.”

“That’s like cool,” Greg says, nodding twice, twice and twisting his hands above the desk with a tilt of his head. “I mean. Sure. Does that – uh, that night – ”

“No,” Tom interrupts, shaking his head once and picking his pen back up just to point with it across the desk. “That wasn’t, apparently, with Greg. But his enthusiasm has been noted.”

Greg presses his mouth flat while lifting a shoulder to acknowledge the point, only to abruptly twist his mouth into a moue. “Could you… uh, like not make a thing about talking like that for the rest of the day?”

Tom rolls his head back and forth, then shakes it with a glance sideways and a sorry smirk. “Tom wasn’t even thinking about that until Greg made it an option.”