When Tony Met Adam (Short Story) Read Free

want me? Come and get me, sailor-boy. But we play this game by my rules. No dinner, no bullshit, no heartfelt talks in front of the fireplace—in fact, no talking at all. No pretending this is something that it isn’t. It’s one night and goodbye. You don’t call me again. Not ever. In fact, you delete my number from your phone.”
    Tony was silent now for well more than a beat. Adam just waited.
    “Is that really what you want?” the SEAL finally asked, his voice quiet. “Because I have to confess, I’m looking for more than—”
    “I don’t give a shit what you’re looking for,” Adam spoke over him. “Because this offer is non-negotiable. You show up—” he rattled off his address and his apartment number “—we get it on, you put your clothes back on, and then you leave. End of game.”
    The kid actually laughed, seemingly genuinely amused. “Wow, sounds tempting, but …” His voice changed then, getting both softer and harder at the same time. “How about I show up, I fuck your brains out, and
then
you decide if you still want me to leave.”
    “Yes or no,” Adam said, refusing to react. No, that wasn’t heat he wasn’t feeling. It didn’t mean anything at all. “That’s all you need to tell me.”
    Now Tony laughed his exasperation. “Don’t you even want to—”
    “One. Of two words,” Adam spoke over him, enunciating clearly. “I’m going to count to two, and if you haven’t said yes by then, I’m going to hang up, which will make it an automatic no. One …”
    “Yes,” Tony said. “
Hell
, yes. I’ll be there by ten.” And he was the one who cut the connection.
    Leaving Adam alone in the deepening twilight in his kitchen, wondering what the fuck he was doing, playing with this kind of fire.
       Tony had a change of clothes and a toothbrush in a backpack that he kept in his locker in the building that headquartered SEAL Team Sixteen.
    According to Adam, he wasn’t going to need it, but he grabbed it anyway and was heading down the corridor toward the parking lot and his car when the sound of voices made him slow down.
    And then he stopped, altogether, when he heard who it was and what he was saying.
    “I know we’re supposed to follow
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,”
Danny Gillman was saying to someone in the senior chief’s office—probably the senior chief, “but somebody’s got to ask him. I mean, we have a right to know, don’t we?”
    Him
being Tony. Great. Tony inched closer, the better to hear exactly what they were saying. If the senior chief was involved, it was over and done. His so-called friends had outed him. It wasn’t a huge surprise, since all of them had carefully avoided him since they’d returned from Boston.
    Still he was disappointed.
    “Nothing’s changed.” Great, Jay Lopez was in there, too. His normally quiet voice was slightly raised in exasperation. “So what if he’s gay, Dan. He’s still the best operator I’ve ever worked with. Hands down,
the
best. If any of us were putting together a team, who’s the first man we’d pick?”
    “Chickie.” That was Mark Jenkins’s voice. He was in there, too.
    “The Chick-ster,” Izzy chimed in. “You know I love you, Fishboy, but you’d only be second on my list. Third. Okay, honestly? Sixteenth.”
    “All I’m saying,” Gillman pointedly ignored Izzy, “is that someone should ask him. If he’s got some kind of weird crush on one of us—”
    “You,” Izzy interrupted him. “Don’t you really mean you? Somehow I don’t see you getting quite this upset at the idea of the V-man wanting to get jiggy with, oh, say,
moi.”
    “He’s seen me naked,” Gillman complained.
    “We’ve all seen you naked,” Izzy said. “Of course, we’re not gay.” He paused. “Or
are
we? For all you know, I’m secretly a tranny lesbian, who dreams of you every night.”
    “An entire busload of Australian nuns saw you naked,” Jenk pointed out. “During that training exercise …? When