Page 77 of Bro Code

Louis smiled to himself, shutting off the tap, and turned around, drying his hands on a towel. “Felt a little more special, I guess.” He shrugged, setting the towel aside. “I don’t know. It just sounded nice.”

He got two beers out of the fridge and gave Riley a tour of the apartment while they drank them. Riley didn’t really care all that much about the history of the building, but it was cute to see how excited Louis got about it. In the living room was a shelf crammed with toys – spaceships and little guys in red and yellow shirts, some of them still in the boxes. He frowned, leaning in.

“Are you a collector, or something?”

“Oh – ah…” Louis looked embarrassed. “Yeah, kind of.”

“What are these from?”

“Star Trek? It’s a sci-fi show that’s been running for ages.”

“Oh right: Klingon. Your weird keyboard.”

Louis’ eyes lit up. “You watch it?”

“No, but I’ve heard of it. You have a lot of these.”

“Yeah…kind of a big fan.”

Riley smiled, looking over his shoulder. “What a nerd.”

“Ha ha. Actually, we’re called Trekkies.”

Louis came over and straightened a box Riley had touched – Riley hadn’t actually moved it, but apparently putting a single finger on it was out of bounds.

“It was pretty inspirational for me,” he said. “There’s a guy in The Next Generation” –he picked up an action figure: a black guy with a yellow shirt and visor– “Geordi La Forge. Nerd who runs the computer on the ship, so he was kind of my hero. Oh, and then there’s this lady” –he picked up another figurine– “Nyota Uhura. She was like one of the first black women on TV back in the sixties. Also a big nerd – she speaks thirty-seven Earth-based languages, but what’s rad is that twenty-two of those languages are native dialects of Kenya, which is where she’s from, which is kind of crazy if you think about–”

He paused. Riley was smiling again.

“Anyway.” He cleared his throat, touching a knuckle to his glasses and setting the figuring back on the shelf. “She’s cool.”

Riley watched his slender finger nudging the figurine back into the exact position it had been in. Pretty hands. He remembered the first time he’d noticed them, using that weird Klingon keyboard on the flight to Alaska. It felt like a million years ago. Had it really only been two and a half months?

He stepped in, slipping his arms around Louis’ waist and turning him so his back was to the shelf. He set his beer down next to the Uhura lady and leaned in to kiss him.

Louis sighed and put his arms around Riley too, and they stood for a long time, kissing, with the quiet hum of the street outside. By the time Riley pulled away, his skin was buzzing and a bulge was pressing at the front of his jeans.

Louis smiled. “I feel like maybe I should show you the bedroom next.”

“Mmm.” Riley’s hands were roaming up and down Louis’ sides without him really telling them to. “Yeah, I think I would be very interested in seeing that.”

“Just one thing, before we go.” Louis stepped out of his arms, turning to pick up the beer bottle Riley had set down on the shelf beside the toys. “You can absolutely never put a beer bottle here again.”

Riley nodded, taking the bottle and saluting. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

Louis slipped his hand into his and led him toward the door. “In this house, we just say Aye, Sir.”

The bedroom was cool – exposed brickwork and rustic ceiling beams. Riley did an appreciative glance around to pretend he was interested before he started removing Louis’ clothes.

“So the majority of these buildings were built in the nineteenth century,” Louis was saying, tipping his chin to the ceiling while Riley kissed his neck, undoing his shirt one button at a time.

“Uh huh.”

“And the, uh, the wood in the ceiling all came from a forest in the Ottawa Valley.”

“Fascinating.” Riley pushed the shirt off his shoulders and onto the floor.

“They were built using this unique style called Pièce sur Pièce–”