“Twenty bucks if you take the trash out for Leigh again.” Sionn eased back into a patio chair before resting his feet on the edge of another. “And she’ll cough up another twenty if you help her empty the fry oil. She hates doing that shite.”
“I don’t need charity….” Who was he kidding? Damie thought. Not only did he need charity, he was making a scrape at a life begging with a song.
“Not charity,” Sionn drawled, looking over at Damie with a wolfish grin. “I hate doing that shite too. Better you than me, boyo.”
“Sorry. I can be an asshole… sometimes.” The coffee was hot and a bit sweet, just the way he liked it. There was enough of the brew in the mug to keep him warm for a long while if he took small sips, but the cold had already settled into his chest, pinging a bit of tightness across his scar. Gulping the coffee helped loosen the twisting skin, and if he planned on stalking Sionn the entire day, he’d probably blow more than Leigh’s twenty bucks on coffee alone.
He could have gotten a blow job or someone’s rough hand around his cock for that twenty, but Damie’s brain churned with disgust at the thought of anyone touching him. That same brain, however, was more than willing to call up images of Sionn’s blunt-edged fingers working his cock’s loose skin or rolling his balls, and Damien once again cursed the fit of his thrift-store jeans.
“Definitely tighter underwear,” he muttered into his coffee.
“Tell me something about yourself, Cowboy.” Sionn’s eyes never left the clotted gray mists in front of them, but Damien could feel the man’s attention on him. “Why are you out here singing like a canary? Or something else. I don’t know much about you.”
What was the saying? Damien tried to remember it clearly, but his mind was faulty at best, and sometimes he wasn’t sure about what it spat up at him. In for a penny, in for a pound?
“Just found out I’m gay.” Sionn nearly choked on the coffee in his mouth, and Damie wiped a few errant drops from his arm. “I mean, not just just, but pretty fucking sure of it now.”
“That’s certainly not what I expected to come out of that mouth of yours.” The other man ran his palm over his chin, smearing away a bit of splatter. “Here I was thinking maybe you’d tell me about your place or something. Maybe a sob story of your life being shite because you’re really a street musician at heart and you live in the suburbs.”
“Nah, I live in a shithole.” Damie chuckled. “Pretty sure the guy down the hall shoots porno with blow-up dolls down in the laundry room, and he’s one of the better ones living there.”
Sionn tried another sip of his coffee, then said, “So yeah, gay. Leigh tell you I was?”
“Nope.” Damien’s cock couldn’t have been trying harder to get his attention, and he dropped his hand down to squeeze at its head, shifting his legs as if he were getting more comfortable in his chair. Telling his body to fucking behave, he tried not to squeak when he replied, “I’m shitty at the whole gaydar thing. Apparently it doesn’t even work on me.”
“When did you figure it out, then?” Sionn’s chuckle rumbled, a lolling wave of bass. “’Cause not like it’s something you get as old as you probably are without some idea there, Cowboy.”
“I kind of woke up this morning and figured out I was kind of… either or. Maybe a bit more either one than or. I dunno.” Damie’s mind raced with the possibilities, which he quickly shot down.
He liked coming to the pub and playing. He enjoyed sitting in the front when there was no one around and talking to Sionn about stupid things like Fun Dip or cheese fries. Hitting on the man would fuck that all up and probably get him kicked out of Finnegan’s. Damie couldn’t risk that. The pub was the only place he’d found that gave him a tingling connection with Miki. Determined to steer the conversation away from sex and desire, he opened his mouth to change the subject, only to be horrified by what dropped out.
“How’d you know? For sure, I mean. That you liked dick… or ass?” Jesus, it was like he was raised by wolves. Damie kicked his brain. Short of threatening his noggin with a marathon session of Teletubbies in the library’s children section, there was little he could do about his gray matter dancing off into the inappropriate. “I mean, if you want to talk about it. Some people don’t, and that’s cool.”
“Well, my dad caught me wanking off when I was watching a rugby match. I guess that’s when he found out.” He cocked his head. “I think I knew when I was pissed off I couldn’t get one of my schoolmates to kiss me. I must have been six? Maybe seven? Feeling got stronger as I got older, especially after the infamous wanking, and I got shipped out over here to Gran’s. I was about… sixteen by then.”