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“Thank you, Sir,” he said, sounding honestly grateful, despite the forced abstinence. Jack believed him.
Perfect boy. Jack wouldn’t have him any other way.
Chapter Three
Channon liked flying. He didn’t care for airports, particularly, but that feeling of the plane taking off, the sudden change between ‘plane on the runway’ and ‘plane definitely in the air’ made his gut tingle.
When he expressed this to Nate on their flight to Dallas, however, Nate said, “You could take flying lessons.”
Channon stared at him. “Me? Why?”
Nate grinned. “Because you can afford it and it sounds like fun. You could buy a Cessna.”
It sounded absolutely ridiculous. Channon’s chest ached at the thought of it. “Ewan would make fun of me forever.”
“Sure, but he’s not the boss of you.” Still, Nate let it go. “Excited about the conference?”
“Not excited, really,” Channon confessed. “Nervous, I guess.”
“About what? Worried people won’t like you? Won’t make any friends?”
It gave Channon an involuntary shudder. “Well, I wasn’t before,” he said. But then he shook his head. “I just…sometimes I want to ask questions, but I don’t want to risk sounding stupid. You know.”
Nate nodded. “Relatable.”
“I can’t imagine you ever worrying about that,” Channon said, eyeing Nate sidelong. “You don’t seem worried about anything.”
“I have absorbed a lot of California chill, that’s true,” Nate said, seemingly unaffected by this statement. He’d stowed his phone and laptop, and now his fingers tapped restlessly on his leg. “But I remember the first few times Jack and I tried to talk to investors, way back when. I was worried they’d think I was a hack, or a fraud.”
“So what happened?”
Nate flashed him a white, shark-like grin. “I realized I wasn’t the only one. It’s like masculinity,” he went on, absently doing hand stretches Channon recognized from the OSHA card at his own desk. “We’re all out here putting up this front, terrified of being found out. But if everyone’s pretending, there’s no use in worrying about it. Anyway, now I let Jack do all the blustering. He enjoys it.”
It didn’t seem like bluster to Channon, but Jack certainly projected a sort of confidence that was bigger than any one man could really be. Channon couldn’t deny that he found that attractive, but more than that, Channon loved seeing the Jack that existed in private, a different sort of confidence. Sir, Channon thought, smiling to himself over it. His Sir, and his alone.
Or not entirely his alone. There was a part of Jack that belonged in some way to Nate. Channon was aware of this though he couldn’t fully articulate it—Jack and Nate were a unit, an entity that existed in conjunction with what Jack and Channon were together. Channon tried to picture a Venn diagram of it, but it didn’t quite work. Still, it was true. Nate had access to parts of Jack that Channon didn’t.
He wondered if that should bother him. The fact that it didn’t felt oddly unsurprising. In much the same way that Jack encouraged Channon to have sex with people who weren’t Jack, Channon realized that he wanted Jack to have this thing he had with Nate, a closeness and understanding that was different from the one between Jack and himself.
And it was fine because Nate wasn’t a threat to him. Channon couldn’t imagine Nate ever being a threat to what he had with Jack. But then, Channon couldn’t imagine himself being a threat to what Jack had with Nate, either, so that seemed fair enough.
When they landed in Dallas, there was a driver waiting for them. Nate chatted breezily with the guy, finding out all the best places to eat or drink or see live music as if he really was on holiday. Channon played Yankai’s Peak on his phone, not really listening.
At the hotel, after check in, Nate said, “Are you headed to the dinner tonight?”
Channon shook his head. “Isn’t that for, like, VIPs?”
“It’s for whoever can afford a ticket,” Nate told him, grinning. “But I guess you’re on a budget, huh? Maybe you don’t have a nice enough suit.”
“Oh, sure,” Channon said, trying to keep a straight face. “Yeah, I can’t afford stuff like that.”
Nate nodded sagely. “Too bad. But I’m guessing you aren’t allowed to eat half the things on the menu anyway.”
This was actually true. “I hear room service has green juice,” Channon said, which made Nate chuckle.
They were on the same floor, but when Channon went to go on down the corridor, Nate stopped him.
“Jack wanted me to give you this,” he said with a wolfish grin. ‘This’ was a long box with a plain, black exterior. It felt hefty and sort of solid, nothing rattling inside.
