Bad Habits

By Hollis Shiloh

Jack and Cameron have a good thing going. Jack is a burned out reporter and Cam is a fox shifter who gives him tips. They also meet up to play pinball...and to have sex. It's a nice arrangement, no messy feelings involved, no pressure that neither one of them needs.

 

Cam is frightened by the idea of falling in love—been there, done that, got the scars to show for it—and Jack's last relationship ended in a painful breakup. But things have been changing lately.

 

When there's only one guy in the world you really want, is it going to work to keep pretending it's just casual?

 

31,000 words

low heat

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spare Words Press
• Release date: Aug 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223782735

Book preview

Bad Habits

by Hollis Shiloh

About the story:

Jack and Cameron have a good thing going.  Jack is a burned out reporter and Cam is a fox shifter who gives him tips.  They also meet up to play pinball...and to have sex.  It's a nice arrangement, no messy feelings involved, no pressure that neither one of them needs.

Cam is frightened by the idea of falling in love—been there, done that, got the scars to show for it—and Jack's last relationship ended in a painful breakup.  But things have been changing lately. 

When there's only one guy in the world you really want, is it going to work to keep pretending it's just casual? 

31,000 words

low heat

Jackson

It was that kind of night.  The kind of night where I needed a tip—or something else.  Maybe I just wanted to see him.  That was dangerous, and I knew it.  Getting attached to sources—or whatever we'd become, in this little dance back and forth—not quite friends.  Not lovers.  Not exactly.

The bar wasn't busy, but I didn't see him right away.  I looked around cautiously, before heading towards the bar.

He's in the back with the pinball, the bartender told me in a bored voice.  Drinks for both of you?

I shook my head.  We'll see.

That was bad, then.  The guy knew I only came here for Cameron. 

Unsettled, I moved past the beaded curtain.  Vintage video game consoles loomed around the room in shadows, their electronic sounds loud and blending with each other.  A few steady game players were deep in the zone, but lots of the machines stood empty.  Sure enough, Cam was loitering by the pinball machines.  He detached from the shadows and stepped forward, lean and loose-muscled. 

Beat you at pinball, mister? he said, grinning.  He looked up at me.  In the dark, his eyes gleamed, but so much of him was still in shadow. 

Around us, the machines beeped, whirred, whistled, and screeched, endless scores and enticements to play.  But the man in front of me was more enticing than anything else.

Lean-hipped, long-legged, with broad shoulders, trimly muscled—he fit the bill for me, if I'd been asking.  But I hadn't.  He'd just walked into my life with that strut of his, and that little curve to his lips, and a light in his eyes that said he thought I might be kind of interesting, under certain circumstances.

Tonight he had about two days worth of scruff, and he was wearing his battered brown leather coat with the wool lining that was probably older than he was.  He had on jeans, flashy sneakers, and a tight black t-shirt.  His smile was more sinful than flirty.  It was definitely something.

He took hold of my jacket's lapels and gave them a little playful tug, pretending to straighten my jacket.  As if there was any hope of straightening anything about me.

Sure, I said, as if I didn't care one way or another.

His grin came and went, quick, sly, cuter than he could possibly know.  You got change? he asked.

I dug into my pockets and handed him a handful of coins.  He turned swiftly to the machine and fitted quarters in, got the game set up for two player mode, and took his turn first.  The rest of the change had disappeared into his pocket.  I leaned against the machine—not hard enough to tilt it—and watched him play. 

You got any tips for me? I asked.  Just to get that out of the way.

He hesitated.  I could kid myself that he was just concentrating on the game, but I knew it wasn't the truth. 

He settled on, Not especially.

Okay, this made it complicated.  Cam was a funny guy about this sort of thing.  If he gave me a tip, any tip at all, I paid for it, and that was all fair and square. 

But if we were having recreational naked time together, he wouldn't give me tips.  He didn't want money changing hands if we were having sex, and I agreed with him.  In principle, we needed to keep those things separate.  Fooling around shouldn't be part of the game of cat and mouse, reporter and source, whatever we were and whatever we weren't to each other.

So, he had a tip.  But it wasn't urgent.  And he'd rather spend some time with me than earn a few bucks from the paper.  Good to know.

I guess tips could wait, if we could have sex instead.  I tried to swallow my grin, and I think I mostly succeeded.

Cam was a fox shifter.  He was my informant, possibly my friend, and lately we'd been hooking up semi-regularly. 

I liked him more than you should like a source.  Getting curious about him was no good, because he was a secretive guy.  I still didn't know what he did to make a living, and it sure wasn't much of a living.  He was always bumming cigarettes or change, and I'd actually seen him with my own two eyes pull a McDonalds grift one time—the old scene where a scruffy homeless guy pretends to eat out of the trash, and a kind stranger can't help rushing in to buy him a full meal instead.  Of course, the food he was eating from the trash—a burger with a single bite out of it—was one he'd planted only a few moments before. 

It had made me laugh, but privately; it was such a hokey kind of scam to pull, for a guy like him, who was so edgily careful about how much money he accepted from me and under what circumstances.  There were times I sought him out just to shoot the shit, giving him softballs.  If he needed money, he could hit me up for it with some practically worthless tips.  He knew I'd give him at least a bit of money for almost anything. 

But he wouldn't do that.  It didn't matter how low in the heels he looked, he wouldn't go for it.  He'd shoot the shit back with me, give me nothing, and I wouldn't see him again for a while.  Then he'd turn up like a bad penny and not be out of my hair for days at a stretch.

I knew about some of his hangouts, a few of his friends, and almost nothing else about him: where he'd been born, who he trusted, where he lived, what he did with himself most of the time, or how he earned his rent. 

I knew he never seemed to have two nickels to rub together unless he'd just won a bet or beaten someone at pinball or any one of the other little games he liked to carry on at, including three card monte, which is so old hat that nobody falls for that anymore unless the patter is entertaining enough for you not to care it's a trick.  Which his was. 

But everything I ever saw him do seemed like a sideline and something he was too smart for, really.  I couldn't figure him out, but I liked him.  Trusted him, too, after a fashion.  Like I'd said, he was funny about what he'd take money for and what he wouldn't.  No fake tips, and no money at all anywhere in the vicinity of sex.

I guess because he was a fox shifter, and a lot of times people assumed foxes were willing to have sex for money.  If he'd decided not to do that, he'd always have to be damned careful to keep that clear in people's minds or they'd just assume things. 

Not me, I don't think.  But maybe I hadn't needed to think about it as much as he had, either.

I guess I should admit this: I liked him an awful lot.  But it never felt serious enough to send me running scared.  The last time I tried to have a relationship—a real relationship—I'd ended up crashing and burning so hard you could probably see it from space. 

Nathan was a nice guy, a respectable guy, and he'd honestly liked me.  I really thought he was the one, once.  But we'd ended up wishing we'd never met by the end.

Cam was probably a little younger than me.  It was hard to tell, but I thought he was, if not by much. 

When I was younger, I'd lived for my job.  I'd wanted to be a big time reporter.  I'd wanted the next big scoop.  I'd really believed in what we were doing.  Now, I knew a little more about how the sausage was made.  I'd seen good stories get killed.  I'd seen bad shit soft-peddled or hidden—basically covered up. 

There were folks in this town you didn't cross, if you played the newspaper game.  The same went for the cops and the judges and all the rest of it.  It hurt to see how dirty the game was played sometimes.

I guess when I was younger, I thought it wasn't a game at all.  Now I just thought I wasn't on the winning team, and the good guys sure weren't there either.

So, sometimes I ended up hanging around Cam—for tips, so he could earn a few dollars legitimately—or to play him at pinball.