Chase in Shadow

by Amy Lane

  “Tommy….” Chase complained, because it was petty and Tommy knew it, but Tommy didn’t care and Chase wouldn’t hold it against him. Tommy had to drop him off and watch him go sleep in someone else’s bed for a couple of weeks. Tommy got all the pettiness he could manage.

  “You wash it off yourself,” Tommy snapped, “but not here. When you’re here, you’re mine.”

  And Chase let it be. He knew Tommy was looking at the big hickey on his neck and thinking, She’ll see that. She’ll see that and it will be over. The earrings he can explain, but not that big fucking love bite. It’s over. He’s mine. He didn’t tell Tommy that he had a plan for that, because he’d gotten really fucking good at being a two-faced douche bag when he hadn’t been paying attention.

  Johnnies was closed on Sundays—apparently people only watched porn on the Lord’s day, they didn’t make it. Chase kissed Tommy through the window of the car with so much mastery, so much dominance, that Tommy’s eyes were dazed and he had trouble putting the car into reverse before he backed out of the driveway and went back to his snug, wonderful little home with the aging cat and the desperate need for company.

  Chase took his duffel to the back parking lot and spotted the pile of rocks and gravel in the corner, left over, he thought, from when John had probably landscaped the interior courtyard. There were some sizeable chunks of gravel under a tree in the parking lot, the kind with the rough edges because the top had been finished to make it durable and shiny. Chase found one of those pieces, and stripped off his sweatshirt and the shirt underneath it. Looking into the side mirror of his car, he scraped at the spot on his neck just enough to make it sting. Then he stood up so he had better leverage, and dug that fucker into his skin, scraping it down his neck, his shoulder, his arm, with enough force to leave a vicious wound. He stared at it in his side mirror for a moment, watching incuriously as the blood welled up to replace the space left by the missing skin. It hurt—God, doing that to himself hurt, but it was okay. He deserved it. He deserved it for cheating on Mercy, he deserved it for leaving Tommy when Tommy needed him so badly—he deserved the pain, he knew he did.

  He deserved it so much that he spent some time slamming his fists into the tree to bust up his knuckles so no one could say he hadn’t been doing construction. He stopped at a drug store to buy gauze and taped up the wounds himself, feeling a curious mixture of disgust and pride.

  God, he really was a fucker sometimes, wasn’t he?

  MERCY had fawned all over him like he was some sort of hero, and Chase had refused to take a painkiller because the pain had been so damned affirming of everything he knew about himself. He deserved to be alone. He deserved the pain. It was perfect. The scrapes had been all but healed by the time he’d done the shoot with Dex—Tommy didn’t notice them in the shot itself, but he sure as shit had noticed them after he took Chase to his house and got them naked. He didn’t say anything, but his jaw tightened and he spent a wordless moment kissing the still-tender skin.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, looking at Chase miserably. “I thought… I mean I hoped….”

  Chase kissed him, so he wouldn’t have to say it. Chase had hoped too, in a way, but apparently Chase’s cowardice was too overwhelming even for Loki’s deviousness, and that alone made Chase a little sad. No one could save Chase from his own deceit but Chase, and he was well aware he just wasn’t that fucking strong.

  But right now, it didn’t matter. Right now, they were watching the rushes, and Tommy was telling Chase that he’d done good, and Chase was remembering that moment, that beautiful, terrible, frightening moment, when he had lost himself for good and Tommy had found him.

  Find me again, Tommy. Find me again. It’ll be better than a bike, better than Christmas, if you’ll find me again and I never have to be lost in that room again for as long as we both shall live.

  Turbulence

  “SO, CHANCE, how long have you been with us?”

  The young man on the bed had cut off the dyed part of his hair—the blond color underneath had hints of red in it. His eyes were still open and blue, though, and his cheekbones were still high. His mouth was still wide and mobile with full, fuckable lips, and he still held his jaw like he was used to a piece of gum there, ready to crack when he felt like it.

  “Around seven months,” he said, obviously doing the counting in his head and coming up surprised.

  Another young man—this one smaller, with dark hair, an irrepressible grin, and no clothes whatsoever—leapt onto the bed and bounced there, as eager as a child. The voice behind the camera laughed a little.

  “So how is it you’ve never bottomed?” it said.

  “He hadn’t met me yet!” said the naked young man, and Chance grinned at him, clearly delighted.

  “Yeah,” Chance said, winking at him. “Guess I’d just never met Digger.”

  Digger rolled over onto his back and started to stroke his erect penis. It was decent-sized, but not huge, although he clearly enjoyed having it touched. “Well, get naked, buddy, and I’ll treat you to the whole ‘Digger experience’.”

  Chance, who had been reclining, rolled over onto his stomach spontaneously and took the head in his mouth. Digger kept his eyes closed, although the rest of him shuddered deliciously all over.

  “Now that’s not playing by the rules!” he protested—but not hard.

  In response, Chance lowered his head and took Digger’s cock all the way to the back of his throat.

  “That was a class act,” Tommy said approvingly when giving Chase his backrub after the shot.

  “I don’t know what got into me,” Chase mumbled. This was the fourth time Tommy had cared for him after filming a scene, and Chase didn’t know how he would have done it without him. He’d tried, the second time, to think about Mercy rubbing his back, kissing his shoulders, whispering sweet things in his ears, and he’d started shivering so bad that Tommy had gotten out a heating pad and given him Ibuprofen for a fever. He couldn’t help it: his entire body recoiled at the thought of Mercy touching him like this when he was raw and vulnerable and sensitized in the extreme.

  It was hard enough when they were roommates who shared a bed.

  He never mentioned Mercy when Tommy could hear the name. It was like they had finally agreed that his week a month at Tommy’s was magic—a period of time out of time, it didn’t exist to Mercy and Mercy didn’t exist here in Tommy’s little house. And the thing was, not mentioning Mercy to Tommy was almost as hard as not mentioning Tommy to Mercy.

  He loved Mercy. He had once watched her curse out a stray mouse in the corner of their apartment for over a half an hour. He had run out and down the block to buy a mousetrap, just to spare her the pain, but when she had seen that it was the kind that actually killed the mouse, she had burst into tears. He had to capture the damned thing in a jar and let it out on the lawn. He hadn’t pointed out that the poor thing was probably doomed anyway; the fact that she’d watched, anxiously, as the disease-carrying vermin went scampering off to its doom had made him love her even more.

  He just didn’t want to sleep with her.

  He bought her a car instead. It was stupid and transparent and he wondered that she didn’t just turn to him and say, “Chase, you asshole, stop dicking with me. If you’re cheating, just own up.” She didn’t though. She teared up and hugged him and cried some more on his neck.

  “I hated you driving around in that deathtrap,” he’d told her truthfully, because her little Toyota had a tendency to stall whenever it went over sixty miles an hour. Fortunately she’d been using all of the surface roads, but still. When he saw what the returns were on his threesome with Dex and Kane, he traded her car in without batting an eye.

  “You take such good care of me, baby.”

  I’m a guilty douche bag, Mercy. I don’t deserve to kiss the dirt under your feet.

  After that moment, after the next shoot, on the third day at Tommy’s house, when they were eating roast beef and au jus that he’d prepared
just to get Tommy to promise not to throw it up, he hesitantly mentioned that he couldn’t go shopping again for a while.

  “Why? What’d you spend your money on?”

  Chase sat there, opening and shutting his mouth like a stunned salmon until Tommy muttered, “Fuck,” and walked away. He left the bathroom door open, so Chase could hear him toss his cookies. Chase couldn’t listen. He tore out of the house without a jacket, when the sky was pissing down March rain.

  Tommy caught up with him in the car, and when Chase refused to get in, he screeched to the curb in front of some random family’s house and got out.

  “Get in the car,” he snapped, and Chase shook his head. His eyes stung so badly he could barely see, and his shirt was soaked through. He couldn’t seem to feel that, though. He was sitting cross-legged, like a pretzel on a pancake, looking at that door in his chest, wondering if opening it would hurt when the red water overwhelmed him, cut off his breathing, went over his head.

  “We shouldn’t do this anymore.”

  Tommy’s face, pale in the rain, went bloodless: his lips even turned blue. “What in the fuck…?”

  “I’m not good for you, Tommy. There’s so much shit… I’m still in the fucking closet. I’ve got a fucking girlfriend, for Christ sake. I’m hurting you. I’m making you hurt yours—”

  He couldn’t finish because Tommy strode forward and grabbed Chase’s shoulders so hard he left bruises. “Nobody makes me hurt myself,” he hissed. “I make me hurt myself, and I’ll do it whenever I goddamned well please. You don’t get to call this quits on count of my hang-ups, you bastard!”

  “I don’t want to hurt you anymore!” Chase told him, his teeth chattering almost too hard to get the words out. “Look at me! I’m fucking ripping you to pieces, Tommy! You will never find someone better than me if I keep leaning on you!”

  “Look at you?” Tommy yelled. “Look at you? I am looking at you! You think I’m the one getting ripped to pieces, you aren’t paying enough goddamned attention! You come to my house and you sleep like you ain’t slept in a month, and you know why? You know why—c’mon, Chase, let’s hear us some fuckin’ truth. You fuckin’ tell me why!”

  Because I can’t sleep when you’re not next to me.

  “That’s no reason for you to let me do this,” Chase said desperately.

  I’m trying, Tommy. You’re the best person I’ve ever known. I’m trying to do right by you, I swear.

  “Let you? Is that what you think?” Tommy laughed, the sound so bitter Chase was surprised the rain didn’t steam up around him, hissing like acid. “Let you do this to me? I’m fucking begging you to do this to me. How fucked up is that? That here you are, saying ‘Let me go! I’m hurting you!’ and I’m saying ‘Hurt me some more, you fucker, do anything… fucking do anything to me, just don’t get lost like I know you’re gonna!’ I see you, Chase. You think I don’t see you? You think I don’t know that Chance the sexy bastard on the screen isn’t some scary person you made up? That the real person you are isn’t the poor fucker trapped behind your eyes, screaming the shit you won’t say? You think I don’t know that? I know that! I know that and dammit….” Tommy trailed off a little, and his hands relaxed their bony-fingered death grip on Chase’s shoulders. “I can’t let you lose that guy, Chase. He’s the guy who comes apart when I hold you.”

  Chase squeezed his eyes shut, praying for Tommy to hold him at the same time Chance, the brave one, hoped that Tommy would leave and find someone who would make him eat and help him quit porn and live in his house and pet his cat. Then Tommy wrapped arms around him, strong arms, and Chase slouched and lowered his head to Tommy’s shoulder and tried to ease the stinging in his eyes. Tommy’s arms tightened to the point of pain and Chase let him, because he was shaking so hard it felt like that clasp might be the only thing to keep him from falling the fuck apart.

  They made it into the house eventually, and stripped down and dried off and climbed into bed, and they might have made love but neither of them got hard. They just held each other, not speaking, until the shivering stopped, and then they watched television and fell asleep, their legs twined tightly together.

  So Chase had given in a little, ceded to the double life, and it sucked a little because on his fourth “business trip,” the one in April right before spring training that was held in a little kid’s camping facility up in Pollock Pines, he only had a couple of days with Tommy, and he felt the missing time like a rent in his skin.

  He had Tommy drop him off at Donnie’s boyfriend’s house and was unprepared for Donnie to come outside as they were pulling up. He was really unprepared for Tommy to take one look at Donnie and narrow his eyes.

  “That’s him, right?” Tommy asked, his voice flat and his South Boston more pronounced than Chase had ever heard it. “That’s the blond guy you wanted to be, right?”

  Chase cleared his throat and looked out to where Donnie was glaring at him like he was pissed, which Chase couldn’t figure out since he’d said a friend from work was dropping him off and Tommy hadn’t done anything yet to not be a friend from work. “Yeah. That’s him.”

  Tommy put the car in park then and turned to Chase and grabbed his chin, plowing into him with a hard, carnal, possessive, angry kiss. Chase gasped, surprised, but that only gave Tommy better purchase, and by the time he was done Chase was liquid, sweating, and embarrassed, backed up against the car door.

  “You can’t have another life, Chase,” Tommy said, his shiny-dark eyes unforgiving. “You’ve got plenty going as it is.”

  “He’s a friend,” Chase whispered, and Tommy nodded.

  “If you’re lucky, he’s still a friend.”

  Chase nodded, and then stood and retrieved his duffel from the back, but kept his hand on the front seat before Tommy could pull away. Tommy looked at him from under dark, plucked eyebrows, and Chase said, “C’mere.”

  Tommy leaned forward then, reluctantly, hurt in every line of his body. “Yeah?”

  “I didn’t love him like I love you. Be mad at me, Tommy. Not Donnie. Donnie didn’t make me the fuck-up, okay?”

  Tommy’s anger, his attitude, slipped then, and this time Chase kissed him, his lips soft, his breath feathering Tommy’s temple as he pulled away. “I do love you, Tommy Matthew Halloran. Don’t let my love hurt, okay?”

  “Too late. Enjoy your baseball warrior ritual, ya dumb jock.”

  Chase winked and pecked him on the cheek. “Will do.”

  Then he pulled out of the car to face a curiously unsurprised Donnie. Tommy pulled away and Chase forced himself to meet his best friend’s eyes.

  “So, you missed my birthday last month.” His tone was conversational, and Chase eyed him warily. His car—a little Toyota a lot like Mercy’s old one, only green—was open, and Chase went to throw his duffel bag in the back.

  “I sent you a card and a raincheck for a River Cats game!” Chase protested, because he wouldn’t have forgotten Donnie’s birthday for anything. “Is Kevin coming?” Kevin usually drove with them, but his duffel wasn’t back with Donnie’s and Chase’s.

  “Kevin’ll be here in a little bit. I wanted to talk to you. Did I mention my birthday?”

  “You’re twenty-one, you can drink now.” Of course, both of them drank beer at Donnie’s house frequently. “What, you gonna lord it over us ’cause you can buy? ’Cause I’ve got like, what? Two weeks until I’m twenty-one too? Gloat away!” Chase was joking—or trying to, because Donnie’s pretty blue eyes were narrow and dangerous, and his usually full mouth was flat and compressed.

  “Yeah. Well, I needed a drink, lemme tell you. Cause you know what Alejandro got me for my birthday, as sort of a joke, mind you, because he wanted me to see what I was missing out on since he turned twenty-six this year?”

  Oh shit. Chase went with a cheesy smile and a waggle of his eyebrows. “A stripper?”

  “You wish,” Donnie told him sourly, stalking over to his car just to kick the damned tire. “He got me a porn subscript
ion, you asshole. Wanna guess which provider?”

  Chase couldn’t dissemble anymore, not to Donnie. “Johnnies,” he said weakly. “You got a subscription to Johnnies.”

  Donnie sighed and whumped back against his car, all of the piss and vinegar leaking out of him like his spine was a sieve. “And guess who’s there on the front of the website, their new boy, the next big thing?”

  Chase sighed. He didn’t know for certain, but he could guess. He didn’t visit the website after the first week. He’d liked seeing the comments at first, but there were like a thousand of them, praising the size of his cock and his stamina and his body—but not anything about him, even his smile. He’d had to stop looking; he was doing this for himself, not for anyone else, and that was just how he had to treat it.

  “Some homely asshole named Chance,” he mumbled, leaning back against the car next to his dearest and oldest friend.

  Who promptly whapped him on the back of the head. “You’re a god, you know it, now shut the fuck up. What in the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “I thought I was supposed to shut—ouch!” This time Donnie meant it when he smacked Chase’s head.

  “Don’t play with me, Chase,” Donnie snapped, and Chase was suddenly confused and relieved when Donnie—the same Donnie who had draped his arm over Chase’s shoulders after nearly every game they’d ever had, from the second grade on—draped a sexless, kind, comforting arm over his shoulder. Chase leaned his head on Donnie’s shoulder, feeling a tight string break in his stomach. The guy was pissed. There was no doubt in his mind that Donnie was pissed. But apparently being pissed didn’t mean that he wasn’t a friend, and Chase wanted to cry, he was so relieved.