Another Believer (3 page)

“I’m fine. You didn’t spill on me.” Surprising himself with the vehemence in his voice, David guessed from the look on Jonah’s face he’d surprised Jonah, too.

This wasn’t good. David needed to get out of there before his circuits were permanently fried by too much alternating current. He knew when he was outclassed and Jonah Simpson wasn’t just out of his league, Jonah might even qualify as out of David’s species. “Listen, um, thanks for breakfast, but I think I’m gonna go for a walk. See ya around.”

Without waiting for a reaction, David slipped under Jonah’s arm and walked quickly down the corridor, back in the direction of the dining car and away from their seats. He had to get away from all of that perfectly packaged charm and charisma before he did something stupid.

Wandering for a while, David took himself on a tour of the train and all the compartments he could reach as a passenger, walking slowly to draw things out. Although he knew it was out of the question, David would have loved to get a look at the engine compartment. He’d seen pictures, and the control panels and equipment to run the train looked fascinating. It would be a total blast to get in there and see everything, but in a post-nine-eleven world he knew better than to even ask.

The train had passed the Oxnard station a while back and was now running close to the shoreline. Surfers could be seen bobbing out in the water, splashes of black in their wetsuits as they straddled their boards and waited for the next set of waves.

As close as he’d lived to the ocean, surfing was one thing David had never learned to do. He’d done some body surfing as a kid. Had loved the feeling of treading water, waiting for the ocean to swell beneath him, signaling it was time to get horizontal and start stroking and kicking like hell.

Most of the time he’d missed the waves. Too often he hadn’t been a strong enough swimmer to keep up with it and the huge swell of water would pass him by, leaving him to swim back out and wait for the next one.

Once in a while, though, he’d catch it. Catch it just right and know the feeling of being part of something bigger than himself. The ocean would rise up under and around him as he swam as hard as he could--in a partnership, almost. As the junior partner, he’d be carried to shore by the wave and be dumped out, gasping for air and laughing at the sheer exhilarating joy of it.

David shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the window, keeping an eye on the surfers as they disappeared from sight. The train rounded a bend, rolling ever northward, taking him closer by the minute back to school; back for his last year at Mt. Scott.

He hadn’t thought about body surfing or summers at the beach in a long time.

They’d had some pretty idyllic times, him and his brother and sister. Mom was a nurse and had worked full-time to help afford a decent house and educations for three kids. Dad was an electronics inspector for McDonnell-Douglas first, and then Boeing, after the merger. David had learned the principles of electronics from the time he was a kid; he couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t understood at least the basics.

It was his
obaasan
--his Grandmother Sato--who’d taken them to the beach, sitting under a big umbrella reading romance novels while he and his brother and sister had played. Sometimes his cousins had come along, too, and they’d had a great time digging for tiny sand crabs and making forts, spending hours building elaborate structures of sand with moats and towers, only to have them wiped out by the incoming tide.

So if things had been so perfect, why was he on a train to a college in the Pacific Northwest, then? Why hadn’t he gone to UC San Diego like most of his friends, or even Cal State Long Beach, where he could get his degree and still be close to his family? Why did he have to pick a crunchy granola geek college in a state that led the country in inches of rainfall per year?

David pressed his forehead to the glass, letting his gaze rest on nothing in particular-- thinking.

He didn’t make friends easily.

Too much of a geek and, at the same time, too sure of his facts to suffer fools gladly.

Why couldn’t humans be as straightforward and easy to understand as his robots? David could build a robot to do just about anything and a robot either worked or didn’t work, depending on whether or not the wiring and programming were done correctly. No, “Yeah, I wanna fuck. Let’s do it!” one day and, “Fuck off, geek boy,” the next.

At that moment, the memory of strong fingers grasping his chin and guiding his head a particular direction made an encore appearance. David wrapped his arms around himself and leaned against the side of the railway car, giving himself permission to pretend for just a few moments that it was someone else holding him.

***

Leaning back in his seat, Jonah crossed his arms and tucked his hands under his armpits. Eyes closed, he could trouble-shoot what had gone wrong with his plan, while inserting the occasional fantasy to keep his spirits up. He tried to step back and give his actions an objective assessment.

Breakfast.

Okay, things had seemed to be going well at that point. They’d been talking, getting to know each other a little bit and figuring out their differences. There was that whole unhealthy obsession with natural foods thing to be worked out, but it was nothing major in Jonah’s mind. Admittedly, he didn’t have a ton of data to go on yet, but everything he’d found out about David so far had been pretty great.

Smart. Cute. Gay. Part Asian. Jeez, did it get any better than that?

Good oral technique never hurt
. Jonah’s evil, horny guy side asserted itself, but he quashed it. Sure, that was important, but he wouldn’t let himself think negatively. This was going to happen and he wasn’t about to sabotage his efforts with a lot of unproductive thinking.

Jonah stifled his inner critique and aimed squarely for the positive side with a fantasy of him and David.

In his fantasy, the two of them were alone in a room together, facing one another, standing less than an arm’s length apart.

Jonah reached across and lifted David’s shirt. Raising his arms cooperatively, David shimmied out of the shirt when Jonah moved to tug it over his head. David’s arms alighted on Jonah’s forearms, his thumbs rubbing appreciatively over Jonah’s skin.

A shiver slithered up the real Jonah’s spine.

He was turning himself on, but it felt so good to think about, he couldn’t find it in himself to stop.

So next, he’d unsnap the front of David’s shorts, giving himself a little room to work. Then, he’d slip his hands inside and run them along David’s flanks. He’d squeeze a little bit, then reach around to grasp David’s butt firmly in both hands. Letting the shorts fall magically away, he’d drop to his knees and take David’s pretty, flushed cock in his mouth, rolling his tongue appreciatively over its contours, slurping down all of that juicy, salty goodness and…
God!

Jonah forced himself back to reality. He’d have to stop torturing himself before he came in his shorts. Seriously.

Maybe you could get David to help you out with that, if you ask nicely.

About to chide himself for the crassness of his thoughts, Jonah came to the sudden realization that his two sides were in perfect agreement: they both wanted David
.

“Um, ‘scuse me.”

Jonah’s eyes sprang open at his first awareness that David was back. Looking all business, nothing in David’s face suggested that he would ever have said anything remotely like the explicit remarks he’d made to Jonah earlier. Unable to pinpoint what it was exactly about David that drew him so inexorably, Jonah contented himself with admiring the perfectly proportioned face and compact body, even as he moved his feet to allow David to get back to his seat.

“How was the walk?”

“Good.” David sat and immediately busied himself by digging through his bag, eventually retrieving a magazine on …
robots
?

So. Okay. Cool. He could hang with that. “Good magazine?’

David looked up and Jonah got the impression that interruptions weren’t something that David normally had much patience for. A cutting remark seemed perched on David’s lips, ready to fall, but the response when it came was relatively mild. “Yeah.”

“Which article did you buy it for?”

David’s look was skeptical. “Brushless motors.”

If David wanted to play reluctant interview, Jonah could go all day, asking question after inane follow-up question. Right now he was interested in establishing boundaries. Testing limits. He’d push a little and see how long it took David to push back. “Yeah? And how was it?”

“I haven’t read it yet, but I’m interested in the increased efficiency aspect. I’ve got an application in mind for my senior project.”

“Cool. What’s the project--or can you say? It’s not a secret, is it?”

Openly suspicious now, David narrowed his gaze. “You can’t possibly be interested in this stuff, so why all the pretend fascination?”

“Why can’t I be interested?”

“Because you can’t. Brushless motors?” David’s eyebrow went up again. Jonah just smiled and waited, wondering if David had any idea how cute it was. “Got a jones for static armature?”

“Not usually,” Jonah admitted. “But under the right circumstances, I could be persuaded.”

“Really.” David folded his arms across his chest again, a dubious purse of his lips adding just the right amount of ‘you are so full of shit’ skepticism to his expression.

“Oh, absolutely. As it happens.” Jonah nodded. “Everybody knows that mechanical commutators are old school. BLDCs are the wave of the future. It’s all over but the shouting.”

If he hadn’t been watching for it, the infinitesimal jaw-drop would have blown right by him, but Jonah had been waiting for it; been expecting it, in fact. The hard part turned out to be keeping a straight face.

“You--” Gradually, by degrees, David’s face relaxed into a grin that turned into an outright laugh. “You totally set me up. You
dick
.”

“Nah, I can’t take credit. You set yourself up.”

David was openly laughing now and that only cemented things for Jonah. David flipped every one of his switches, in fact he couldn’t remember wanting anyone this much in a long time. But he couldn’t be with a guy who couldn’t laugh at himself.

“
You
… Now who’s not what he seems to be?”

It was all Jonah could do not to bat his lashes and flirt like crazy, but he had the feeling that David needed slow courting. There wasn’t time for that, though. This train ride wasn’t going to last forever and, even if they ended up in the same city, that wasn’t necessarily the same thing as the same destination. Jonah needed to get something going now.

“Nah, I’m pretty simple, really. What you see is what you get.”

David’s gaze flickered and Jonah could swear that was a spark of interest he’d just seen flash through David’s eyes, but he only shook his head. “Nothing’s that simple.”

“Sometimes it really is.” As carefully as he could calibrate it, Jonah let the smallest little bit of desire into his tone as he made deliberate eye-contact with David. Taking a deep breath and letting it out, he allowed his fingers to stray over the armrest and brush the inside of David’s wrist. “Want to take a walk?”

“A walk?”

“Yeah. Wanna go see what kind of trouble we can get into?”

Just that quickly the cautious David was back--the skeptical guy who didn’t seem to have the word trust in his vocabulary. “What kind of trouble?”

“Come on, it’ll be fun.” Refusing to even consider defeat, Jonah stood and backed out of his seat, out into the aisle. “Show me what you found when you took your tour.”

“It’s a train. It’s really not all that exciting. Shocking, I know, but true.” David’s reluctance apparently didn’t extend to his body, because his legs were already moving, pushing him to his feet.

“Let’s go anyway.” Excitement bubbled up in Jonah’s veins as David placed his magazine face down on his seat and stood.

“Where do you want to start?”

Anywhere would do. Just to be doing anything with David was a start, but somewhere they could be alone would be even better. “I suppose Baggage is out of the question?” Jonah suggested. “Or what about an observation deck? It’d be cool to hang out on the back of the train, like in old movies. You know?”

“Old movies? Are you high? The liability would be huge. I’m surprised they even have windows. I mean, we could get sunburned. Sorry to stomp all over your romantic daydreams, darling, but the sleeper cars are probably more doable.”

Darling?
Jonah bit his cheek to keep from grinning. “Man, you’re not gonna give me even a shred of hope to hold onto, are you?”

“Reality bites.” David smirked and Jonah allowed himself a smile. So cute, that little hint of intellectual arrogance that was never far from the surface with David.

“Okay, what about the sleeper cars, then? What’s down there?”

David’s gaze strayed toward the rear of the train, his body swaying as the train rounded a turn and lurched mildly. “I guess we can see if anyone tries to stop us. We won’t have the right ticket if they ask, but what’s the worst they can do? Tell us to go back?”

“Exactly. Don’t you want to know what they look like?”

“They’re pretty small. They don’t even have in-room toilets and the shower is down the hall.” David led the way and Jonah followed happily.

“So you’ve seen them?”

David waited for him at the door to the next car, sliding it aside for them to pass through, confident in his movements. “Sure. You can go a lot of places just by acting like you belong there.”

“I’m shocked. You enter unauthorized areas frequently? You must. You sound pretty comfortable about it.”

“What? It’s not exactly Area 51, you know.” David’s slightly exasperated tone was endearing and Jonah decided it was just one more sign of his growing infatuation. “If they were all that worried they’d have it locked. Or maybe that’s just me.”

“Good point.” They were winding their way toward the back, with only a few cars left before the end of the train, by Jonah’s estimation. Instead of comfortable seats, two to a side, the aisle bisected the car with compartments to either side. “Hey, David, hold up.”

“What?”

“Here’s the shower.”

“Yeah, I know.” Obviously uninterested, David was already half way down the length of the railcar.

“Hang on, I want to look.” Opening the door, Jonah stepped inside, surprised at how roomy it was. A bench across the corner, even. Poking his head back out into the hall, Jonah beckoned. “Hey, check it out.”

“Sheltered life, much? It’s a shower, Simpson. Try to wrap your head around the concept.”

“Get over here, smartass. I want to show you something.”

All but rolling his eyes at Jonah’s stupidity, David stepped into the little room. “Okay, dazzle me.”

“Lucky for you I work well under pressure.”

“Should I even try to guess at what that means?” David just shot him a doubtful look.

Stepping close, Jonah trailed a hand down David’s arm. “Lot of pressure for a first kiss.”

David’s eyes widened, but didn’t back away when Jonah lowered his head. After that first initial shock, though, they closed sweetly and David let Jonah brush his mouth over David’s.

Oh, yeah.