All For Show: A Fake Boyfriend Gay Romance

by Rachel Kane

  As much as he might’ve liked the feeling, I didn’t like this barrier between my hand and his skin, so I slid my hand into his robe. I felt him thicken and tighten in my fingers. As I reached his tip, I felt a little drop of precum, and I spread it with my finger all around his slit.

  “I’m glad this doesn’t require much concentration,” he said, putting some ice into a shaker.

  His cock was rising with my touch, now poking out through the robe. I continued to stroke him, feeling his cock grow hotter and longer in my grasp. He had poured the liquors into the shaker and was giving the thing a hard, rhythmic shake, which I tried to mimic on his cock, which caused him to laugh and buck his hips. But then all pretense of drink-mixing was over. He turned around to face me, and I knelt before his jutting cock.

  I began to open my mouth, but then I sniffed. I laughed.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You smell like that bath gel.”

  “Oh god, don’t remind me of our disastrous first tub bath. It’s ancient history!”

  I stuck my tongue out and licked the underside of his cock. “Ew, it’s bitter,” I said.

  “Maybe you’ll just have to keep using your hand!” he offered helpfully, but I had another idea. I reached up and grabbed an ice cube from the bucket on the bar.

  “I’ll wash you off with this,” I said.

  “Um, Nat, I don’t know--oh--oh--”

  I ran the cube up and down his shaft, and was delighted that he shivered, but didn’t pull away. As the cube melted against his heat, drops slid down his shaft, dripping onto the floor. I tugged his cock downward and continued to run the ice over him, watching his precum mix with the water drops. The cold wasn’t making him shrink, either; his cock stayed hard, even as he writhed and gasped. Once the cube was gone, I grabbed another and popped it into my mouth.

  “Oh no,” he whispered.

  My lips found him, encircled him. The water had washed off much of the flavor of the gel, and now I could taste the musk of his skin again. The ice was slippery inside my mouth, and I used my tongue to roll it around him, sucking on him very gently, my mouth sliding down his length with an excruciating slowness.

  When I reached his base, and let the cube just barely touch his scrotum, he whimpered. “Not the balls, please. Too much.”

  I’ll admit I was tempted to come off his cock and suck one of his balls into my mouth with the ice cube, just to see him react, but I didn’t. I kept the cube on his shaft. There wasn’t enough room in my mouth for the ice, the meltwater, and his fat cock, and water began to drip from my lips, down his shaft.

  But the cube couldn’t survive for long with all that heat, and soon it was gone, leaving nothing but his heat in my mouth. He seemed to find the contrast refreshing, because now his hips really began to buck. He grabbed the back of my head and shoved me forward. A moment ago I had control of this situation, but now he was taking control. I felt his cock hit the back of my throat and swallowed to accommodate it.

  We both understood what was happening. The fear and anger and jealousy and discomfort was coming out through the sex, through a violence only slightly hidden away; my hoping to hurt him a little with the ice, and his hoping to hurt me a little with his thrusts. Maybe it was a way of taking out our aggressions on one another, but it felt deeper than that, more like we were communicating just how hurt we both felt by the events of the day, because I knew I wanted to accept every hard, painful thrust he could give me, to let him know I could take all his pain, to give him some kind of solace.

  His hands were on the sides of my head, pressing me forward. He was so thick, my lips could barely fit around him. He pushed deep into me, and my eyes watered. I reached up and gripped his ass, digging my nails in, hearing his gasp as he felt the pain. In return, he shoved even deeper in.

  It couldn’t last, not at this speed and intensity. He pulled me towards him until my lips were at his base, and his full length was in my mouth. His whole body tensed. When he came, I felt his load shoot straight at my throat. I swallowed quickly to keep up with it all. He grunted and shoved his hips forward, his seed pouring out of him. My lips were at his base, letting every inch of him inside me. Not a drop was going to get lost this time. I swallowed it all, feeling his thickness pulse rhythmically against my lips.

  Finally, after taking shot after shot of his cum, I slowly pulled off his softening shaft, licking as I went. I looked up at him from my kneeling position, and he reached down to help me up. We kissed, and his hands slipped into my robe, gently removing it from my shoulders.

  I was already hard as a rock, and needed some way to release all the tension that had built up inside me. I didn’t care whether it was his mouth, his ass, nothing mattered but that I was entwined with him. He took my hand--he in his open robe, me in my bare skin--and began to lead me to the bedroom.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Is it room service?” I asked, gathering my robe from the floor. I was instantly frustrated, ready to boil over with my need for him.

  “Must be,” said Owen. He tightened his robe and went to the door. Looking through the peephole, he said, “Oh, shit.”

  My heart sank. “Who is it?”

  But I already knew.

  “It’s Harris,” he said.

  “Of course it is.” I shook my head, then walked to the bathroom and picked up the clothes I had been wearing earlier. My hard-on was completely gone at this point. As the doorbell rang again, I pulled on my pants and shirt.

  “I’ll get him to go away,” said Owen.

  “You know what, it doesn’t matter. Let him come in. I’ll give him a piece of my damned mind.”

  The look Owen gave me was a combination of many things. Surprise, definitely. Gratitude. Fear. Maybe he was wondering how Mr. Shy and Retiring was going to take on his juggernaut of an ex. We’d find out in a minute, I guessed.

  People are so strange. When Harris walked in, he didn’t gawk at the suite like we had. He didn’t seem impressed by the fine furnishings, or the view, or the way the firelight flickered and made the room seem vast and peaceful. He didn’t even acknowledge Mr. Thurgood, who had woken up on his entrance and begun to bristle a bit, perhaps remembering the tension of earlier. I suddenly found myself with a protective Boston by my side; he wasn’t to the point of growling, but he clearly knew something was wrong.

  Harris took in none of this. Now, clearly he was drunk, but he also had a serious look on his face. He stared at Owen, still wrapped up in a robe, then at me.

  “We need to have a talk,” Harris said. “The three of us.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.

  He pointed at me. “You are operating from a set of false assumptions. You don’t know Owen, not really. You don’t understand that he is a very vulnerable man.”

  “Oh for god’s sake,” said Owen. “You’re plastered. I hope you didn’t drive here.”

  “I’m allowed to worry,” said Harris.

  “You’ve already expressed your worry,” I said. “Now it’s time for you to go.” I was starting to wonder if I was going to have to take him down. He was bigger than me, but unsteady. One good punch...oh, who was I kidding. I’ve never thrown a punch in my life.

  “I would be happy to go if I had a single indication either of you understood the seriousness of what is happening here. There are parts of Owen’s past that I am sure he has not confided in you, Nat. Parts of his past that are relevant for any decisions you make about being in a relationship with him.”

  Owen seemed frozen in place. His face showed so much pain. “Please don’t do this, Harris.”

  “I wouldn’t have to if you had been upfront with him, to begin with. In the beginning, I wasn’t concerned about what was going on. I thought perhaps this...this plot you two were involved in would provide some needed structure for Owen’s life. Might get him to be out around people.”

  “I’m around people all the time,” Owen said quietly.

  I had no
idea what was going on, but found myself scared of hearing any more. “Harris, leave. Now.”

  “I won’t. Because you two decided that a fake relationship wasn’t good enough. You had to embark on something real. Now, don’t deny it.”

  “I’m not denying it,” I said. “I really like Owen, and you’re really interfering with that. He’s told me what a manipulator you are. How you like to control--”

  “Nat, don’t,” Owen said.

  “No, I think I need to say this. It needs to be out in the open, so Harris can leave us the fuck alone, instead of lingering like a dark cloud over me every second of the day. You’re ruining this for us, Harris. This should be a magical time for us, and instead, we’re spending every moment thinking about you. I don’t even know you! Why are you relevant to my relationship at all?”

  A slow laugh from Harris. I guess I’ve been conditioned by years of movies to expect that it would’ve been an evil laugh, but it wasn’t. It was quiet, resigned, with a shake of his head. “You haven’t told him anything, have you?” he said to Owen.

  “I was going to. When the time was right.”

  “Has he told you that I pay for his apartment?” Harris asked me. “That I pay for his phone, for all his bills?”

  “I don’t see why that’s relevant,” I said uncertainly. I glanced at Owen. “Although I imagine that’s going to stop now, isn’t it? You’ve got a job, Owen. You can pay your own way.”

  His hands were deep in the pockets of his robe, and he was pulling the robe even tighter around himself in self-protection.

  “How is he going to do that?” said Harris. “He works two days a week at the paper. The rest of the time...what do you do, Owen, aside from being Thursday Night Movie Guy and Relaxed Saturday Guy?”

  “That’s not a fair question,” said Owen.

  Harris pointed at Mr. Thurgood. “I got him the dog so that he’d be forced to get out of the house more often. I have tried so hard to support him, Nat, but now I suppose that will be your job. It’ll be you, staring at him as he lies in bed all day, urging him to get up, listening to him talk about how hopeless he feels. It will be you, aching to go out and see friends and have fun, only to have to feel the guilt when he is too depressed to leave his room. And it will be you, when he does go out on one of his artificial visits to the dog park or the Chinese restaurant, who feels just how restricted life is, when your lover is only capable of going to safe places that he has already been to a thousand times, when he is too depressed and anxious to go anywhere else, ever.”

  Owen shook his head and looked at me desperately. “I’m doing so much better now. Don’t listen to him. We talked about this, Nat. You know me. I’m doing all the...all the things I’m supposed to do.”

  “For how long?” asked Harris. “How long until the stress becomes too much and you have another breakdown? How long until you’re back in bed for days at a time? Is that what you’re asking Nat to take on?”

  I felt a strange tightness in my throat, and a weight on my chest--the weight of all the things Owen had not told me. Had he been hiding things from me? Or had there simply not been time for him to tell me about his bad times, his anxious and depressed times? We’d both hinted at our emotional turmoil, but Harris made it sound like so much more.

  I wanted to turn to Owen and ask him to tell me everything. I wanted to, but not in front of Harris. I would never ask that in front of him.

  Harris said to him, “Everything I’ve done for you, everything I’ve done, and yet you’re still making the same stupid impetuous mistakes that wind up leaving you miserable. Don’t you ever learn?”

  Harris was going to have to get out, or I was going to shove him out. I was getting ready to do just that, when Owen, looking frantically between Harris and me, finally shook his head. “Fuck this,” he said. “I’m not...I’m not...I’m not the subject of some medical experiment! I’m not going to stand here and be dissected, or pitied!”

  He grabbed his clothes, then he clicked his tongue for Mr. Thurgood. Still wearing his robe, he left the suite and slammed the door.

  “Oh my god, what did you just do?” I said to Harris, rushing past him. I threw open the door and looked down the hall. “Owen, come back!”

  I saw a glimpse of his white robe and the closing doors of the elevator. I ran like hell. I got my hand between the elevator doors before they could completely shut. “Owen,” I said. “Forget about it. Harris is evil.”

  “I saw your face,” he said to me. “I saw how you reacted when he told you the story of how horrible I am. But more than that, I felt your tension all night. It was like I couldn’t do anything right. You were judging me, just because I have an ex who is controlling. Well, now you know why he’s so controlling. If he weren’t, I’d be living on the streets or something. It’s not much of a fair trade, but at least I have a place to live.”

  “I don’t care, I promise I don’t--”

  “But you do, Nat. I could see it in your expression. You don’t like trouble. You don’t like complications. Even now, I still think you’re jealous of Harris.”

  Was that true? Was I? The hold Harris had over Owen infuriated me...but was that jealousy? Did I want the same kind of hold on Owen’s life, on his attention?

  “I’m not,” I said, a note of pleading in my voice. “None of this is about reacting to you. You’re fine, whatever you have going on. It’s Harris. Don’t you see what that speech was? It was to warn me off, so he could get you back.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to worry about it. I’m taking my trouble and I’m going home.”

  “Wait!”

  He shook his head, and the doors slowly began to close. “I’m sorry you had to find out how gross and complicated my life is, Nat. But I’m not going to be humiliated again.”

  Then he was gone.

  17

  Owen: Truth

  At night, down by the rocky shore, the moon and city lights combine to make the black waves glisten as they crash. They are almost invisible, other than their highlights, but they are not silent. Their noise takes up the entire world.

  The rocks were cold and wet, and dangerously slippery. Mr. Thurgood was back a ways, back where the rocks were dry, but he whimpered at me, wanting me to come back where it was safe.

  A year ago, I would have sat on these rocks and thought about nothing but slipping down into the water, never to rise again. How dramatic. Had anything really changed in my life since then? Like real, fundamental changes? I was still hanging on by a thread. Still unable to navigate my life like normal people.

  No, no, that wasn’t true. As I sat there shivering, the cold working its way up through me, I had to tell myself that things had changed a lot. Even though Harris had been propping me up, I was working, I was getting out and doing social things...and had even found someone who liked me. Someone who didn’t look at me funny when I tried to cover my anxiety with jokes.

  And now that was over.

  It didn’t matter that Nat had come running down the hall to stop me, although I don’t think I could really explain why that was. I am sure he would try to be kind. Try to be understanding. He would probably have long conversations with me and go to great pains to give me enough room to heal.

  In other words, our entire relationship would turn into therapy. How’s that for fun times? It was bad enough having Harris constantly looking in on me in concern...how much worse would it be to have Nat looking at me like that? I wasn’t sure I could take it.

  Fucking Harris. How could he do this to me?

  God, what if Nat was right, and this was a ploy from Harris to get me back? I didn’t think that was true though. Harris likes control, likes to be the big perfect benevolent superhero in every situation, whether it’s stitching nerves back together, or stitching my life back together. He didn’t want me. He just wanted to be right about me.

  And who knows, maybe he was right. Maybe I’m not healthy enough for a relationship. Maybe, as hard as Nat tr
ied to make it work, everything would just fall apart.

  But it would have been nice to have had the chance. To have taken the risk, and felt that hope that this time, things would be different. I’ve worked so hard on myself in the last year. I’ve tried so much. Didn’t that count for anything?

  I almost couldn’t hear the phone, over the sound of the waves. I’d silenced it earlier, and now it was just buzzing in my pocket. Was it Nat? Oh god, what if it was? Could I calm myself down enough to talk to him? Could I explain everything?

  Could I forget the confused and angry look on his face for long enough to have that conversation?

  I yanked out my phone, looked at the screen...and sighed. “Hello, Sergio.”

  “Owen? Owen, is that you? There’s a lot of noise on the line. Listen, I need to tell you about Harris--”

  The rocks almost did me in. I’d twisted around to get my phone out of my pocket, and must have unbalanced myself; the rocks were so wet and slippery that I tumbled down. With a yelp, I found myself getting scraped, my hands scrabbling to find purchase. My phone clattered over the rocks and into the black ocean. I could feel the freezing spray of the dark waves on my skin. Mr. Thurgood was really worried and began barking. I saw him take a tentative step on the rocks.

  “No! Stay!” I said. But he wanted to be brave. He knew bad things were happening, and his instinct was to save me.

  The waves kept crashing, and as I lay there on the rocks, my hands trying to find some place to hold myself that wasn’t too slippery or sharp, I actually laughed. Laughed really loud, in fact. Wouldn’t it be ironic if I just fell in the water, all because Sergio wanted to talk about Harris? Here I was, trying to figure out my life, and it might be over, poof, like that. I always knew Harris was bad for me.

  Not going to happen. I didn’t care if I had to live alone, with no help, with no friends and no love; I was going to live. I’d worked too hard to lose it now. I managed to get one foot wedged firmly on a stone, and pushed myself up. It was hard, but I managed to get myself steady, climbing until I’d reached the safe part of the rocks. Mr. Thurgood, overjoyed, began licking my face. I wasn’t sure whether he was happy to see me, or just liked all the salt the waves had left on me.