Shannon let out a sharp laugh. "Are you offering to be my date to piss off my ex?"
"Yes. Well, that's fifty percent of it."
"Okay, color me curious. You want a beer?"
Reginald's shoulders dropped slightly, like a weight had been removed. "I'd love one, thank you."
Thoroughly intrigued, Shannon hastily put away the groceries before pulling out two Modelo, uncapping them, and handing one over. He motioned Reginald to follow him into the living room, where he cast a colorful assortment of throw pillows he'd made in a sewing frenzy one weekend to the floor before sweeping an arm out in invitation to sit.
"Did you make those too?" Reginald asked, nodding at the pillows.
Shannon had never been so grateful that his skin was dark enough it was never glaringly obvious when his face turned red. "Yeah. I wanted to play with my new sewing machine and pillows are easy."
"Depends on the pillow," Reginald said. "I've seen my dad on the verge of killing clients because of the number of ruffles and buttons and lace involved."
"That's not a pillow. That's an atrocity."
Reginald gave that adorable half-smile again. "That's what he says."
Shannon really wanted to know more about this dad who sewed pillows for a living, because that was not at all what he'd pictured of someone named Gaylord-Jones, but he made himself stay on topic. "So why do you need a date to Winter Wonderland?" And what was the world coming to that people weren't lining up for the privilege?
"Probably the same reason Corey did something as stupid as cheat on you with a shoe store heiress," Reginald said with a sigh.
"I thought you didn't know about his girlfriend."
"After I ran into you, I called my mom. She had the gossip for me in ten."
Shannon grunted at that. Mothers were all the same.
Reginald grinned, absently petting Goldfish as he wandered over and demanded attention. "Anyway, the head honcho of our company is coming to visit, and reliable rumors say he's looking for a replacement CFO. He's all about settling down, family, white picket fence, blah blah blah."
"Uh, no offense, but usually that type of dude isn't terribly fond of the men in his life having Black, bisexual boyfriends."
Reginald made a face. "When it comes to other members of the top tier, you're not wrong, though they're smart enough not to say it when their company president and CEO is within hearing. Thomas isn't like that. His wife is Latina, he's got five kids, two of them queer, and his brother-in-law is a decently famous drag queen in Boston. He's all for the perfect family image because he doesn't want yahoo players who zip around in sports cars and have to pay off escorts with naughty pictures on their phones."
"Um. It's always the married dudes pulling that shit."
"Look, I'm just telling you what he thinks. I never claimed it made any sense."
"Fair enough." Shannon tilted his head. "So you want us to be dates to Winter Wonderland, where you'll help me make Corey fucking furious, and I pretend to be your doting boyfriend expecting an engagement ring any time? Am I reading this proposal right?"
Reginald grinned in a way that even Shannon would have called flirty, and he hadn't known Corey was flirting with him until he'd abruptly asked if he'd like to sneak out back of the bar to make out. This grin was probably just wishful thinking, though. If the man had been interested, he'd have just asked Shannon out, not laid out a scheme of mutually beneficial shenanigans.
Shit, there were much worse ways to spend a Saturday. Shannon took a long pull on his beer, then held out his hand. "Deal."
"Awesome. Thanks, man," Reginald said, shaking his hand enthusiastically. There were callouses, a surprising strength, not the soft hands he'd expected of a man in a three-piece suit on the weekend. Reginald kept surprising him. Maybe Shannon needed to work on his assumption making. "Want to grab a pizza or something? Get to know each other a bit?"
Shannon snorted. "No way am I leaving this house again. You want pizza, friend, we're ordering in."
Reginald's face filled with surprised delight. "Fine by me. Mind if I grab my bag and change out of this suit?"
"You just carry a bag of clothes with you everywhere?"
Laughter. "No, I was planning on going to the gym after I did my grocery shopping and brought some clothes to change into before I hit the bars or whatever after."
"That sounds utterly exhausting. Who does shopping and the gym and the bars all in a row like that? I'm ready to go to bed just thinking about it."
"I'm not very good at holding still," Reginald said with a grin and wink before he finished his beer.
"What do I call you?" Shannon blurted. "Shit. I mean, Corey always called you Gaylord with a particular viciousness, except when he was talking to you, and then he said Jones as nicey-nice as he could manage. What name do you like to be called?"
"Yeah, that tracks. Most people call me Reggie. A handful of friends call me Criss. Business associates that don't hate me call me Jones. The ones that do hate me, as you might have guessed, emphasize the Gaylord in my stupid, all-white elite boarding school name."
Shannon peered at him, frowning slightly.
"What?"
"None of that answers my question. What do you like to be called?"
Reginald opened his mouth, closed it, and then sat there looking adorably flummoxed. "Nobody's ever asked me that. I just go with whatever people call me. I always liked Crispin best. It's more 'poor kid who got into the elite boarding school,' less 'Reginald the 5th, who's probably a racist fuck.'"
Shannon laughed. "Shannon Weiss, an honor to make your proper acquaintance, Crispin. I just go by Shannon, unless you're my parents, who call me 'where have you been' and 'what did you do this time?' with a sidenote of 'why weren't you at church?'."
"My family is technically Catholic, but we're very bad at it, to the unrelenting disappointment of my grandparents. On both sides, so that's fun. Anyway, I'll go grab my bag if that's cool, then we can order food. I'm starving." He took their empty beer bottles, and a few from the previous night, with him as he left. That was already more chores than Corey had ever done.
Scrubbing at his face, silently calling himself twelve kinds of stupid, Shannon made quick work of tidying up the living room and getting more beer. He also went to grab his sketchbook and pencils, because damn it, if all he got out of this weird bargain in the end was sketches of Crispin and his many beautiful smiles, he would take that win.
Crispin reappeared hauling a large, dark blue duffel bag, something that seemed way bigger than was needed for the gym, but Shannon only told him where the guest room was and opened up his sketchbook.
He'd just started to sketch those pretty, pretty eyes when Crispin came back, and fucking hell, the man shouldn't be allowed to wear those jeans. Or that entirely too tight t-shirt. Or have all those tattoos. Shannon's mouth had gone as dry as Death Valley. "Um. Nice tats."
"Thanks," Crispin said, with a smile that was almost shy, of all things. "Been working on them since college." He laughed sheepishly. "Even lived out of my car longer than I needed to because the tats mattered more to me. Thankfully, those days are long behind me."