My Paper Heart

Dim lights were never in Rory’s list of favorite things. He could barely see the woman sitting across from him. Not that he’d want to. She was old, wrinkled, and had tattooed on eyebrows.

Not exactly the prettiest peacock in the zoo.

The woman downed another shot of brandy and raised the glass to signal the bartender for another.

“Did you bring me here to talk, or just to watch you drink yourself into oblivion?” Rory asked. He adjusted his glasses and leaned back in his seat.

The woman set the glass back down on the table and shot a glare at him. Rory got a sense of hostility from the woman, hostility that shouldn’t have even been there. Especially not since she was the one who had called him first and dragged him all the way across town to a seedy bar that was probably serving her brandy that had been so watered down, it was brandied water.

“Do you smoke?” she asked in a raspy voice. Rory frowned slightly.

Her voice had sounded so different over the phone. Over the phone, it was youthful and slightly masculine, but only to the extent that it gave her an authoritative aura. In person, it was raspy and bleak and spoke of many, many years of smoking and alcohol abuse.

“Rowan. You heard me talking to you, right?”

Rory jerked out of his mind and looked back up at the woman. “Yeah, I was just thinking. I don’t smoke. Not anymore.”

The woman sighed and shook her head all in one move. “I was kinda hoping that you’d carry through for me, Rowan. Anyway, let’s get down to business. Do you know why I’ve called you here?”

Rory clenched his jaw, crossed his arms, and sat back against his seat. “No. You failed to tell me why we’re here in your delightfully planned phone call.”

The woman cocked an eyebrow at him and rubbed a finger absently on the rim of her glass.

“You’re a smart boy, Rowan. I thought you’d have thought about it and figured out that it’s about your grandmother. I look about as old as her, don’t I?”

The woman grinned, a crooked toothless grin that gave Rory a sudden wave of guilt for her. He cleared his throat, dismissing the thoughts from his brain.

“Yeah, what about her? She went missing two years ago and turned up dead. There’s not much else to discuss,” he said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table. The woman waved a hand as if to clear smoke from her face.

“We’re not talking about death, Rowan, we’re going to talk about her life. Do you know about her?”

Rory shook his head. “No... No, I never knew her. I met her once and went to her funeral. She was never on good terms with my mother.”

The woman nodded like she cared about Rory’s mother and her problems. “Understandable. Your grandmother was stupid and fragile, just like these dumb bitches your age today. She shouldn’t have been allowed to breed.”

Rory clenched his jaw again and balled his hand into a fist, dragging his nails along the table. He hardly noticed the wood splinter going under his fingernail, and when he did, he ignored it.

The woman frowned at his sudden mood change. “What? Did I say something that upset you, Rowan?”

Rory cleared his throat again, taking a while until he answered. “You’re talking about my grandmother. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

The woman raised her eyebrows and looked away. “You know you’re really sensitive, right? You get that from her. She cried at the drop of a hat.”

Rory growled under his breath. “Can we just get on with it? Why are you telling me this?”

The woman rolled her eyes again and for a second, just one, pure rage washed over Rory. He could have knocked her so dead that they’d have to bury her in Hell.

But he didn’t.

Killing the elderly wasn’t exactly how good boys played.

“Well my point here, Rowan, is that you’ve got something from her. She wanted me to deliver this to you on this exact date. Thing is, the old crow gave this to me twenty years ago. I don’t know what’s in it, but she said it was important, so here I am, twenty years and thirty less teeth later,” the old woman said. She smiled softly with a look of old, sepia colored nostalgia on her face.

Frankly, it made Rory uncomfortable to intrude on her memories of teeth and such things, but he had a sense that he shouldn’t leave without getting what his grandmother wanted him to have.

He shifted in his seat, folding his hands in his lap, then resting his arms on the table, then raising one hand to his mouth to bite his fingernails to the nubs.

“My name’s Vicky, by the way,” the woman said, snapping out of her nostalgia. Rory nodded once, not taking his nails out of his mouth.

“And you know my name,” he said. Vicky nodded once and gave a crooked grin, showing off her gums.

Rory shuddered internally from the sight.

“I guess I should give you the gift and get to steppin’ huh?” Rory nodded and held his hand out.

Vicky dropped a small brown ring-box into his palm. “She said that it’s yours to give to who you’d like. She said that it was given to her by a good friend all the way from where she came from and since you’re her only grandson, it goes to you. Happy birthday, Rowan.”

Rory frowned. “My birthday’s in November.”

You can only imagine how the conversation went after this.

---

As soon as he closed the door, Jace was all over Rory. For a few seconds, it was kinda nice.

Jace’s soft kisses on Rory’s neck and his hands all over, dipping into Rory’s pants every so often, but never touching the prize.

Only light, teasing touches for a light, teasing round.

Jace pulled away for a second and Rory realized, or more like remembered-- this morning, he’d been angry at Jace. He’d wanted to punch Jace through the floor.

Shouldn’t he still want to?

Before Rory could say anything, Jace was back at him again, touching, kissing. Rory moaned softly and slumped against the wall. If it weren’t for Jace holding him up, he would have slipped right to the ground and probably melted into a quivering pile of flesh.

(Try not to visualize that.)

Jace put his hands on Rory’s hips, grinding into Rory slowly in a way that made Rory’s knees turn to water. They’d already been jelly.

“Let me teach you a few things,” Jace whispered. His voice was husky and full of sleep in that way that makes a man’s voice oh-so sexy.

Rory nodded helplessly like a schoolgirl and then hesitated for the second time.

Sex with Jace could possibly be dangerous. What if his heart got broken again, or he contracted some kind of disease? Or worse-- what if his parents found out that Rory was having sex before marriage. Or even worse than that, what if his parents found out he’d had sex before marraige-- with a man?

Rory would be dead for sure.

Or worse. Way worse. Much much worse. What if Jace didn’t prep him before?

Rory wouldn’t be able to sit properly, walk properly, or stand properly for possibly weeks. Then, his boss might find out.

And he’d get fired.

Of course not just blatantly for liking men, his boss would fabricate a few things worthy of being
fired for, but underneath all the gritty papers, the stink of shame, the lies, and the super’s oblivion, Rory would know.

It would be because he liked men. And couldn’t sit at his desk.

Mostly for not being able to sit at a desk, because that is a distraction to productive workers.

Jace tugged lightly on Rory’s belt. “Hey, you’re spacing off. Come to the bed with me. I have some things to show you.”

All over again, Rory’s brain turned to mush and his knees to jelly and he followed Jace into a bedroom, not caring whos it was.

Jace put his hands on Rory’s shoulders and turned him around so that Rory’s back was to the bed.

Jace’s eyebrows twitched at the realization that Rory was as tall as he was, maybe a half inch shorter at the most.

But that didn’t matter.

He was horny.

Jace nudged Rory’s legs apart with his knee and pushed him to the bed.

“Let me show you a few things, love. Just a few.”