All For Show: A Fake Boyfriend Gay Romance

by Rachel Kane

  It was agony, watching him walk to his room. I wanted to follow him, wanted to rush in, to throw him on the bed. But he had told me to wait, and so I waited, even though every second seemed to stretch to an almost delirious length, I was so hungry for him.

  But he returned to me. He had the now-familiar bottle of lube and set it beside us. He again wrapped himself around me, the weight of him against my thighs, his skin hot.

  I was already rock-hard when he began to pour the lube onto me. His fingers played in it, let it run down my shaft. It was so cool, a contrast to the heat from his body. He stroked me, his thumb firmly against the underside of my cock. I shuddered, my eyes narrowing with the pleasure of his steady hand.

  “What happened to my shy wallflower?” I whispered to him, but before I could finish the question, he had silenced me with his lips, the heat and softness of his tongue.

  I was so slick with the lube that there seemed to be a great distance between his hand and the skin of my shaft, a strange sensation when coupled with how fast his hand was moving, flashing over my cock to the point I worried I would come in his hand. Worry. Even now, even with him jacking me off, I didn’t want anything ruined because this might be the last time.

  But I think he saw the way I looked, how my face had gone from passion to concern because the look he gave me was as sympathetic as it was hungry. He kissed me again, then edged upward. He used his fingers guide me between his ass-cheeks, and I saw his eyes widen when he got me in just the right place.

  He sat a little back, wiggling his hips until my cock head touched his newly-slick hole. His arms were around my shoulders, holding me for support, as he eased himself down. Slowly. So slowly that I groaned at the feeling of it. He was so tight, and my cock was so thick and hard. In my fevered state, it seemed to take him hours to move all the way down my length, days, weeks of a pleasure that was almost painful.

  His eyes were closed, and he was concentrating hard on his descent. When he finally made it all the way down, his ass squeezing the base of my cock, his eyes opened, and he smiled at me. With a slow, undulating roll of his hips, he began to fuck me.

  I put my fingers against his belly, feeling the muscle tense and release as he moved atop me. I was at his mercy. He was in control of me. But it wasn’t like when others had been in control, it wasn’t manipulation, it wasn’t being ordered around under the guise of being supported. It was more basic than that. My cock was inside him, yet he could do anything he wanted with me. He could speed up, almost bouncing on my cock, paralyzing me as I tried to take in all the sensations; or he could slow down, almost unmoving, just the feeling of the muscles of his ass squeezing me, milking me, ready to be filled with my cum.

  He released his tight grip on my shoulders and neck, but now he pressed his hands against my shoulders, pushing me back against the sofa. I lay back, looking up at him, at the way the dim light played against his ridges of muscle, his sweat. The earnest look on his face as his eyes again closed, and he used his thighs to lift himself gently, then let himself back down onto me.

  His cock was so thick and heavy it couldn’t stand up, but its hardness rested against my belly as he fucked me. So I picked it up in my hand and began to rub it for him. I felt him shudder at my touch, at the combination of his cock and his ass being stimulated. It made him fuck me faster, the sensation of it. He started going harder down on my shaft, his thrusts quick and short. I almost couldn’t concentrate on jacking him, but managed to keep my hand wrapped around him, making long, slow strokes up his shaft, until the sides of my fingers met the flare of his cock head, then slowly traveling back down. With my other hand, I toyed with the skin of his sack, feeling his balls already tightening the same way mine were.

  “I can’t--I can’t--” he said, panting now, fucking me harder, and my hand began to move faster on his cock.

  I just couldn’t take it anymore, the tightness of his ass, the way it felt to be so deep inside him, it all combined with the thought of him coming, the way his cock was aiming right at my face.

  It happened all at once. His balls tightened up, and he groaned a long, loud sound that announced his climax; his semen shot out in a hot burst, splashing across my chest and uplifted face, sticking to my cheeks and lips. But his ass had clamped down on me, and I was coming, too, shooting my load up inside him, nowhere to go, no escape from this sensation. It felt like getting lost in a fire, felt like not being sure which body was mine and which was his, we were so locked together in this orgasm. I could taste the saltiness of his cum in my mouth, and for a strange moment imagined it was my own.

  He collapsed against me, finally, our bodies soaked with sweat, his chest now lying in the cum he’d left on me. Soft kisses, where he licked his cum off my lips before our tongues touched.

  I was overwhelmed by a feeling I could neither describe nor understand, because it was too many things at once. A certainty of the rightness of this, his weight against me, his tongue gently exploring mine. The heat of it, and some strange sense of melancholy.

  “I knew it,” I whispered to him.

  “What did you know?”

  “I knew I made a mistake back at the restaurant.”

  His soft laugh against my cheek. “You made all kinds of mistakes back there.”

  “Calling this fake. I knew I was in trouble the minute I said it. You’re trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you.”

  “Why?” he whispered. “Does this feel real to you?”

  I felt him give my cock another squeeze. My arm slid around his back, pulling him even tighter against me.

  “I’ve never felt this real,” I said, but he had already dozed off, his cheek against my shoulder.

  14

  Nat: The Trouble With Being Real

  Do you ever have that dream where you are the king of a strange land brimming with pyramids and exotic trees and tall, muscular men to fan you and feed you? And sometimes they lean over and gently brush your face off with a cloth? And sometimes they keep doing it, over and over and over and--

  “Mr. Thurgood, yuck!” I said, my eyes opening to find a Boston Terrier eagerly giving me morning-breath kisses. I didn’t know him very well, but he was clearly agitated about something, eager to wake us up. “Owen, I think your dog needs to go out.”

  “Mmph?” Owen said. His face was kind of wedged under my shoulder. Actually, I was surprised he hadn’t smothered in the night the way he’d worked himself there. He freed his breathing parts and said, “Oh. Wow, I am stiff from a night on this couch.”

  “You were stiff during the night on this couch.”

  “Hey, not in front of Mr. Thurgood. He has very delicate and refined feelings.”

  But what Mr. Thurgood was trying to tell us wasn’t that he wanted to go out--it was that someone was trying to get in.

  I heard the key in the lock and froze in horror. “Oh shit, it’s the show!”

  “They have a key?”

  “They needed to get in and out while I wasn’t here! Joan told me they would just let themselves in this morning!”

  “And you didn’t think to mention that before we fell asleep in a puddle of our own sin-fluids?”

  We both tried to spring up at the same time, but we had gotten so tangled up both trying to fit on the couch in the night, that it was nearly impossible, and the best we could do is sit up, as the door swung open and Joan walked in.

  “Anybody here?” she whispered, then laughed as Mr. Thurgood ran up to her for a greeting. “Hey boy, are your daddies at--”

  There was no way to cover up. Our clothes had been flung all over. When she turned her head, she saw us, naked, tousled, entangled. My hands flew down to cover my crotch. Owen’s raised up to cover his nipples. “Further down!” I whispered, and he gasped and used one hand to cover his cock while his arm covered his chest. I rolled my eyes.

  “You know, we’ve had fake relationships on the show before,” she said. “Usually they don’t go to quite these lengths to appear real.”
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br />   The crew started to come in, and I was blushing so hard I felt like I might catch fire, but she shooed them back out. “We have a ton to do today, boys. We need you out of here entirely. We’re putting in all the new equipment and will film the big reveal this evening. So I’m giving you 30 seconds to get decent, then we’re coming in, whether you’re naked or not.”

  She shook her head and walked back out.

  “Oh god, today’s the day!” I said eagerly. “Finally, a new kitchen!”

  Owen looked like he wanted to say something--in fact, his face had taken on a very serious cast.

  “Uh-oh,” I said, “what’s going on?”

  He leaned in and whispered, “It’s my cock. It’s hard again. Do you think she saw it?”

  I reached down and gave it a squeeze. “Holy hell, where did that come from?”

  “Maybe I’m an exhibitionist and never realized it?”

  “Can you make it go away? We’ve got to grab some stuff and get out of here.”

  “Nah, she said we have thirty seconds, that seems like enough time to squeeze in a quick fuck, doesn’t it?”

  I laughed and got up from the couch, but not before giving his cock one last, long stroke.

  Getting dressed in record time, I brushed teeth and put some stuff in my hair and pulled on my old sneakers. “Another day without much to do,” I said.

  “Lucky you,” said Owen. He was already dressed and was getting Mr. Thurgood’s leash.

  “Why don’t you come with me and do nothing?”

  His face lit up. “Really?”

  “Yeah! Call in sick. We’ll go get a proper shower at your place, and then go explore the town. It’s a weekday, it’ll be totally dead, we’ll have the place to ourselves.”

  “Do you hear that, Mr. Thurgood? No office today!”

  “This really isn’t fair,” I said.

  “In my defense, it’s just a rental.”

  “But it’s not fair! Look at that view! You can see the ocean!”

  Owen’s place was fantastic. I don’t mean that it was expensive or anything like that. The apartment itself was pretty simple, one of those cinderblock duplexes up the hill. But inside was crisp, clean and white, and he was on the right side of the hill to get the full view of the ocean below. We cranked open the jalousie windows to let in some of that fresh sea air, and it was amazing.

  “You spend so much time a short walk from the ocean,” I said, “that sometimes you forget it’s there. Like it’s just there for the tourists to look at.”

  “If you sit at the right angle, at night you can see the lights from the pier, and sometimes hear the music.”

  I turned to him. “What’s it like, having an apartment you don’t have to apologize for?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve done anything with the place. It’s nice, I’ll admit, and I’m glad Harris found it for me after we broke up, but I’m even scared to put stuff up on the walls. It feels really transitory to me. Like maybe I can’t stay.”

  I looked around and could see what he meant. He hadn’t decorated, so much as unpacked. It was like looking at a dorm room. The futon took up a good portion of the living area, flanked by milk crates playing the part of shelves and tables. Cinderblocks and 2x4s made up a bookcase. “You have books!” I said.

  He scrunched his brow. “Did you think I was illiterate?”

  I thought back to my conversation with Rhody, about whether Owen had proper tastes in books and music...but didn’t mention that to him. Instead, I did what I always do, went to examine spines, except instead of hiding from a party, this time I was eager to see what I could learn about Owen.

  He had a shelf given over to Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh and even John Mortimer. His copy of Brideshead Revisited looked tattered and well-loved, its spine almost illegible from the many times it had been opened. Rumpole of the Bailey wasn’t quite as read. The Code of the Woosters was held together by scotch tape. “You’re rough on books,” I said.

  “It’s the humidity,” he said. “It’s hell on them. But I don’t want to buy new editions. I feel like I can just drop any of those open and know exactly what’s on each page.”

  I knelt and looked at the next shelf. “Jane Eyre? Vilette? Freaking Middlemarch? Have you read all these?”

  He snorted. “I think proper etiquette would have you say that without quite so much surprise in your voice.”

  “But you were sitting there last night talking about how inadequate you feel compared to some people! Yet you’re well-read, you’re smart, you’re funny, you’re hot as hell, you’ve got this great apartment...why are you single, again?”

  He had an uncertain smile. His hand reached out and touched the spines of his books. “So, about that... Am I single?”

  I took his hand. “You said not to talk about our feelings. So I was trying to spare you how confused and lost I feel.”

  “I’m feeling pretty lost too.”

  Our fingers were twining. “I like you a lot, Owen.”

  “I thought you said we were friends with benefits.”

  I gave him a playful push. “That’s what you said. I never said there were any benefits. Ask anybody. It’s more like friends with detriments when you’re with me.”

  I had given him that push, but our hands were still joined, and he used that fact to pull me back in. He kissed me and said, “Let’s not be friends.”

  “Enemies with benefits?”

  “Let’s maintain a staunch neutrality towards one another. We’ll be like two countries that have just spent ten years building a diplomatic treaty together.”

  “Mm, international tensions,” I murmured into his ear.

  “Trade imbalances.”

  “Expelled ambassadors.”

  “You want to expel your ambassadors on me?”

  “I want to fill up your embassy with my long, thick charge d’affaires.”

  He looked at me and blinked and kissed me again. “You are the most random person I have ever met. Why are you so shy out there in the world? If you ever said these things to a group of people, they would love you.”

  “Maybe I’ll steal some of your confidence for myself.”

  I could have spent the whole day talking to him, saying absolutely nothing, just letting our lips move as a break between kisses. I could have lounged on his futon next to him, our bodies coming together, falling away, twenty-four hours of lazy lovemaking. Picturing it in my mind was starting to get me hard, and I pulled him in for a deeper kiss.

  Then his phone rang.

  “Timing,” he whispered against my lips.

  It rang again.

  “You don’t have to get it,” I said.

  We weren’t kissing anymore, just standing very still with our lips together.

  It rang again.

  “What if it’s an emergency?” His voice was muffled.

  “When has it ever been an emergency? Nobody calls with an emergency. That’s what police and ambulances are for.” But our lips parted, just long enough for him to check his phone.

  “Oh god, it’s Harris,” he said.

  “See? Let it go to voicemail. No emergency.”

  “It’s weird, he doesn’t usually call during the mornings. He’s usually busy at work.”

  I felt a little flare of fear. I don’t know why. That was ridiculous, was it jealousy? It was something deeper than that. That feeling where you’ve got something you want, but you feel it being pulled from your hands. I didn’t want to feel this way. I didn’t want to play tug-of-war with Owen’s heart.

  It was such a relief when he put the phone back in his pocket. “I’ll talk to him later,” he said.

  “Good.” I smiled. “This morning should be about us.”

  “Us? Oh, is there an us now?” His arms snaked around my waist and suddenly I was close to him again. “Tell me all about this strange creature, the Us.”

  “It’s terrifying and alien,” I said, “with four legs, four arms, and two cocks.”
>
  “Two cocks? Then how does it--”

  His phone dinged with a text message tone.

  “You’re kidding me,” he said.

  It dinged again.

  “Christ, he’s not going to let you have a moment’s peace,” I said. “Just answer it. Ugh. I’ll sit here on the futon and glare at you balefully while you get rid of him.”

  He pulled his phone back out, and his face fell. “Oh no,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He showed me the message: Plz call. Sergio broke up with me.

  All I could think was, lucky Sergio. Maybe he’d seen through some manipulation Harris was doing to him. Or maybe he thought it weird that Harris couldn’t go five minutes without talking to his ex. I sure found it weird. If I broke up with somebody, the first person I’d go to is Rhody, not my previous ex.

  Maybe there were different rules for Golden People. Maybe you were just supposed to drop everything and show them tons of sympathy whenever anything went wrong in their perfect lives. They were not used to things going wrong.

  Damn, I thought to myself, bitter much? Owen and Harris had remained friends, now Harris had bad news. I needed to stop reading so much into everything. It was just this newness, the budding of what might be a relationship between me and Owen--it was a delicate thing, and I wanted to protect it!

  Owen called him. “Hey. Yeah, I saw it. What happened? He didn’t. He didn’t. God, what did you do?”

  I looked around the room. Other people’s phone conversations were kind of dull, even when you were interested in the topic. The envious part of me wanted to know every word Harris was saying. The more realistic part of me just wanted him to hang up so Owen and I could get on with our day. I leaned back against the futon, and Mr. Thurgood jumped up into my lap. “See, you’re loyal to your new friend,” I whispered to him. He cocked his head to the side and gave me a reassuring snuffle.

  “No, I took the day off,” he said into the phone. “No, no, not like that. No, it’s complicated. No, I--oh, hold on.”

  He muted his phone and turned to me. “Huge horrible favor to ask.”