Chase in Shadow

by Amy Lane

  Donnie pulled back and grinned at him. “Yeah, and since you don’t have anyone who gives a shit about your balls, that would be a real fuckin’ shame—ouch! ’Yandro!”

  “Just because you are old enough to use that word does not mean it’s necessary,” Alejandro said primly, and Donnie bent his head again and silenced him with a kiss so dominant, the older man actually whimpered.

  Chase shook his head, surprised that he found a genuine smile from somewhere. “Yeah, guys. I’m with Kevin—let’s play some more Ping-Pong, where the balls can’t actually freeze off!” He crossed his arms and shivered, wondering if the fog was going to be too thick to drive. “I prefer to spend my Christmases warm.”

  THE upstairs part of Tommy’s mom’s house had been cold in the mornings, because it was apparently controlled by some ancient dinosaur of a thermostat that Tommy needed to bang on and swear at before the heat would kick on. Their second morning after their second quiet, furtive night, making love with their clothes on using tantalizing, forbidden flashes of skin on skin, Tommy almost cried at the thought of getting up and working the damned thing. Chase had hopped out of bed in his bare feet and stumbled to the hall, hitting the wall by the thing and swearing for form, before running back.

  “Jesus, Tommy, you’re gonna make me freeze my balls off, and at the moment, they’re the only things making me money at all!”

  Tommy had draped his shorter, muscular body over Chase’s, saying, “You’ve got a brain too, buddy. I don’t see that dropping out of your ears anytime soon.”

  THE memory was so powerful Chase stumbled on his way into the garage, and it was a good thing Donnie’s delicate, pretty sister came out to tell them all that it was time to come in and eat, or maybe Chase really would have fucked up his life and lost it, crying on all of them, spilling the entire story out to three guys who may or may not have hated his guts when they heard it.

  SO ALL things considered, when Chase went in to shoot the scene with Reg, he was desperate. Desperate for escape, desperate for release, desperate for something, anything, that didn’t run his insides through a cheese grater and then throw in some salt and dump them all back in with nerve endings attached.

  His body, always his best emotional barometer, almost hummed when he saw Reg in the room, eyes closed, hands down his pants, probably imagining a harem of women licking his bare, bronze skin with seductive tongues. Suddenly, all of that muddle seemed to fade away, and only this moment in this faux bedroom in the office suite, the one with the plain bed and the blue plaid bedspread, mattered. That there were cameras on them only made it more real, with lines etched by an Exacto knife into his consciousness. They were a reason to focus, to move his chest out instead of in, to drop his shoulder back as he closed his eyes and allowed the flesh of Reg’s rectum to grip his cock tightly and squeeze. But mostly, it was the feel of skin on skin, and how simple and wonderful it was that his entire body quivered when touched, and that orgasm would be a release so powerful even his vision would forget.

  Reg cried out, shuddering, and came on the bedspread, the camera guy in front of him dipping to catch the shot, and Chase pulled out and shucked the condom, pumping his flesh so tightly the head turned purple, you could even see it on the rushes. His face was twisted into a savage snarl when he came, and that was the shot John included, not just the spatter of white spend coating Reg’s back.

  Chase looked at that moment and frowned. He texted John.

  Why didn’t you stay on the cum-shot?

  Because that look on your face is the reason

  We watch porn.

  I’ll take your word for it. It was good?

  Yeah. You signed the direct deposit paperwork?

  Yeah.

  Good. Your ticket should be waiting, and

  The check is in the bank. Tell

  Tango we love him, okay?

  Will do.

  Chase got on the plane with every intention of making sure that the sex he’d just had, the faceless, wordless animal thrust of tension relief, was the only kind of gay sex he’d ever have again.

  Loki, the Lunatic Sex God

  TWO boys sat on an anonymous bed, looking at each other with hooded, assessing eyes. One of them had blond hair that was darker at the roots and bleached almost transparent at the tips and a lazy, cocky grin as he measured the other boy.

  The other young man had dark eyes, dark hair, and a goatee, and the look he gave the blond one was of a sort of cocky dominance.

  “So, Chance, you’re getting comfortable here at Johnnies, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Chance said, sending a cool, assessing look at the other guy on the bed. “I’m real comfortable on top.”

  “Yeah,” said the dark-haired young man, “so am I.”

  “That’s true,” conceded the voice behind the camera. “Kane usually tops, but not this time.”

  Kane sent Chance a smoldering look, and Chance’s cocky grin upped in wattage and intensity.

  “I’ll try to be gentle,” Chance said wickedly, and Kane made a low, sexy “Hm….” sound in his throat.

  “Try to keep up, boy, and maybe I’ll break your ass in when it’s your turn to bottom.”

  CHASE got off the plane and Dex was waiting for him, looking contrite and nervous.

  “Man, don’t yell at him, please,” Dex said, taking Chase’s bag without any preliminaries. Chase was actually surprised.

  “There’s nothing to yell at,” he said honestly. “He needed someone. That’s why we showed up in the first place.”

  Dex actually dropped the bag and turned around to him, right there in the airport. “No, dumbass. I showed up because he needed someone. You showed up because he needed you.”

  Chase looked away, grabbed the bag, and started walking. “We had a nice week in Florida. I made more out of it than it really was, okay? I’m….” He swallowed. “I’m new to the business, right? I just didn’t see it for what it was. Now I do—what in the fuck?”

  There was a recessed door—probably a maintenance closet—to the right of the hallway they were passing, and suddenly Chase was being thrust into the little nook of the busy airport.

  “If you tell him that what you two did was business, it will kill him, and then I’ll kill you, do you hear me?”

  Chase looked at Dex’s hands, white-knuckled in his shirt, and wondered where all his carefully gathered composure was now. Suddenly he was shaking, his hands, his chin, the breath in his chest, and he could hardly look at Dex’s eyes. Dex shook him again, and his head knocked painfully back against the wall, and he was forced to. Dex looked like he was ready to cry.

  “I….” Chase swallowed. “I needed so badly to think it was real,” he apologized. Dex sighed and dropped his hold, and they both slumped to opposite walls in the little door recess.

  “It was,” Dex told him, twisting his mouth. “I’m… I’m the one who confuses things,” he said after a moment. “If you’d needed a friend, I would have blown you too.”

  Chase remembered his first shoot. “You’re good at those,” he said, and now that he’d been blown by Cameron and Reg, he had something to compare Dex to.

  Dex’s grin was ironic. “Not something you can really put on a resume. Now, what are you going to say to Tango?”

  There was this door in Chase’s chest—he’d known about it for years. On one side of the door was the guy who’d gone after Reg like a dyed-in-the-wool sexual dominator. This was the same guy who pitched a no-hitter in State Finals and threw guys out with a casual flick of the wrist. This was the guy who could ask a cashier for Mercy’s favorite clothes and tell Donnie that he was doing great and hop on a plane for the second time in his life like he was a born and seasoned traveler.

  On the other side of the door there was nothing but red water, darkness, and pain. The thought of another night, or another handful of nights, with Tango threatened to open the door, and it was all Chase could do to shove the door shut before that scarlet-dyed water flooded every ch
amber in Chase’s limited soul.

  “I’m going to say I’m his friend,” he said, shoving that door shut with a mental shoulder. “And I’m going to ask if I can sleep on his couch.”

  Dex closed his eyes and blew out a breath. “God. Chase—why?”

  Kick that door shut, kick it shut… kick it kick it pound on it, scream….

  “Because I have a girlfriend.”

  A muscle jumped in Dex’s long jaw. “Fuck.”

  “Let’s go. Don’t you have to be back here tonight?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, good. Let’s go get some takeout so he doesn’t have to stress about dinner.”

  MEN give different hugs. There is the tender hug that they give a lover, the one with liquid bones and hands that linger, and protective shoulders, and the unselfconscious touches of skin. There is the hug that they give children and parents, which has more bones in it, somehow, as though the man is building a framework, a gentle cage in which to keep this precious person. Then there is the hug that they give a male friend—that is a different hug altogether.

  If the man is not the type to clasp hands between chests and lock muscles, then it has to be a real hug, and just like the “protecting the weak” hug has more bones in it, the “platonic man hug” has more muscles. It is, in fact, all muscles, no skin, no bones, because skin and bones can be vulnerable, but muscles are tense and taut—steel meat on an adamantium frame. This hug usually ends with a fist thump to the back—often two of them.

  That was the hug that Chase gave Tango, and the look on Tango’s face was anything but resigned.

  He didn’t say anything there in the entryway, though. He let Chase and Dex in and took the takeout gratefully. Chase saw that the bed was gone, and with it, he assumed, Tango’s mother.

  Tango saw where his eyes went and nodded. “They think maybe a couple of days. We couldn’t give her enough morphine here, so they took her to the hospital so they could drug her up good.” A poor imitation of his usual smile peeked out. “When I was a kid, she usually dosed me to the nines whenever I was sick. The priest bitched a little about having fortitude, but I was like ‘Jesus, you gotta die, you might as well go out stoned to the fucking gills, right?’”

  Chase and Dex nodded and shrugged.

  “I’d say that’s how I’d wanna go out,” Dex said reassuringly. “But you coulda told me she was going before I left, you know? I could have been there when the ambulance came.”

  Tom—Tango shrugged like it was no big thing. “I didn’t do anything. Guys came, put her on the gurney, truck came and carted the bed away.” A sudden shiver racked him, and that casualness shredded like rotten muslin in a stiff wind. “Of course tonight’ll be weird. I mean, I’m not that used to the house anyway, but now that she’s not in it….” He trailed off and turned on his heel into the kitchen, his arms full of takeout bags.

  A sudden thwack sounded in Chase’s ears right when the blow landed to the back of the head. Chase looked at him in outrage, but Dex’s eyes were all for Tom—Tango, dammit, Tango—who was wandering around the kitchen singing softly to himself. The door in Chase’s chest gave a groan, like it was under way too much pressure, and Chase sighed. He walked into the tiny kitchen and, just from his three days spent there before, found the silverware and some napkins and set everything out on the table.

  “Wanna eat in the living room?” he asked. “There’s a television, we could find something to watch.”

  Tomm—Tango, goddammit, Tango!—was standing in front of the sink while he looked out into the encroaching darkness.

  “How did you spend Christmas?” he asked, his voice toneless. “I didn’t even think to ask.”

  I spent it pretending I was a functional human being. We all have our fantasies.

  “My friend Donnie’s house. His mom’s pretty awesome. Stockings, presents.” Chase breathed out for a second, and realized his door wasn’t as solid as he’d thought. “She… some Christmases, she gave me my only presents, you know? I… I’m sorry. That’s stupid. Boo-hoo, right?”

  Tommy (Tango?) turned around and looked at him. “Mom and I watched a midnight mass on television. Halloran—Irish Catholic, right?”

  Chase nodded. “Traditions are nice. Did Dex watch it with you?”

  Tommy (Tango.) nodded. “Yeah. Turns out he was just regular Catholic. He called his family, told his mother he was visiting a friend. Called his girlfriend. Told her the same thing.”

  Chase swallowed, and it didn’t take. He tried again. “The truth,” he said, but his voice cracked strangely, and Tommy came a little closer.

  “And you stayed the night with your girlfriend, and was that true?”

  No. No. Nothing about it was true. True was a pocketful of dark here with you, Tommy. True was your breath upon my skin.

  Chase couldn’t look at him. “I can’t do this,” he whispered. “I’ve got… I’ve got a double life already, you know? You’d be a whole other life, and I’m not that—”

  Tommy put his hand on Chase’s chin and forced him to meet those dark-bright eyes. “Jesus, Chase. Don’t you want something that’s true?”

  Yes. Yes. I want something true. I want you. I want you so bad.

  “But I can’t know you’re with someone else. I mean… doing a scene? I can handle that, maybe.”

  I love to watch you. You’re magnificent. You’re everything sex is supposed to be—glorious, uninhibited, you’re the fantasy I never knew I had.

  “How do you think I feel!” Tommy snapped, dropping his hand. “I’ve had sex plenty, Chase. I’ve been with the company for three years, and I’ve had guys and made a few runs at boyfriends. You’re the first guy that I think of you with someone else and it hurts! That’s why I glommed onto you like a fuckin’ limpet, man. I could stand you doing a scene, but that first night in Florida, you talked about your girlfriend, and the thought just ripped me the fuck up!”

  You and me both.

  “Then maybe you and me need to be the kind of friends who don’t do that, Tommy! Maybe you and me need to be the kind of friends who just talk into the night and don’t fucking….” He couldn’t finish that sentence. He couldn’t. He couldn’t put a label to those stolen moments, not out loud.

  Who don’t make love.

  Suddenly Tommy was there, right there in front of him, and his hand was on Chase’s cheek. He pulled it away and pulled the sleeve of his sweatshirt up over his palm and Chase felt the rough cotton against his wet skin.

  “You really think we can do that?” Tommy asked, and his voice was rough and broken.

  Chase groaned and suddenly wrapped his arms around Tommy’s shoulders, holding him tight, so damned tight. “We gotta do something,” he graveled. “We’ve gotta find some way. Because I’ve got to have you in my life, man, and we can’t do that killing each other.”

  Tommy sighed and simply melted into him. “We’ll try,” he said. “You tell me you’ll hold me this week while you’re here, and I’ll tell you I won’t think about us naked, how’s that?”

  Naked. I want naked. I don’t want another fucking guy in my bed, and I want naked with you.

  “We can try that,” Chase said. He closed his eyes and rubbed his lips near Tommy’s ear and told himself it wasn’t a kiss.

  THEY did it. They slept in the same bed that night, and Chase wrapped his arms around Tommy’s body, muscular, strong, sturdy, and his skin all but groaned in completion. This is what he’d wanted as he’d lain next to Mercy. This is what he’d wanted as he’d watched his cock disappear into Reg’s asshole. He’d wanted nothing more than Tommy Halloran, back against his body in a pair of sweats, if that’s what they had to do.

  He closed his eyes for what felt like the first time in three days. When he woke up, Tommy was watching him from troubled black-bright eyes.

  Chase opened his eyes and smiled a little. “I keep trying to see,” he mumbled, and Tommy said, “See what?”

  “See where the brown is, because they�
��re so dark.”

  Tommy’s puff of amused air brushed Chase’s face. Tommy needed to brush his teeth, but Chase didn’t really care.

  “Your eyes are the color of real spring,” Tommy murmured, and then his face tightened, and some of that soft morning around his eyes grew thin and transparent over his cheekbones. “Do you know you make sounds in the night?”

  Chase pulled up one corner of his mouth in disbelief. “Get out of here—I do not. What kind of sounds?”

  Tommy kept that black-bright gaze on him. “You cry.”

  Wham!!! That there is the sound of my door closing.

  “You’re mistaken,” Chase said coldly, pulling back and rolling out of bed. “If I made sounds like that, Mercy would have told me. When do we need to have Dex to the airport?”

  “We should leave in a couple of hours,” Tommy said, his voice distant as he stood up on his side of the bed. “He’s taking the cat with him, so we need to dose Buster in an hour. There’s a bunch of boxes outside in the garage. After we shower and eat, we should schlep them up here and start packing.”

  Awesome. No one has to talk if we’re packing stuff, right?

  “’Kay. If you want the shower first, I’ll go down and make coffee and start breakfast.”

  Suddenly Tommy’s voice and eyes were no longer distant. “Did you miss making love at all, Chase?”

  Chase looked over at him, and it felt like the bed was the entire space between Sacramento and Massachusetts. “For the record, you never have to ask that question. Ever. You will always know the answer. I’m gonna go start the coffee.”

  He padded down the stairs feeling like shit, but it was a good kind of feeling like shit. It was penance. Penance for hurting Tommy, penance for lying to Mercy. He should feel this bad. He was a bad person. It was only right.