Shades of Henry (The Flophouse Book 1)

by Amy Lane

  “Glory hallelujah,” Dex said dryly. “Now you two, across the room from each other.” He made eye contact with Lance, who nodded, because both of them were apparently subby as hell. “And don’t come.”

  They gave a matched pair of delighted whimpers, and Kent dragged himself away from his lover, practically stumbling naked to the opposite wall.

  “I’m going to go make a call and get John to take over the camera,” Dex said. “Lance, go shower, then meet me in my office, okay?”

  “Half an hour?” Lance said.

  Dex looked at the guys. “Can you wait that long?”

  They were apparently eye-fucking, because they both nodded dreamily, like edging with just their gazes was a real thing.

  Lance wrapped his robe tight around himself, grabbed his clothes from the cubby on the edge of the wall, and left the sex-saturated room. A part of him was aroused—because that yearning between Kent and Conrad had been damned hot—but part of him was perplexed.

  This used to be so easy.

  When had walking into the room, getting an erection, and getting off gotten to be a problem?

  He had, in fact, felt sexier, more excited, when he and Henry had been doing their thing with the spaghetti.

  A HALF an hour later, he was fresh and clean, hair washed, body loose and unsatisfied. He walked down the hall from the showers to the office, pausing by the scene room. The door was open, which happened sometimes to give the cameraman room. Dex and John were absolutely adamant that nobody not in the business be allowed to walk past the door from the reception area during business hours, for exactly that reason.

  Kent was facedown on the comforter, his ripe, muscular ass thrust into the air, while Conrad buried his face between Kent’s cheeks and licked.

  Behind Conrad, naked and willing, was a tall kid, maybe nineteen, with deeply tanned or bronzed skin and black hair down to his shoulders. He was fully erect, and decently sized, but that wasn’t the sexiest thing about him. What caught Lance’s attention was the way he was standing—two fingers in Conrad’s asshole, one hand wrapped around his cock, while Conrad gave Kent the rim job.

  “Good,” the newcomer whispered in Conrad’s ear. “Now finger him. Slowly. Not fast like I’m doing to you. Not two fingers—oooh, wait, three—like I’m doing to you. One. Slow. Because I fucking said so.”

  Lance swallowed and managed to keep his groan—and his hard-on—to himself. Oh fine. Now his cock was working.

  But you’d rather watch this scene than participate, right?

  The voice shocked him.

  Sure, he hadn’t watched a lot of porn since he’d become a model. But then, he’d really only indulged in the low-key, in-house relationships since then too.

  Bobby, Reg—yeah, sure, there was the chance there’d be some regret when the person moved on, but in the meantime, it was all safe, sensual, and consensual. What was bad about that?

  Except Lance’s body was now on full-on alert, and his heart knew only one thing for certain: he did not want to be the guy in the room. Not today.

  He swallowed and kept walking, unwilling to even contemplate what that could mean.

  “So,” Dex said as Lance entered the office. “How’re they doing in there?”

  Lance gave him a full smile. “It’s gonna be some damned hot porn, sir.”

  Dex laughed a little. “Yeah, sometimes shit just falls in your lap, you know?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry it had to, though. I mean, I showed up ready to work.”

  Dex (Davy? Dammit, Lance kept thinking of him as Davy. Damn Henry Worrall, anyway!) smiled slightly. “You did, but your heart wasn’t in it. That happens sometimes. We… you know… don’t ever want this to be a place where you feel like you have to work.” He reached under his desk and came out with a small packet of whole-wheat wafers, no flavoring, and some vitamin water. “Here. You’ve got to be starving. This’ll tide you over until you can get to the nearest buffet.”

  Lance took the packet of wafers, absurdly touched. Healthy with some easy-on-the-stomach carbs, because obviously Dex knew his fasting comedown food. He remembered Henry talking about his brother as a caretaker, and his stomach knotted again, and not because it was empty. Henry’s brother was a good guy.

  So was Henry.

  “I’m sure it’s a onetime thing,” Lance said hopefully, trying to overcome that weird little gap in his head when he wanted to call Dex by his real name. “I mean, you know, the last three years I’ve been down to fuck—”

  Dex held up his hand. “You’ve been really professional, and you’ve been fun, and you’ve made some glorious porn. And you are always welcome here. I, you know… want you to know that it’s never mandatory.”

  Lance chewed his lip. “Well, no, it’s always been—”

  Dex shook his head. “Lance, you still get to come to the company picnic if you’re not doing the wild thing with someone on set.”

  Lance swallowed hard. “We having another one of those?” he asked weakly, not wanting to admit how much that thought moved him.

  “Yeah, it’s during the buttcrack of July, because John is really fucking demented that way. Of course you can come. You can still go out with your friends, you can still live in the flophouse—although when you move, I suggest you burn all your clothes, because just hearing ‘flophouse’ makes me smell come. Sort of like work. But yeah. Lance, your family doesn’t leave you because you don’t work on the farm anymore, you know?”

  It flew out before he could censor it. “Yours did. Henry’s did. Mine did.”

  Dex’s eyes opened really wide, and Lance could really see him as a little kid.

  And seeing him, he could see Henry, and his heart practically fell out of his chest.

  “I’m sorry. That was rude and intrusive and uncalled for. I’ll go. I’ll quit and I’ll go and I’m—”

  “Lance! Sit down!” Dex blinked a couple of times. “Man, did Henry really tell you why he got kicked out of the house?”

  Lance sagged in his seat and gnawed on his lip. “It was personal. I never should have—”

  “I know,” Dex said, letting out a shuddering breath. “I’ve known since before he showed up on my doorstep. Our older brother, Travis, he’s like the family liaison to the gay. He sends me letters from Sean and Joey, our younger brothers, and pictures of his kids. He hit me up a couple of hours before Henry showed up on the doorstep and told me about the discharge and Dad, but not how bad it was. I’ve known about… the situation for a while. It was bound to explode. I… I’ve been waiting, you know? Been waiting for Henry to tell me about it. And he just looks at me, like he’s mad he had to ask for help. So he told you, and….” Dex swallowed. “God. I’m just so glad he told somebody.”

  Lance took a deep breath, his eyes burning. “I don’t know… I don’t know if your brother really understands how bad it was, himself,” he said softly, feeling like a traitor. “His… your brother-in-law… he did a number on him. When Henry picked his promotion over….”

  “Over Malachi.” And Dex’s face—it closed down. Suddenly he looked like he could kill a man, and Lance normally would have put that in Kane’s court. “Explain what you mean by number.”

  Lance looked away. “Don’t make me betray a confidence, David.”

  “Don’t make me beg, Galahad. I am worried for my brother. He won’t talk to me. And I don’t know why.”

  “He’s ashamed!” Lance burst out. “He… he did what he had to, you know? To pass? To live up to your father’s expectations? And… and in the end, he was trying to pick the honorable thing—and he lost it all.”

  “He didn’t lose me,” Dex said. “I am still in his court. I am always in his court. Make sure he knows that, okay?”

  Lance nodded, still not able to look Dex in the eyes. “I will. I—he just wants to do something useful. He’s so lost. And he’s so betrayed. I…. Malachi was a rat bastard, you know that, right?”

  Dex’s eyes sharpened. “What do you mean?”
/>
  “Henry took a promotion so he could feel like he could say no.” Well, shit. “It didn’t work.”

  Dex sucked in a breath. “I’ll kill him. I’ll tell Travis. Travis will beat him until he has pulp for a face. They have thirty-thousand acres in the middle of bumfuck, USA. They will never find the fucking body!”

  Lance had trouble finding his balance. On one hand, he wanted to tell his friend to calm down. But on the other, the look on Henry’s face, the way he’d been trying so hard to be strong….

  The utter devastation.

  “I’d help you,” Lance said, voice rusty. “But it’s not going to help him. Not right now.”

  It was Dex’s turn to nod, and then he scrubbed at his face with his hands. He took a few deep breaths and peeked out at Lance with some semblance of the Dex that Lance knew.

  “Sorry,” he said automatically. “Sorry. This went from me telling you that we wouldn’t abandon you, to you wanting to run away screaming. I didn’t mean for that to—”

  Lance shook his head, and the burning in his eyes spilled over. “I was worried, you know,” he said, swallowing. “I don’t know if this is the end for me at Johnnies. I’m still not sure what happened today. But I… you know. I fit here.”

  “You didn’t want to lose your family,” Dex said. “It’s… it’s the hard part about making this a good place to work. I…. Reg didn’t have a plan after porn, you know? We had to give him one, because he was ready to stop but he didn’t… didn’t have a plan. You’ve got a plan—you walked in here with one. But that doesn’t mean we want you to just walk away.”

  Lance wiped his eyes again with the back of his hand. “Sorry. I don’t know why….” He gestured to his face. “I’m having the weirdest month.”

  Dex cocked his head. “Why? What happened, besides meeting my stupid brother?”

  Lance raised his eyes to meet Dex’s, and Dex made an “ooh” face.

  They both laughed wretchedly.

  “God. This business.” Dex pulled in another one of those ragged breaths. “I used to think, ‘Show up, do a guy, have some fun, day over.’ It gets harder than that.”

  “I… I don’t know why he’s got me so nutted up,” Lance said. “I don’t even know if he wants to kiss me.”

  Dex let out a brief bark of laughter. “That is probably the least of your problems.”

  Lance made to stand up and then frowned. “Oh, hey, since Henry’s being a closed-mouthed bastard, I was wondering, did Reg tell you about Scott?”

  Dex’s surprise would have been comical—if his horror hadn’t been so palpable. “Scott?”

  Oh God. Lance was not going to tell him all of this one. Just no. “He showed up at the flophouse—trying to deal. He sort of scared the shit out of Reg.” Lance had to smile a little. “Henry threw him in the dumpster. It was very caveman-like, and a little hot, I’m not going to lie.”

  Dex let out a strained chuckle. “God. Scott. That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Okay. I’ll keep an eye out for him and let the guys here know. We run a clean house—we’ve got help if guys get hooked, but God. Drugs—” Dex shuddered. “—do not make good porn.”

  “You’re a purist,” Lance said affectionately.

  “It’s only worth making if it gets people off.” They seemed to have shaken their worry—and their fury—over Henry, and Lance stood, grateful for the wafers, for the talk.

  For the kindness.

  “Henry said I’m coming over for dinner sometime next week.”

  Dex shook out his hand. “Yeah. I was going to say he just wanted a buffer so Kane would stop glaring at him, but….” Dex bit his lip. “Maybe he also wanted a… friend?”

  Lance nodded. “A friend. Sure. We’ll call it a friend.”

  “We’ll call it a… hope?” Dex’s sideways look would have been a devastating punch to the solar plexus, if Lance hadn’t been looking at Henry’s scowl for the past two months.

  Somehow Henry’s scowl held more power. Who knew that was possible?

  “Okay.” Lance was game. “What am I hoping for?”

  Dex gave him a mild gaze that showed he wasn’t fooled. “We’ll hope my brother can sort out his ass from a hole in the ground and realize that you’re ready to be more than a friend.”

  Lance wiped at his eyes some more. “Goddammit. If nobody said it, I could pretend it wasn’t happening.”

  “Galahad, you wandered away from a sex scene when you had a guy’s cock in your mouth. It’s cute that you think you’re fooling anybody but yourself.”

  “Not even my mother called me Galahad,” he muttered.

  “What did she call you?”

  Lance couldn’t even meet his eyes. “Gally.”

  Dex’s snort of laughter was somehow reassuring. “I’ll call you Lance for the rest of your life if you like. But it’s not going to change the fact that your head wasn’t in the game today.” He sighed, some of the playfulness fading. “Do you really want it to be?”

  Lance looked away. “I’m on the schedule in six weeks,” he said. “Can I think about it?”

  “It may take Henry longer than that to find himself.”

  Lance finally glanced up and saw nothing in Dex’s eyes but compassion. “Yeah, but by then, I can at least know if he even sees me.”

  “Fair enough.” Dex flashed a tight grin and stood, then walked around the desk. “You still get a check for showing up. You’re doing direct deposit these days?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Mrs. Roberts will send that out tomorrow. Now go find yourself something to eat. You look like you need it.”

  Lance stuck his hand out to shake, but got pulled into a hug instead. He stood immobile for a moment, surprised, and Dex said, “You guys could be good for each other, but be careful, okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  And with that Dex swung around to leave the office, and Lance was left to go home.

  CONTRARY TO Dex’s directions, he didn’t stop anywhere for food. He’d always enjoyed that clean, hollowed-out feeling he had from knowing his digestive system was empty and void, and he was just a vessel. He was missing the thrum under his skin that usually came from sex and a good workout, but it was replaced with another odd buzzing, something he didn’t want to quantify.

  When he walked into the apartment and saw Henry, alone in a quiet clean apartment, surfing the web on his laptop, the emptiness and buzzing stilled inside him, and he practically gasped.

  Dammit.

  Oh, this was worse than he thought.

  Henry looked up as he walked in and gave a strained smile. “You’re done already? Usually the guys spend all day doing… uh, scenes.”

  Lance grimaced. “I, uh, well, I wasn’t focusing. Happens sometimes. My scene partner got to do something new and kinky, and I got to go home.”

  Henry’s smile did an odd, fluttering thing. It was like his mouth didn’t change shape, but suddenly the smile wasn’t tight anymore—it was real. “That’s… well, I hope you didn’t need the money.”

  He didn’t sound disappointed at all that Lance hadn’t spent all day having sex with someone else. Go figure.

  Lance allowed himself to squeeze Henry’s shoulder before he sat down kitty-corner and looked over Henry’s shoulder.

  “Looking for work?”

  “I should be, but I’m looking through community college courses. I filled out the apps, and I’ve been planning on computers, but nothing’s appealing to me.” He shrugged. “It does help to have residency.”

  “Yeah, it does. So, uh, I haven’t eaten in two days. You wanna take me out for a burger or something?” Oh God, he was so nervous. A burger was actually the last thing he wanted.

  Henry grinned, though. “Absofuckin’lutely.”

  Well. Awesome. Lance bit his lip and thought that maybe, just maybe, he might be able to keep food down for once.

  LANCE DROVE, and they found a bistro in midtown. He parked near McKinley Park, and they took their food to go to
eat in the shade. McKinley wasn’t the best of areas, but nobody bothered them as they sat on a park bench in the shade of the palm trees, looked out over the duck pond, and told random stories from their youth.

  Lance had been an honors student—Henry wasn’t surprised.

  Henry had been a football star—Lance was unshocked.

  But underneath their stories, a picture started to emerge of Henry as a boy denied.

  “Oh my God,” Henry said, laughing. “No you had to be there. Because cow-tipping—it’s the dumbest fucking thing. And I was, like, ‘Mal, you crazy stupid asshole, there’s nothing funny about how sad they are when they fall and how much they can get hurt. This is my family’s livelihood!’, right?”

  “Yes, and I find it a little bit sexy that you don’t approve of random cruelty,” Lance said, wrapping half his burger up and putting it carefully in the brown takeout bag.

  Henry gave him a quick grin and a sideways look that punched Lance in the stomach way harder than Dex’s, and continued with his story.

  “So Mal, he decides he’s going to push the cow anyway, and the poor old thing goes down—on me. She wakes up and goes ‘Moo!’ and wiggles her bony spine all over my leg, which snaps like a twig. We’re, like, in the eighth grade, and thank God it was after Pop Warner or my life would have been over. Anyway, I’m pinned. Mal took one look at me and ran off. I’m just lying there, yelling my damned head off, and Davy and Travis come out of the house because I guess they’re the only ones who were still awake and heard me. They pull me out—I so puked all over myself too, because God, I cannot take pain like that, it’s embarrassing—and they set me up on my side. Davy gives me his jacket to keep me warm—it’s Montana in November, you people here don’t even fucking know what cold is—and Trav runs to go get Dad. And there I am, whimpering like a weenie, and Davy says, ‘Look, Henry, you got two choices here. You either tell Dad who pushed the fucking cow on top of you, or you keep silent and suck it up.’”

  Lance let out a strained chuckle. “Your brother’s not stupid.”