Kris T. Bethke–Author of M/M Romance

**This week’s prompt is a car breaking down, a bickering couple, and a hot tow truck driver. Enjoy!**

“When the check engine light comes on, that means you’re supposed to check the engine.”

Clenching my jaw, I kept my gaze fixed straight ahead at the white smoke billowing from the hood of the car. I did not turn and look at the man who had shared my heart, bed, and body for the past nine years. If I did, I would probably claw his eyes out just for the patronizing tone. I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, then closed my eyes as the smoke seemingly got thicker.

“This is not my fault.”

Sam snorted out a derisive laugh. “This is exactly your fault. Jeremy, you didn’t service your car when it told you it needed it.”

“Don’t snipe at me,” I ground out. “The light came on when I was driving home yesterday, but then it was gone this morning when I started the car. How was I to know the car would start belching steam half way to your parents house?”

“You should have called the garage as soon as–” Sam’s words were cut off when a flashing yellow light cut through the darkness. His parents lived twenty-five miles out of town, and we’d been stuck on a back road that only had intermittent lights.

Sam turned and looked behind us as the tow truck came into view, it’s huge headlights illuminating his face. I turned in time to see his scowl morph into one of relief. He’d called his father to come meet us after we’d called Triple A, and I knew he was worried about keeping his dad out in the cold. Now, once the man arrived, we’d already be in the process of getting the car taken care of.

A big bulk of muscle hopped down from the cab of the tow truck, and I exited the car at the same time as Sam. The moment the tow truck drive came into view, I sucked in a breath. He was gorgeous, all cut muscle and broad shoulders. His face was a study in carved perfection, and his grin was blinding even in the dark. I had to lean against my sedan as my knees went a little weak.

“Hey there,” he called in a jovial sort of voice. “Looks like you’ve got problems. Can you pop the hood for me?”

I leaned back in to do as he asked, but when I straightened, Sam was right there, standing between us. He’d crossed his arms over his chest, puffed up even, and he was glowering at the tow truck driver. I tried to peer around Sam as the man leaned over to look at the engine, but Sam stepped back into me, pushing me back a step. I jabbed at his shoulder, but he didn’t move. Sam was almost as big at the driver was, six foot tall and bulky. There was no moving him if he didn’t want to move.

“What is with you?” I hissed in his ear. But Sam didn’t respond.

The driver stood up, and gave us another grin. “Blown head gasket. You got a place you want me to tow her?”

Sam answered before I could, giving him the name of the garage, and then all but ordered me to get anything of value out of the car so that we didn’t have to worry about it when it was at the shop. I grumbled as I did it, constantly glancing at Sam and the way he stood glaring at the tow truck driver.

Fifteen minutes later, my car was hooked up to the tow truck, and Sam’s dad had arrived. I’d put all my belongings into his dad’s car trunk, and then turned to thank the driver, but saw he was already getting into his truck. A moment later, he trundled off, my sedan rolling along behind.

I whipped around to glare at Sam. “What the hell was that all about?”

Sam glared right back. “You’re mine. And he can’t have you.”

Possessiveness. My knees went weak again, but for an entirely different reason. Sam knew he had nothing to worry about where I was concerned. I’d never stray. But that didn’t stop Sam from staking his claim every now and again. And every time, it made my heart pound and my stomach swoop. I loved that he had to show the world I was his.

I grinned and threw my arms around his neck. Sam softened immediately.

“He wasn’t going to take me. Never would be able to.”

“Damn right.” Sam sounded smug.

My grin grew even wider. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. Once we get home, I’ll show you just how much I’m yours.”

**Today’s prompt: a diner after a Broadway audition. Enjoy!**

It had been a long, fucking day. Made to feel even longer by waiting for most of it, attempting to keep myself limber, while I watched group after group of dancers head in to audition. Waiting my turn. I’d been in one of the last groups to preform for the director and choreographer. This was both a good and bad thing. Waiting was terrible, and everyone was tired. Including the powers that be, the ones who made the decisions. But by then they also knew what they didn’t want, and they often grouped the better dancers toward the end of the day. I had a pretty good reputation, having just come off a successful two year run in the ensemble of Fiddler. This new show was supposed to be groundbreaking, and getting in on the first run would go a long way to prettying up my resume.

“I’m starving, Jj!” Leigh whined, slinging her dance bag over her shoulder, and putting on a huge pout. “Teddy and Marcus are too. Let’s go eat.”

“That diner on 45th?” I suggested picking up my own bag and looking at the other three. Teddy rolled his eyes, and Marcus’s got big.

“Are you sure you want to go there?” he asked.

Leigh rolled her eyes. “He always wants to go there. He’s likes staring at the big dude behind the counter.”

“I like it,” I protested mildly, “because the food is good and it’s usually pretty quiet in there.”

“And you like staring at the dude.”

I ignored Leigh and led the way out of the theater and into the cool night air. It was going on ten, but then temp was still pretty balmy. The city kept the heat in. So even though I was tired, I didn’t have a problem walking the three blocks over and two up to get to the diner. The moment I stepped inside, I felt better. Some nourishing carbs to build back up the calories I’d lost, and some eye candy to boot, while I ate with my friends. Because Leigh was right; I did like looking at the big man behind the counter.

He gave us a nod and a wave as we traipsed inside and headed for a booth in the corner. There were only a couple of other occupied tables, and the man made sure everyone else was doing fine before making his way to our table. He graced us with a grin.

“Waters all around?”

“Yes please,” I said with a smile. He smiled back.

“Seen you a lot lately,” he mentioned casually, passing around menus. His gaze kept straying back to me.

“I like the food.” I caught his gaze, made my smile a little bit wicked. “I wanted to bring my friends.”

“Just come from an audition?” He crossed to the counter and grabbed four glasses and a pitcher of water, and then came back.

Marcus was staring wide-eyed, and Leigh was practically gaping. I grinned. “How’d you know?”

The man shrugged, but his smile was adorable. “You have that hungry look that’s a combination of both actual hunger and metaphorical. Usually when it’s rehearsal, it’s just exhausted and physical hunger.”

I laughed, and the man grinned. He left us with the menus for a bit so that we could look over the menus, and I pointedly ignored my friends. When the man came back to take our orders, he made a point of talking to everyone else before focusing on me. I tried not to read too much into his smile as I ordered a patty melt. He wrote it down, but kept his gaze on me.

“My name’s Sam.”

“Jason. Everyone calls me Jj.”

Sam’s smile widened.  “Well, Jason. If you’re interested, maybe one day soon, you and I can get a meal together somewhere else.”

My heart pounded hard at the surge of adrenaline and arousal. I nodded, smiling. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

“Good.” Sam rapped his knuckles on the table. “I’ll get your order in.”

I watched him walk away, the grin growing until my face hurt. I didn’t even care that my friends were teasing me. Despite the long day full of tense waiting, the audition had gone well and now I had a date with a pretty man.

I was going to call that a win.

**Today’s prompt: an argument after a game. I had to think about exactly how I wanted to do this one. Enjoy!**

I slammed through the front door, anger seething in my gut, and dropped my equipment in the mudroom. Behind me, Henri entered more sedately. I caught his wince out of the corner of my eye when I threw my stick into the corner. I should be more careful, but I was too angry to care. I stomped into the kitchen, then yanked open the refrigerator door. The bottles clanked and clinked dangerously. I grabbed a beer off the lower shelf, slammed the door shut, then banged the bottle down on the counter to pry off the top.

“Please stop banging around.” Henri’s voice was quiet as he followed me into the kitchen, his words slightly accented from his formative years spent in Quebec.

I pointed a finger at him, scowling. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

His answering scowl was adorable, but I wouldn’t let his pretty face sway me from my anger. I had every right be pissed off and I wasn’t going to stop just because he was pleading with me with his big brown eyes.

“What would you have me do, Christopher?”

Always my full name. Never Chris like everyone else in the world. Not for Henri. Not since the moment we met when I joined the team and certainly not since my apartment building collapsed and I moved in with him because I needed a place to stay. And his voice, saying my full name, caused shivers to roll down my spine. But I was angry, dammit!

“I was wide open! Half the night, standing there with a hand on my ass, while you fucking refused to pass me the puck!”

Henri’s eyes blazed, color rising high on his cheeks, and he straightened to his full six two height. “Their defensemen were twice your size. And gunned for you every time you did have the puck.”

“I can handle myself on the ice!” I threw up my hands, slopping beer out of the bottle in my hand. I slammed it down on the counter and rounded on Henri again, pushing into his space. “It’s not up to you to make those kind of decisions. You play the game!”

He reached out, almost too fast for me to track, and he grabbed my shoulders. He pulled me in, right up against him, and then slid his hands into my hair, tilting my head back so he could look down into my eyes. “I will not have you hurt.”

The ferocity in his voice, the utter conviction, made me catch my breath. What the hell? His grip softened, turned into holding on instead of gripping, and I licked my lips, watching him. His exhalation was explosive.

“You got something to tell me, Henri?” I whispered.

For a long moment, he was silent. And I was sure, for just a second, that he was going to pull away. Then he sagged against me, and I held on, wrapping my arms around his waist. Henri slid his fingers into my hair.

“Yes,” he said with conviction. “I want us to stop pretending we don’t love each other, stop being roommates, stop sleeping in separate rooms. I want you to come to bed with me right now, and stay there all night. I want you to be mine, not just my friend who lives in my house.”

I swallowed hard. He was offering me everything I’d been craving for months, the thing I only dared to acknowledge to myself in the dead of night. I’d hoped, sure. We’d been dancing around each other since the beginning, and we’d fallen into an easy rhythm of cohabitation. But I didn’t allow myself to give it solid thought, because I couldn’t be entirely sure.

But now he was staring at me, his eyes full of warmth and affection, desire and need, and a little bit of worry. I knew he was speaking the absolute truth. Henri never minced words.

The longer I was silent, the more the worry replaced the lust, and I couldn’t allow that. Not when I wanted him so much.

I lifted up onto my toes, closed the few inches between us, and kissed him.

**This week’s prompt: a road trip and a discovery. Enjoy!**

“I got the snacks!”

I chuckled over Jake’s enthusiasm. He was more excited about the trip than I was, but he loved to drive, and three days on the open road as we transversed the country sounded like heaven to him.Me? I wasn’t quite as excited as my best friend, but his eagerness more than made up for it. I was only doing this for him anyway. His grandmother’s ninetieth birthday could not be missed, and Jake decided to turn it into a vacation. Three days to drive there, three days to hang out and celebrate, and three days back. I still wasn’t sure how he’d talked me into going with him, but Jake was persuasive in the best of times. When there was something he really wanted? I couldn’t even try to stand in his way.

“Get a move on!” Jake called over the top of his car. I laughed again, and pushed off from the door. I turned and locked it, and then jogged down the steps with my bag slung over my shoulder. Jake popped the trunk, and I dropped the bag inside, then slammed it shut. Jake winced.

“Careful with her, now.”

I refrained from pointing out that the car was actually an inanimate object, and didn’t have feelings. But Jake was overly attached to his car, and I knew it. I patted the trunk consolingly, then climbed into passenger side. Jake shot me a huge grin.

“Thanks for coming with me. It means a lot to me.”

“Of course, Jake.” He’d been my best friend ever since he and his mother moved in next to my family. We’d been barely old enough to walk. And the past thirty years we’d been inseparable. He wanted me to go, of course I would.

He was my world

He pulled out onto the street and pointed the car toward the highway. Thirty minutes later, we were cruising the interstate at only a slightly higher speed than the limit. Jake turned up the volume on his music, classic rock, and I settled back, letting his smooth baritone wash over me, as the rhythmic whir of the tires on pavement lulled me. I wasn’t asleep, for all that it was seven o’clock in the morning, but I was soothed by the whole thing.

We rode like that for hours, occasionally making conversation, or pointing out a bit of interesting landscape, but mostly riding in comfortable silence. Jake ate like a machine, and I passed over his snacks as he wanted, whatever he was hungry for. We passed the day like that, him behind the wheel, me helping him navigate. Which, when I thought about it, was pretty much how we lived our lives. Eventually, the sun had slunk below the horizon, and Jake’s eyes began to droop.

“Maybe we should stop for the night, huh? Get some dinner?”

Finding a hotel was easy, and they had plenty of rooms available. I went to reserve two, but Jake’s face fell and he bumped me with his hip. “No need to waste the money, yeah?”

I turned to the clerk. “One room with two queens please.”

Upstairs in our room, Jake investigated everything, and found a nearby restaurant in the little book on the bedside table. It looked good to me, so I agreed. Jake wanted a shower first and I turned on the TV to find something to watch while I waited for him to be ready.

“Can you grab my bag of stuff out of my bag?” he shouted.

I rolled my eyes, chuckling as I pushed off the bed. It was a good thing I’d long ago become fluent in Jake-speak. I put his bag on the bed, then unzipped the duffel and sifted through the content until I found his toiletries bag. I shoved aside t-shirts, and there at the bottom was the bag. As well as a rope bracelet. My heart started to pound. The piece of hemp was worn and frayed, but still whole. I’d given him that when we were eight, and I’d learned how to tie sliding knot.

Why did he still have it? And more importantly, why did he pack it in his bag? He wasn’t an overly sentimental guy. So why did he have this piece of our childhood and why was he carrying it with him.

“Hey!”

I startled, then took his bag into the bathroom, dropping it onto the closed toilet lid without look at him and heading back into the room. I told myself to put the bracelet back away and pretend I didn’t know about it, but I couldn’t stop staring.

I was still holding it in my hand when Jake emerged from the bathroom.

He caught sight of me and froze. Then he gave me a lopsided, nervous grin. “So. Uh. I see you discovered my secret.”

I shook my head, holding it up. “Jake? I… uh?”

He smiled. “I don’t go anywhere without it. That’s the moment I knew I…” He looked scared for a second. Then cleared his throat. “The moment I fell in love and lost my heart. To you.”

“You never said anything,” I whispered.

“How could I? But, you know, you have the proof of it in your hand so…” He blew out a breath. “Luke?”

I walked forward, and he sucked in a breath. When I was right in his space, took his hand in mind and slipped the bracelet onto wrist. It barely fit, even extended all the way. But I managed to get it on, and in the process, I felt like I marked him as mine. Just as I had all those years ago.

I grinned. He grinned back. And then I noticed what he was wearing. I rolled my eyes, and nudged him toward his bag. “Get dressed. I believe we have things to discuss.”

He sighed, and kissed my temple as he walked by. “I guess we do.”

 

**The prompt was simple this week: Tom bails Greg out of jail. Enjoy!**

Tom watched as Greg collected his belongings. Keys, phone, wallet, pink hat with the pointy ears. Greg made sure he took possession of each item before signing the form the booking sergeant held out. He signed a few more forms, and Tom stood by, not saying a word until Greg was finished. Then Greg walked toward Tom, and just as Greg opened his mouth, Tom turned and headed out of the precinct. He didn’t have to look to know Greg was following behind him.

Silently, they made their way down the long parking lot to the car. Without a word, Tom got into the driver’s side and stared straight ahead, waiting for Greg to get in as well.

“Tommy, I’m sorry.”

Tom blew out a breath, spared a glance at Greg, before he started the car and got into motion.

“I can’t not protest, Tommy.” Greg’s voice was low and urgent. “I have to keep speaking out. I can’t be quiet. We can’t be quiet. That’s the only way anything will change.”

“I know, Greg.” Tommy turned onto a quiet street, wending his way toward home. “And I love how vocal you are. How hard you fight. It’s one of the things I’ve always admired about you. And if I hadn’t been on shift, I would have been right there with you.”

“I know! So what is with you? I said I was sorry.”

“I’m not mad.”

A beat of silence. “Really?” Disbelief laced Greg’s voice. “Because you haven’t said a single word to me since I called you for bail.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t love getting up in the middle of the night to bail my husband out of jail.” Tom shook his head. He reached out and grabbed Greg’s hand, squeezing his fingers. “I get it babe. I do. Of course I wish you hadn’t gotten arrested. But I’m not mad. Because if you don’t speak up, then who will?”

The tension melted from Greg’s shoulders, and he exhaled heavily, settling back in the seat. Tom refocused on the road, but he kept glancing at his husband. The man was beautiful, if tired and disheveled. And the pink hat looked good with his dark hair.

“You’re going to keep speaking out, and I love you for that. You have a voice when so many others don’t. But honey? Please can you try not to get arrested again? Bail money aside, coming to get you, I worry what could happen and…” Tom’s gut clenched as his mind raced with all the possibilities.

“Yeah,” Greg said quickly, soothingly. “Of course. I’ll do my damnedest. And pretty soon? Pretty soon all this protesting, speaking out, constantly barraging them, they’ll learn. They’ll learn we aren’t going to get tired and give up. That we aren’t going to go away. We’ll make a difference.”

Tom nodded. He wanted exactly that. Though he didn’t have the unwavering faith his husband had, he still held onto hope.

Pulling into their driveway just as the sun lightened the sky, Tom wearily exited the car and pulled Greg in close when the man pushed into his space. Maybe not the most pleasant way Tom had ever spent the night. But it was worth it. Important. He wasn’t in the position to do it himself, but he loved Greg with all that he was. He would support the man in everything he did.

Even bailing him out of jail.