by Amy Lane
It didn’t really wake Dex up anymore. It was official. If Dex could sleep through Kane’s snoring, he could sleep through fires, tornadoes, thunderstorms, tax collectors, and yet another escape from Tomas, the snake who liked to sleep nestled in Dex’s balls. (Twice. Twice more, that snake had crawled up Dex’s boxer shorts. If Dex hadn’t learned to sleep like the fucking dead, he would never sleep at all. He would, in fact, be crouched up on his empty dresser with a flashlight and a metal pan, waiting to warn that fucker away from his fucking boxer shorts!)
So Kane’s snoring hadn’t woken Dex up this cold, foggy Friday after Thanksgiving. What had actually woken Dex up was the knowledge that he’d been planning to buy his plane tickets home today—but he didn’t wanna.
It was a completely childish emotion, and he knew it.
He usually loved going back home. It was like two weeks to be a kid again. He and his brothers would help Dad with the livestock and talk about the planting. Dex’s older and younger brothers had both stayed to work the farm, and they’d built houses for their families on the property. (Well, Sean didn’t have a family yet, but he would eventually.) Dex got to play with children and ride horses in the snow. He got to milk the family’s few cows and herd the small flock of sheep they kept to sell wool to local vendors, and be glad he wasn’t there come harvest time. He got to help his mother cook and his sister-in-law tend her two kids, and everybody in the house would call him David.
He never mentioned Johnnies by name, he just referred to it as a business, and the porn tapes as product, and the models as guys at the office. No one judged him, and no one expected him to look at sex any differently, and no one knew he was gay.
On the one hand, it was enormously comforting to be there for Christmas. It felt amazingly normal.
On the other hand, sometimes he felt like standing in the snow that blanketed his parents’ front yard, stripping off his clothes, and shouting “See me!” at the top of his lungs until they knew him for who he really was, and proved that they could still love him after all that.
Every Christmas he watched Catholic Mass on television with his mother, who could recite to him all of the edicts the Pope had issued that year, and who had loudly and proudly voted no on everything from gay rights to abortion rights to equal salary rights to… hell. Name something Dex now believed in, and his mother (and, less obtrusively, his father) believed the exact opposite.
So those two weeks were like being someone else, someone he used to know, someone with a different name.
He’d lived so long as Dex that he now felt like he was both of them—the best of Dex and the worst of David, fused solidly into one person.
But not lying here, watching Kane snore.
Kane… Kane didn’t have any of those hang-ups about the different names or the labels or the beliefs or being two different people. God, Kane was simple. Dex had been sure—absolutely sure—that Kane would just do it, just move out of his room and go back to fucking anything that moved. But Kane’s simplicity had turned out to have a whole different direction. Anything that ends up with us in separate beds, that’s the wrong thing.
Dex reached out and traced a finger down the curve of his thickly muscled shoulder. So monogamy—outside the office, of course—was really that easy to achieve. Anything that made them sleep in the same bed was a good thing. Anything that separated them was bad. Was it really that easy?
Either way, the thought of leaving Kane alone in this house while Dex went off to be somebody else for Christmas just wrecked him.
Kane’s snores stopped. He smacked his palate, made an “mm-mm,” sound, and rolled over onto his stomach, hunching his shoulders protectively over his hands. His eyes opened a little, and he squinted at Dex. “Did I wake you up?” he asked. “Was I snoring?”
Dex laughed softly and rolled from his stomach to his side so he could rest his head on the pillow.
“Not at all, Princess. You were as delicate as a feather made of snow.”
Kane’s lips curved up in a smile. “You’re so fulla shit.”
Dex nodded. “As are you. It’s why adding another bathroom is on my to-do list.” He had a sudden thought that it wasn’t a bathroom he needed to add, and a whole actual to-do list for Christmas appeared behind his eyes, and he thought he might make this one actually work.
Kane snickered again and then reached out casually and hauled Dex into a kiss, morning breath and all. Dex went, closing his eyes and sighing. God. Kane had it right, didn’t he? Anything that made this impossible was a bad thing.
“What’s wrong?” Kane asked when the kiss ended, and Dex had to hand it to him. For a guy who claimed he wasn’t bright, Kane was damned perceptive.
“I want to ask you something, and it’s going to sound really nice, but if we do it, it could be a whole lot of trouble, and I don’t want to do that to you.”
Kane squinched his eyes shut and opened them and squinched them shut again. Then he squinted at Dex like he was trying to put things into focus. “I’m sure you could have made that more complicated, but I’m not sure how.”
Dex pressed his face into the pillow and giggled. He turned his head back and reached out to touch Kane’s coarse dark hair, which was standing up in six different directions from the top of his head. “Trust me, oh simple one, I’ll find a way.” Kane pushed his face against Dex’s hand, and Dex touched his temple delicately with skating fingertips. “I don’t want to leave you alone for Christmas,” he said. Maybe just touching Kane gave him magic powers to cut to the chase. “The thought of you alone here with the turtles makes me want to cry. But I already promised my mom that I’d go home, and I want to take you with me, but….”
Kane grinned and bounced up, sitting on his knees with avid eyes. “You want to bring me? Really? To Montana? You want to take me with you? That would be awesome. Would we see mountains? I’d love that—would there be snow? I’d have to get new boots, right? Really, I can go?”
Dex couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry, so he started with propping himself up on his elbow and smiling. “Yeah—but only if you hear me out, okay?”
Kane snapped his mouth shut and nodded, and Dex patted his spot—still warm—so he’d calm back down again. Kane settled right back into his warm spot, but he was still grinning, and Dex had never hated himself more than right now, when he had to make this simple thing complicated and squash some of that innocent enthusiasm.
“It’s not as easy as that,” Dex said softly. “See, here’s the thing. My family doesn’t know I’m gay, or in porn, or any of it.”
“I knew that,” Kane said, surprising Dex. He couldn’t remember mentioning it.
“You did?”
“Yeah. I heard you talking to your mom. She was trying to get you to vote some way on some proposition, you know, back in October? I remember I was surprised because she lives in Montana, and anyway, just the way you were talking about it with her—you were voting for gay rights and she was voting against, and you had that sound in your voice. You knew something she didn’t. Anyway, so what? They don’t know. So?”
Now Dex was the one squinching his eyes shut. “Okay, so I take you with me, like I want to because I don’t want you spending Christmas here alone. Anyway, so who are you? Right here and now, what are you to me?”
Kane blinked and then smiled. “I’m your friend,” he said smugly, and Dex didn’t blame him. It was true.
“Great. Now who am I?”
Kane pulled up one side of his mouth. “You’re Dex!”
Dex shook his head. “No, I’m David.”
Kane shrugged. “Why can’t you just tell them it’s a nickname?”
Dex looked down and spoke to the hollow of his shoulder and the pillow. “Because it’s not just a nickname,” he mumbled. “It’s the name of someone they’d know.”
“Will I get to meet him?” Kane asked, his voice so guileless, so sweetly curious, that Dex wanted to cry.
“No. I’m sorry, he’s uhm… he died, mo
re than… almost….” Oh God, really? That long ago? And Dex—David—was still this hung up about it? “Nine and a half years ago,” he finished, not able to look at Kane. Geez, Kane thought Dex sort of had his shit together. Dex flashed back to that first night, when he’d been stoned and needy, the night that had pulled Kane into his bed, where he didn’t want to leave. Well, maybe not that together.
“He was important to you?” Kane asked, and Dex closed his eyes.
“If I say yes, can we leave it like that?” he mumbled. “My parents… they thought I was sad because I lost my friend.”
Kane was suddenly there, his face near Dex’s, the space of his enthusiasm diminished to breath. “Nobody knew? Ever?”
Dex’s throat was thick and his eyes burned. “You do,” he rasped. “See, and that’s the hard thing.” He pulled himself together, started to push himself up, but Kane put a hand on his shoulder and kept him down, with his head turned sideways on the bed, and then slid down and joined him there, their shoulders overlapping, their breath mingling. Kane reached down and pulled the comforter up, and for a moment, Dex remembered David and the real Dex, six years old and playing blanket forts. But Kane’s skin was silky against his, and Kane’s eyes were wide and accepting, and Dex was suddenly aware that for all that he was only twenty, this man had supported his sister, had paid for his niece’s doctor’s bills, had bought a house and taken care of a menagerie and, right now, was listening to Dex’s heart with more attentiveness than anyone else in Dex’s life.
They weren’t six, and Kane wasn’t his first lover, and this was real.
“What’s the hard thing?” Kane asked, blinking owlishly in their little space. His eyes were such a wonderful chocolate brown.
Dex swallowed and wished they were fucking instead of talking. “The hard thing is that if you come with me, one of two things will happen. One is you’ll have to call me David and you’re not used to it, and you’ll have to not kiss me or touch me the whole time, and that will feel like a lie. The other thing is you’ll slip up or I’ll slip up or, hell, I’ll just lose my nut and fucking tell them, and it will be ugly—Kane, it’ll get ugly. And I will have hauled you across the country to fuck up your Christmas all on the basis of you don’t want us to sleep in separate beds.”
Kane grunted. “Will we have to sleep in separate beds?” he asked, and Dex shook his head.
“Probably not. I had a queen-sized when I was in school. Shared it with my younger brother. It’s where I stay now when I go back for Christmas—Mom made our room into the guest room.”
“Mm.” Kane nodded then. “Okay, so what’s the problem?”
Dex squinted at him. “Hello? Two options? Hiding and lying or a big ugly scene? Did you not hear that part?”
Kane nodded. “Yeah. But we won’t be in separate beds. I haven’t changed my opinion on that, Dex. As long as we’re sleeping in the same bed, it’s a good thing.”
Dex smiled a little. “Okay, then. After we’re up and we eat, I’ll call my mom and get you a ticket.”
Kane’s smile was broad and wide, but he did not whoop and jump up and down like Dex expected.
“What?” Dex asked after a moment of just them smiling at each other.
“I know something about you that no one else does,” Kane said softly, and Dex’s cheeks burned.
“Which thing? At this point, you know a lot of things about me that no one else does. Which thing is it?”
Kane’s grin cranked up. “I know you watch me while I sleep!”
Dex howled with indignation and snatched the pillow under his head so he could try to beat Kane to death with it. “Auuuughhh! You psycho, yeah, I watch you! I wanna see if you suck any flies in that big mouth of your—mmmffff….”
Kane caught Dex’s flailing pillow easily and clasped both of his hands together at the wrist, then pinned them up over his head against the bed and ravished his mouth before Dex could even finish the sentence. Dex kissed him back, suddenly so hungry, so needy for those big arms around his shoulders that he couldn’t kiss him enough. His body went pliant, bones liquid, and his knees came up around Kane’s hips, his feet pushing against that surprising bubble butt so Kane would mash his groin against Dex’s.
Kane groaned into his mouth and pulled his head back, although his hips kept undulating. “God, Davy, what you do to me! How ’bout I make this quick and then we can go eat, okay?”
Dex groaned and frotted desperately against him, but he was just a little too far away for really good traction. “Food?” he complained. “I’ve got a hard-on like steel and you want food?”
Kane chuckled and bit his chin. “Don’t worry,” he said, punctuating it with a lick on the neck. “It’ll take five minutes, ten minutes tops. Here.” He reached down and grabbed Dex through his boxers and squeezed, and Dex groaned. Kane kept his hand down there and started to scoot his hips up while moving his head down. “See, if we do this, it’ll save time.”
And there he was, his mouth hot and wet, clamped over Dex’s cock like the vice of heaven, and there was Kane’s cock, beautiful and thick and mostly erect, the foreskin covering it like a half-torn wrapper on a big white-chocolate truffle. Kane slurped him down hard and Dex suddenly needed Kane in his mouth. As his brain went bye-bye, his body started screaming yes, yes, yes, yes, oh God, Kane, fucking yes! Dex had maybe a moment to think that Kane might change everything for better or worse, before he was just an electron in the power surge Kane sent streaming through his body.
THEY went out to breakfast at Denny’s, which was low-rent, but Kane liked their hash browns, so he ordered, like, four plates of them. Dex ordered fruit and toast and looked so longingly at Kane’s sausage and hash browns that Kane gave him his own plate.
“I’m gonna get fat,” Dex said through a full mouth. His eyes were blissfully closed.
“Good,” Kane said after he swallowed his own mouthful. “Good. ’Cause then you can’t be in porn anymore, and I can have you all to myself.”
“You’re not gonna want me when I’m fat.” Sausage. God. Ever since Tommy had gone on his nonbulimic binge-and-purge thing, Dex had been eating health food as a show of support. He’d lost five pounds, but… oh God. He missed sausage. He’d been raised on it.
Kane actually paused in the middle of his second plate of hash browns and sausage, the fork halfway to his mouth. “That’s stupid,” he said, his nose wrinkled. “Why wouldn’t I want you? I like you. I mean, I could fuck any pretty thing that moved, but I couldn’t live with any of them.”
Dex cocked his head. “You know, I’ve mostly quit porn as it is. I get a decent paycheck from helping John out with the rest of the shit. You want I should tell him I’m done for good and forever? Not even to help out when the schedule’s thin?”
Kane looked stunned for a minute, and then he blushed, looking really pleased. “You’d do that?”
Dex thought about it, thought about Bobby with the giant schlong and anyone else he might end up banging. Yeah, sure—there was always a hot guy out there. But then, there was always a Chase, who could break your heart, or a Tommy, who Dex was glad wasn’t in the business anymore, because he would have felt weird banging his friend when his friend had a boyfriend.
And a Kane, waiting for him at home.
“Not really a sacrifice,” he said, meaning it.
Kane looked down at his plate and, wonder of frickin’ wonders, put his fork down.
“What’s wrong?”
“I… I can’t really do the same thing,” he said apologetically.
“How much money do you have?”
Kane shrugged. “I got no idea. I deposit my shit and the money disappears. I have to go get my mail from Lola.” Yeah—Lola had said she’d forward Kane’s mail, but they hadn’t seen any of it yet.
Dex blinked. “How much did you have two months ago when you moved in?”
Kane toyed with his hash browns for so long Dex actually saw them congealing.
“Eat your food, Kane. We’ll go
get your mail from Lola after breakfast.”
“She won’t be home.”
“We can get it from her on Monday, then.”
“Okay, fine.” Kane took a bite, but he still didn’t look happy.
“Now what?”
Grunt.
“Look, Kane, you’ve got an unhealthy amount of potatoes here that are gonna get gross if you don’t quit fucking around and get your momentum back. I don’t expect you to quit tomorrow, so just say what you gotta say and turn the steam shovel back on.”
“What do I do if I’ve got enough money to quit?”
Dex blinked. “Whatever you want, right? That’s the purpose of having enough money to quit!”
“But the only thing I know is bugs and snakes!”
Dex grinned. “’Kay, Kane. Two words. Two lousy fuckin’ words. I want you to memorize them, all right?”
Kane had slicked his hair to the side, which was hard because it was so thick. But he’d also put on his other good shirt, and his new jeans. Dex knew—just knew—it was to look good when they went out, so it made him proud when Kane looked at him with trust and hope in his eyes.
“Two words?”
“Yeah. Two words.”
“I’m listening.”
“Entomology and herpetology.”
“Every time you say them, they sound like more than two words.”
“Trust me, Kane. You’re gonna love them.”
Kane shoveled half the hash browns, smothered in ketchup, from his plate into his mouth. He was halfway through swallowing the giant mouthful when he spoke again. “How would I go about loving those two words?”
“Trust me. Just trust me, okay? But we have to wait until Monday.”
Kane wiped his mouth and moved on to his next plate, sausage first. “Monday? So everything’s happening on Monday. What’re we doin’ for the rest of today?”
Dex looked around them. The place was a madhouse, because it was Black Friday and shoppers were losing their fucking minds. “I’d say Christmas shopping, but Jesus. I guess we should work out in an hour—”
“Fuck it,” Kane said, taking another one of those huge ketchup-coated bites. “We’re goin’ back home and humping like some sort of farm animal.”