by Amy Lane
For the second shoot, he’d had to do something wonky in his head. When all of the guys had been talking and fluffing and bandying about sexy talk, Kane had been in the corner, eyes closed, remembering the way Dex had looked that morning, fast asleep.
He’d wanted so badly to wake him up by kissing down his spine. Dex had that long body: when he arched his back, it looked like poetry. That thought had sustained Kane through the shoot. He’d been doing his thing on the set, following the basic directions the cameraman gave before the shoot so that they knew where he was going and could follow him without getting in his way or caught by the mirrors. In his head, he pretended he’d awakened Dex in the early morning and they were doing poetry.
But now Dex was in the room, and while the rest of the world might just see Dex, that’s not what Kane was seeing. What Kane was seeing was David Calvin Worral, whose jaw was held too tight and whose eyes were for once looking closer to thirty than twenty, and who kept twisting the ring on his finger nervously, like he was afraid someone was going to take it.
Oh fuck. His ring.
He’d been about to reach his hands down his pants and start massaging himself through his underwear, but he jerked his hand out like his cock was on fire and he didn’t want to get burned.
Quietly, when Dex was all alone checking out his handheld camera, Kane walked up to him and thrust the ring into his hand. “Hey, Dexter,” he said, trying to be all cool and shit, “do me a favor and hold this for me, will you?”
Dex looked at the ring in his hand dumbly and swallowed. “When do you want it back?”
“After I shower,” Kane said matter-of-factly. “The real shower. The one by myself.”
Dex nodded and then leaned in close enough for Kane to smell his sweat and realize that he had stains under his arms from the effort of keeping himself together. “Carlos?” he said, his voice uncertain. He tried a smile and couldn’t quite make it go.
“Yeah?” God. Say anything, Dex. Just let me know we’ll be okay when this is over.
“It’s okay if you think of me.”
Kane’s grin was all relief. “Oh thank God,” he said, totally serious. “I feel so much less skeezy now!”
Dex laughed then, and Kane wanted to kiss him, but not here. Not on the set. He found suddenly that he didn’t ever want to kiss him on set again.
“You going to be okay?” Dex asked, and Kane nodded, suddenly feeling like he could do this.
“Just give me the ring back at the end,” he said cockily. Yeah. He could do this.
HIS eyes were closed a lot. He’d open his eyes and he’d see this guy he’d had lunch with a couple of times, just to get to know him, and then another guy he and Dex had taken out dancing on the same principle, and if there hadn’t been something going on in his pleasure spots, his woody would have died a sad and shriveled death. So when the camera wasn’t on him, he closed his eyes and thought of Dex, imagined it was Dex’s lips touching his skin, Dex’s hand gripping his cock tight. At the end, after the bottom (Nick) had come and the other top (Bobby) had come all over Nick’s face, Kane kept his eyes closed and just kept fucking away, imagining the noises Dex made beneath him, but he knew. He knew it was someone else. Nick’s ass was a little tighter, his chest and thighs were bigger, his hair was brown and silky, and instead of waxing, he’d mowed.
Kane felt a moment’s fear then that he wouldn’t be able to do it, wouldn’t be able to come. Oh Jesus, how was he going to pay his bills if he couldn’t come on command? His whole life, the one thing he’d been able to do with any sort of competency was fuck, and he wasn’t going to be able to do it!
He opened his eyes in sudden fear and saw Dex, the camera whirring in his hand, his eyes fixed on the viewscreen. There was no time to register expression or intent—for the moment, it was just Dex, and that’s all that mattered.
Kane hardly had time to pull out and rip off the condom before he came all over Nick’s hard, rippled stomach. He closed his eyes tight when he came and just let the explosion wash over his nerve endings like purifying fire. He barely registered that he was being pushed into the kiss for the end of the shot, even when Nick’s tongue, tasting of Bobby’s come, licked inside his mouth.
“Shower scene optional.” Dex’s voice was tightly packed—Kane heard it. “We’ve got plenty of footage.”
Kane pulled away from the guys and forced a shaky smile. Guys were often a little lost after a shoot—even guys who’d worked together before and knew each other. Some guys, like Ethan, could kiss and cuddle, and it felt just right. Tommy had always been practically ready to go again, and Kane almost wanted to just rebound and go run a race with him. Chase had always seemed to need a friendly arm over his shoulder. Dex had had this smile, this sweet “Well done!” smile that let everyone know the touching time was over. But if you weren’t with guys like that, guys who had their manner, their personal space, completely geared for the gentle disengage, things could get awkward.
Kane pulled away first and grabbed the offered robe from the gaffer (another porn model working extra shifts) and smiled, wondering if it was his usual smile or some other smile that stretched his face funny, because that’s what it felt like. “You guys go if you want,” he said graciously. He didn’t do irony or sarcasm. He was completely sincere. “I’ll sit this one out.” Yeah, the extra money would have helped, but he couldn’t do it. Not today.
Dex looked at his other cameraman and gave a little nod, and Kenny and the gaffer trotted off to follow the guys into the shower.
Kane sat down on the soiled bedspread before his shaky knees went out from under him. “Think they’ll go for it again?” he asked disinterestedly, and Dex shrugged.
“Only if Bobby bottoms,” he said, sinking down next to Kane. The bed jiggled a little under his weight. “You fucked Nick raw.” He lifted his arm to put it around Kane’s shoulders, but Kane blocked it clumsily.
“Don’t touch me,” he said gruffly. “Don’t touch me when I’m like this.”
Dex’s voice was just what it always was, and Kane gave thanks for it. “Like what? Sad?”
Kane couldn’t look at him. “Please, Dexter,” he said softly, staring at his hands, which were clasped loosely in his lap. “Give me this, okay? Go away for now, but… but could you do me a favor?”
“Yeah.”
“Be there when I’m out of the shower, okay?”
Dex nodded and stood up, carefully not touching him, and walked out, probably to upload the shoot into the computer.
Kane sat in the room gazing into space until the gaffer stuck his head in and said they were done. “You shoulda seen it, Kane! It was epic! Bobby totally bottomed—ate his own come!”
Kane nodded. “Impressive,” he said sincerely. “Everybody done now?” He’d managed for that fifteen minutes to be nowhere in his head, and it had been wonderful. No thoughts, no Dex, no pain. Maybe he could keep that, right? Maybe he could just be… empty, right? Empty of sex and desire and come? Empty?
He stood up and walked into the bathroom, relieved that everyone was gone. He stepped under the shower, and that sudden blissful emptiness was filled, hot and tight in his throat and his chest, and he let the warm water loosen it as it sluiced the contact from his body. He thought wretchedly that he shouldn’t have any hickeys or razor burn or bruises—he’d given. Given. He’d sucked, he’d fucked, he’d nibbled, kissed, handled, pushed, pulled, prodded, and stimulated.
He’d done that so he didn’t have to feel anyone else’s hands on him when they weren’t Dex. His chest heaved, and he kept forgetting to move his face out of the water and sucking water in through his nose on the inhale because he was so busy sobbing on the exhale, and every time he tried to make it stop, it just felt worse and worse.
Suddenly the water stopped and there were two arms around his shoulders and he was left gasping on a shoulder covered in the gray sweater Dex had worn out the door that morning as they’d walked to work.
“I’m getting you wet,�
� Kane mumbled, but he didn’t try to pull back.
“I know, dickhead,” Dex said, kissing his sopping wet hair. “You’d better bring me something dry when you’re all done. I’ll be here until five o’clock, you know.”
“Thanks,” Kane mumbled. “That’s a fair trade.”
Dex grabbed the towel from the side of the shower and started to towel off Kane’s back and hair, and Kane let him. He just submitted and let Dex tend him, let Dex touch him, because he didn’t want to make Dex dirty with his own touch.
When Kane was dry, Dex led him to the bench by the lockers and sat him down while Dex pulled the clothes out of his locker and set them on Kane’s lap. Kane waited until he was done, then captured his hand. “Dexter?”
“Yeah?” Dex turned to him anxiously, and Kane smiled a little.
“There’s really only one thing I want to put on right now. You got it?”
Dex’s smile was warm and real, and he fished it out of his pocket. “Gimme your hand.”
Kane put his hand out, and Dex held it steady because it was shaking, and slid the ring on gently, so Kane’s skin didn’t pinch.
Kane swallowed and nodded and grabbed Dex by the hips and pulled him closer so he could rest his head against Dex’s middle while Dex finger-combed his wet hair.
“That got harder,” he confessed and was relieved and blessed when Dex bent and kissed his head.
“I know it did,” Dex whispered. “It should get harder.”
“It never got harder for me!”
Both of them turned to the voice in horror, but it was Dex who moved first. “Jesus, Scott! You douche bag! Get the fuck out of here, you don’t even work today!”
Scott smirked. “I came in to talk to John. I didn’t expect to see something this sweet going down! Jesus, Dex, it’s a good thing he’s pretty!”
Dex lunged at him, and Kane stood up and caught him around the waist.
“Say it again!” Dex snarled. “Say it again, motherfucker!”
Scott looked legitimately surprised as he backed up, and Kane struggled to hold Dex back.
“I’d get the fuck out of here,” Kane snarled. “Because if you say something to piss him off again, I’ll go in for the hit, and I don’t think your nose would survive that!”
Scott put his hand up in front of his face protectively, and Kane knew his expression was twisted beyond reason.
“Jesus, you two!” Scott snapped, backing out of the bathroom not fucking quick enough. “Lighten the fuck up! It’s only sex!”
And then he was gone, and Kane was left feeling crumpled and lost like a condom wrapper. “It’s not,” he said, half to himself. “It’s not. He’s wrong.”
Dex came to himself and he stopped fighting in Kane’s arms and turned around to hold him. “Wrong about what?” he asked, and Kane started shaking again, holding his hand against Dex’s chest and looking at the ring.
“It’s not just sex,” he said weakly, and Dex, bless him, Dex just held him in the echoing space of the locker room, and Kane gave it up and spent the rest of his tears cleanly on his lover’s chest.
SCOTT was gone when Kane and Dex got out front. They didn’t hold hands or do anything obvious, just bumped shoulders, but that was enough.
“I’m gonna go get you some clothes,” Kane said quietly when they got to the big glass doors in front of Kelsey’s desk.
“What’re you going to do with the rest of the day?”
Kane had a moment of acute discomfort. He didn’t want to be home alone, but he didn’t want to talk to anyone either. Ethan had been a stellar roommate over the past two weeks—he did the dishes, hit the center of the toilet, and pretended not to hear when Kane and Dex had noisy New World primate sex in their bedroom. Once he realized that Kane was, as Dex stated in no uncertain terms, the grand royal prickweenie king of the fucking remote control and that Animal Planet and Dancing With the Stars were not optional, he’d been absolutely perfect. But Ethan wasn’t there—he was out with Chase and Tommy, so it would just be Kane alone. And even if Ethan was there, Kane just didn’t have enough asshole in him to sit in a corner and brood while a guy who’d been so grateful for company wanted to talk. So going home was out, and going to a movie alone just sucked. He could work out, but he’d already done a light workout that morning, and for once, he was just tired. He didn’t want to do anything. He wanted to sit in front of the television under a blanket with Tomas around his arm, just being, except that would mean he would be home alone again!
Dex seemed to know exactly what his problem was, though.
“Go get your homework,” he said quietly. “You start class next week—bring those new books in. If you have a problem, ask Kelsey or me. It’ll be good.”
Kane cast a furtive glance at Kelsey. “Kelsey?” he asked, feeling a stab of shame. She was a nice girl, but she was pretty and funny and quick with the words, and maybe she’d be like all those other girls who made fun of him in junior high and high school.
And Dex read his mind again. “Kelsey’ll be fine with it,” he promised. “No one’s going to hurt you on my watch, ’kay, Carlos?”
And Kane nodded, knowing his lip was pushed out with a little bit of vulnerability. “I’ll be right back.”
After Kane had scared the shit out of the reading services lady, he’d made up for it by being particularly charming. She’d bent over backward for him, and he’d ended up with a bunch of what she called college-age hi-lo books. Dex had been the one who’d asked what that meant, and she said it was short for high interest, low readability—so books that would appeal to someone who wasn’t a kid (mostly) and that wouldn’t make Kane feel like a fucking moron. He could get behind that. After some discussion, she’d gone to the resource center and come back with what she said was every book about animals—snakes, insects, dogs, cats, chimpanzees, leopards, and wombats—that she could find. Kane hadn’t been able to take them all home, but she’d set them aside for him and told him that as he progressed through the reading class, he could go through them when he needed to.
He’d been so happy he’d hugged her, and then Dex had hugged her, and she’d told them both that they were adorable. He had no idea what that meant, but it had made Dex wink at her, and that had been fun to watch too.
So Kane brought back a couple of those books (and some lunch, which Dex was grateful for) and hung out in Dex’s roller chair, leaning the back against the wall and propping his feet up on a trash can as he read.
It was soothing.
There was background noise—Kelsey was constantly on the phone or talking to someone at the front desk, but Kane was mostly hidden behind the filing cabinet next to Dex’s desk, and nobody talked to him. Dex would come by and put a hand on his shoulder or knee, and then he’d go out of the room again, leaving Kane feeling cared for, and for about two hours, he could almost forget that this job that he’d sort of loved for coming up on three years suddenly constricted his chest like a big fucking anaconda and he couldn’t do a damned thing about it.
He was so deep into a book about primates and trying to sound out the word “macaque” (Mackakwee? Maquay? Makag?) that he almost didn’t recognize Scott’s voice until he heard something wrong with Kelsey’s.
“Hey, beautiful, how’s things?”
“I’m knocked up and it’s yours, asshole. What do you want?”
Kane’s eyes shot way, way open, and he very slowly took his feet off the trash can so he could hide better.
“I offered to pay for the—”
“Please don’t say it. I’m pretending it’s Dex’s, ’cause he gives a shit and I don’t want to think about how low my standards got. What do you want?”
“I need you to check the schedule. I sent John an e-mail, and I want to make sure he set me up for suicide boy’s last spot.”
“Chance is doing fine, by the way. In case you gave a shit.”
Scott gave a disgusted sniff. “God. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut—he could have had them both
on a fucking string.”
Kelsey’s deep, even breath rattled through the suddenly silent room. “Martin—”
“I told you not to call me that!” Scott snapped, and Kane wanted to cheer.
“Martin Eugene Sampson, you are on the schedule in two weeks for Chase’s last scheduled shoot with….” Kelsey’s voice suddenly lost the chutzpah she’d infused it with and cracked. “How in the fuck did you manage that?”
Scott preened. “By telling John I’d quit if I couldn’t. Good. Let’s see how his new Jethro likes him after he slobbers all over my cock and begs me like a fuckin’ girl.”
Kelsey took another one of those deep, even breaths, and Kane heard her work the phone. “Dex? Yeah. Get out here. You need to talk to Scott about a scheduling problem.”
And that was when Kane made the connection between the guy Scott was talking about and Dex, and by the time he’d surged to his feet and around the file cabinet, Scott had already pushed through the glass doors at a dead run.
“I’ll kill him!” Kane roared, and Dex got out in time to grab him this time, and Kane was pissed, because he might have caught up to the guy if Dex hadn’t done that.
“What in the fuck?”
“I’ll kill him!” Kane broke away and turned toward him, furious. “Do you know what he did, Dexter? Do you know what that fucker did? You can’t do it. You quit first. You tell John you quit before that fucker touches you again, do you hear me?”
“He can’t quit!” Kelsey interjected. “He runs the fuckin’ company!”
Kane looked at her sharply, because for some reason, as much as Dex had done, Kane had never really thought of it that way. Dex had always been John’s second banana, and that had been plenty smart for Kane. He hadn’t ever really thought of how Dex was the one who made everything go.
And Dex, who’d put eight years of his life into the place, took a step back and caught his breath. “He did what?”