“My brother has a perfect sense of timing,” he tells me, stroking my cheek. He even helps me up from my knees as though I’m the delicate one, when his whole side is blooming yellow and violet, and then he goes out to the other room. I hear the door opening.
“Fuck!” says a deep male voice from the other side. “Jesus Christ, put your junk away!”
“You interrupted me, Frank,” Lucifer says in this cool, autocratic voice. I lay it away in my memory, ’cause I know that’s what he’ll sound like all the time when he really hits it big.
I’ve never been so fucking sure of anything in my life as I am of this guy. It’s like a conversion experience.
Chuckling at myself, I stroll into the other room where Lucifer has left the door open for his brother.
“Yo,” I say with a raised hand when Brother Frank walks in, still complaining.
“Aw,comeon!” he says, throwing up his hands when he see me in all my naked glory, too.
“Finch,” I say, walking across to offer a hand.
He actually shakes it. “Frank. What the fuck happened to my brother?”
I give a shrug. Up to these two to sort that out. “I just cleaned up the mess,” I tell him. Frank looks a lot like his brother: tall, dark, with the same blue eyes, only my guy is sharper, more refined in his features. Frank looks like he’s caught a fist in the face more than a couple of times, his nose large and twisted. His ears are cauliflowering. He looks older than the both of us, but it’s hard to tell what’s age and what’s injury when a guy’s been fucked up enough times.
Lucifer waves a cut-it-out hand at the both of us. “I’ll tell you all about it later, Frank,” he says, and turns away. “I just need my clothes.”
“What the hell is that on your back?” Frank asks him, his face screwing up.
“Cum,” I tell him, grinning. “That, Francis darling, is a physical manifestation of the love your brother and I have shared.”
Frank turns away, putting his hands up towards his head like he wants to cover his ears but knows he’s not nine years old anymore. “Fuck’s sake,” he mutters. He adds, “And it’sFrancesco, dipshit.”
Lucifer reappears. “Where the fuck are my clothes?” he asks me.
I have to think about it. “Oh, yeah. I sent them for cleaning when you were asleep.”
“Well, shit,” Frank says. “Look at little Suzie Housewife here.”
Lucifer and I both ignore him. “You can take something of mine,” I tell him with a shrug. I don’t know how well it’ll fit him—he’s way longer in the legs—but I have sweats he can take. He follows me to the bedroom again. Frank waits in the living room, grumbling loudly.
“What’s your name?” I ask, as I grab out pants and a hoodie. He ignores the question and pulls on the clothes, staring down at the Harvard crest on the front of the hoodie. “My Pops’ alma mater,” I say. I want to keep him here, this sinful demon of a man, for as long as I can. Forever.
So I talk.
“Pops wanted me to go there too, but I took some time off after high school and now, I don’t know, I’m thinking something more arty. Or maybe, like, drama school. My sisters tell me I’m a drama queen all the time, so I figure, why fight destiny?”
Lucifer squints at me.
“Georgie, come on!” Brother Frank hollers from the other room. “I got places to be!”
“Georgie?” I grin. “Georgie.”
The guy looks pained, and not from the contusion taking up half his side. “That’s not my name.”
“Then why—”
“It’s what Frank likes to call me when he’s looking to piss me off. I can’t return these clothes. And when you get mine back, you should get rid of them.”
“Mm,” I say. “Well, you know, I’m fond of that hoodie. I like showing off that my Pops went to Harvard.”
“And you, too,” he says back. “Eventually.”
“Ooh, was that a burn? You don’t think I got the chops to tell my daddy I don’t wanna go to Harvard?” I give him a smirk, but I hate him a bit, nonetheless.
