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Pitch:
Linus Twist, a hedonistic divorce attorney who views sex with men as a transaction, is pursued by a straight guy who forces Linus to face his past traumas and accept that love doesn't have to hurt.
Blurb:
Silver-tongued lawyer Linus Twist has expensive tastes. The sharpest suits, the purest drugs, and the dirtiest sex. Linus wants it all in excess, especially the sex, and especially with the wrong types of men. So when he impetuously follows a foxy redhead into the gym shower and gets kissed like it means something, Linus knows he's headed for certain disaster.
Finnigan Wilde is a dreamer, a wanna-be novelist, in search of himself. He woos Linus with lilacs, speaks to him in filthy poetry, and touches him like he doesn't care who's watching. It's enough to make Linus want to set aside his sinister tendencies, his ambition, and one vital fact - that, as far as the world is concerned, Finn is straight.
First 1000 words:
New Year's Eve
Linus Twist is flying. His eyes are closed. The biting wind is the cigarette at the corner of his mouth. The frigid ocean is the roar of his blood. His ankles crook around the balusters of the hotel balcony, hands gripping iron tight. He perches on the railing, high above the Southern California Pacific.
Linus thinks, just for a moment, if he would relax his ankles and let his stomach ease, maybe then he could just be.
But be what?
He's always trying to be something. In one way, he's achieved quite a bit, chasing that siren. In another, the chase renders any satisfaction elusive.
In just a few weeks Linus will be 30 years old. It's something he's not trying to be at all, but there it is anyway.
And yet, the idea of falling off the balcony is far less appetizing. So instead of loosening his ankles, Linus tenses them. He screws up his courage, stiffens his core until the muscles vibrate. One finger at a time, Linus lets go of his death grip on the handrail. He holds his breath and raises first one trembling arm, then the other.
All that is to come. This is now. And this is an ineffable, unutterable, indescribable moment in which Linus Twist is flying, floating, fleeing. And the ocean below is roaring, reaching, responding. And the stars. Oh God, the fucking stars.
"Christ on a cracker."
Linus puts his hands back on the railing and eases himself back to vertical. The dangling cigarette scatters hot ash on his bare shoulder.
"Linus?"
It's just one word, but Linus can hear generations of Eton and Oxford in it. Afternoon tea on the estate lawn. An inverse to Linus's shuddery Irish and its accompanying disregard for grammatical norms.
Maybe if Linus doesn't respond, Bennett will go away.
"Linus."
The pulse of the ocean, the throb of the wind are interrupted by the grating scrape of iron on cement as Bennett seats himself at the balcony table. He fumbles through a pack of cigarettes. The sound is followed by the click-click, "fuck!"
More scraping and shuffling ensues. God, was Bennett always so bovine?
The cigarette is plucked from Linus's mouth.
Linus makes a sound of tepid objection but is secretly grateful because air tastes so much better. Salty. Fresh. He fills his lungs with it and tells himself no more cocaine.
"F'r fuck's sake, what you want?" Linus says.
"Bored?" Bennett asks.
Maybe. Maybe he is bored. Could it be that simple?
"Old things losing their shine, perhaps?" Bennett says as he marries the cigarettes, lighting a new one in the embers of the old.
Oh. He's referring to Linus's sort of ex-lover who is currently tied to the hotel bed frame with a plug up his arse. Bennett must've passed him on the way to the balcony.
Linus shrugs, just a laconic quirk of one shoulder. "He needs a stretch."
"Isn't his new man fucking him anymore?" Bennett asks, peeking into the hotel room. Linus can't blame him. Alaric is objectively a pretty sight.
"I'm told it's a matter of size," Linus says.
"Ah, quality not quantity," Bennett says, eyes now on Linus's impressive, but quite soft, cock. Linus can't blame him for that either.
"Perhaps," Linus says, finally looking at his childhood friend.
Bennett looks the same as he always does. His ash-blond hair cropped tight at the sides and pushed back in a careless sweep. The fat, black diamond in his ear glints. Black t-shirt, dark jeans. Premium fabric showing off moonlit collar bones, wrists, and ankles. Keen face showing not much at all, only his eyes with their bleeding pupils, blinking too slow, as he looks at Linus's body. As though Linus was his to enjoy.
When Bennett finally looks up, the shave of silver eyes over Linus's face is close and meticulous. Linus is sure that gaze does not miss a single hair.
He weathers it. Tips his chin up, bares his throat to the blade.
Linus already knows what Bennett sees. The bruised purple of thin veined eyelids. The goose-fleshed, brown skin, tattooed with memories. The mad black curls whipping wild in the mad black wind. The forever frown.
"I do not know why you do this, why you allow that fucking prat to do this." Crisply enunciated. Bennett's tone is dry and cold.
Linus looks at the stars. He loosens his grip on the railing. It gets easier after the first time.
Bennett gets up again, a lot quieter this time, and puts a new cigarette between Linus's lips.
"Cheers," Linus says, around it.
The two sit and smoke. Linus gets lost in his thoughts. In a way, he appreciates Bennett's ability to just shut the fuck up sometimes. It makes all his other vacuous tendencies a bit more palatable. It would've been so simple if, two years ago, he'd chosen Bennett's familiar brand of hostility instead of Alaric's unfamiliar one. Linus and Bennett accepted each other. The type of acceptance forged by experience. Bennett always wanted him, since before he took what was left of Linus's virginity.
What else did one need besides desire and tolerance?
"Do you ever wonder what sin you are?" Linus asks.
"All of them," Bennett says without a second thought.
Linus smiles; it's only half fake. "Greed, then. So predictable."
"Says Lust to Greed."
'Do you ever?' is a game they play sometimes. A smidgen of whimsy that Linus will allow himself when he's soused and stewed. A way to connect, to make himself less of an island in a river of confused filth.
It has multiple renditions. 'Do you ever get so hungry all you can do is put yourself to sleep?' 'Do you ever just sit in your car and scream?' 'Do you ever wonder if love is real, and if so, how much would you be willing to pay for it?' This version's his favorite though: the one where they label their friends, put each in a little box with a tag and a bow.
