“What do you have there?” Patrick asked.
Spencer gulped back a lump and desperately averted his eyes from looking down at his hard-on.
“What? Nothing.”
“Crisp Fall Night.” Patrick read the label off the jar in Spencer’s right hand. “What’s this one?”
“I don’t know. You gave it to me.”
Patrick removed the lid, completely oblivious to anything else going on with Spencer. He took a whiff and let out a moan of approval. It had a little bit of a grunt to it that made Spencer dizzy.
Lord, give me the strength to not bust a nut in Yankee Fucking Candle.
Spencer imagined he was the one causing Patrick to make those sounds. He tried to shake the image out of his head.
“You don’t like it?” Patrick asked.
“It’s, uh, good.”
Patrick held it up to his nose. It had a vague outdoor smell. Some campfire, some leaves, some pumpkin. Nothing strong enough to evoke a feeling. Basically all the scents that fell on the factory floor got cobbled together into this generic scent.
“Actually, I feel like there are better ones.” Spencer didn’t know what was more surprising: that he had an opinion on fall candle scents or that he had an erection. “What about Apple Pumpkin?” He nodded at a jar on the display wall. “You like pumpkin, but you don’t like too strong of an apple scene. It could work.”
And it would give Spencer a minute to cool down whatever the hell was happening in his crotch. Though of course, Patrick walked to the wall, and Spencer’s eyes drifted to his ass, perfectly framed in his chinos, like his body was purposefully messing with him.
“You’re right. It’s nothing special.” Patrick said upon a second smell of Crisp Fall Night before returning it to the display. “I must’ve gotten excited too easily.”
Yeah, same.
* * *
The restof the day dragged. Spencer’s office didn’t believe in summer Fridays. He texted with Ryan about going to the volleyball game that night, his first since his injury. He would be cheering and coaching the team on from the sidelines. After reading random articles on the internet and doing the bare minimum of actual work, he found himself on Patrick’s Instagram feed, scrolling through pictures of his life in Los Angeles and then before that, here in Chicago. He wanted to run his fingers through the waves of blond hair rolling across his head.
“What the hell,” he said out loud to a mostly empty office. His co-workers had smartly put in for paid time off, leaving him one of a handful of people on his floor.
Patrick was his neighbor and was being nice to him helping him out. That was it. He didn’t have any interest in Spencer. And Spencer had ruined any chance of anything else potentially happening when he mocked him to Ryan at the Fourth of July party.
Still, he felt his body get just a touch lighter when he left his office to meet up with Patrick for the commute home. He walked up State Street, which was crowded with people enjoying the delightful weather, and stopped in front of an Old Navy. He snapped a pic on his phone and smiled to himself.
“Check it out.” He showed Patrick the picture a few minutes later on the El platform.
“Is that a cranberry cable knit sweater?” Patrick’s eyes looked to jump out of his head and right into the photo Spencer snapped. “And dark khaki corduroys?”
“I’d call this a prototypical fall outfit.”
“Right in their front window.” Patrick shook his head in disbelief. “Amazing.”
“Are you going to spontaneously combust?”
“It’s very possible.” Patrick put an instinctive hand on Spencer’s chest to keep him back as the El rolled into the station, packed to the gills more than usual. The train car was an explosion of red and blue.
Patrick sighed. “Cubs game.”
“Yep.” Spencer loved summer, and he loved the Cubs, and he loved summer baseball games. But he, like all Chicago commuters, hated how Cubs fans made the Red line extra crowded on game days, a hellish hurdle for regular commuters just trying to get home. They didn’t follow proper commuting etiquette. They were loud, took up too much room, and were resistant to squeezing together to fit more people in.
All right, so maybe this was one thing that sucked about summer.
He didn’t know if both of them could fit into the train car. Before he could suggest they wait for the next one, Patrick grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him flush against his body. Their left sides leaned against the plastic partition between the doors and the first seat. The El door closed behind Spencer.
