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lit_galAdjustment Required
Pairing: Lock/Gary
Fandom: Original
Prompt: Taming the Muse, any joke in a storm
Warning: none... this is just a fragment of an idea.
Gary Clayton is good at hiding behind a façade of confident heterosexuality, at least most of the time. At least until now. Now he’s stuck in a job with Lock Roma, a man who seems to have taken an instant dislike to him and worse, he’s everything Gary wants to be—independent, strong, and openly gay. For his part, Lock never expects fair. Life has kicked him in the balls too often for that; however, he’s good at laughing at life and himself. Sometimes people doubt his ability to swing a whip because of his humor and his vertically challenged body, but he can Dom with the best. He’s never wanted to do more than play, though. However, both men are about to learn that appearance can be deceiving, and love is a nasty little bugger with a sense of humor sharp enough to sting.
“Lock,” Yolanda yelled, her voice muffled by the rattle of Angie’s printer doing the monthly reports.
Lock sighed. He’d wanted to get the hell out of the office before she found some new disaster for him. They had three other senior claims adjusters, but Yolanda always seemed to give him the nasty jobs, the ones that involved climbing over the burnt remains of some orphanage in the rain while a hurricane threatened the area. Okay, maybe that was a slight exaggeration. The Southwest didn’t get hit with many hurricanes. Or any. Still, if one did hit, Yolanda would make him do the damn investigation.
“Yeah, what’s up?” he asked as he stuck his head in her office. A new kid sat in one of her chairs. He looked like he’d just come off some high school football field with his brown hair spiked up and his too-tight suit jacket. Considering it was at least a hundred and five outside, Lock would bet money that the kid was trying to get a job.
“Lock Roma, meet Gary Clayton.”
Lock stepped farther into the office. “Clayton?” he asked.
The kid stood up, and he had to be at least six foot, two, which was just annoying. Lock hated looking up at people, but he’d inherited a serious case of short from his ancestors. The Native Peoples of the Southwest did tend be on the short side, and Lock was five foot, six on a good day. If he slumped, he wasn’t even that tall. Despite the fact he was only one-quarter Tohono O'Odham, Lock had inherited the round face and dark hair. The green eyes must have come from his father, a man who’d died before Lock could form more than a vague impression of him with his large hands. However, Lock knew that if they were in a club, he’d never be able to get this kid’s eye. He probably went to clubs where he could take his pick of all the blonde girls with their painted pink lips. Smiling widely, Gary stuck his hand out. “Hi. Actually, Ben Clayton’s my uncle.” Gary had that sort of forceful personality that probably made most people like him.
“Your uncle. Isn’t that just great?” Lock asked, not even trying to hide his sarcasm. A flash of confusion crossed Gary’s face. Most people in the office respected Ben Clayton, the district supervisor, but Lock had a few issues with him. Him and his candy-assed lawyer.
“He’s a great man,” Gary said as he gave Lock an odd look, and Lock barely bit his tongue in time. It wasn’t like he was well known for his verbal self-restraint, after all.
“Mr. Clayton wants Gary to learn the business from the best,’ Yolanda said, her smile as plastic as her jewelry.
“Really? So, he’s going out with Abrams?” Lock asked sweetly. Yolanda’s smile faltered. If this bright-eyed, shiny new kid spent any time around Bill Abrams and his foul mouth, Clayton would audit the whole damn office. He was the sort of moralistic asshole who would enjoy doing that.
“Abrams?” Gary looked confused. He was dangerously cute when he looked confused, but Lock put that in a little part of his brain marked “too dangerous to think about.” As much fun as it would be to corrupt a homophobe’s cute little nephew, it wouldn’t be good for long-term job security, and Lock was holding on by a thread now.
“Bill’s busy. Besides, Gary doesn’t have the educational background for commercial appraisals.”
“Oh yeah, and you don’t need any education to be a plain-old adjuster,” Lock added sarcastically. Yolanda gave him a nasty glare. He’d worry about pissing off the boss, only he was pretty sure she didn’t know which form to fill out to fire him. Besides, she liked him. Usually. Right now, she was doing a good job of imitating someone who was really annoyed with him.
Gary spoke up. “I have an insurance claims adjuster certificate.” That sidetracked Lock’s whole train of thought. Lock stared at Gary, not sure what to say in the face of that sort of naïve confidence.
Yolanda cleared her throat. “Lock, just take him out and show him around.”
“Yeah, I’ll show him the coffeemaker and the bathrooms and the hole in the wall from that time that—”
“You have a case.” Yolanda held out a file. For several seconds, Lock just stared at the file with the thumb drive clipped to the edge.
“I hear Joe Joe’s been really bored lately,” he said hopefully. He had just gotten in from three days on the road, and he wanted to hit the club, dance, and do a little cutting loose.
“He’s handling the hailstorm damage in Phoenix.”
Lock sighed. “Great,” he said without any enthusiasm. Taking the folder, he flipped it open and looked at the pictures of a dusty neighborhood in Carrizozo, New Mexico that used to have a large warehouse. Jagged black pillars stuck up from the muddy ground and corrugated metal lay on the ground like tossed card. “Arson?” At least this looked more interesting that having to check on two dozen houses with hail-dented air-conditioners on their roofs. Boring.
“Well, that’s your call. Take Gary,” Yolanda said, and then she turned to her computer, a frown already forming as she read her email. Home office was probably complaining about some missing paperwork again.
“I guess you’re with me,” Lock told Gary before he turned and headed out of the office. An insurance claims adjuster certificate. Great. He’d gone to school to learn to fill out paperwork.
“Lock, freeze!” a voice commanded when Lock was three steps down the hall.
Cringing, Lock turned to see Angie coming straight at him, she was a fat woman with short legs, so he had no idea how she moved so damn fast, but she was coming right at him with her finger pointed like a deadly weapon. “Where the hell is your Tucson paperwork?”
“Um… on the computer?” Lock guessed. He hoped it was on his computer. If not, Angie looked ready to kill him. She crossed her arms and glared at him over her glasses. “You know I’ll turn it in,” Lock promised. “Angie, this is Gary. Gary, Angie Ferro would be the woman you never want to cross.”
“And yet you do it so often,” she snapped back even as she held out her hand to shake with Gary.
“Only because I know you love me.”
“I don’t love you enough to put up with late reports again. Clayton is all over our ass about the paperwork out of this office, so if you get me written up, I will take it out of your hide.”
“Um, Angie, have I mentioned that this is Gary Clayton?” Lock cringed again as Angie gave him the dirty look to end all dirty looks. “He’s riding along with me, learning the business.”
Angie muttered something under her breath before she seemed to intentionally clear her expression. “Paperwork is important. We’re an insurance company. If we can’t do paperwork well, what are we doing in business?” Angie asked. From someone else, that might come off as sucking up, but she had that attitude even when the big boss’s nephew wasn’t standing in front of her.
“And Angie is the best at paperwork,” Lock agreed. “But maybe I can catch up with the Tucson paperwork after I finish the Carrizozo job.” He gave her his best pleading expression. This expression had gotten university professors to give him extensions and University of New Mexico football players to give him dates.
“Oh no,” she said, turning on him again. “The last time you went out again before doing paperwork, you got all my receipts mixed up. Take care of them now.” With that, she wheeled around and headed back down the hall, her dark ponytail bobbing with every enthusiastic step.
“Wow. She’s serious about paperwork,” Gary said with a chuckle.
“She’s good with it.”
“And you’re not, I take it.” The kid had a big cheesy grin, and Lock had a fantasy about pushing the boy to his knees and putting his cock in that full mouth.
Lock knew that some of his frustration came from his sexual attraction, but if he had to deal with spending time with Gary, he was going to have to set some ground rules. “If you’re here to get dirt for your uncle, just say so now because I am not amused at having to play nice with you.”
“If I… what?”
“Clayton’s sunk to a new low having you babysit. What? Does he think I’m going to pick up some cute little twink and fuck him in the company truck?” Lock put it as crudely as he could. Actually, he considered throwing in a reference to whips and handcuffs and rope bondage, but Gary was already turning so brilliant red that Lock feared he might have a blood vessel burst.
Lock snorted and headed toward the adjusters’ office. This case was shaping up to be a blast with Mr. Certificate along.
“What exactly did I do to piss you off?” he demanded as he trotted after Lock like a puppy. A very large puppy with a mouth made for fucking.
“Breathe.”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.”
“Any joke in a storm,” Lock grinned.
For a second, Gary stared at him as if he couldn’t understand English. “Are you drunk?” he asked.
Lock chose to ignore the racial implication of getting called a drunk Indian. “That is one of the few issues we don’t have around here, but if your uncle is determined to clean house in this office, I’m sure he’ll be fine with making something up. Not that he needs to. Stick around, and I’m sure someone will slip up and say something incredibly incriminating.” Lock headed into his cubicle and poked the power button on his computer. If he didn’t have Angie’s paperwork, he wasn’t going to have to worry about Clayton firing him; she’d kill him and hide the body somewhere that no one would ever find it. If Angie ever decided to try out the non-vanilla side of the fence, she’d make one hell of a Domme.
Gary followed him into the office. “I’m not looking to accuse anyone.”
“Right. Your uncle just sent you here.”
“My uncle said I could get a job with the company if I could learn to clear a case like you guys could.” Gary actually sounded like he believed that, and Lock was normally a pretty good judge of character. “He said that you and Mullendor and Abrams were the best in the business.”
Lock studied the kid. He actually wasn’t much of a kid at all. He had to be pushing twenty-five, which put him just a five or six years younger than Lock. “So, you just want to learn to clear cases?”
“Yes.”
“As good as me?”
Gary blushed. For the first time, Lock noticed the particular shade of gray-green in Gary’s eyes. “If I can be, yes. I know it will be a lot of work—”
“Oh hell yes. You’re walking in here with a degree in paper pushing.”
“In claims adjusting,” Gary protested.
“In paper pushing,” Lock said more firmly. “I have two bachelor’s degree, including one in fire science. Abrams spent twenty years in construction and Mullendor… actually, don’t ask about Mullendor.”
Gary sucked in a breath, clearly shocked down to his little white athletic socks. “Two bachelors?”
“Against your certificate in paper pushing.” Lock leaned against the desk and wondered if the kid wasn’t starting to see the problem with this little internship.
He held up hands up. “Okay, I get it. You don’t have to rub my nose in it.”
Lock sighed. Now he felt like he’d just kicked the family dog. Gary had that sort of wounded expression. “Just be honest. Did you uncle send you here to collect dirt?”
“And if I say no?”
“I might believe you.”
“Why?”
The man surprised Lock with that question. Most people did tend to assume others would believe them. Most people actually thought they were great liars, even if they sucked at it. “Let’s say the answer is ‘yes’,” Lock said, turning it back around on Gary. “Let’s assume that your uncle sent you to collect dirt.”
Gary frowned. “Okay, you’re wrong, but we can assume.”
“That means that he’s ready to do some mass firings. I already know I’m in the line of fire for that massacre, so it makes no difference to me. But if you go making friends with Lisa or Angie or Joe and then give your idiot uncle dirt on them, it’s going to hurt them.”
Gary looked confused enough that Lock could almost believe that he wasn’t part of Clayton’s grand plan to get rid of people who annoyed his sense of morality. “Why would my uncle want dirt on them?”
“Because he hates this office?” Lock guessed. From the blank expression on Gary’s face, his uncle had left out large parts of agency history.
“Let’s just say there’s some water under the bridge with both me and Yolanda, and probably with Abrams, although I try to stay as far away from Abrams as I can, so I don’t actually know,” Lock said. “And now you coming walking in with your all-American charm and ask to ride along with me.”
“But you said that you’re already in the line of fire if Uncle Ben wants to fire you, so if I was looking for dirt, wouldn’t I be looking at riding along with someone else?”
He had a brain in his head, Lock had to give him credit for that. However, Lock still wasn’t sure he should trust him. “Okay, let’s assume that Clayton didn’t send you here to get dirt. Then the question is why he would want you to ride with me.”
“He said you were the best.”
“Uh huh,” Lock said, not convinced. He was the best. He’d solved cases that cops couldn’t, and he’d saved the company a hell of a lot of money in fraud cases; however, Clayton was obsessed with Lock’s sex life, and as far as Lock was concerned, Clayton’s obsession made his own heterosexuality suspect. Maybe Lock shouldn’t have said that to the man’s face, but then Lock never had been good at keeping his mouth shut.
“Look.” Gary ran his hand through his spiky hair, pushing his hair around so that it looked suspiciously like bedhead with one side all flat. Lock definitely needed to get laid because he could not keep his mind out of the gutter. “I just want to learn to do that job. That’s it. I’m not down here looking for trouble, and whatever problem you have with my uncle are your problems with him, not me.”
“He really never told you.”
“Not one thing because I’m feeling like I got dropped into the deep end of the pool.”
“You have no idea.”
“No, I don’t. And unless you start telling me, I might have to call Aunt Ellen and ask her because something is going on here.”
“Not your uncle?” Lock watched as Gary shifted, his whole body subtly whispering distress. Even if he pretended to have a great relationship with his uncle, there was something buried there—Lock could smell it.
“Let’s leave my uncle out of it.”
“Now this is interesting.”
Gary’s body stiffened. The boy had a secret—some deep dark truth he wasn’t wanting to share about his uncle. This was turning out to be interesting after all.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Gary offered, running his hand through his hair again so that it looked even more like rumpled bedhead, “if you don’t ask me about my uncle, I won’t talk to my uncle about whatever I happen to see here. Even if you pick up a twink with the company truck.”
Lock laughed. Gary turned a deep shade of red just saying the line, but he had the balls to say it anyway. “Okay, that’s a deal. As long as you ride with me, I won’t ask, and you won’t tell.”
“Deal. Only, you aren’t actually going to …” Gary made a face, and the red in his face actually turned a shade that came close to purple.
“I haven’t yet,” Lock said with a shrug as he sat down at the computer and started pulling up expense sheets. He was proud of himself; he managed to not even point out that Gary was young enough to pass as a twink, even if he had a little too much muscle to really pull the look off. Normally he wasn’t good at passing up that kind of material, but if they had to ride together, maybe they could both make one or two concessions. After all, the trip to Carrizozo meant a lot of hours together in a small van. And if Lock couldn’t keep his tongue in check, they were going to be some very uncomfortable hours.
“Okay, that’s good. I guess. Not that there’s anything wrong with being with… one of those… only maybe not in the company van.”
Lock looked up. Then again, maybe they were going to be some uncomfortable hours no matter how good he was at curbing his normally sharp tongue. He sighed and started entering numbers on the expense report. Yep, life hated him, but he still had a chance to get back in Angie’s good graces.
Pairing: Lock/Gary
Fandom: Original
Prompt: Taming the Muse, any joke in a storm
Warning: none... this is just a fragment of an idea.
Gary Clayton is good at hiding behind a façade of confident heterosexuality, at least most of the time. At least until now. Now he’s stuck in a job with Lock Roma, a man who seems to have taken an instant dislike to him and worse, he’s everything Gary wants to be—independent, strong, and openly gay. For his part, Lock never expects fair. Life has kicked him in the balls too often for that; however, he’s good at laughing at life and himself. Sometimes people doubt his ability to swing a whip because of his humor and his vertically challenged body, but he can Dom with the best. He’s never wanted to do more than play, though. However, both men are about to learn that appearance can be deceiving, and love is a nasty little bugger with a sense of humor sharp enough to sting.
“Lock,” Yolanda yelled, her voice muffled by the rattle of Angie’s printer doing the monthly reports.
Lock sighed. He’d wanted to get the hell out of the office before she found some new disaster for him. They had three other senior claims adjusters, but Yolanda always seemed to give him the nasty jobs, the ones that involved climbing over the burnt remains of some orphanage in the rain while a hurricane threatened the area. Okay, maybe that was a slight exaggeration. The Southwest didn’t get hit with many hurricanes. Or any. Still, if one did hit, Yolanda would make him do the damn investigation.
“Yeah, what’s up?” he asked as he stuck his head in her office. A new kid sat in one of her chairs. He looked like he’d just come off some high school football field with his brown hair spiked up and his too-tight suit jacket. Considering it was at least a hundred and five outside, Lock would bet money that the kid was trying to get a job.
“Lock Roma, meet Gary Clayton.”
Lock stepped farther into the office. “Clayton?” he asked.
The kid stood up, and he had to be at least six foot, two, which was just annoying. Lock hated looking up at people, but he’d inherited a serious case of short from his ancestors. The Native Peoples of the Southwest did tend be on the short side, and Lock was five foot, six on a good day. If he slumped, he wasn’t even that tall. Despite the fact he was only one-quarter Tohono O'Odham, Lock had inherited the round face and dark hair. The green eyes must have come from his father, a man who’d died before Lock could form more than a vague impression of him with his large hands. However, Lock knew that if they were in a club, he’d never be able to get this kid’s eye. He probably went to clubs where he could take his pick of all the blonde girls with their painted pink lips. Smiling widely, Gary stuck his hand out. “Hi. Actually, Ben Clayton’s my uncle.” Gary had that sort of forceful personality that probably made most people like him.
“Your uncle. Isn’t that just great?” Lock asked, not even trying to hide his sarcasm. A flash of confusion crossed Gary’s face. Most people in the office respected Ben Clayton, the district supervisor, but Lock had a few issues with him. Him and his candy-assed lawyer.
“He’s a great man,” Gary said as he gave Lock an odd look, and Lock barely bit his tongue in time. It wasn’t like he was well known for his verbal self-restraint, after all.
“Mr. Clayton wants Gary to learn the business from the best,’ Yolanda said, her smile as plastic as her jewelry.
“Really? So, he’s going out with Abrams?” Lock asked sweetly. Yolanda’s smile faltered. If this bright-eyed, shiny new kid spent any time around Bill Abrams and his foul mouth, Clayton would audit the whole damn office. He was the sort of moralistic asshole who would enjoy doing that.
“Abrams?” Gary looked confused. He was dangerously cute when he looked confused, but Lock put that in a little part of his brain marked “too dangerous to think about.” As much fun as it would be to corrupt a homophobe’s cute little nephew, it wouldn’t be good for long-term job security, and Lock was holding on by a thread now.
“Bill’s busy. Besides, Gary doesn’t have the educational background for commercial appraisals.”
“Oh yeah, and you don’t need any education to be a plain-old adjuster,” Lock added sarcastically. Yolanda gave him a nasty glare. He’d worry about pissing off the boss, only he was pretty sure she didn’t know which form to fill out to fire him. Besides, she liked him. Usually. Right now, she was doing a good job of imitating someone who was really annoyed with him.
Gary spoke up. “I have an insurance claims adjuster certificate.” That sidetracked Lock’s whole train of thought. Lock stared at Gary, not sure what to say in the face of that sort of naïve confidence.
Yolanda cleared her throat. “Lock, just take him out and show him around.”
“Yeah, I’ll show him the coffeemaker and the bathrooms and the hole in the wall from that time that—”
“You have a case.” Yolanda held out a file. For several seconds, Lock just stared at the file with the thumb drive clipped to the edge.
“I hear Joe Joe’s been really bored lately,” he said hopefully. He had just gotten in from three days on the road, and he wanted to hit the club, dance, and do a little cutting loose.
“He’s handling the hailstorm damage in Phoenix.”
Lock sighed. “Great,” he said without any enthusiasm. Taking the folder, he flipped it open and looked at the pictures of a dusty neighborhood in Carrizozo, New Mexico that used to have a large warehouse. Jagged black pillars stuck up from the muddy ground and corrugated metal lay on the ground like tossed card. “Arson?” At least this looked more interesting that having to check on two dozen houses with hail-dented air-conditioners on their roofs. Boring.
“Well, that’s your call. Take Gary,” Yolanda said, and then she turned to her computer, a frown already forming as she read her email. Home office was probably complaining about some missing paperwork again.
“I guess you’re with me,” Lock told Gary before he turned and headed out of the office. An insurance claims adjuster certificate. Great. He’d gone to school to learn to fill out paperwork.
“Lock, freeze!” a voice commanded when Lock was three steps down the hall.
Cringing, Lock turned to see Angie coming straight at him, she was a fat woman with short legs, so he had no idea how she moved so damn fast, but she was coming right at him with her finger pointed like a deadly weapon. “Where the hell is your Tucson paperwork?”
“Um… on the computer?” Lock guessed. He hoped it was on his computer. If not, Angie looked ready to kill him. She crossed her arms and glared at him over her glasses. “You know I’ll turn it in,” Lock promised. “Angie, this is Gary. Gary, Angie Ferro would be the woman you never want to cross.”
“And yet you do it so often,” she snapped back even as she held out her hand to shake with Gary.
“Only because I know you love me.”
“I don’t love you enough to put up with late reports again. Clayton is all over our ass about the paperwork out of this office, so if you get me written up, I will take it out of your hide.”
“Um, Angie, have I mentioned that this is Gary Clayton?” Lock cringed again as Angie gave him the dirty look to end all dirty looks. “He’s riding along with me, learning the business.”
Angie muttered something under her breath before she seemed to intentionally clear her expression. “Paperwork is important. We’re an insurance company. If we can’t do paperwork well, what are we doing in business?” Angie asked. From someone else, that might come off as sucking up, but she had that attitude even when the big boss’s nephew wasn’t standing in front of her.
“And Angie is the best at paperwork,” Lock agreed. “But maybe I can catch up with the Tucson paperwork after I finish the Carrizozo job.” He gave her his best pleading expression. This expression had gotten university professors to give him extensions and University of New Mexico football players to give him dates.
“Oh no,” she said, turning on him again. “The last time you went out again before doing paperwork, you got all my receipts mixed up. Take care of them now.” With that, she wheeled around and headed back down the hall, her dark ponytail bobbing with every enthusiastic step.
“Wow. She’s serious about paperwork,” Gary said with a chuckle.
“She’s good with it.”
“And you’re not, I take it.” The kid had a big cheesy grin, and Lock had a fantasy about pushing the boy to his knees and putting his cock in that full mouth.
Lock knew that some of his frustration came from his sexual attraction, but if he had to deal with spending time with Gary, he was going to have to set some ground rules. “If you’re here to get dirt for your uncle, just say so now because I am not amused at having to play nice with you.”
“If I… what?”
“Clayton’s sunk to a new low having you babysit. What? Does he think I’m going to pick up some cute little twink and fuck him in the company truck?” Lock put it as crudely as he could. Actually, he considered throwing in a reference to whips and handcuffs and rope bondage, but Gary was already turning so brilliant red that Lock feared he might have a blood vessel burst.
Lock snorted and headed toward the adjusters’ office. This case was shaping up to be a blast with Mr. Certificate along.
“What exactly did I do to piss you off?” he demanded as he trotted after Lock like a puppy. A very large puppy with a mouth made for fucking.
“Breathe.”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.”
“Any joke in a storm,” Lock grinned.
For a second, Gary stared at him as if he couldn’t understand English. “Are you drunk?” he asked.
Lock chose to ignore the racial implication of getting called a drunk Indian. “That is one of the few issues we don’t have around here, but if your uncle is determined to clean house in this office, I’m sure he’ll be fine with making something up. Not that he needs to. Stick around, and I’m sure someone will slip up and say something incredibly incriminating.” Lock headed into his cubicle and poked the power button on his computer. If he didn’t have Angie’s paperwork, he wasn’t going to have to worry about Clayton firing him; she’d kill him and hide the body somewhere that no one would ever find it. If Angie ever decided to try out the non-vanilla side of the fence, she’d make one hell of a Domme.
Gary followed him into the office. “I’m not looking to accuse anyone.”
“Right. Your uncle just sent you here.”
“My uncle said I could get a job with the company if I could learn to clear a case like you guys could.” Gary actually sounded like he believed that, and Lock was normally a pretty good judge of character. “He said that you and Mullendor and Abrams were the best in the business.”
Lock studied the kid. He actually wasn’t much of a kid at all. He had to be pushing twenty-five, which put him just a five or six years younger than Lock. “So, you just want to learn to clear cases?”
“Yes.”
“As good as me?”
Gary blushed. For the first time, Lock noticed the particular shade of gray-green in Gary’s eyes. “If I can be, yes. I know it will be a lot of work—”
“Oh hell yes. You’re walking in here with a degree in paper pushing.”
“In claims adjusting,” Gary protested.
“In paper pushing,” Lock said more firmly. “I have two bachelor’s degree, including one in fire science. Abrams spent twenty years in construction and Mullendor… actually, don’t ask about Mullendor.”
Gary sucked in a breath, clearly shocked down to his little white athletic socks. “Two bachelors?”
“Against your certificate in paper pushing.” Lock leaned against the desk and wondered if the kid wasn’t starting to see the problem with this little internship.
He held up hands up. “Okay, I get it. You don’t have to rub my nose in it.”
Lock sighed. Now he felt like he’d just kicked the family dog. Gary had that sort of wounded expression. “Just be honest. Did you uncle send you here to collect dirt?”
“And if I say no?”
“I might believe you.”
“Why?”
The man surprised Lock with that question. Most people did tend to assume others would believe them. Most people actually thought they were great liars, even if they sucked at it. “Let’s say the answer is ‘yes’,” Lock said, turning it back around on Gary. “Let’s assume that your uncle sent you to collect dirt.”
Gary frowned. “Okay, you’re wrong, but we can assume.”
“That means that he’s ready to do some mass firings. I already know I’m in the line of fire for that massacre, so it makes no difference to me. But if you go making friends with Lisa or Angie or Joe and then give your idiot uncle dirt on them, it’s going to hurt them.”
Gary looked confused enough that Lock could almost believe that he wasn’t part of Clayton’s grand plan to get rid of people who annoyed his sense of morality. “Why would my uncle want dirt on them?”
“Because he hates this office?” Lock guessed. From the blank expression on Gary’s face, his uncle had left out large parts of agency history.
“Let’s just say there’s some water under the bridge with both me and Yolanda, and probably with Abrams, although I try to stay as far away from Abrams as I can, so I don’t actually know,” Lock said. “And now you coming walking in with your all-American charm and ask to ride along with me.”
“But you said that you’re already in the line of fire if Uncle Ben wants to fire you, so if I was looking for dirt, wouldn’t I be looking at riding along with someone else?”
He had a brain in his head, Lock had to give him credit for that. However, Lock still wasn’t sure he should trust him. “Okay, let’s assume that Clayton didn’t send you here to get dirt. Then the question is why he would want you to ride with me.”
“He said you were the best.”
“Uh huh,” Lock said, not convinced. He was the best. He’d solved cases that cops couldn’t, and he’d saved the company a hell of a lot of money in fraud cases; however, Clayton was obsessed with Lock’s sex life, and as far as Lock was concerned, Clayton’s obsession made his own heterosexuality suspect. Maybe Lock shouldn’t have said that to the man’s face, but then Lock never had been good at keeping his mouth shut.
“Look.” Gary ran his hand through his spiky hair, pushing his hair around so that it looked suspiciously like bedhead with one side all flat. Lock definitely needed to get laid because he could not keep his mind out of the gutter. “I just want to learn to do that job. That’s it. I’m not down here looking for trouble, and whatever problem you have with my uncle are your problems with him, not me.”
“He really never told you.”
“Not one thing because I’m feeling like I got dropped into the deep end of the pool.”
“You have no idea.”
“No, I don’t. And unless you start telling me, I might have to call Aunt Ellen and ask her because something is going on here.”
“Not your uncle?” Lock watched as Gary shifted, his whole body subtly whispering distress. Even if he pretended to have a great relationship with his uncle, there was something buried there—Lock could smell it.
“Let’s leave my uncle out of it.”
“Now this is interesting.”
Gary’s body stiffened. The boy had a secret—some deep dark truth he wasn’t wanting to share about his uncle. This was turning out to be interesting after all.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Gary offered, running his hand through his hair again so that it looked even more like rumpled bedhead, “if you don’t ask me about my uncle, I won’t talk to my uncle about whatever I happen to see here. Even if you pick up a twink with the company truck.”
Lock laughed. Gary turned a deep shade of red just saying the line, but he had the balls to say it anyway. “Okay, that’s a deal. As long as you ride with me, I won’t ask, and you won’t tell.”
“Deal. Only, you aren’t actually going to …” Gary made a face, and the red in his face actually turned a shade that came close to purple.
“I haven’t yet,” Lock said with a shrug as he sat down at the computer and started pulling up expense sheets. He was proud of himself; he managed to not even point out that Gary was young enough to pass as a twink, even if he had a little too much muscle to really pull the look off. Normally he wasn’t good at passing up that kind of material, but if they had to ride together, maybe they could both make one or two concessions. After all, the trip to Carrizozo meant a lot of hours together in a small van. And if Lock couldn’t keep his tongue in check, they were going to be some very uncomfortable hours.
“Okay, that’s good. I guess. Not that there’s anything wrong with being with… one of those… only maybe not in the company van.”
Lock looked up. Then again, maybe they were going to be some uncomfortable hours no matter how good he was at curbing his normally sharp tongue. He sighed and started entering numbers on the expense report. Yep, life hated him, but he still had a chance to get back in Angie’s good graces.
