Shades of Henry (The Flophouse Book 1)

by Amy Lane

  “Nothing!” Henry dropped his hands and stared at Lance in horror. “Oh my God! With all of the other shit I’ve got to tell him, does he really need the cherry on the shit sundae? I’m telling him nothing!”

  “How could you do that?” Lance demanded, the irrational anger kicking in. “Pick up a stranger like that?”

  “I don’t know. How can you have sex on camera for cash?” Henry lashed out. “We all have our lines, Lance.” He grunted. “Mine just happens to be trying to get out of the fucking dumpster.”

  Lance let out a slow breath. “I was an asshole,” he admitted, and then glared at Henry, expecting the same thing in return.

  “And I’m white trash with all the wrong answers,” Henry snapped, obviously not giving in. “Look, man, one thing at a fucking time here, okay?”

  And there was the disdain Lance had been expecting. He’d known it was there, waiting to jump out and bite him. “Whatever,” Lance muttered. “I’m going out for a day off with the other whores. You have a nice fucking day.”

  “Whatever,” Henry snapped behind him. “Make sure Reg is okay, wouldya? You’re the one who knows what to say.”

  Lance drew up short, suddenly realizing that was a compliment and Henry was trying to be an adult. He turned around, but Henry had already made it up the stairs, and all he saw was the door slamming behind him.

  “WHAT’S WRONG?” Bobby asked quietly as the boat knifed through the Sacramento River like a machete through butter. Reg was still in the front, looking out excitedly, and Bobby had literally wrapped a rope around his waist to keep him from going nose first over the side. Lance had hung out in back thoughtfully while Bobby’s boss and his wife took turns piloting the thing, talking loudly between themselves. Gruff and homely, in their midfifties, they’d made Lance feel welcome when he’d arrived at the dock. Like with most boating trips, conversation wasn’t going to get good until they arrived at their destination for the planned picnic at Discovery Park, where the Sacramento River and the American River joined.

  Lance looked out at the water and then smiled briefly. “Henry surprised me, that’s all,” he said. The trip to the dock had been a lot of Lance and Bobby calming Reg down and making sure he felt safe after Scott had gotten in his face. “I didn’t realize he knew Scott, you know?”

  Bobby raised his eyebrows. “A lot of us did. He was in one of my first scenes. But, you know, there’s hookups that matter and hookups that don’t. You taught me that. Which one do you think it was?”

  Lance swallowed and remembered Henry’s painful confession. Wouldn’t Scott have come up in their discussion the night before if he’d mattered? “I know,” he muttered. “I know. But it… I mean, his brother’s ex-boyfriend. That’s just so….”

  “Twisted,” Bobby agreed, turning his tanned face toward the sun. Lance thought fondly that the only reason Bobby and Reg weren’t true rednecks was that they were in porn, and they had been conditioned to take care of their skin. Bobby had a long, strong face with a bold nose and no-bullshit green eyes. He was one of those people who would rather rebuild your porch than sit and watch TV with you, which was good, because Reg needed some looking after. Bobby didn’t mind being busy, and Reg didn’t mind being looked after.

  “Wasn’t his fault,” Lance said after a moment. “But….” Dammit.

  “You were starting to like him?” Bobby asked delicately.

  “He has unexpected depth,” Lance said with dignity.

  “Then he’ll forgive you for being an asshole,” Bobby told him, lips twitching.

  “But will he forgive me for being in porn?” Because as soon as Lance had wounded him, that’s where Henry had gone.

  “Remember that one time you and me hooked up?” Bobby asked him softly.

  “Yeah.” Lance closed his eyes. Reg, Bobby—he’d done them both, on and off camera.

  “That was special to me, even though I was breaking my heart over Reg. Sex is complicated—you taught me that. Love is simple. It’s where the two meet that shit becomes a tangled mess.”

  Lance laced his fingers behind his head and tilted his face up to the sun. “It’s not that tangled yet,” he admitted. “There’s been no sex.”

  Bobby let out a laugh. “And he’s lived in the flophouse for how long?”

  Oh God. “Since late March?” Lance was really asking if that was bad.

  Bobby’s out-and-out guffaw told him it was. Really bad. “Oh my God, Lance. You’ve managed to tangle this mess without a penis in sight. You realize that, right?”

  Lance buried his face in his hands. “Oh, for sweet fuck’s sake….”

  “Yeah. I’d say you and this guy are more fucked-up without the sex than him and his brother’s ex were with it. Fun shit right there. I hope you survive.”

  Lance glared at him. “You. Asshole.”

  “We’ve met,” Bobby said evenly. At that moment Bobby’s foreman shifted the boat into a lower gear, and they all looked in anticipation of the dock at Discovery Park. Picnic time. Time for Lance to be fun and charming, for Bobby’s boss to be a neat old geezer who didn’t mind a bunch of porn kids in his construction company, and Lance to put his worry on hold.

  HE GOT home that night, happy, a little buzzed from the beer Bobby’s boss had so generously provided, and full from the picnic. He hated feeling full—and he hated himself for what he was about to do about it, but he figured he’d turn on the shower to cover the sound, the way he always did.

  But first, he had to deal with the aftermath of that morning.

  He opened the door to find Henry in the corner of the couch, his knees drawn to his chest, watching an action flick, with the guys gathered around him, hooting at the screen. There was a big bowl of popcorn on the table—unsalted, unbuttered—and a smaller bowl of carrot sticks. Snack time for porn models.

  Lance closed the door behind him and looked meaningfully at the spot on the couch next to Henry, currently occupied by Cotton.

  Cotton looked back at him, his eyes wide and innocent, and Lance narrowed his in return.

  “Scoot, junior, or I’ll break your arm,” he said softly, and Cotton laughed.

  But he retreated, moving to the air mattress with Curtis, Zep, and Fisher.

  Lance wriggled in and very casually leaned against Henry in a way Cotton had seemed too scared to do.

  “Good day?” Henry asked, his voice careful and civil.

  “Sunshine, wind,” Lance said, smiling pleasantly. “Beer.”

  Henry gave a soft laugh. “Well, good. You needed it.”

  “Anything fun happen while I was gone?” Did you suddenly realize how much I like you and decide that porn didn’t make me a completely unsuitable candidate and human being?

  “Nope. Fixed shit for John, shuttled Frances to child care and back. Davy wanted me to ask you to dinner next week, so, you’ve been asked.”

  “That’s nice.” Lance regarded Henry through half-masted eyes. “Was there any more trouble?”

  Henry shook his head grimly. “Nope. I don’t think he’ll be back.”

  Lance nodded. “Good.” Was he forgiven? He couldn’t tell. “Scoot over a little,” he murmured. “I need to lean on something.”

  He waited until Henry had turned and lowered his feet to the floor before he laid his head on Henry’s shoulder and made himself comfortable in the sprawl. Henry’s arm wrapping around his shoulders made him smile, relieved. Good choice.

  He felt Henry drop his head and breathe softly in Lance’s hair. “You smell like river,” he murmured, so low Lance could barely hear him. “And sun and wind.”

  “Mm….” Henry smelled like shower, and it was really turning Lance’s key, but he wasn’t going to say that.

  Henry took another deep breath. “Freedom,” he said.

  Lance closed his eyes then. Someday, Henry, you can be free.

  But he didn’t say anything. Instead he ate lots and lots of popcorn and made sure Henry was fast asleep before he threw it up.

  E
VERYTHING WAS the same after that, but not.

  Work—the insanity of the hospital was hard to quantify, but at the same time, it was a job like any other. Lance liked working with people. He’d been raised to give back to the world, and for all his parents’ flaws, that was one of the good things that had stuck.

  As for family, Lance still saw his sister once a month, listened to her stories of law school, and told her about his residency. She never asked about his living situation—he was pretty sure their parents had made her afraid to, which was too bad. He wanted to tell her about home.

  He wanted to tell her about Henry.

  Coming home was… well, nice, as bizarre and sex-saturated as it was. Apartment 126C made him feel grounded. And coming home to Henry—

  Until that day with Martin Sampson, when he thought he’d lost Henry Worrall’s good opinion forever, he hadn’t realized how much he valued it.

  Which made him dread what was on the schedule for the end of May.

  “Not eating?” Henry asked that night at dinner, and Lance grimaced.

  “Scene the day after tomorrow,” he said briefly. Sure, there were other alternatives to fasting, but that tended to leave his breath shiny bright, as Reg called it, and gum left his mouth pasty.

  Henry grunted. “You kids—it kills me. I… I mean, I was raised where you got loved with chow. I feel like you’re depriving yourselves, you know?”

  Lance regarded him, surprised. “Nothing shitty to say about filming the scene?”

  Henry rolled his eyes. “Have I said that to anybody else?”

  And Lance felt a little ashamed. “We can feel your disapproval,” he said, regarding Henry over his can of seltzer water.

  “Well, that’s not my fault.” Henry glared mulishly, and Lance’s heart melted a little more. “I just….” He grunted. “Sex isn’t… sanitary,” he said after a moment. “I… it’s one of the magic things about it. Or it was. Or it should have been. You wanted it so bad the… uh, sanitation didn’t matter.” He shrugged and fidgeted with the spaghetti on his plate, looking at Lance under his lashes. “You break out a washcloth and a towel and get on with it, you know?”

  Lance wanted to ruffle that pretty blond hair. “That’s what, uh, sex should be. But in sex fantasy, there is no washcloth.”

  Henry blinked slowly. “You’re a sexual fantasy?” The strangest things happened then. His eyes narrowed, like he was trying to be sarcastic, but his voice… his voice got rough and smoky, and real, like Lance was his sexual fantasy and he’d only now realized it.

  “To some people,” Lance said calmly. “To some people, I’m the roommate who’s becoming emotionally invested in watching you eat spaghetti.”

  And those narrowed eyes suddenly widened with mischief. “Emotionally invested? Or… you know, physically invested?” He took a little bit of meatball on his fork and nibbled it. “Mm… like, are you emotionally invested in this meatball? Do you want this meatball?” He swallowed and grinned. “Are you feeling this meatball?”

  Lance’s stomach gave a vicious cramp, and he was tempted—so tempted—to devour an entire plate of spaghetti and spend ten unpleasant minutes in the bathroom with his fingers down his throat. God knows, he’d done that before.

  But Henry was having such innocent fun there—and Lance had kept his little bulimic secret for the last two months. He didn’t want Henry to feel bad, oddly enough. The eating and binging thing was his little problem. He couldn’t make it something Henry would hate about himself.

  And he really wanted to see Henry smile. God, he was too grim most days.

  “I am so feeling that meatball,” Lance said, saturating his voice with all of the sexiness he probably would not be putting into it when he went in to film in two days. “Oh, Henry, eat that fuckin’ meatball!”

  Henry waggled his eyebrows and took another bit of meat on his fork. “Like this? Do you want me to eat it again?”

  “Oh yes! Yes! Eat that meat some more!”

  “With sauce this time, Lance? You want some sauce on that?”

  “Give me all your sauce! And noodles! Oh God, slurp my fuckin’ noodles!”

  Henry did, sucking on them slowly, making sure the sauce dripped temptingly down his chin. When he was done, he stuck out a surprisingly long pink tongue and caught the last drop before it drizzled too far, and that was as far as Lance could take the joke before he kissed him, straddled him, took his grim mouth and made it swollen and ripe with kisses. Before he worshipped the strong column of Henry’s neck, nibbled on his collarbone, showed him what sex could be like with someone who didn’t just know what he was doing but who believed sex was magic to boot….

  Or, uhm, cracked up.

  Lance covered his mouth with his hand, closed his eyes, and laughed. Because that other vision had been so close, so tantalizing, so real, and if he didn’t laugh, he’d reach out his hands to touch the thing that would burn him the worst.

  “Hey, wait, is that spaghetti?” Zeppelin was coming out of his bedroom, Fisher at his heels.

  “Forget spaghetti,” Fisher said, wrinkling his nose in confusion. “Was that sex? I could have sworn I heard sex!”

  Henry grinned and winked at Lance. “Nope,” he said, taking another bite. “The only noodle getting slurped here was spaghetti.”

  The guys cracked up too, and Henry invited them to dish up and come sit down to eat before asking about their day. Behind them, Lance lowered his forehead to bang it repeatedly on the table when Henry couldn’t see, because never before had spaghetti gotten so close to getting out of hand.

  “LANCE!” DEX called, effectively ending the scene. “What are you doing?”

  Lance had to think a minute, and then Kent, his partner in the scene, thrust his cock into Lance’s mouth, and Lance was suddenly in the present.

  “Gimminf m bwwmb?”

  Kent withdrew and tagged him playfully on the back of the head. “Nice guess, but no cigar and no blowjob. No dick either. Jesus, Lance, it’s like your eyes rolled back in your head and you went somewhere else.”

  Lance sat up in bed, feeling suddenly naked and wrong about it, when it hadn’t ever bothered him before. “Sorry, guys. Not sure where my brain went.” He smiled greenly at Kent. “I was sort of looking forward to this too.” God, he’d needed to get laid in the worst way—because his sexual fantasies about Henry Worrall were consuming his every waking minute.

  But Kent didn’t know that. Kent was a giant blond tank of a guy, with thick muscular thighs, a chest almost as wide as Bobby’s, and a seven-inch cock the width of a soda can.

  If you were into sex-for-pay, Kent was a wet dream—or at least a wet workday.

  Kent ruffled his hair. “You’re probably hungry,” he declared practically. “I know I’m starving. Here—we only just started. Go think the dirty, do what you gotta, we can regroup in five, ’kay?”

  Dex cleared his throat, and Lance had to laugh.

  “Is he taking your job, Dex?”

  Dex checked the camera and set it down on a nearby desk put there mostly for that very reason. This set only looked like a bedroom.

  “He is, sort of, but it’s good advice.”

  “You gonna fluff for me, Dex?” Kent asked with a wink.

  Dex rolled his eyes. “Not my job anymore, you horny bastard. Don’t you have a boyfriend watching?”

  Conrad was a sweet guy, with thinning hair, fish lips, and a wicked sense of humor. Kent adored him, and Conrad? Conrad watched his boyfriend fuck on set all day and apparently went home and got his rocks off with style.

  Lance was all for whatever turned guys on.

  Sensual, consensual, healthy—sex could be such a good thing.

  Or at least it could be in a controlled environment, with partners who agreed to the same terms. If there weren’t any emotions involved.

  Without warning, his thoughts turned toward his breakup. He’d thought Teddy had loved him, but he’d just been really excited by the “rent boy on the side” idea. />
  And then they turned toward Henry’s breakup, and the look on Henry’s face when he’d mumbled, “Don’t make me say that word.”

  With a groan, Lance rolled over to his front and buried his face in the rumpled sheets of the bed.

  “Lance!” Dex moved to sit on the bed and started to rub his back. “Buddy, what’s wrong?”

  Oh God. This was the wrong person to talk to.

  Lance looked at Henry’s brother and heard the way Henry called him Davy, and the shame of having not treated Davy better, and the half-worshipful way he felt about his brother now.

  “Oh Jesus,” he mumbled. “I have got to pull my shit together.”

  He wasn’t surprised when Dex draped the robe over his shoulders, but he was disappointed.

  “No sex today?” he mumbled.

  “Not for you, buddy.” Dex ruffled his hair. “Conrad? You do test stuff with Kent to keep him company. You want to film a scene with him?”

  Conrad looked up from where Kent was kissing his neck and tried to focus. “But I’m homely as a potato,” he said in honest surprise.

  Lance chortled into the sheets, and Dex contained a snort. “Only to the blind. Kent thinks you’re beautiful, and I think his fans will too. Trust me—you’ll give the average guys something to shoot for.”

  “He’s hung like a donkey,” Kent mumbled, sliding his hands down the back of Conrad’s pants.

  “Down boy,” Dex barked, and both of them pulled in a deep breath, like they were both turned on.

  Dex sat a little straighter. “O…kay. I’ve got an idea. You two, different sides of the bed. I’m going to go make a call. I’ve got a guy—new, a little dominant—and all he’s gonna do is tell you two lovebirds how to fuck each other silly. How’s that sound?”

  Conrad moaned a little, and his hand snuck toward the button of his jeans.

  “Stop!” Dex barked, and before their eyes, Conrad’s dick unfurled under the denim.

  “Wow,” Lance whispered.

  “Like a frickin’ donkey,” Kent breathed. “Can you hurry it up, Dex? This is the greatest thing to ever happen to me.”