Straight Shooter (Rear Entrance Video, #3)

by Heidi Belleau

  And he wasn’t just talking about the hockey team. Especially not at the end there.

  Because sure, SFU’s hockey team was a bunch of assholes, some of whom Austin would never associate with if it weren’t for a shared love of the game, but none of them—not one—could be called “weird.”

  But his roommates sure as hell could.

  That settled things, anyway. Austin wasn’t a quitter, wasn’t a traitor, was better than Drew in every way, including on the ice. Which meant that weird or not, he was going to have to learn to live with “Bobby.” Because as tempting as it was to move the fuck out and leave all this confusion behind him, that was something Drew would do.

  Austin was made of stronger stuff than that. Austin had morals. Austin had balls.

  It also helped that today’s disastrous boner-and-betrayal-filled lunch had solidified the fact that living with any of his teammates—especially considering his . . . problem—would be absolute hell. He thought things were uncomfortable now? Just wait until his new roommates spotted one of his inappropriate hard-ons. Sure, he’d managed to avoid detection up until now, but how long could you live with a group of guys before they figured out that a specific subset of insults gave you a boner every time? Living in the gayest house in Vancouver may have had its pitfalls, but nobody there called him fag or pussy on a daily basis.

  He had a closing shift at Rear Entrance Video tonight, which would be a good test of his new resolve. He’d make nice with whoever was scheduled to work days, and then he’d sit right there in the middle of all that gay LGBT shit and force himself not to be grossed and/or weirded out by it. And hopefully he’d come up with a way to do the same thing around Rob—ahem, Bobby—so he could keep his place in the house and prove his loyalty.

  If he even could.

  Without the ultimatum, he maybe would have been able to get better at handling Bobby by way of desensitizing himself to The Gay, but he wasn’t sure if a month—even one spent living with two and a half gay dudes and working in a porn store absolutely saturated in gay—would be enough to bring him to that point. The past two weeks sure hadn’t resulted in any progress, but then, Austin hadn’t exactly been trying.

  But maybe if he purposely exposed himself to critical levels of the stuff, even beyond what he was currently dealing with . . .

  Which was a possibility, he guessed, except he had a feeling trying for that much exposure would involve marching in a pride parade before going drinking at Celebrities and then heading home to raid Christian’s personal collection of dirty movies for his own nightly presleep jerk-off session.

  And by the time it got to that point, why not suck a bunch of dicks while he was at it?

  Argh.

  He scrubbed at his face in frustration, more than a little concerned at how detailed the image of himself sucking dick was.

  And not, like, lovingly either. Not like girls did in porn, licking their lips and smiling like the dude they were sucking off was their personal god. Not even like girls sometimes did to him, borderline disinterested but still willing so long as he returned the favour. More like a brawny guy cornering him in some grimy bathroom and shoving him to the floor, pinching his nose to force his mouth open and fucking into him like a blow-up doll. And he’d hate it. It’d taste disgusting, and it would choke him and feel wrong all around, but he still wouldn’t fight it, wouldn’t bite the guy or anything, would just—

  Shit. Now he was getting a boner on the fucking bus.

  He needed to get this thing under control.

  Except he wasn’t sure he even could. As much as the guys at the house all joked about the gay being contagious like it was the most absurd thing they’d heard of, Austin couldn’t help but wonder if having so much of it around wasn’t making his problem worse. After all, he’d had his problem pretty well dealt with before Christian and Max had started fucking and Rob had started wearing lipstick and Rear Entrance Video had become Queer Entrance Video.

  And now? Now it was back to square one, except instead of being a terrified teenaged kid, he was a terrified grown-ass man with a much more seasoned—okay, more like plain fucking perverted—imagination. Austin pulled his backpack onto his lap to hide his shame. Couldn’t move out because it would be betraying his roommates, and his problem meant he had nowhere else to really go, anyway. Couldn’t stay where he was because being around so much gay was clearly affecting his hormones or something.

  And his only solution was to expose himself to even more gay? God, if he did that, by the end of the month he’d be popping a boner every time someone so much as looked at him funny. Of course, if he was also making nicey-nice with his rainbow roommates, maybe the boner problem wouldn’t matter anymore. He’d be one of them.

  Oh, who was he kidding? Of course it would matter. Austin wasn’t like Drew, but he also wasn’t like Rob or Christian or Max, who all could say “Screw what other people think; I don’t need them anyway. I’ll do what I want.”

  Austin needed to play hockey. And for that, he needed his team.

  He needed to be straight.

  No, he was straight. But he needed to be a normal straight guy. His roommates could blab about how there was nothing wrong with them all they wanted, but that wasn’t Austin. There was something wrong with Austin, and he couldn’t lie down and accept it. And if he didn’t fix it, and soon, he’d lose everything that mattered to him. He’d lose himself. Because he wasn’t just on a hockey team, he was the team. The team was him.

  The more he thought about it all, the more he realized: he was fucked.

  He was also at his stop.

  And of course it was Rob working the counter.

  Of course it fucking was.

  Rob, who didn’t look any more happy to see Austin than Austin was to see Rob. First, he looked up with a smile, then he startled, then he opened the till and started counting out the bills without a word.

  Make nice, Austin reminded himself as he walked in. “Since when do you work days?” he asked. And, like the fuckstick he was, made it sound like an accusation. Not on purpose or anything, but there it was.

  Rob snorted. “I have the summer off, remember?” he said, and then mumbled something into his lap that may or may not have been, “Or have you taken too many hits to your thick head?”

  “Oh,” Austin said, forcing himself not to get lippy right back. “Uh, well. That’s cool.” He swallowed hard and took the seat beside Rob, unintentionally catching a glance of the black lace bra peeping out from the top of Rob’s half-unbuttoned white shirt. Imagined someone forcibly putting something lacy like that on him and watching him squirm in embarrassment. His face went hot, and he turned away from Rob, staring at the bills instead. He was beginning to see why Rob couldn’t take his eyes of them today. “Look, uh, R—Bobby, about how I’ve been acting. I’m sorry.”

  Rob turned on him, his face insufferably smug. Not the face of a guy about to accept an apology, that was for sure. “Oh yeah, is that so? And I’m sure how sorry you are has nothing to do with the fact that Noah told you he was kicking you out at the end of the month.”

  Jeez, what the fuck had happened to the old pushover Rob from before? The one he could steal food from and never have to pay back? The one he could make small dick jokes about, who’d never punch him in the face for it the way Ben once had in the locker room?

  “Well, look who it fucking is. Here kissing ass, I take it?”

  Dylan, of course. The fat fuck sauntered in, giving Austin the kind of scowl that didn’t turn him on at all.

  So that was where Rob was getting his new balls from. Hell, the guy had probably coached Rob on exactly what to say.

  “Why, you want in on the action, gay boy?” Austin snapped back. Oops.

  Dylan’s shoulders went up, and shit, Austin had forgotten the guy was fucking huge, at least as big as their team enforcer Riley, except with brains to back up the brawn. “You know what I think, toolbag?” Dylan said. “I think you’re such a dick to Bobby because it
makes you uncomfortable to see him embrace himself.”

  “Uh, yeah, duh,” Austin replied, because with the gay boy comment, he’d already fucked this thing up and he might as well go down swinging.

  “And you know why I think that makes you uncomfortable? I think it makes you uncomfortable because you’re jealous. I think you’re a little bit of a jock closet case.” Oh, there went Austin’s boner. He crossed his legs, meeting Dylan’s fierce stare. He wasn’t going to let this guy intimidate him, big or not. “I think sometimes you stare a little too long at your teammates’ dicks in the locker room. I think maybe sometimes you jerk off thinking about your coach. And I think seeing Bobby happy makes you jealous, and it also scares you, and I think that’s why you treat him like shit. Straight guys—actual straight guys—have no reason to be threatened by people like Bobby. People like Noah are secure in their sexualities, but you’re not.” Dylan smirked in triumph. “You’re repressed, and you’re unhappy, so you’re lashing out at Bobby because he’s brave enough to do what you can’t. Admit it.”

  “F-fuck you,” Austin managed to spit. That was all he had. Just . . . “Fuck you, Dylan. What the fuck do you know?”

  Rob slammed the cash drawer shut and snatched his man purse from under the counter. “Let it go, Dylan,” he pleaded, then stood and walked out from behind the counter, taking Dylan by the arm. “Come on, he’s not worth it.”

  “I know, baby,” Dylan said, brushing Rob’s long hair from his forehead and pressing a kiss there.

  Austin stood there, dumbfounded, with a boner, feeling like a complete fucking asshole. An asshole who was going to be homeless at the end of the month, if things kept on the way they were going. Maybe he should apologize, maybe— “Hey!” he yelled, when they turned their backs on him like he really wasn’t worth their time or attention. “Just so you know, I am not a closet case, okay? I am straight as fuck!”

  No reply other than the jingle of the bell over the door as they exited. Not that they needed to bother; did a statement that pathetic and desperate really require a comeback? Seriously, straight as fuck? How straight was fuck, even?

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

  He banged a fist down on the desk. He’d literally just decided to make things better, and yet in the time since making that decision he’d somehow made them ten fucking times worse?

  Shit, if he’d decided to say fuck it and embrace getting kicked out, would he and Rob have miraculously kissed and made up?

  Okay, no, that was stupid as fuck, and not just the part about him and Rob kissing each other, even metaphorically.

  The issue was, deciding to do something and actually making it happen were two separate things. If they weren’t, he’d already be in the NHL by now, captain for the Canucks, taking home the Stanley Cup and single-handedly preventing another riot. And he’d be straight—without exceptions.

  But he was none of those things. He was just Austin Puett, playing for one of the shittiest college teams in Canada, getting kicked out of his place at the end of the month, and springing wood every time anyone suggested he was anything other than macho.

  To get what you wanted, you had to do more than want it and decide to get it. You had to make a plan, and then you had to execute it. Get on a college team. Train hard. Kick ass. Win games. Make captain. Get drafted. Kick more ass. Win more games. Get traded. Kick even more ass. Win even more games. Take home the fucking cup.

  Austin knew all about discipline, all about planning and making those plans fucking happen. With hockey, at least. So why not with Rob?

  Bobby.

  So maybe he hadn’t hammered out any kind of plan yet, but whatever that plan ended up being, Austin was pretty sure that calling the guy by the name he’d chosen would likely be a part of it.

  “Bobby, Bobby, Bobby,” he muttered to himself, practicing the word as he returned to his seat.

  “Who’s that, yer boyfriend?”

  Austin recoiled, torn between surprise and—God fucking damn it—horniness; his wheelie chair flew back and slammed into the wall behind him.

  The guy draped over the counter laughed, then blew a big pink bubble of gum. Popped it. Snapped it. Smiled.

  Holy shit. A customer. Had Austin missed the bell? Was this guy some kind of gay ninja?

  And oh, he was definitely gay. Spiky hair with frosted tips. A V-necked T-shirt tight enough that Austin could see his nipples were pierced.

  And gay porn in his hand. That too.

  Austin wheeled his chair forward again and snatched the DVD out of the customer’s hand. “I’m straight,” he said, probably way too late for it to sound like he wasn’t lying.

  The customer flashed him a crooked smile. “No shit, really? Isn’t that weird, working in a gay porn store?”

  Weirder than you know.

  The DVD was some locally produced BDSM thing called Master Puck and Mistress Titania’s STRAIGHT SUB SETUP 4.

  Austin stared at the case. At the main title in bright red, bolded capital letters.

  STRAIGHT.

  SUB.

  SETUP.

  His face burned. The customer cleared his throat, and somehow even that came out gay-sounding.

  “Oh!” Austin snapped his gaze up. The guy had asked him a question. Shit. “Uh, well. It wasn’t a gay porn store when I first started working here.”

  The customer smirked, dark eyelashes dipping over his eyes smugly. “So you could say you . . . got set up?”

  Oh God. Austin was at the point of giving fourteen-year-old boys the world over a run for their money when it came to involuntary boners. He squirmed and yanked the DVD case open so he could scan the bar code into the system and process the return.

  Beep. Three days overdue. He threw it into the TO BE SORTED pile, forcing himself not to give it a second glance. “Will that be all?” he rasped, then tacked on, “. . . bro?”

  Yeah, real straight, Austin. Straight as fuck.

  “Don’t I, like, owe you late fees?” Snap went the guy’s gum.

  “Oh, uh, right. Um. Yeah. Six bucks.” Austin licked his lips, refusing to meet the guy’s gaze as he took the ten from his hand and opened the till.

  His boner pulsed. STRAIGHT SUB SETUP, his mind taunted, those red capital letters floating through his mind. He wondered what a movie with a title like that might be about. He knew enough about BDSM from working here and from his own “research” on the internet to know that the SUB part meant submissive, as in someone who got off on being ordered around and spanked or whatever while wearing a collar and one of those creepy zippered hoods.

  Doing whatever some sexy chick in a corset and thigh-high boots told you to do? Yeah, Austin could go for that. But when it turned into her calling you a sissy and paddling your ass like a little kid and making you suck her lovingly realistic strap-on complete with wrinkly balls, Austin started to get weirded out—and turned on, and then weirded out again even worse. So, you know, even if it was a guy and a girl together, he stayed away from the BDSM stuff. Back to the normal porn of blondes in pigtails with fake tits pretending to be babysitters and fucking black pizza delivery guys.

  “Um, hello? My change?”

  Shit!

  “Sorry. Uh, fuck. Four bucks, right?” he fumbled in the cash drawer for some toonies but kept grabbing and dropping the same three over and over again, unable to gather the dexterity to get exactly two. Three. Zero. One. Three. Zero. “Fuck!” he snapped, on the edge of crying like a bitch.

  “Are you okay?” the customer asked. Blew a bubble. Popped it. Snapped it. “You seem kind of high-strung, sugar.”

  “I’m not a tweaker,” Austin said. Finally, he managed to pick up two toonies and hand them over. “Four dollars.”

  The customer put up both hands defensively, rolling his wide eyes. “Nobody said you were, sweetie. But between you and me? I don’t think you’re quite straight, either.”

  “What do you know, huh?” Shit. That didn’t come out angry so much as . . . pleading? Was th
at the word for the desperate whine in his tone just then? Also, yay, another fail on the not being hostile to gay dudes front.

  “On this subject? Quite a bit, babycakes. Not to brag, but I’ve sucked so much supposedly straight dick in the last few years, that when you say straight I hear convince me.”

  “D-does that really happen? Straight guys? They let you . . . let you . . .” Suck their dicks? Fuck them? Get fucked by them? “Let you?” he finished, unable to make his mouth say anything more explicit.

  The customer threw back his head with a gloating laugh. “Let me? Let me? Oh, honey. They beg me.”

  Beg you.

  Austin nearly passed out.

  The customer—Zeke, according to the sloppy scrawl on the back of his receipt—wound up giving Austin his number before he finally left. And he’d signed it with XOXO.

  Austin, of course, balled up the scrap of paper and chucked it into the garbage, then prematurely tied off the bag and took it out to the dumpster in the alley.

  There. No evidence.

  He returned to the counter and fell into his seat, feeling like he’d run five miles. Which he may have, earlier today. Shit, he was going to fucking hurt tomorrow, and it was going to destroy his workouts for the entire week, and it hadn’t even helped his problem at all.

  Maybe he was going about this all wrong. Maybe the punishments weren’t the solution, but a part of the problem.

  Maybe Zeke and Dylan were right about him.

  Not about him being gay, fuck no. Austin was straight, he was. Whatever Dylan thought about him, he sure as hell never looked at his teammates’ dicks or asses in the showers, and he’d never been tempted to, either. He didn’t think they were sexy to look at the way girls were. He liked tits and hips and long hair and, oh yeah, pussy. He was sitting here at the counter with a stack of gay porn DVD cases—returns processed and discs filed away, ready to be returned to the shelves for the next gay dude to rent—and he wasn’t even remotely turned on by them. Guys sucking dick, guys with cum dripping down their chins, guys spreading their ass cheeks and showing you their assholes . . . not one image appealed.