Dex in Blue

by Amy Lane

  But that’s not what he was thinking as he manned the damned phone and waved people in and signed for packages at the front desk of the Johnnies office a week later.

  He was thinking he didn’t know where the fuck the receptionist was, and there was a reason they paid her every month when she, as of yet, hadn’t gotten naked with anyone.

  It turned out, the problem was that she had.

  She came in about two hours late, looking pale and sad, her normally shiny dark hair stringy, her brown eyes puffy from crying, and the sort of cast to her skin that Dex was starting to associate with Chase right before he’d… yeah. That night had really sucked.

  “Jesus, Kelsey—you could have called and told us you were sick!” he said, half concern and half irritation, and to his complete mortification, she burst into tears.

  “Oh fuck.” Tears? Tears? None of his girlfriends had done tears. He’d tended to go for strong women who thought only the weak cried. He’d found it sort of annoying, actually, and it hadn’t prepared him for this at all. And she didn’t even run away to the bathroom or anything, just stood there, helpless and vulnerable as a wounded hamster. He gaped at her for a second while the phone rang.

  And then did what he did, apparently, which was get his shit together for other people.

  “Okay, Kelse,” he said, his voice dropping to the same gentle tone he used on Tomas the snake, “I’m gonna put the service message on and grab someone to come up and sit down here, and you and me are gonna have a talk, okay?”

  Kelsey nodded at him, her lower lip thrust out and quivering, and her arms folded over her abnormally large boobs.

  And the lightbulb went off in Dex’s head, and he wanted to groan, but he didn’t.

  “Go ahead and go clean up in the bathroom,” he said and then managed a smile. “There’s a girl’s side now—that’s a good thing, right?”

  She tried a smile too. It didn’t really take, but he gave her points for trying while he lassoed Ethan (who had no earthly reason to be in today—Dex was going to have to ask him about that later) to man the phones and direct traffic.

  “You can do this, right, Ethe?” Dex asked.

  Ethan looked up at him, that broad Italian face open and guileless and his mouth, surprisingly pink and naked, with thick, downright pornographic lips, widely smiling. “Yeah, no problem,” he said, nodding. “Sign for packages, direct people to John’s office if they’re on the list, don’t fuck with the phone. I can do that. I’ll just sit here and wait for Kane and Tommy.”

  “Okay, fine, thanks!” Dex said, and later he felt like a stupid dick because he had no idea why Kane and Tommy would show up at work, and didn’t think to ask before he wandered through the adapted office complex to find Kelsey.

  Dex had often thought about how deceptive the home office of Johnnies was. From the outside, it was a little complex—big enough for a couple of businesses, one floor, with a courtyard in the middle. It wasn’t very old but had apparently stood vacant until John had leased it, about three months after Dex shot his first video. John liked to say that Dex made his down payment on the office, and Dex always laughed with quiet pride. Yeah, his videos had always sold really well—they’d always gotten five-star ratings on the website too. He’d liked it—loved it—the attention, liked being told he was beautiful. It didn’t matter what girls said to him; the only places he’d ever gotten the same feeling of being perfect and lovely had been online after his videos had been posted and that one crystalline summer day, lying on a picnic blanket, looking at Dexter’s brown eyes under the cloud-dappled shadows of the endless Montana sky.

  So knowing that his performances had helped build John’s place made him feel good. He was a good performer—he’d always been a good boy at home, and here, he was a good bad boy. And he liked this place. It was professional. They had a receptionist, they had a laundry service, and they only took trained cameramen. Dex had taken a couple of film classes and then passed that knowledge on to John, and their videos had improved.

  Dex had taken all his accounting classes and helped John rework his payroll program so that it was more efficient, and John’s finances had become pristine. And between Dex and John, they tried to make sure that none of the guys they had doing scenes felt exploited—or were exploitive. Sex wasn’t going to be vilified or fetishized in John’s business. It could be hot, it could be raw, it could be sweaty and a little rough, but it wasn’t going to be dirty (unless it was in the good, happy way that made you want to fuck something), and it wasn’t going to make the models feel like anything less than professionals at something a lot of people wanted to see.

  So when John took his first year’s profits and bought this office complex and then renovated it with Dex’s suggestions, Dex was honored. He’d felt useful, like all of that college education his on-camera sex was paying for was actually something good. Silly, right? But true. True. He’d helped build a business, and he’d loved it. He’d gotten touched and caressed, licked and fucked, and he’d gotten to do the same things back. He’d traveled to France, Belize, Florida, and New York on the company dime. He’d had his dick sucked under a blazing blue sky in Cabo San Lucas, and he’d been fucked into a mattress in a penthouse in Las Vegas while the model who fucked him cried “Yee-fuckin’-haw!” at the top of his lungs. (That guy now had a family in Oregon—he still sent Dex Christmas cards.) He’d come frickin’ gallons, and he’d enjoyed the hell out of it—and when he’d stopped loving it so much, the opportunities to help John had been fun too.

  And this little office building, with its various bedrooms and its shower and its laundry service, its little gazebo and garden square with the easy-on-the-knees polyplastic ground cover, was a testament to how much he’d loved his job.

  Gathering models in the hospital for Chase and knocking on the bathroom door to talk Kelsey out of the freaky tree were Dex’s dues for that pride.

  “Uhm, Kelse?” Dex muttered, knocking on the brand-new door at the opposite end of the hall from where the usual entrance was. He was unhealthily embarrassed. “Kelse? I can talk now.”

  “I’m—” Sniffle. “—I’m o—” Sniffle. “Okaaaaaayyyyy!” Sob.

  Dex thunked his head against the door. It was painted pink—against his strenuous objections, but John insisted that he didn’t want anyone confusing the girls’ shower room with the boys’ shower room. This might be porn, but goddammit, it was gonna be classy porn, right? At this moment, that classy locker room door made Dex think about Pepto-Bismol. He wanted some.

  “No you’re not,” he said, wishing he was the kind of guy who could take that at face value, but he couldn’t. It sucked. If he could turn around and walk away from this, he could have turned and walked away from Tommy and Chase, and he would have been spared that horrible moment in the hospital when he’d been faced with all the things he’d lost by being a gay man with a past in pornography. “You’re not okay.”

  “Yes I am!”

  “Do you want me to shout it all over the fuckin’ complex, Kelsey? I have four brothers and a sister. I know what a—”

  “Jesus, Dexter!” The door opened and Kelsey’s hand reached out and hauled him bodily into the girls’ room.

  He wrinkled his nose as he looked around. “What the hell kind of soap do you guys use? It smells like vanilla and flowers.”

  Kelsey sniffed experimentally and then blanched. “Aw, fuck. Add something else to the list,” she moaned and then ran for the toilet. Dex watched her go, then visited the shower, found the hand soap, scented candle, lotion, and air freshener, all of which emanated vanilla and flowers, and shoved them into an unused locker.

  Suddenly the pink door burst forward and a willow wand in a fluffy robe, with dark hair and blue eyes, burst in, shouting, “Oh God, where do they find these guys with big dicks and no clue? Bobby? Seriously, Bo… uh. Bee?”

  Dex’s cheeks flamed. “I thought he was very sweet,” he offered, and the girl’s face flamed.

  “I thought this was t
he girls’ dressing room,” she mumbled, and Dex shrugged.

  “I thought so too. I didn’t realize your scene was up so soon, and I was trying to talk to Kelsey.”

  “Who the hell is Kelsey?”

  “I’m the receptionist, Rachel,” Kelsey said, disgust written on her face as she emerged from the bathroom stall and washed her hands. “Jesus, I gave you a tour of the place.”

  Rachel looked at Kelsey and it looked like she caught herself midsneer. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry—I just… I sort of wanted some privacy to blow off steam. What are you doing in here? I thought this was girls only?”

  “He’s gay,” Kelsey said, not mollified in the least. “Cool your jets, we’ll be in the hallway in a minute.”

  Dex gaped at her. He’d been spending the last year, ever since Scott, his first nonporn affair, looking himself in the mirror and practicing that word. He wasn’t just a straight guy boning straight guys—he was gay, and he needed to pony up. But he’d never heard anybody say it out loud.

  Kelsey looked at him, a little color in her face, and suddenly clapped her hand over her mouth and grew a lot more color. “That wasn’t common knowledge,” she said, and he glared at her.

  “Not even to me, Kelsey. Dammit, it’s like our real names—you just don’t fucking blow those out of the water, you know?”

  Kelsey’s head looked like a bobblehead’s, and her eyes got suspiciously bright, and Dex wanted to swallow his tongue.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and Rachel’s eyes widened in horror.

  “Oh fuck—is she gonna cry?” Rachel turned to Dex and actually stomped her bare little foot with the pink glittery nail polish on the toes. “Really? You gotta make her stop! Make her stop crying!”

  Dex nodded and dredged up a panicked smile. “Look, Kelse—look. It’s okay. It’s okay, seriously. I’m not mad—I’m not. I thought I was, but I was wrong. I just want to help you out here, okay? You came in, you looked like hell, I thought maybe you could tell me what’s doin’ and I could help. But if you’re not ready to do that, we don’t have to. You know you can always—”

  In that moment there was a crackle and a whine, and the PA opened up with a cacophony of voices.

  “Don’t touch that!” “Turn that off.” “Not that button!” “Hey, I didn’t do it on purpose!” “Ethan you fucking moron, turn off the goddamned PA system, you’re gonna get Dex in tr—”

  There was a sudden morbid silence, and it felt like even the air-conditioning stopped to listen.

  Kelsey and Dex eyeballed each other in horror.

  “Was that Kane?” she said curiously.

  “And Tommy,” Dex responded flatly, picking their voices out of that babble and trying not to think about the post-panic attack that was about to mow him down in his solar plexus. “Ethan, of course.”

  “Anyone else?” Kelsey asked, and Dex shook his head.

  “I don’t recognize the other voice. Did you know we have two scenes shooting?” Oh God. Two scenes. That sort of thing was hard to edit out. He was going to be here for hours.

  Kelsey groaned and rubbed her forehead. “You’re gonna be here for fucking hours,” she muttered, and Dex closed his eyes and nodded.

  “Are you feeling better?” he asked, and she grimaced.

  “I think some soda crackers will help,” she admitted.

  “I’ll send Kane, Tommy, and Ethan to get them. They seem to need something to do!”

  As they turned around to walk out, Rachel let out a little whine. “Oh geez—what happened to my candles and stuff? This place is gonna start to smell like a locker room or something!”

  Dex wrapped his arm around Kelsey’s slender shoulders and resisted the urge to bang his head against the wall.

  KANE looked miserable. “I’m so sorry,” he muttered, and Dex clapped him on the shoulder and shook his head.

  Ethan looked worse. “Seriously, man. I’m… I’m just… dude.”

  Tommy looked furious. “Jesus, Ethan, what the fuck were you doing?”

  Ethan cringed, and Dex smacked Tommy in the arm.

  “I… I wanted to see if the buttons had bumps on them!” Ethan protested. “Like Braille! I know that sometimes computer keys do, and I just wanted to….” His voice dropped, because Dex wasn’t the only one staring at him like he’d lost his mind. “Yeah, stupid idea,” he finished.

  Dex took a deep breath and looked around. He realized that the mystery voice was Donnie, Chase’s friend with the white-blond hair, who was looking almost sick with apology. Controlling these situations: he sucked at it. Why did John leave him in charge? The real Dex had been a leader. He’d been the guy on the football field you could count on. He’d been the guy who’d told Davy what to do when they’d been alone together. David? David was just flailing around, trying hard not to make any bad situations worse.

  “Okay,” he said, planning like his life depended on it. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Ethan, you’re gonna go buy Kelsey here some soda crackers, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and some milk and fruit, okay? Don’t ask why, she’s got the flu and she’s gonna man the phones since you monkeys can’t even throw poo at a wall without missing, okay?”

  Ethan nodded sheepishly and took off, and Kelsey sat down at the phones with a grateful, weary look at Dex.

  “And you three,” he sighed, turning to them. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

  Tommy glared at Donnie and Kane. “I called psycho boy here to see where you were to help me plan Chase’s coming home party, and he called blondie here, and I thought we couldn’t possibly do this shit together without you!”

  Dex closed his eyes and opened them and then looked at Kane, who shrugged.

  “I tried to tell him you were busy today,” he said, because Dex had spent the night before whining about what kind of day it was going to be. “I thought once you told him to fuck off, I could go with him and help.”

  Kane had dull red stains on his cheeks, and Dex wanted to hug him. “I think that’s a fuckin’ awesome idea,” he said with feeling. “Tommy, Donnie, consider Kane my proxy. He’ll tell me what you guys think, I’ll give you a plan—but not now, not here, okay? The only way any of us get paid is if we pretend this is a real fuckin’ job I’m doing, okay?”

  Kane’s full mouth quirked in and his dimples popped as he tried not to preen. Dex reached out and mussed his carefully gelled hair, and Kane’s suppressed smile became an all-out grin.

  “I got your back, bro!” he said, not self-conscious in the least.

  Tommy cast an uneasy glance at Donnie and then reined in his general irritation. “Yeah, sorry to fuck with your day.” Tommy glared in Donnie’s direction again. “You need to keep your mouth shut unless it’s something dire like a food allergy or something.”

  Donnie stuck an impertinent tongue out at Tommy and then gave Dex the brotherly clasp-hands-shoulder-bump, saying softly, “I’ll be on my best behavior. Just keep him from strangling me, okay?”

  Dex nodded, and Chase’s friend and Chase’s lover headed for the exit, turning back in time to see Kane hesitate in front of Dex.

  Dex could feel it too. It was time for something: a peck on the cheek, a buss on the lips, clasped hands, something. But they weren’t defined that way—Kane wasn’t, by his own admission, gay.

  But that didn’t stop them from looking into each other’s eyes in troubled silence for a moment.

  “You’re good at that,” Kane said softly, and Dex smiled, feeling his face heat.

  “You were trying. I wasn’t so great when I was barely twenty.” Feeling suddenly like they had to touch, Dex reached out and ruffled his hair again and then pulled Kane’s head against his chest while giving a halfhearted noogie. Kane didn’t burst out of Dex’s hold around his shoulders, and Dex didn’t let go of him immediately.

  “Thanks,” Dex said quietly. “You were trying to do me a solid. I ’preciate it.”

  Kane looked up from Dex’s chest and beamed. “I’ll let you know
if they’re still talking to each other, ’kay?”

  Dex remembered Kane’s mediator skills at the hospital. “I’d put money on it,” he said, feeling proud, and Kane’s beaming smile as he left lasted Dex for at least as long as it took John to come out of the shot he’d been filming to rip Dex a whole new asshole for the sound gaffe.

  For once, Dex didn’t take it personally. He had other things to sustain him besides John’s approval.

  AND finally, it was calm. The scenes were shot and in the can, John set up the second one for editing, and it was just Dex and Kelsey sitting at the reception desk with some takeout.

  The quiet was unnerving. Dex ate his lean chicken and spinach with lemon juice and looked at Kelsey, who was eating something smothered with cheese and not looking the least bit repentant.

  Kelsey caught his regard and sucked the last of the cheese off her fingers. “Say it,” she said softly. “If you say it, then I have to believe it, and then I can deal with it.”

  Dex swallowed his last bite of chicken. “When are you due?”

  Kelsey closed her eyes. “June,” she said with a sigh. “I’m due in June.”

  “And Daddy….”

  “Is a douche bag.” Kelsey leaned forward and balanced her chin on her fists. “I mean, at first, I felt sorry for him, because he told me he’d just broken up with his girlfriend.”

  Dex raised his eyebrows. “How do you know he didn’t?”

  “Because he brought her into the office. Apparently she’s into kinky shit like knowing he bones guys for a living. I still don’t know where he got those marks on his face, though.”

  Dex’s spinach and chicken abruptly turned into concrete and rubbing alcohol. “Marks? What marks?”

  “I don’t know—he had these… divots. Like someone threw something sharp at him and a fat lip that was split in the middle too. He didn’t even want to shoot that day, but it was right after Chance… well, after Chance couldn’t come in anymore, and John said nobody would notice.”

  Dex closed his eyes and swallowed, his mouth suddenly full of sand and grit. He hadn’t picked up on it—he should have, when she said the guy had brought his girlfriend into the office.