Yuletide Knights by Johnny Miles

Author:Johnny Miles [Miles, Johnny]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Contemporary m/m
Publisher: Loose Id LLC
Published: 2014-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Michael

It was the day before Christmas Eve, and the mall was abuzz with last-minute holiday shoppers. I was ready to pull out my hair, but not because we were busy. In fact, far from it. In the last couple of weeks, the only sales were for the intermittent coffee or pastry of passersby.

A perpetual chill seemed to permeate the store, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Jackson was somehow responsible. Did he really have that many friends loyal to him? And if that were true, what was he saying about me, about the store, that would keep them away?

Both my part-timers, including Jackson, were gone without notice. Only Shane remained, my only full-timer and number one comic book guy, ever faithful as long as he could continue taking advantage of his employee discount on comics, coffee, and other merchandise.

The trouble with Shane was that although he never gave me problems, he never asked questions. And he certainly wasn’t the type to gossip. If he knew of his ex-coworkers’ whereabouts, which he swore he didn’t, he kept it to himself. My morbid curiosity was of no consequence to Shane, no matter how much I probed.

Gone, too, were the hordes of geeks, nerds, and dweebs—misfits and accidental virgins of all ages, shapes, and sizes—as well as the coffee whores who lingered the day away without spending, discussing their favorite male superhero in homoerotic fandom, countered by, lest they be thought “too” gay, what they’d do to their favorite female superhero.

I can’t say I was sorry to see some of them go or that I missed some of them. The all too familiar “that’s so gay” had been wearing thin. So was their lack of purchases.

And yet despite all the cons that seemed to almost always come with the territory, I’d never felt more at home than with the societal outcasts that hung out at the Heroes’ Battle Grounds, bouncing back and forth between the racks and small round tables where customers could enjoy their books, recharge on caffeine, or munch on a pastry.

Still, it was spooky how there’d been little business after the fight with Jackson and my arrest.

After that night in jail, I moved out of the home I had made with Beauregard the past seven years. Now I slept on a cot at the back of the shop. It wasn’t exactly home, but at least it was free. Sort of.

The slightly overweight bear cub and skinny, pimply-faced redneck—two of the four men charged with guarding the mall at night—both found it odd at first. Bribes soon took care of that, and they kept their mouths shut, each thinking they were getting a sweet deal. The redneck enjoyed his free Wednesday comic books while I sucked him off in the back room, while the bearded cub preferred his Boy Wonder fantasy to my billionaire bat-caped crusader.

After almost four weeks of debasing myself, however, I was growing tired of the arrangement. It left me empty and ashamed. Which only made me want to do it all the more, perpetuating the repetitive cycle.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.