Bobby Green

by Amy Lane

  “He’s pretty,” Reg acknowledged, because how could you not? “And he’s hung like a monster, but he’s sweet too. Anyway, you’re his first bottom, and he sort of got screwed over with the whole ‘treat yourself’ thing. So, you know. If he gets a chance to go out for dinner—God, anywhere but McDonald’s—could you take him? He hasn’t really seen us at our best, you know?”

  Ethan’s smile wasn’t quite his brightest, but Bobby wouldn’t know that.

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “If we can stand each other after two days of shooting naked, I think that’ll be something special.”

  God love the guy—he was awesome. But still, it was nice to come back to the house and find Bobby there, elbows-deep in drywall dust and crumbling floorboards.

  “Heya,” he said, peering up from where he knelt, a little cushion under his knees. He’d apparently been ripping up the floor around the toilet, big work gloves encasing his hands, the leather worn to a shine. “Good shoot?” The wood near the toilet was brittle, flaking away under his hands, and Reg marveled that it hadn’t disintegrated under his own feet as he’d been taking a piss in the middle of the night.

  “Short,” Reg said gratefully. “We went and traded in Ethan’s car afterward—but he wasn’t up for anything else.” He frowned, remembering why. “God, this month sucked. People getting sick, hurting themselves, getting kicked out. It’s like a perfect fucking storm.”

  Bobby grunted while ripping out a floorboard. “I’ve never lived through a perfect storm before,” he said. “Pretty much glad I’m just along for the ride.”

  “What you are doing there is magic,” he said, full of admiration, mesmerized by Bobby’s capable hands making the floor disappear. “Can I help?”

  Bobby wrinkled his nose. “It’s kind of small in here or I’d let you. If you want, you can take the shitty wood out to the truck and pull the good stuff up to the porch. Sort of swap shit out if you can.”

  “I can do that!” He had no idea how to fix the house, but he was all excited about having something to do to help get it done. Right up until he yawned.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Bobby said, pushing himself up and stretching. “I forgot you had a scene today, and frankly, you’re looking tired. Did you eat?”

  Reg grinned. “Yeah—we went out to Chili’s before the car thing. I’m good.”

  “Fancy.” Bobby winked, because it wasn’t that fancy, but it was dressier than Hometown Buffet. “There’s some apples in the kitchen, and I made some of that pasta—the kind with the cheese inside, and the white sauce, in the little bowls? I made that for V for lunch, and there’s plenty leftover. So go eat, and I’ll clean up here so I can start again in the morning after I work out.”

  Reg nodded gratefully. “Thanks, Bobby. I can help tomorrow—it’s just so nice of you to come over here and do this.”

  Bobby shrugged. “I like the apartment and all, but everybody has stuff to do this week. I like to keep busy.”

  Reg looked down and away, registering the construction dust over the cracking white tile of the hallway and remembering the loneliness that had hit him when Ethan had given his regrets for hanging out that night. “You, uh, wanna stay the night? I mean, we don’t have to do anything, just… you know.”

  Bobby frowned, like he was doing complicated math in his head. “Uh, yeah. Sure. Like we did at the apartment. No worries.”

  Like no sex. Which was fine. Really. Because Reg had just had sex, right? Hours upon hours of sex. Or, well, two hours. But sex. And Ethan was good—Reg always felt better when he was done doing a scene with Ethan—like all that happy, real touching energized him.

  But still. No sex with Bobby. Even though Bobby seemed to like him. Seemed to want to spend time with him. Didn’t even mind sleeping with him. But no sex. Because why?

  “You got a girlfriend,” Reg said, squinting and hoping it wasn’t obvious this was a guess as to why they wouldn’t be having sex.

  “Yep,” Bobby said, dusting off his hands. Most of the floor was up, so he had to balance on the support beams as he walked to the edge of the bathroom. “I’ll have to replace some of the beams tomorrow. Think you’ll be up to help me?”

  Reg nodded, and another damned yawn snuck out, and he realized he was never going to get to the bottom of this mystery if he was nodding off as he stood.

  “Go,” Bobby urged. “Go nap. I’ll clean up, and we can have a good night.”

  Sure. A good night with no sex. Reg thought that sounded like sort of a trap—like a good day at school, when everybody knew there was no such thing, but he was too tired to argue.

  He could get to the bottom of the no-sex thing later.

  Heh, heh… bottom!

  BUT NOBODY bottomed that night.

  First they had dinner—just like Bobby suggested—and then suffered through television with V before Reg made her take her meds. This time, though, she popped them in her mouth, took a swig of water, and kissed his cheek before going to bed. A big part of him relaxed—oh God. He could sleep—at least until she started hiding her pills again.

  But after that, he and Bobby brushed their teeth and stripped to their shorts and got in bed.

  They just lay there and touched—and talked.

  Reg heard about his mom, who sounded nice, and his girlfriend, who sounded, well, like a girlfriend, mostly. Pretty, with soft boobs, and sweet. He heard a little about the girlfriend’s brother, but Bobby kept a pretty tight mouth about that.

  Reg kept going back to the girlfriend.

  “I like girls,” he said plaintively. “I do. I miss having a girlfriend.”

  Bobby grunted and rolled over on his side so he was facing Reg but not touching. Reg liked that. He could see Bobby’s eyes when they talked and look at his full lips when he smiled in the dark.

  One of Reg’s few purchases as an adult had been a king-sized bed with matching bedding that he swapped out every year. This year the comforter was a faded chambray blue, and the sheets were a few shades lighter. Bobby must have liked it, because he ran his hands back and forth along the edges as they talked. Something about seeing how John and Dex cared for the sets at Johnnies showed him what he could do with his bedroom—so he did it. He had dressers and a mirror.

  He kept things clean, kept his clothes folded, kept stuff dusted, and swapped out the posters on the wall every so often. This was his space, and he loved it.

  And seeing Bobby here, lying shirtless on his sheets, was sexier than words.

  Even when they were having no sex.

  “Why don’t you have a girl?” Bobby asked, looking at him like the answer mattered.

  “Well, I used to,” Reg told him. “But girls find out about Johnnies, and sometimes they want freaky shit—and I tried the freaky shit. Doing a threesome with another guy—that never ends well. I mean, it ends well with the three guys, but never with the girl and the two guys, that’s for sure.”

  Bobby hid a laugh by biting his lip—a habit Reg could forgive him for because it made him look evil in the good way. “Why not two guys and a girl?” he asked, hanging on to Reg’s every word.

  “Well, it either comes out one of two ways,” Reg said, speaking from experience. “Way one, all they want is to see the two guys fuck—and that’s great. I do it all the time. I got no problem with that—but I took the girl out to dinner, and I’d like to at least, you know, touch her boob, kiss her, something, ’cause, hey, we’re in bed together, right?”

  Bobby nodded sagely. “Okay, so that’s one way.”

  “Or the other way is she expects we’ll spend the whole time with her, and only with her. So, you know, it’s all about her and two guys doing all the stuff to her. And sometimes, when you’re doing something special, this is nice, but… I mean, dude. One of the first lessons at Johnnies is… returning… giving back—what’s the word?”

  “Reciprocation,” Bobby said, pulling out that big word without blinking. Yup, one thing was sure—this kid was too smart to be i
n Reg’s bed.

  But anyway….

  “Exactly! So, like, you get a blowjob, you give one back. You like to bottom, that’s fine. Either find someone who likes to top or learn how to top just for that time. It doesn’t matter—you give back. So two guys doing all the things for this one girl—if she’s not giving them blowjobs on the other days, it’s not… you know….”

  “Fair,” Bobby supplied.

  “Yeah. It’s not fair. So that’s some of the freaky shit girls want, and it’s not as fun as it sounds. Some of the other shit is, like, big orgies, and I did one once, and nobody wanted to wear a rubber, and I was the only one who’d even seen an HIV test, and once I realized all these people jizzing all over the place didn’t have more respect for themselves than that, I found my keys and my shorts and went home.”

  Bobby chuckled. “So, no bueno.”

  “No. No bueno.”

  “Have you tried… I don’t know, finding a nice girl, who doesn’t mind—”

  Reg grunted and rolled to his other side. “Yeah. And she was okay until V went off her meds. But it’s… it’s like I can’t talk to girls like we’re talking here. I miss that when I’m dating girls. It’s just plain weird.”

  “Then why not a nice boy?” Bobby asked, his hand coming up to Reg’s brow and playing with the quickly growing scalp stubble.

  Reg narrowed his eyes. “I’m not gay,” he said.

  “You can be, you know, bi.”

  They’d talked about that. “But isn’t that when you fuck guys but have a girlfriend?” Reg asked, feeling stupid.

  The way Bobby’s big hazel eyes widened and his face went absolutely still didn’t reassure Reg on that account either.

  Idly, while Bobby was struggling for an answer, Reg reached out and rubbed the super-straight bridge of his nose. Bobby crossed his eyes for a moment and then captured his hand—but didn’t release it.

  “Bisexual is when you like both. So you could have a girlfriend to come home to or a boyfriend to go out with. You don’t have to have them both at the same time to be bi.”

  Reg thought about it. “But how do you have… you know. A grown-up family if it’s only two guys?”

  Bobby spread Reg’s hand and started drawing small designs on the inside of his wrist, and for no reason at all, Reg started getting hard.

  “I don’t know,” Bobby admitted. “But you see it on TV. People do it all the time.”

  Reg wrinkled his nose. “We must watch very different TV,” he said, remembering V’s news program.

  Bobby kissed the center of Reg’s palm, and Reg watched him, the small flower of warmth blooming in the center doing nothing bad for his hard-on at all. He didn’t question why Bobby would do that, or how it was different than hooking up, like, say, with Lance or Ethan or any of the other guys. But something near the pit of his balls said it. This is different. Guys who just fuck each other don’t do that. Why doesn’t Bobby know this?

  “Yeah, well, your sister watches the scary kind of television,” Bobby admitted. “The guys in the apartment watch sitcoms and action shows and get their stuff off the computer.”

  Reg grimaced. “V uses the computer. I don’t. I kept getting bugs and crashing mine, so I sold it, like, years ago. I could barely fill out the application at Johnnies.”

  Bobby grunted. “You know, we should get one. Like, go in on it. I could leave it here. We’d learn how to use it so it didn’t get buggy. That could be good.”

  Reg whimpered and rubbed himself against the bed. He thought if he saw one shot—just one shot—of two of his friends locked in the middle of something passionate, spewing spunk from their cocks or swallowing or getting fucked so hard their eyes closed and they couldn’t talk—he would probably sympathy-come right now.

  “Okay,” he said, thinking more about surfing porn than any good the computer would do. “That could be good. Just… oh, geez… tell me when and where, and I’ll go shop—Bobby, I’m gonna come from that. Isn’t that fucking… weird?”

  Bobby took Reg’s first two fingers deep into his mouth, and Reg imagined… just imagined… those pretty eyes looking at him while Bobby’s sweet mouth milked Reg’s cock for everything he had.

  His orgasm rolled agonizingly through him. He should have been all sexed out, but still it churned slowly, like his brain cells were awakening in all his nerve endings. The realization that he’d been turned on and brought to climax by this kid just from having his fingers sucked made fireworks erupt all over his body.

  His penis actually hurt, and his balls ached by the time he was through.

  He lay, still facedown on his bed, panting and gazing at Bobby like he was scary magic man. “That was the damnedest thing,” he breathed. “I woulda… I didn’t think I coulda… how did you do that?”

  Bobby heaved himself across the bed and kissed his cheek. “I got no idea,” he said softly. “But I don’t think either one of us could be all straight for something like that to happen.”

  Reg grunted, too tired to even argue. “I thought you had a girlfriend,” he whispered.

  “I do,” Bobby whispered back. “This wasn’t… it was like lying in bed with you when you were sick. Feels natural. Like it’s what I should be doing. Doesn’t feel like cheating. Isn’t that weird?”

  Yeah. Weird. Reg whimpered. “You’re gonna leave me for your girlfriend,” he explained, like Bobby didn’t know this. “That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

  Bobby hmmed in his throat and pulled his hand through his hair. “Why?” he asked.

  “’Cause people don’t leave their girlfriends for people like me,” he said, feeling patient. Bobby was still looking at him, pretty eyes big and full of disbelief. “It’s like nice girls don’t date porn models, and nobody wants to live in this falling-down house with my sister. These things are true.”

  “Hunh,” Bobby said. “Does that mean you don’t want me to stay the night?”

  “But you’re fixing my bathroom!” Reg said, confused as hell.

  “Yeah—but you don’t have to put out for me because I’m fixing the bathroom,” Bobby said, laughing. But wounded. Reg could see that in his eyes. Oh hell.

  “No,” he said, reaching out and capturing Bobby’s hand. Ah God, the closeness. This was what he loved about Johnnies—the closeness. The kindness. He’d always paid it back in the coin of sex, but here it was, being offered for free.

  He had no currency for that.

  “No what?” Bobby asked quietly, squeezing his hand.

  “Just… just stay. Talk to me. Be my….” Friend? “I can’t think of the word,” he said disconsolately.

  “Companion,” Bobby told him. His voice sounded husky in the dark. “Let’s do companion.”

  “Okay. Let’s be companions. I like that.”

  “Good.”

  Reg closed his eyes then, because it had been a long day and he was still recovering, but he felt it when Bobby inched closer to him, his body massive and muscular and warm. Bobby was the one who pulled the comforter over their shoulders and settled the pillows under their head, and it was Bobby’s breathing that lulled Reg to sleep.

  Friends. A companion. Was that really the word Reg wanted?

  Lessons in the Interim

  JESSICA TEXTED him at least four times a day.

  Sometimes it was silly stuff she found on the net, and sometimes it was dream houses, and sometimes it was sample budgets for how much he needed to make to have an apartment for her to move out to Sacramento.

  Sometimes it was selfies of herself at her job or with her brother or horseback riding—which was something she loved to do.

  When he was done filming his scene with Rachel—who’d been bitchy to the point of making Bobby limp, if truth be told—he found Jessica had left ten texts for him during the six hours of work.

  He wasn’t sure who he’d been most irritated with by the end of that day—the girl waiting for him in his hometown or the girl who’d said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake—that’s
not a fucking baseball bat. You can stop hitting me in the face with it anytime.” Jesus—there was nothing in the sex handbook that said she couldn’t hold it with one hand while giving a blowjob, was there? He was busy holding her hair back and opening up his chest so everyone could see her swallow his cock. Improvisation wasn’t just for Shakespeare!

  But after his shower—and there were a thousand people in the locker room, so he found himself practically falling asleep in the shoot room and resenting the hell out of having to smell him and Rachel in the sheets—he realized he was both loving and hating every ding his phone made from his pocket.

  He’d kept his job working Hazy Daze, even after he started getting all the work at Johnnies. The shifts were for three hours, and he only worked two days a week there, but his mom had texted him that Keith’s dad was raising her rent. He’d be damned if he let his mother get kicked out of her house because he stopped giving Keith Gilmore blowjobs and couldn’t protect her. But he hated waiting tables—and sucked at it for that matter—so he dreaded getting a text asking him if he could come work.

  So that was two people he didn’t want to hear from.

  Then again, it could be one of the guys. Rick and Skylar were funny—and they often got their clients to pose for him. They were good about having not just the eye candy too. The scrawny kid who could now lift five pounds more than he could last week, he got shown to all their friends so he could read all the “Good jobs!” and “Keep goin’ little bro’s!” that came rocketing back. Skylar had one client who had lost 100 pounds and had 150 more to go, and he told the woman that he’d send pictures to all his friends so they could cheer her on too. She’d declined the pictures—Bobby could have told him that—but she did appreciate the good wishes whenever he told his friends the newest weight-loss news.

  Trey—tall, lanky Trey, with a smirk instead of a smile and perfectly coiffed black hair—liked to text his roommates his English professor’s quote of the day. Billy—almost as small and compact as Reg, but with pale skin and hauntingly dark eyes—would text his professor’s geeky vector drawings whenever he went into physics. Bobby kept those. He particularly treasured the one asking about the speed of a monkey that fell out of a tree and got swatted across the river by the elephant’s trunk. If his high school teachers had been that funny, he might not have hated school so much.