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No matter how many years he'd taken up in LS, it never seemed like Michael belonged to the city. It wasn't just rolled up sleeves in clammy ac, sheet of sweat under his collar when Franklin couldn't feel the tips of his fingers any time he was in the man's house.
His resolve was sturdy, a stone set in violent waters. Very unlike the people he'd tried emulating who threw money at their problems to settle things quietly.
Michael De Santa- Townley, Franklin reminded himself, didn't settle things quietly.
He saw through the man sitting on a flipped crate, polishing the barrel of his gun with an old t-shirt. “See, at your age you can get away with putting most of your money into equity. I've got a lot put away, but I don't want to gamble it in stock when I can't expect a return short term.”
“Talking about investing when you can lift that kind of money overnight,” Franklin dismissed, eyes flitting down on that repetitive motion, following the swipes and passes.
“You can't expect to live like this forever.” He dropped the T-shirt, turned the gun in hand, both inspecting it and showing it off. “You take a hit to the leg, it never recovers right. You can never run again, or at least not like you used to. All the planning in the world wouldn't save you if you can't even outrun the cops.”
“I got enough sense to know you don't live that long in this business.”
“But you can,” Michael pointed to himself. “And I don't plan to die in any blaze of glory.”
“Sentimentality does that to you. Makes you soft.”
Michael scoffed. “You been eating up the shit Trevor feeds to you? Sentimentality makes you dangerous. Trevor's the most sentimental guy I know.”
“If that's what you want to call it.”
At that, Michael laughed. Franklin followed in a smile.
“I never had much to be sentimental about,” Franklin admitted.
“I didn't either at your age. When you care about something, and I mean really care, you'll see how hungry it'll make you.”
He stopped Midway at rolling his eyes, stuck on the way the piece fit in Michael's hand like it was made for him and he thought it was a crying shame for a man of that age to not see who he truly was.
Michael grabbed his beer off the ground, stopping at his lips. Before he took a sip, he spoke behind the bottle. “Stop by tonight. Amanda's making lasagna.” He took a drink.
“Yeah, alright.”
-
Franklin was anxious to sit down for a family dinner. Amanda treated him well enough, offered him drinks right out the gate. All hard liquor, which didn't go unnoticed or unappreciated.
Michael was already drinking a Jack and Coke out of a tall glass. They seated themselves in the living room while the food was in progress, glued to college football on tv. Franklin was never crazy about the game, but he listened to all the facts and stats Michael threw at him all the same. Hell if he'd internalize them, but passion for something was infectious and Franklin was vicariously enthused.
He matched Michael's Jack and Coke, opting for a proper whiskey tumbler. He drank steadily to Michael’s half-glass gulps, which had him on his second refill.
“You trying to get drunk?”
“Off of just this?” Michael laughed. Well, he was a big guy and a seasoned drinker.
He watched the man watching TV. Michael felt the stare and turned to him, motioning his head toward the game. “One of these days we should organize a game.”
Franklin grunted, something especially non-committal in the hope that Michael would come to forget the idea altogether.
They sat for dinner, a cut of lasagna a half foot thick and Franklin was certain he wouldn't finish it until he cleared his plate it was that good. That left coffee, the kids going upstairs while the adults sat around and shot the shit.
“You really are a nice young man,” Amanda commented in a way which Franklin wasn't sure was meant to be flirting or not. She had that way about her, a tendency to grab a wrist or shoulder when she addressed someone.
“Guess who taught him everything he knows?” Michael boasted, sitting tall and puffing out his chest.
“Forget everything you learned, then.” She laughed as she said it, slapping her husband on the shoulder. “This man can't teach you anything good.”
He'd heard the horror stories, but seeing the camaraderie between them surprised him. He didn't mention such, only smiled through their kindness, repeatedly thanked them for inviting him until Amanda retired upstairs after kissing her husband on the cheek, leaving Michael and Franklin to their “boy things”, as she put it.
Which meant going for straight Jack sans the Coke. Drinking to get loose lipped, but not sloppy. According to Michael, anyway, who was already a notch past loose-lipped.
“Days like this, I love her,” mumbled forlorn and distant, calling back to better times. “You get this funny idea like love is supposed to be one of those uncompromised, unwavering things.”
Even when he drank, he never felt much like talking. Only watched Michael drink, followed the facial contortions in the grimace. More the heat of the alcohol going down his gullet than the taste, he explained.
It didn't suit the likes of Franklin, but he admired Michael’s more dramatic flourishes.
“What about you?” For the first time that night, Michael set down his glass. “Have you ever been burned by love?”
“I'm not sure I’ve ever been in love.”
Michael regarded him with an incredulous look. “You're fucking with me. There hasn't been that one girl who twisted your heart into a pretzel?”
“No. I was too broke for a girl to be interested, anyway. Now that I've got cash in the bank, I'm not gonna be stupid with it.”
“It's a little sad, don’t you think?” He played with his glass, circled his finger on the rim. “You kids are so cynical these days.”
“It's the times,” Franklin offered
“Maybe, but there's so much to get out of life and even through the pitfalls, I've got very few regrets. I mean, shit. I'm still with Amanda. We try to make it work. She hasn't tried to take a hit on me, which is better than some friends of mine.”
At that, Franklin snorted. “You serious?”
“No bullshitting. Lost a few golfing buddies that way. I'm buddy-buddy with most of the hitmen in the area so I just ask around to see who did him in and whether it was the wife who called for it or not.”
“They tell you?’
“Yeah.” Michael shrugged. “I help em out sometimes, have Lester give them work, and we compare notes every now and then.”
“Here I thought Trevor was the worst friend you got.”
“He still is,” Michael said definitively. “Contract killers have rhyme and reason, at least.”
Again reaching for the glass, swallowing the remaining contents before setting it down for what Franklin guessed was the final time that night. He sat forward, shoulders hunched and hands folded, elbows rested on his knees.
A strange intensity. From drunkenness or from talking about his wife and Trevor, it was anyone's guess. “Don't make the same mistakes I did, son.”
The endearment always sat with weight in Franklin’s thoughts, more of a figure of where he really belonged to but marking him as family with such nonchalance gave the young man a reluctant warmth. He dared not name it sentimentality. That made him soft.
All the same, it reminded him of when he first met Michael, his aunt accosted him all wild accusations about the nature of their friendship.
“That a stand in for your daddy? He looks rich, bet he pays you well.”
He brushed it off. It wasn’t the first time she’d accused him of being a rent boy.
Lamar was another story. “All on that white man’s dick. How much he gotta pay you to suck it?”
A “Fuck off, Lamar,” was all it took to get him to get his laugh and drop the subject, but he blamed his own lingering thoughts on the question being direct. It was easy to jump to the first big figure he thought of, one million.
One million to suck off some dude. No matter what angle he looked at it, he came out the winner. On the wrong corners at the right time of night, he’d seen whores being offered grams, hits and cheeseburgers. Few would scoff at him taking that million, especially where he came from. But that would just have been for some dude. Michael was a friend. A good one, at that, who’d helped him secure his lot in life to earn that million a couple of times over.
Fact of the matter was if Michael insisted Franklin owed him, and all he wanted in return was a blowjob, he’d do it. Not without complaint, but he’d do it. More in thanks than a transaction, at that.
That stretch of silence had lasted long enough, Franklin decided. The two had done sufficient mulling. “Hey, everything turned out alright in the end.”
Michael grinned. “Better than expected.”
Franklin decided Michael wouldn’t even have to insist, really. He’d just have to ask. That’s when he figured he’d had enough to drink, alongside the wishful thinking of the man whipping his cock out right then and there.
“I’m telling you, though,” Michael continued. “It’s not always glamorous.”
Those were not helping words. Franklin had a picture in mind of shifting to his knees while Michael patted his head and encouraged him with, ‘it’s not always glamorous’.
“Guess not,” he found himself agreeing in a half-mumble. Memories were cropping up, coming to light, suggestions from Trevor that he and Michael sometimes had a less than platonic partnership. All of a sudden these were things he needed to know. “You and Trevor, that shit you were saying about him being the most sentimental guy you know.”
The subject of Trevor sucked some of the humor from his features. “Yeah?”
“He loved you?”
“Loved?” Michael barked a laugh. “He’ll deny it all day, but that hasn’t changed a bit.”
Franklin didn’t like the pang of jealousy that soured his stomach. “You knew him before you met Amanda, right?” Now or never. He looked Michael dead in the eye. “You two fuck?”
“Woah.” Michael sat up stiff and alarmed. “Where’s that coming from?”
He knew Michael. If Michael hadn’t, he’d have laughed it off and called Franklin crazy. God knows what the two had gotten themselves into to get to that point, what sort of sad tryst they’d found themselves in. Trysts, maybe. Repeated events out of youthful longing and need. Or older. Maybe when Amanda was gone. Trevor did hang out an awful lot with Michael in his big, empty house. But he knew Michael, and the moment he saw that reaction he instinctively knew that Michael fucked Trevor.
“I’m not judging, man.”
Michael took a turn for the defensive, puffing up and sitting tall, trying to look intimidating. “Well, it’s none of your damn business.”
“I know it’s not.” He had to salvage this somehow, problem resolution center in his mind haywire in a deluge of terrible ideas on how to explain away his curiosity so that he could get the answer he was looking for. Instead, what came out of his mouth was, “I want to give it a try.”
Too late to take that back, he realized when he took in Michael’s stunned expression, but the man calmed a bit and asked his piece slowly. “Let me just make sure I’m not mishearing things. Try what, exactly?”
“Don’t make me make a fool of myself for asking.”
He watched Michael’s expression go from surprised to thoughtful, followed by beats of silence before he stood suddenly and motioned Franklin to follow. Follow he did, part wondering if he was about to get his ass beat. When Michael grabbed his car keys, that turned into half wondering if he was about to get his ass murdered.
“Where are we going?”
“Motel.”
“Motel?”
Exasperated, Michael gestured upward with his car key. “We sure as hell can’t do anything here with my wife sleeping upstairs.”
He was pretty sure Michael was too drunk to get behind the wheel, not that it ever really stopped either of them. It helped the time pass along faster, that haze in a deathly silent, awkward car ride all the way to the closest motel.
Michael slapped his card and license on the check-in counter. “Any room. One night.”
They got their key-cards and found themselves in a room on the far end of the building. The two adult men squeezed side-by-side into a full bed, and at the point of Michael removing his suit jacket was when Franklin realized this was really happening.
He couldn’t back out now, and he wouldn’t lag behind. He pulled his t-shirt off.
“You’ve never been with a man before, right?”
“No.” Franklin noticed Michael’s eyes flitted down, staring at his chest.
“I’ll show you then, son.”
As crazy as it all was, the words shot straight to his cock. It felt weird getting naked for the man, like stripping for a teacher. He was grateful Michael hadn’t moved onto touching him just yet, but he was also hoping for it just for something to encourage that this wasn’t just a ridiculous fantasy.
Down to his boxers, he was already half-hard. The expectant eyes were doing it for him, hooking his thumbs into the waistband to get him fully naked and hard the rest of the way.
He saw the appraising raise of Michael’s brows, but he said nothing. Instead, he removed his shirt and undershirt and once he was top-bare, his hand inched closer. “You good?”
“Yeah.” Franklin breathed when after the go-ahead, Michael fixed a hand on his thigh. He shifted down on the bed, settling between Franklin’s knees.
He didn’t know what to think of the sight of Michael taking him in hand and fixing his mouth over the head of his prick. He knew how it felt, made his balls ache, and better yet when the mouth closed over him and suckled.
Michael was good at it, the slide of his tongue mindful, tip of it prodding at his slit. Easily making it one of the top five blow jobs he’d ever received. He took him in the back of his throat like a champ, opening slightly only to tighten around him again.
Franklin exhaled. “I’m close.”
“Mm-hmm,” Michael acknowledged around him.
Whatever Michael’s plan was afterward, the imagery of flooding the man’s mouth with cum did it for him. He bucked up a bit, leaning into that sensation before came. He exhaled again, this time a settling sigh as his breathing tempered.
He watched with a small smile as Michael gulped down his load, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “You good?” Michael asked a second time.
“Yeah. I’m great.”
“You up to returning the favor?”
Now he looked down, Michael pitching a tent in his slacks. Confronted with it, he breathed sharply. “Sure.”
“If you’re not comfortable-”
“I’m fine,” Franklin insisted. ‘I’m not a pussy’, he meant, but he kept that to himself knowing Michael didn’t mean it like that. Despite his nervousness, he wanted to do it. He wanted to make Michael feel good.
Michael nodded, worked off his belt and slacks. Notably gungho, removing his briefs and stroking himself a measure. It was the first time Franklin had ever seen a cock this close to him that wasn’t his own. He stared down the barrel of a gun multiple times, yet this was more intimidating somehow.
No use in delaying the inevitable, he thought. He looked up briefly at Michael, gave what he thought was an assuring smirk before emulating the man’s position from before. Between Michael’s knees, pushing the thighs apart a bit. He nudged Michael’s hand off and held the shaft in hand and lowered his head.
The head of it against his lips was spongy, tongue poking at an unexpected yield of the flesh. Michael let out a small sound, nothing intelligible but it sounded like a grunt of encouragement.
It was easier than it looked, then. That gave Franklin some confidence. When he started sucking down, that’s when Michael’s hand placed itself on the back of his neck. He was worried he’d be pushed down, but a thumb rubbed circles beneath his hairline.
“Feels amazing. You’re doing great, son.”
Let it be known that Franklin had never enjoyed recovery time quite like those words inspired, already feeling his loins stir again. His eyes swept up to look at the man’s face, appreciating how handsome the man suddenly looked to him.
This wasn’t so bad, he thought. Michael was gentle, never pushing down on him. It was Franklin who decided to open up the back of his throat to mimic the deepthroating. The girth of the cock sitting tight and heavy at the back, left to dealt with the uncomfortable feeling of trying to swallow around it.
“That’s real good,” Michael told him. “I’m getting close.”
As eager as Michael was, Franklin wasn’t ready to take a load in his mouth. He lifted off, giving a final lick of the head before finishing Michael the rest of the way with a handjob, the other man’s cum dribbling hot down his arm.
Michael was kind enough to reach over and grab a tissue for him to wipe off. Franklin didn’t know the etiquette for afterward so he moved to his side of the bed and eyed Michael expectedly, waiting for some sort of guidance, wondering if things would be any different.
“I’m beat.” Michael stretched his arms over his head and yawned. “I don’t know about you, but I’m calling it a night.” He tucked himself beneath the covers, and before saying his goodnight he offered one last little tidbit to Franklin. “That was good.”
It was good. “Yeah. Goodnight, man.” He wanted to go for a second round, need nagging again when his mind cycled through what happened, but he’d let Michael sleep. He wasn’t the least bit tired, and there wasn’t anything interesting to do in the motel. He’d just rub one out in the bathroom.
Passing a last glance at Michael before getting to his feet, he could admit to the littlest bit of sentimentality. He wondered if he’d become a little more dangerous.