Jake caught up with him so that they walked shoulder to shoulder, but the snow-covered bushes still gave Vars the creeps. They looked as if they were guard dogs about to wake up, shake off the white fluff, and charge at them.
Jake distracted Vars with a little bump into his shoulder and a shy smile that showed off his white, even teeth.
If they weren’t out for a break-and-entry, he’d have gladly made use of Jake’s newfound openness, but it seemed good things needed to wait until they’d dealt with what was necessary.
Vars examined the doors leading from the garden into the house, pleased to find out they were all quite old. No sophisticated techniques would be needed to get inside. All it took was a folded newspaper and a bit of force to break the glass in one section of the lattice in the french door. Once Vars had an opening, he pushed his hand inside and opened the lock. The whole operation took him less than two minutes.
Jake watched the process without blinking. “Wow. Have you done this before?”
Vars had long denounced the ways of his younger years, but the sheer fascination Jake expressed still made him proud of knowing this age-old technique. “That was how I earned my money when I was your age.”
Jake gave Vars a cocky grin and followed inside. “In the fifties?”
Vars snorted and gave the back of Jake’s head a gentle slap. “Brat. How dare you joke like that? I could be your father.”
“How wrong is it that I think it’s kinda hot?” Jake chuckled as they slowly entered the corridor inside.
Vars took a deep breath, glancing at Jake in the darkness. The wooden floor creaked under their feet as they made their way down a hallway with walls covered by maps and old drawings that illustrated the town’s history. It was cold here too, albeit not enough to turn breath into vapor. Jake’s comment made Vars’s nape heat up to the point where he feared it would glow red, like a beacon in the dark.
“Yeah? You into daddies?”
The way Jake got slightly skittish at the question made all of Vars’s dominant senses tingle with glee. Jake was nothing like Damon. Jake needed to be coaxed out of his shell, and Vars would gladly take his time.
“You mean, like… older guys?” Jake absentmindedly traced the wall with his fingers. He clearly wasn’t aware of the daddy scene, but he would learn of it eventually.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Vars said, moving his hand across Jake’s shoulders. Vars used his cell phone to light a plaque on the wall, and it directed them to the site of the temporary exhibition, where the collar was on display.
Jake’s mouth twitched, and Vars found it difficult to look away from him. The boy was a lost little lamb, and Vars would gladly provide guidance for someone this sweet. “I… I like how older guys seem to know what they’re doing.”
Vars chuckled, unable to resist the impulse of pulling Jake closer. Something in the boy’s attitude had changed today, as if the help Vars had provided him developed a new kind of trust and an interest more genuine than the service Jake so eagerly provided to the patches.
“Not all of us, I can assure you of that. But me? Oh, I do know what I’d like to do with you, Jake,” he said, lowering his tone with each passing word. In the silence of the closed museum his softly-spoken words sounded powerful.
Jake didn’t back away this time. Vars wished that they’d had this talk before, because no matter how much he wanted to push Jake at the wall and smell his delicious neck, this wasn’t the time or place for this.
“Maybe it’s pointless fighting it then.” Jake sighed, still curled up under Vars’s arm. “But, you know, on the down-low.”
Vars’s body flooded with heat, but he kept calm, holding Jake as his mind was weaving filthy scenarios of how they could include the magical collar in their playtime. “Isn’t it allowed for two prospects to fuck?”
Jake glanced away once they entered a room full of displays behind glass. “Yeah, but I don’t want the guys making dumb comments about it.”
Vars swallowed when they faced a tall cardboard cutout of a man in period clothes. The faint light coming through the window revealed red stains at the front of his vest, on his face, and even in the cheap white wig he was wearing. He held a white sign which read that one of the rooms used for the temporary exhibition contained disturbing themes and was available to minors only under parental supervision.
“Yeah, I get that,” he said absentmindedly. Unlike Knight, Vars preferred keeping his affairs private, but he disliked the fact that Jake felt so self-conscious about having entirely normal consensual sex at a place booming with promiscuous behavior.