by Amy Lane
“God, it’s enormous,” John whispered.
In response, Zion thrust his hips forward and grunted. “C’mon, man. You already helped me out one way. Help me out another.” He stroked again, and his cuffs clinked, and they both flinched at the sound.
John was actually surprised when he felt the hot flush of that rich, thick cock in the palm of his hand. He closed his fist and stared, just stared, as Zion moved his hands to the side. Oh man—so pretty. He wanted a picture. The contrast between his white, freckled hand and that blacker-than-black cock—it was beautiful.
“Don’t… just look,” Zion commanded, and John knew what came next. Up, up, up—the head was uncircumcised, and John pulled on the foreskin, smiling at the faint gasp Zion made when he got there. Then down, down, down, his skin caught, and he loosened his grip slightly so he wouldn’t pull because of the stickiness.
“Gimme your palm.”
John kept his eyes on the three cops talking laconically, and Zion spat several times into his hand. He saw his father’s head move, and lowered his hand to Zion’s lap again, spreading the spit over the head and along the shaft while he met his father’s eyes. His father sneered behind his sunglasses, because from his angle he couldn’t see that John was beating off the guy next to him, in the open back of a cop car, and turned back around.
John breathed a sigh of relief and gripped hard, stroking faster.
“Oh God that was close,” Zion whispered. They both knew it. John had to get this over with, and if the thrill of it—of the cop car, and the cops, and almost getting busted—didn’t do it for Zion, it was certainly doing it for John. He was hard, swollen in his pants, bursting at the zipper, but that was part of the awesomeness. The pain of denial while he beat off the kid next to him in public. God, it was addictive, and he sped up his stroking, because beating off Zion was almost the same as beating off himself.
When Zion hissed and bucked his hips and spurted into the air and all over John’s hand, it was almost better. “Yessss….”
For a moment the world narrowed to just their harsh breathing and the overwhelming musk of sex, and then Zion tucked his dick back in his pants, cuffs clinking quietly, before pulling John’s hand up to his mouth. He extended a bright pink tongue and licked his spunk off John’s hand thoroughly, neither of them looking at the other, both staring straight ahead at the three cops who hadn’t seen a thing.
Hank shifted, Jimmy scratched his balls, and John’s dad scratched his head. That was John and Zion’s cue. When Frank Carey turned around, both boys were sitting, hands in their own laps, heads back, eyes closed, once again trying to endure the heat.
When Zion spoke, it was so softly his lips barely moved. “Thanks, cop’s kid.”
“Any time, college kid.”
Zion grunted. “If I give you my phone number, you think you can remember it?”
John wasn’t cuffed—he had his cell phone in his pocket. He pulled it out and took down Zion’s number and had his phone back in his pocket before his dad got to the car.
“I’ve got a boyfriend,” John said quietly since Frank still couldn’t hear them. “It would just be as friends.”
Zion grunted and laughed like he’d heard it before and didn’t believe it, but by then Frank was at the door. He opened it, sat down and turned on the ignition, and then wrinkled his nose.
“Jesus, what is that fucking smell?” he demanded.
John met his father’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Smells like someone jizzed in the AC vent, Dad. You should really get that checked out.”
“Don’t be a crude asshole,” Frank grunted. “Zion, you got no priors and I didn’t really catch you doing anything, but you know what?”
“If you see me in your town again, it don’t matter?” Zion asked like he wasn’t really asking.
“Maybe you are a college student,” Frank sneered. He left the car on so it could cool off before he had to get back in, and then got out and let Zion out, uncuffed him, and gave him back his wallet without even a thank-you. John waved to him as he turned around and got into his car, and Zion waved ironically back.
It would totally be worth the bruise his father left on his cheek that night, and he’d tell Tory that excitedly in the morning.
“You jacked him off? In the car? In public?” If John had been hoping for jealousy, he was destined to be disappointed. “You are so lucky. Next time it’s my turn to beat off the stranger, right?”
Tory looked at him, dark eyes dancing over the cards they were ostensibly playing as they sat on the floor of Tory’s room.
And John thought of Tory’s hand on a stranger’s cock, contrasting skin tone, Tory’s face contorted in pleasure while John got to film every moment.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, agreeing and ignoring the consequences. “I’ll bring the video camera. We’ll watch it later.”
Tory closed his eyes and shivered at the suggestion. “God, John. You’ve got the best ideas.”
Landings
THE BUMP of the plane as it touched down pulled John off Memory Lane and into the completely irritating hassle of disembarking and finding his rental car.
It was just as well. If he had to relive the next few years of that time without a break, he’d jump off the plane and go screaming through the terminal, begging for drain cleaner to snort if he couldn’t find cocaine.
Just seeing Tory’s face—bright, happy—in front of his eyes seemed to constrict his rib cage into his lungs, squeezing so tight he couldn’t breathe.
He’d avoided thinking about this for so long.
Dex had arranged for the car, and John’s first happy moment in days was seeing that Dex had opted for the premium package—a cherry red Mustang convertible with a V-6 and white upholstery.
John smiled at the car through his sunglasses, and his face actually hurt from the unexpected muscle use.
You deserve happiness.
God, Dex. You would have been so much easier to ignore if you’d just been another failed relationship and not the one who got away.
But even that thought couldn’t take away from the immediate joy of rolling down the top and driving through the humid spring air to the Florida house.
JOHN HAD followed his nana’s wishes. About four times a year, he sent a film unit out here, along with a bunch of guys—often the new guys, but sometimes just the ones who said, “Jesus, I need to get the fuck out of Sacramento!” in John’s hearing. He kept the rooms stocked and aired and let the guys sleep there for free, like a big dorm. Only two of the rooms were used for actually filming scenes. Well, along with the porch and the lawn and the pool area, depending on what whoever he sent out to run things wanted to do. Most times Dex ran things—he had a couple of services he used to keep the place stocked and laundered and gardened—and damn if he didn’t take care of John this time too.
John got to the house and discovered it had a fresh coat of paint, new rails on the porch, and a different, safer set of double french doors in the back.
It also had a new security system, but Dex had shoved the electronic lock into John’s pocket as he’d been getting out of the car for the airport. John pulled it out and stopped the alarm from going off just in time, and then he closed his eyes, dropped his suitcase on the floor, and leaned his head against the newly painted wall. He remembered authorizing all of these changes, but he hadn’t actually seen them all.
Now that he was here, he sort of loved them.
Nana’s house had been the house of an old woman. What Dex had created was the big country home of a prosperous business owner who liked to entertain friends. The original furniture was still there, maple wood and a little ornate, but the carpets had been replaced with hardwood, and the old wallpaper—a lot of fussy floral stuff—had been replaced by brightly painted walls with the occasional wallpaper trim.
What had Dex told him? Oh yeah. The main bedroom was the most comfortable, it had an adjoining bathroom, and the view was dynamite.
Also th
at he’d had groceries delivered, the cable turned on, the pool prepped and heated, and that the gardeners would be by in the morning.
John looked around him at the open-air living room/kitchen, and his eyes teared up. It was perfect, it was beautiful, and it was all his.
Tory, I know you didn’t mean to do this, but you may have just found a way to keep me clean.
For the first time since he’d gotten his mother’s letter, John felt a little breathing room, right in his mother’s backyard. (Sort of. Nana lived in Cypress Point, right next to Orlando and about an hour away from Daytona and ninety minutes away from Florentine.) Well, John’s mother had been ignoring the porn shoots for three years—she could certainly ignore his flamingly gay ass now.
He pulled out his phone and left a quick message, not wanting to intrude on Dex’s family time or his worry over the gorilla with the soul patch.
“Hey, Dex? It’s perfect. You’re amazing. I’m so glad you’re still my friend.”
He hung up feeling gutted because that had been raw and honest, and it was not the hardest thing he was going to have to do by a long shot.
In addition to the cable, Dex had also activated Wi-Fi, and satellite radio, and John thought that even if Dex had taken all of the company, which he probably deserved, it was totally worth it to arrive in this house and find himself worry-free.
He checked the pool for snakes and gators, counting himself lucky when all he found was a couple of fallen leaves, and then he took a quick dip. The heater had been turned on that morning (and, John assumed, the cover pulled up and the water treated), but it was still a little chilly. That was okay—he swam just long enough for his feet to hurt and then got out and set about scaring himself up something to eat.
He found fixings in the refrigerator for sour cream pork chops, among other things, and John sighed. Dex loved them but didn’t eat them because he was always watching his weight, and Tory had hated anything to do with sour cream. It was like Dex was sending him message after message that said, You’re alone now, and you can do it, and he was receiving them loud and clear.
Even the memories of Tory seemed to help with that.
As he sat down in front of an old Tom Cruise movie and ate his favorite dish, John had a sudden notion of freedom. No schedules, no shoots, no business—how long had it been since John had taken a nonworking vacation? God, if nothing else, he was going to have to get his shit together so he could give Dex one of these too.
Even the thought of Dex taking the vacay with his gorilla and the little girl didn’t hurt as much as it might have once. The past three days had reinforced that Dex was better for him as a guardian angel than a love interest, and right now John needed the guardian angel more.
THE NEXT day John made his way to one of the neighborhoods in Daytona that you didn’t see in the travel commercials. It was unfortunate that a neighborhood this bad was also so flamingly queer. An awful lot of rainbow flags were being used as curtains, awnings, and, over businesses, actual flags. The LGBTQ bookstore probably carried a little self-help in all that porn, but John wasn’t sure anyone noticed.
John found the ten-story apartment building that had been in the packet of information his mother had sent, and read the contact name on the buzzer. G. Henderson #812.
He’d just buzzed G. Henderson again when the intercom crackled. “Whoizit?”
Someone wasn’t quite awake today, were they? Well, it was barely 9:30 a.m. Not everyone had John’s solid work ethic, fueled by a Starbucks down the street from his office and an orgy of cocaine.
“Hi, this is John Carey? I’m here to start going through Tor—uhm, Vittorrio Petrelli’s effects.”
“Oh.” G. Henderson sounded fully awake now, and John felt a little bad. Whether G. had known Tory or not, dealing with a dead man’s stuff when you weren’t fully awake had to suck.
“Uhm, yeah. I have a letter from his family and—”
“He was hoping you’d come,” G. said over the intercom, his voice low and respectful. “When he… I mean, he used to say that the only way he’d get you back is if you came to his funeral. I didn’t think….”
John closed his eyes.
Johnny—Johnny, don’t leave me here.
Tory, man, I’m not doing you any good. It’s like I love you too much to ever say no to you, and you need someone who can be an asshole. I can’t be that asshole, and Jesus, I need you to live.
I’ll fucking die without you, John! You bastard—you want to see that, don’t you?
You go ahead and live, Tory. Please. For me. Live.
Fuck you. Come make me.
John had kissed his forehead then—he remembered that, because Tory had been lying in detox, on the second day of his third trip, when John had finally broken. Goddamn you, Tory, you couldn’t have done that one lousy fucking thing?
“I was sort of hoping I’d come back to him serving me a big old plate of eat shit and die,” John said, his bitterness corroding through the intercom, he was sure. “But gee, it was awfully good for him to hope for the whole funeral thing instead.”
“Yeah,” G. Henderson said, his own bitterness a little softer but no less apparent. “Well, Tory wasn’t great at hosting dinner parties. Here, I’ll buzz you in.”
John chuckled dryly to himself. Tory hosting dinner parties. Nope, apparently not even if the reward would have been the chance to serve a giant helping of you-left-me-you-bastard-now-eat-my-successful-shorts.
John would have added a little salt, a little ketchup, and had seconds, if only he didn’t have to go clean up Tory’s mess right now.
His eyes were still closed and he was still trying to get a handle on how he felt when the door buzzed. He let himself in and made his way to the bank of elevators past the mailboxes. The building was of a tacky age—built in the seventies, it was squat and unlovely from the outside and utilitarian and plain on the inside. Old tobacco permeated the walls, and John hoped that was one bad habit Tory had never picked up. God, it was funny how you always forgot that California was the left coast until you realized that nobody smoked in Sacramento and everybody smoked in Florida.
The elevator opened to an equally taupe corridor, and John knocked on 812, not sure what to expect. The voice on the other side of the door had sounded young—younger than John’s thirtysomething—and dry, which was encouraging. John wasn’t ready to deal with someone who couldn’t speak sarcasm.
The man behind the door was probably pretty on a good day, but it really wasn’t a good day. In his early thirties, he was thin enough to be gaunt, and his eyes were sunken into his head by sleeplessness. John had enough of an appreciation for good-looking men to spot the appealingly narrow face and the pale eyes that were probably gray or green in any sort of light. His brownish hair was long and tousled, both by hands tearing through it and what appeared to be permanent bedhead, and he didn’t look like he’d seen the sun in far too long.
When John extended his hand for a shake, his new friend had to shift an aluminum cane from his right hand to his left.
“John Carey.” He’d been running his own business long enough to shake with firmness and authority, and he was mildly surprised to get the same back.
“Galen Henderson. I’m really sorry about your friend.”
John swallowed. Well, small talk was overrated. “I, uhm… I don’t even know where to start.”
Galen grimaced. “How about you come inside.” He looked behind his shoulder, as though suddenly self-conscious. “I’m sorry—I know it looks pathetic. It’s been a really bad pain week. I’m on a, uhm, new meds regimen—as soon as I can move a little better, the apartment is the first thing on the agenda.”
For the first time in forever, John pulled his head out of his own misery. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw the horrific scarring on Galen’s left knee, calf, and ankle.
“No worries,” John said, because he knew if Dex hadn’t had the maid come when he’d been in rehab, his house would have been nothing bu
t Starbucks cups and cockroaches. “Accident?” he asked politely, stepping through the doorway.
“Motorcycle,” Galen confirmed, flicking the light switch by the entryway.
John had a moment to look beyond the covers on the couch and the books strewn around the place to realize that Galen actually took the apartment building up on the challenge of making his space personal.
The couch and love seat were a deep oxblood, but the area rug underneath was a bold pale blue and black. He’d hung swaths of fabric on the walls in aggressive colors much like the painted walls at John’s house and had put up startling prints in assertive hues or black and white. The ebony bookshelf in the corner sported everything from autobiographies to westerns to WWII adventure, and the DVD shelf next to the ebony television stand was equally eclectic. John had to admit, at first he’d been inclined to dismiss his claim of “bad pain week” as embarrassment for being forced to live like an invalid, but looking at this space, he conceded that no, this guy wasn’t used to being helpless.
“That sucks,” John said frankly. “But you’re lucky to be alive.” He’d seen enough motorcycle accidents on the side of the road—and plastic-covered bodies—to know this was true.
“I know it,” Galen grunted, making his way to the little attached kitchen. The kitchen was apparently incapable of being dragged into the twenty-first century: something that small and covered in burnt orange tile would need to be leveled in order to be transformed. “Can I get you something? Water, soda, beer?”
Oh God. A beer. John wanted a beer so badly. “Soda would be great,” he said, aware that a low-level headache had been pushing at his cranium all day. Soda might take care of that, thank God.
Galen grunted meaningfully, and John looked sharply over his shoulder. “What?”