by Amy Lane
Kane held out a hand and helped Dex to his feet, and kissed him, come and all, and then he wiped Dex’s cheeks off with a thumb. “Why’d you do that, Dexter?” he breathed softly.
“’Cause I couldn’t stand to let you do it alone,” Dex said back.
Kane grabbed his hand—empty of a ring—and squeezed.
On the bed behind them, Scott grunted and rolled over to his stomach and glared at the both of them with unmasked hatred. “What in the hell—”
Kane jerked his chin in Scott’s direction. “What’s the matter, dickhead? You said it yourself—it was just sex. You got your sex with your ex-boyfriend’s boyfriend. What are you complaining about?”
“But—” Scott floundered for words, and Kane’s smile was so damned evil that if Dex didn’t love him, it would have made him flinch.
“You said it was consensual, asshole. You said it was consensual, and we’ve got you begging for the world to see.”
And that brought Scott surging to his feet. “You can’t show that video!” he squeaked, and Dex reached for a towel and used it to wipe of his face, then wrapped it around his hips on the way to the shower.
“Why not?” Dex asked. “It’s what you said it would be. I saw the contract, Scott. You wanted a sex scene with Kane or me—hell, you got me in there for a two-fer.”
“But—but that was humiliating!” Scott snarled, and Dex didn’t have any pity for him.
“So was being sold for coke, but I’m not whining about it now, asshole, because it’s done.”
Scott glowered at Kane and then looked back at Dex. “C’mon, Dav—”
Kane was suddenly right there and in his face. “Call him Dex or get your nose broke,” he snarled, and Scott blinked.
“Fine,” he said, his breath shaky. “Come on, Dex, just… throw me a bone here!”
Dex and Kane looked at each other, and Dex said, “Quit. Quit and go find another house. You don’t work for Johnnies anymore.”
“But what about your precious schedule!” Scott asked, outraged, and Dex shrugged.
“I do the accounts, Scott. If John isn’t trying to shove the company up his nose, we’ll be fine. That’s my deal. You quit, we fill your spots, and you move on to another outfit. I’ve even got some places I can—”
“I’ll find my own goddamned porn, thank you very much!” Scott snarled. “Jesus, Dex! It was just sex! What in the hell was so wrong about that?”
“Nothing,” Dex said, not caring enough about him to be angry. “Until you start thinking you deserve more. Kane and I are going to go shower. You’re going to use the come towel and go.”
“Fine!” Scott snapped and turned toward the bed to start getting dressed, and Dex, who had made sure that he’d be the only cameraman for this one and that not even the gaffer was on set, breathed out a sigh of relief. He gathered his clothes and one of the cameras, and Kane gathered his clothes and the other, and together they headed for the showers. Dex couldn’t wait to be clean.
Kane
IN THE showers, Kane couldn’t stop scrubbing at his hands. He could have been there all day, but Dex grabbed them and then grabbed him and held him in the spray.
“You were awesome,” Dex murmured in his ear. “You were great. You’re clean now. It’s okay.”
Kane rested his head on Dex’s shoulder, knowing that the wet hair would itch but not able to keep from doing it. “I was gonna do worse,” he mumbled, because that had been his plan.
“Yeah?” Dex’s arms felt so good around his shoulders that Kane didn’t even care that he’d turned the water off.
“I was gonna fuck him,” Kane confessed, because if Dex didn’t know his heart, the shower wouldn’t take. He’d be left feeling like his soul was covered in shit for the rest of his life.
“I thought you were going to,” Dex told him softly. “What you did was better.”
“I was gonna. I was.” He had to know. He had to know. If Kane didn’t tell Dex, it wasn’t real anymore.
“Why didn’t you?” Dex grabbed his hand, and dragged him to the lockers. Then, like he had before, Dex started pulling stuff out for Kane. If Dex didn’t take care of him when his own head was up in his shit, did that mean Kane would end up wandering around naked?
“I….” Kane was sitting, dripping wet, staring at his hands. There was a big fluffy white towel around his shoulders and one being rubbed on his hair and thrust into his lap, and suddenly he stopped that thought. “You take real good care of me, David.”
“Yeah,” Dex said, looking pleased. “It’s the only thing I’m successful at most of the time. I can live with that.”
Kane smiled up into his angel-blue eyes and suddenly found words. “Ms. Darcy—”
“The iguana?”
“No, the real Ms. Darcy, the teacher the iguana was named for. Don’t fuck with details, Dexter, I gotta get this out.”
Dex had a clean towel around his own waist, and he sat down next to Kane, still and listening. “Shoot.”
“So she told me that if I wanted sex to mean something, I had to put a higher price on it, you know? That’s why I went into porn.”
Dex didn’t make a noise, but his entire face froze up like he was processing something really hard. That was okay. It had taken Kane a while too.
“And… and this thing we’re doing, the thing with the house and the rings—you were right. It’s not a joke. It’s serious. And this thing we do with our bodies—when it’s just you and me, it’s… it’s precious, man. It’s not cheap. It’s not easy. It hurts sometimes, how much I love you when we’re together. And I just couldn’t do that with him. I mean, it sucks to do it for money now. Now that I know what it’s really for, it sucks to do it, even though it means keeping Frances and Lola safe, it sucks.”
Kane’s voice was rising, and he couldn’t sit still. He wanted to hit something or kick something or just do pull-ups until this ache in his chest went away. He stood up and started pacing. “It sucks,” he said again, his voice dropping because if he kept saying it, he’d just cry. “But… that thing… that thing I just did… I couldn’t take that thing we do and make it dirty. I thought I could. I had plans, man. I thought I could just fuckin’ humiliate him, and I couldn’t. He got off easy ’cause if I had to do worse, it would have fuckin’ broken me, and I finally have this part saved for you, just for you, and it’s the best part of me, and I didn’t want to—”
Dex all but tackled him, stopping him midpace in the locker room and holding him until he wept like he couldn’t remember weeping even when his sister kicked him out and it was just him and a garbage bag full of clothes on Dexter’s couch, grateful that he had a friend.
He finished and was down to the baby stage of hiccups and feeling fucking stupid when Dex made his night.
“You know what?” Dex asked, his voice sort of happy and skippy.
“What?” Kane wasn’t letting go of his waist. They were getting sweaty and sticky, but Kane wasn’t letting go.
“We take cooking class in three days.”
Kane had actually been looking forward to that. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. The first thing on the agenda is chocolate-chip cookies.”
Kane pulled back, absolutely entranced. “I love those!”
“I know, right? And we’re bringing ingredients, so I know we’re making them and not just getting a lecture. You want to take some afterwards to Frances?”
The world as Kane knew it was suddenly a better place. “I’d love that! She likes you, you know!”
It was true. They’d gone there two days ago, and while Kane and Lola had argued about having to duck Hector again while Lola was living in Kane’s house, Dex had taken Frances on a heavily insulated walk around the block. She’d come back with flushed cheeks and a big smile, talking about Unca Dex and how she wanted a bunny. She’d been so excited about the bunny that Dex and Kane had taken her to buy a stuffed one, and she’d clutched it to her chest for the rest of the visit. The kid didn’t seem that in
terested in snakes and bugs, but that was okay. Dex could be her uncle with the furry things.
Dex’s smile was unforced. “The feeling’s mutual. But maybe you and Lola could not argue the whole time. It makes her sad.”
Kane shook his head. “Hector—”
Dex interrupted him then, which was probably good, because there was nothing either of them could do. “Hector’s an asshole, and we’re working on it,” he said practically. “You wanna know something else good?”
Oh wow—there was more good?
“Hit me!”
Dex swallowed, suddenly way too serious for something good. “That was your last scene. Ever. No more porn for you, Carlos. You’re fucking retired.”
Kane had to make himself breathe, and by then Dex was talking again.
“I own a quarter of this company. I did the fucking books this morning, and you know something? We need another employee. You can draw a paycheck here being a gaffer or filling in for Kelsey or moving shit around or painting the fucking building. You don’t need to do that thing. Not for anybody but me, if you don’t want to.”
Kane remembered that feeling as a kid when he hated school—that summer vacation feeling. He had that feeling now, but better. Way the hell better. There was probably something wrong with it. “I should probably have some pride about not taking that,” he said after a moment, trying hard to make himself say it.
Dex shook his head. “You want outta porn, Carlos?”
Kane looked at him soberly. “God, yeah, David. I don’t want to fuck another person that’s not you.”
Dex nodded. “Then we’re going to forget your pride, and you’re going to work for a paycheck instead of per film, and we’re going to go home and watch that episode of killer snakes that I DVR’d tonight.”
Oh God. Was it really that simple? It had to be, because Kane couldn’t do much more complicated than this day. “Can we get pizza?” he asked hopefully, and Dex nodded.
“Let’s get dressed and we’ll have Ethan call it in.”
And oddly enough, even knowing that Ethan was there, a friend on the couch to talk to them about anything but the stuff that hurt the most, that was a cherry on the sundae.
“I really love you,” Kane said, and Dex pulled him in and kissed him on the top of his wet hair.
“I do too. Now let’s get dressed. You’re so fuckin’ vain, if your hair dries like that, we’ll be here for another hour while you try to fix it.”
“OKAY,” Kane said, standing over the mixing bowl, “so more chocolate.”
“No,” Dex said. He was squinting at the recipe when he suddenly seemed to notice what Kane was doing and looked in the bowl. “No! Don’t add more, we’re still… oh fuck. Kane, you fucking psycho, now we have to double the recipe!”
Visions of tray after tray of cookies danced in front of Kane’s eyes. “That’s bad?” he asked, confused. “We like cookies!”
“Yeah!” Dex wailed. He grabbed a pencil to make notes on the recipe card, which was lying in a puddle of flour on the counter space. “But we like good cookies, and if I fuck up this recipe, they’ll be shitty cookies. Acres and acres of shitty cookies, and we promised Frances on the phone!”
Kane looked at the recipe, then looked inside the overflowing bowl. He got out another bowl from under their counter and dumped half the chocolate-chip soup into it and started adding flour.
Dex made a sound like one of the mice before Tomas ate it, and Kane kept adding flour to one of the bowls until the mixture of butter, eggs, vanilla, chocolate chips, and sugar wasn’t soupy anymore. In fact…. Kane grabbed a spoon and popped a spoonful the size of a small apple into his mouth, then closed his eyes and mashed the chocolate chips between his teeth.
“Oh geez… Dex, are you sure you won’t hate me if I’m fat? ’Cause I could get fat on this. I’ll just stay at home and—”
Dex snatched the spoon from him and scooped up a much smaller bite. “Now you’re just bragging. Here, let me….” Dex chewed for a minute. “Oh God. Carlos, I think you’ve got a talent for this!”
“See?” Kane started pouring flour into the other bowl and turned on the mixer. Dex took another bite of cookie dough—this one decidedly bigger—and then rinsed off the spoon so he could scoop up little lumps of dough and put them on the cookie sheets.
“Did you remember cooking spray?” Kane asked, and Dex grunted, because it was Dex, and he didn’t forget shit like that.
“Yeah, I remembered cooking spray,” he said and then kept doing the little scoop thing until the cookies were all ready to pop into their preheated oven.
He’d just slid the pan in and set the timer when the teacher came over, and Kane, who was finally done mixing the second bowl, thought that maybe it was going to be to compliment the two of them because they got it all done themselves.
“Did you even follow the recipe?” The teacher was a plump woman with frizzy dark hair. She was in her early fifties, probably, and had spent twenty years teaching high school students home ec. Kane figured that was where she got her unhealthy quantities of sarcasm.
“No,” Dex said frankly, “but seriously. Taste ’em. I think he’s got talent!”
Dex gave the teacher the spatula, and she took her own bite. “Mmmf….”
“Good, right?” Kane wanted to know, and Mrs. Frampton took the spoon out of her mouth and looked at him sort of puzzled-like.
“Did you put more than vanilla in there?”
Dex said, “No,” at the same time Kane said, “Yeah, why not? I mean, if vanilla was good, vanilla, some almond, some lemon, it’s gonna be pretty damned good too, right?”
“Seriously?” Dex asked, and he sounded kind of admiring. “I wouldn’t have thought of that.”
“That’s because it should have tasted like crap!” Mrs. Frampton said, appalled. “I have no idea why these aren’t the worst cookies in the history of history!”
“It’s because Kane made them,” Dex said, sounding confident. “Anyone else, those cookies would have bit them on the ass. Kane? The cookies are his bitches. Just like anything else he cooks.”
Kane flushed. “He’s just saying that to be nice.”
Mrs. Frampton blinked at them. “Sure. That’s why he said it. Well, I dare you to remember how to make them again, but for now? You’re going to have to work out for another hour just to work off half of these, and that brings me great joy.”
“You know,” Dex said, looking at her through narrowed eyes, “sarcasm isn’t a real plus in an educator.”
Mrs. Frampton smiled thinly. “Sarcasm can be bribed away with a plate of cookies,” she said, and Kane smiled happily.
“You like ’em, right? See that, Dex, she likes ’em!”
The teacher smiled some more, then took another bite of cookie dough. “He’s pretty,” she mused. “Is he taken?”
“Yeah, by me!” Dex snapped, and the woman raised her penciled eyebrows.
“Well, ten years ago, I would have arm wrestled you for him, but I’m wiser now. He’s all yours. Gonna hand over that plate of cookies when it’s done?”
“If you’d like them,” Kane said, undismayed by the byplay. She thought he was pretty and she liked his cookies. Hell, he’d spent the last three years getting paid for exactly those reasons—the fact that next week she was teaching them how to make pasta made that sort of thing not dirty.
Suddenly the sarcasm dropped from Mrs. Frampton’s smile, and she looked like one of those maternal women who should have taught third grade. “You are a nice kid, you know that? You take care of your boyfriend here—he’s looking out for you.”
Kane grinned at her. “Yup. Will do!”
Mrs. Frampton walked away, and Kane turned his grin on Dex, who leaned forward and licked some of the cookie dough off his lips.
“None of that!” the teacher called over her shoulder. “It’s unsanitary.”
Dex pulled back and giggled, and Kane giggled too, and Kane reflected that this could be the most fun h
e’d had in school, ever. He got serious for a moment and searched Dex’s eyes to make sure Dex was as happy as he was. Oh God, it looked like he was. Kane felt his stomach do strange shit just at that thought alone.
Suddenly Dex jerked and swore and wiped his hands on his apron. “Shit. Phone.” He pulled the phone out and checked his texts, and just that quickly, the happy night, Kane’s reward, all of it went to shit.
“God. Oh God. Kane, Scott’s over at Kelsey’s. She just called the fucking cops. He’s raising hell.”
Dex looked blankly around the little kitchen thing and did some quick calculations in his head. Kane tried to do them too, because he could see they had a definite scheduling conflict. They’d driven separate cars because Kane had been coming from home and Dex had been coming from school, and Kane waited for Dex to come up with a plan.
“Okay,” Dex said. “So I’m going to run over there and see what’s up. You finish up with the cookies and take them over—but call me before you go in, okay? I don’t want you there if Hector’s there, Carlos. Any guy that would beat your sister isn’t gonna fight fair with you, okay?”
Kane nodded. “Yeah, I hear ya,” he said. Dex was right. Hector was a real motherfucker, and the last six months of Lola living somewhere else had only made him meaner.
Dex ignored Mrs. Frampton’s meaningful eyebrows from across the room and leaned forward to kiss Kane thoroughly. “Save me some cookies, ’kay?”
“Yeah, sweetheart,” Kane said, helpless against his smell and his pretty blue eyes and the hardness of his legs and the way the grooves at his mouth deepened when he smiled.
“Good. Love you! Like I said, give me a call.”