A Single
[ permutations of bb/ew/dm . before Turn ] R
They spent one night that summer in a Motel 6 on I-55 South.
:::
"A single please, ma'am," Elijah had said, digging for his wallet in the back pocket of his jeans. The elderly woman behind the counter raised a carefully drawn eyebrow and pursed her watermelon pink lips at him.
"A single, you say?" Her voice was a well-cultivated smoker's croak with a thick, slow drawl. She peered at him queerly over her turquoise glasses and nodded over his shoulder at Billy and Dom standing in the glass foyer to the lobby. Their two figures waited along one of the walls--hovering and fidgety. They stood with their bodies bending towards each other, their faces almost touching, and their hands roaming across one another's arms and necks. Occasionally, one of them would look over at Elijah; their eyes would catch the fluorescent light overhead and glitter in the distance. "What about your friends, now?" she asked. "They just gonna hang `round all night looking for trouble? Cause we don't wan' none of that."
"Don't you worry about them, ma'am," he said with a small wink. "They're well-behaved." He pushed a hundred dollar bill across the counter towards her with two fingers. "Just make sure it's a single." She began to move down the counter towards the key log, but Elijah caught her wrist and added: "Make sure it's got a window overlooking the highway, too." The old woman's upper lip twitched slightly at the toothy grin he gave her and she turned away, muttering under her breath. Elijah swung himself around, planting both elbows along the edge of the counter and began chewing at a hangnail on his right ring finger. Tugging at the small piece of excess skin with his teeth, he was amused to see that Billy already had Dom up against the wall. One hand was disappearing past the waistband of Dom's jeans while the other pressed against his heaving chest. Dom tried to lean forward, attempting to nip at Billy's face and neck with his mouth, but was only pushed away with greater force. As the hand in Dom's jeans began to work more vigorously, his head rolled backwards and Elijah saw his eyes and his cheeks glisten in the gathering heat of the night underneath the flickering incandescent light. Inside his own mouth, Elijah ran his tongue along the small wound left by the hangnail and tasted blood.
He laughed, and at the same time, the elderly receptionist coughed loudly once behind him. Her highly glossed lips were pressed into a very thin line and her eyes narrowed as she looked once over his shoulder again. "6B," she said with repulsion. A key was dangling from her hand, pinched between two fuchsia acrylic nails, but she did not offer it to him. She leaned across the counter and said: "Now listen, boy, I've heard all about people like you an' your friends. An' I should think twice before I let a lot like you stay in a decent hotel like this. So you'd better not be causin' any pro'lems `round here."
"Don't worry, ma'am," Elijah said again. He glanced quickly over his shoulder and could see Dom begin to shudder and his knees begin to buckle. He tossed another crumpled hundred across the counter at her and snatched the key from her hand. "We won't."
:::
That night, Elijah fucked Dominic up against the open bedroom window, watching the tail and headlights of the passing cars slip through the spaces between Dom's fingers spread wide across the glass. There was a small throb of pain in Elijah's hand as he dug his fingers into the clenched muscles of Dom's hips, which he would later realize was from the pulled hangnail. At the time, he was too preoccupied with the shape Dom's breath would make as it condensed upon the window and the repeated slap of damp skin on skin. Occasionally, Dominic would make a tiny, strangled noise in his throat as if he were dying.
From his place on the bed, Billy giggled quietly behind his hands as he watched and waited his turn.
