Smoke and Mirrors

by Lillian T. MacGowan

  “Good.” Deck smiled, dropped his head again, kissed Naim at the hollow of his throat, and snuggled against him. Naim continued to blink, wondering where Deck had come from—precisely which planet.

  A church bell somewhere rang midnight.

  They slept for a little while, completely drained.

  Naim woke, feeling a chill, and he stretched, blinking at Deck, who’d shoved the blankets to the foot of the bed. He sat on his feet next to Naim, watching him. Naim smiled.

  “What on earth are you doing?” he murmured, rubbing an eye.

  “I told you. I needed to look at you.”

  “Oh good Lord, Deck.” Naim chuckled. “It’s cold.” He sat up, reaching for the duvet.

  “Gimme ten more minutes and I’ll warm you up. But right now I’m gonna look at you ’cause you’re fucking beautiful.” Deck pushed him back down onto the bed with a hand to his chest.

  Naim grinned and shifted more comfortably, the chilly air bringing up gooseflesh.

  Their gazes traveled along and across each other, Deck marveling and wondering at how Naim could possibly become more beautiful the more he looked. He was slim but strong. Deck couldn’t think of a word to describe the color of Naim’s skin; it was dark but not dark. Rosy and bronzy and gold at the same time. The trail of soft, shiny black hair running below his navel made Deck crazy, and he decided that from now on Naim must have his shirt off at all possible times.

  He wanted to touch him, but he knew if he did, he wouldn’t stop, and he really wanted to look right now. And fuck if he didn’t have the prettiest cock. No. Not that word. Handsome. Charming. His cock was charming. Deck made himself laugh.

  “Oiy. I said I was cold.” Naim made a face.

  Deck laughed harder. “No.” He snickered. “I’m sorry, love; that’s not why I was laughing.” Naim turned onto his side, looking suspiciously pouty. Deck leaned forward and pressed him onto his back again with a gentle kiss. “That’s not what I was laughing at. I was just thinking how fucking beautiful your cock is, and then I thought it was charming and that sounded really funny in my head.”

  “It sounds funny out loud too.” Naim glared.

  “But it is.” Deck grinned. “It’s a handsome, charming cock, and I love it. It doesn’t look at all cold.” Deck stretched himself out and snuggled up to Naim, throwing one insanely long leg over Naim’s hips, pulling him closer.

  “Thanks, cupcake.” Naim locked Deck’s other leg between his, sandwiching them together.

  Deck didn’t respond for a long minute.

  “Cup…ca…ke…?” He finally pulled his head back and blinked.

  “Yup.” Naim grinned.

  “Cup…cake…” Deck squinted.

  “Yup.”

  Deck stared through another long silence. “You’re going to call me that all the time now, aren’t you?”

  “Yup.”

  “Do you know how much trouble that’s going to cause?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’m gonna have to fight Keller. You know that, right?”

  “Yup.” They were quiet for a minute. “And you love it, don’t you.”

  “Yeah, I kinda do.” Deck smiled happily. “You fucking knew I would too.”

  “Of course. Cupcake.” Naim smirked back.

  “Because you think I’m a whack job.”

  “Yup.”

  “S’okay. I don’t care if you think I’m a fucking chicken, as long as you never leave me.” Deck found Naim’s hands and lifted them to his lips.

  “No. No chickens.” Naim pulled away from him, sliding out of bed. “I draw the line at bestiality.”

  Deck reached for him and whined, “Where are you going?”

  “Bathroom.”

  “Hurry up,” Deck yelled after him, dying inside a little at the breathtaking view of wild, mussed black hair and that perfect erotic plum of an ass.

  Deck stretched and sighed and smiled. Fuck, he was happy. He thought of the future and how they were going to have to do that a lot more. Like all the time. Everywhere. Every way. He’d surprised himself asking to top. Truth was, Deck could easily be the bottomest bottom ever to beg a man to pound his ass. And God, he wanted to figure out how to ask Naim for that because…Naim all fierce and intense over him, grinding and sweat dripping… Why the hell was he taking so long in there?

  “WHY THE HELL ARE YOU TAKING SO LONG IN THERE?” he shouted, lonely already. Being in love was awesome. It was terrifying and horrible and helpless and powerful and powerless and bigger than anything in the universe, and he wished he were younger so that he and Naim would have more years together.

  He heard the water run, then turn off. Naim headed back. He bounced.

  “I’ve been meaning to mock you,” Naim said as he came back into the room, a pair of Deck’s sweatpants drooping around his hips, “but I kept forgetting.”

  Deck leaped up and grabbed him, flinging them back onto the bed, Naim on his chest, Deck pawing at his ass. “Why would you mock me?” he asked, trying not to laugh but also not caring because they were both getting hard again.

  “You have six hundred skin care products in your bathroom. Seriously, Deck, how gay are you?”

  “What? I like having nice skin.” Deck wrapped his legs around Naim’s, kind of annoyed about the sweats. Naim had said he was cold, though. “And about an hour ago I was up to my nuts in your gorgeous ass, and I’m getting another giant boner just feeling that charming cock of yours, so I’m going with pretty fucking gay.” He pushed down on Naim’s ass, pressing his cock into Naim’s hip bone. Naim’s head dipped, and his forehead fell to Deck’s chest. He breathed out a soft moan against a pebbled pink nipple and, his tongue peeked out.

  Deck lifted his shoulders and shoved forward, closer into Naim’s mouth. Naim bit down on Deck’s nipple, and Deck bit down on his lip and growled. Naim dragged his tongue, flat and wet, across sweet, salty skin and lifted his head. “Is that difficult? On the fire department? I know the squad is great, but have you ever had a hard time with others?”

  “Wha? What?” Deck blinked. The hell was he talking about?

  Naim laughed. “You’re awfully easy to distract.” He rolled off Deck and touched his face. “I was just thinking that you don’t get a lot of openly gay firefighters. Especially in places like the Bottom.”

  Deck chuckled. He really could deny Naim nothing, and he snuggled his face into Naim’s hand. “Not really. I mean, I’m just me, ya know?” He tried to pull himself together. If Naim wanted to talk, they would talk. This honeymoon period business was interesting, and he thought he might learn things about himself.

  Deck came to the conclusion that what he felt for Naim was bottomless, and he’d never stop falling. Which, in a strange way, made it safe.

  Naim laughed. “Yeah. You really are.” He brushed his fingers along Deck’s lower lip. He had a mouth like a new pink summer rose on such a handsome face. It should have been incongruous, but it was nothing but splendid.

  Deck nipped at his fingers. “I remember when my mother was sick. I guess she knew she wasn’t going to be around for us.” He turned onto his side, wrapping his legs around Naim’s again, and took his hand, closing their fingers together. “She was pretty sharp, ya know. She must have seen something or…I dunno, but she knew. I was young. I don’t even know if I was seven yet, but I remember she sat me down and told me I was different from a lot of people. And that as I got older, I’d start to feel different from what people would tell me I should feel, but that it was okay. There was nothing wrong with me, and I wasn’t to let anyone tell me there was. Then she said that sometimes, some people wouldn’t like it. They wouldn’t like me and how I was different, but I had to promise her that I would be who I am, no matter what.” He looked at the ceiling, a soft smile on his face. “I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I promised.”

  Naim wanted to see photographs of Deck’s family.

  “I mean, I knew I didn’t like girls. Ya know, even when you’
re a kid in fucking kindergarten or whatever, people ask you if you have a girlfriend or what girl you like at school or some shit.” He kissed Naim’s fingers, and Naim ran his calf along Deck’s long leg. “I always wondered why people asked me that. Like, what the fuck would I want with a girl? I always knew I liked guys, even when I was that young. I just didn’t know what gay was or that anyone would think there was something wrong with who I liked. As I got older, I remembered what my mother said. By time I was probably eleven or twelve, I realized what she meant. So I kept my promise.”

  Naim felt the loss of Deck’s mother. He also marveled at how fortunate he was to have this man in his life, to be loved by him.

  “There’s always assholes, right? Bigots, fuckwads, those—whatda ya call it, I always forget the word for dicks who think women are less than men?”

  “Misogynists.”

  “Yeah, them, misogynists. The world is full of shitty people.” He held their hands to his heart. “I don’t bother with them any more than I bother with the fuck heads who think I should hate someone who looks like you, because of my dad.” Deck laughed. “That would be awesome.” He shook his head. “What kind of asshole would lose out on you…?” He trailed off, the idea not worth finishing.

  He leaned in and kissed Naim, reestablishing contact after such an absurd and unfortunate thought.

  After he pulled back, he spoke again hesitantly. “I guess…I guess it was different for you.” He swallowed and looked at Naim earnestly.

  Naim looked away and tried, unsuccessfully, not to stiffen.

  “Naim, love. Naim, look at me, love.” Deck nudged at Naim’s forehead with his, lifting his head. “I know you don’t like talking about it. You hate talking about it. But it’s you. It’s all part of you, and none of it is anything for you to be ashamed of. I’m not going to be like, okay now I know, so we can just forget about it.”

  Naim made a spectacularly unpleasant face and growled, “Why not?”

  “I just said. Because it’s all part of you. I want to know everything about you, and this is important.”

  “Why? Why is it so important?”

  “Well, you asked me, didn’t you?”

  Naim sighed. Deck’s whole damn family should have been a crime syndicate. Boy-and-girl-next-door faces and filthy vocabularies hiding criminally brilliant minds. He sighed again. “It is very different though.”

  “Then tell me.” Deck turned onto his back, pulling Naim closer, Naim’s head on his chest. Naim wondered if he’d done that on purpose so that Naim could avoid Deck’s eyes as he spoke of these things. And yet be held as he spoke of these things.

  Naim sighed and settled in. He hesitated as he started to speak.

  “A lot of people think that…they think if a boy is sexually abused by a man, that somehow, it affects his sexuality. Like it affects who he loves. That always pisses me off. I’ve heard people say it, and it’s fucking ridiculous. ‘Well of course he’s queer; don’t you know what happened to him when he was a kid?’” he mimicked cruelly. “Like it’s a consequence or a symptom of something.” He lifted his head and put his chin on Deck’s chest but still looked at the wall.

  “Do you know how many boys I knew like me that were straight? We all went with men because that’s who paid, but if they chose to fuck someone, it was a girl.” Words came easier, but it was still difficult. “I didn’t think I wanted anything. I never did anything I didn’t get paid for.”

  Deck pressed him closer, and Naim became conscious of the fact that he didn’t feel ill. He lay naked and intimate with Deck, talking about things that always made him want to shower, and he felt…okay. Not great; he was uncomfortable and feeling a little hot, in the not-good way—but he felt okay.

  “It was confusing. I didn’t understand attraction or love, and sex was—it was a bad thing. Like you keep saying…it was something that you did to someone. A power thing.” He felt Deck’s heart pounding harder under his hand and his body getting tense, so he stopped and looked at him.

  “Deck. If we are going to try and talk about these things, you can’t lose your shit every time. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t…” He sighed, a little embarrassed and not sure why. “If I said I didn’t like it that you got angry. It’s reassuring. But it’s also going to give you ventricular hypertrophy if your blood pressure keeps spiking.” He wondered if he would start nagging Deck about his diet soon.

  “I don’t know what that is.” Deck gritted, petting Naim’s hair a little roughly.

  “It’s bad.”

  Deck took a breath and then another. “Okay.” He breathed one more time. “So what changed?”

  Naim put his head back down and was quiet for a minute. This was harder than anything else. “Étienne.” Deck squeezed him. They hadn’t spoken of Étienne since the night Naim told him about Marseille. But he remembered—he vividly remembered—telling Deck that he’d loved Étienne. He hesitated more as he wondererd if talking about this would be a space hurt them both: Naim for his guilt and loss, and Deck for that part of Naim’s heart to which he wasn’t entitled. It belonged to Étienne.

  “I told you we were really just friends. I know he…he had feelings for me, but he had this girl that he’d been with on and off for ages, and I was…me.” Unconsciously, Naim nuzzled Deck’s chest, breathing him in, and it grounded him. “But as I got older, maybe fifteen or so, I guess some things started to…click, I suppose.”

  He lifted his head and rested his chin on Deck again, but this time, he looked at Deck, not realizing he did it. “There was this girl—another cheap little trick, like me.”

  “Same piece of shit ran us both. Her name was Aubine. We weren’t friends like Étienne and me, but we were friends. She came on to me a lot, and for a long time I figured I wasn’t interested because she wasn’t paying. I couldn’t understand why she wanted a freebie; it didn’t make sense. Because she of all people should know that fucking was something you did for money. Even the few times it…” It made him sick to acknowledge the physical reality of prostitution, but it was a biological reality. “The times… it…it felt good. Physically. I mean just…getting off, right?”

  He needed a minute, and it suddenly occurred to him that he was looking at Deck. He dropped his gaze and gathered himself, breathing deeply. Deck shifted slightly and wrapped an arm completely around Naim, massaging the back of his head with his other hand. His chest had to hurt but Naim was selfish enough to refuse to move unless Deck asked him to.

  Naim cleared his throat. “So I never took her up on it. Finally she asked me if I was gay and that still made no sense. I remember thinking she must have been high and I told her…” He laughed a little, and it wasn’t ugly. “I told her, ‘I’m not gay, you fool; I’m a whore.’” She looked at me like I was high. She thought that I thought I was straight. I didn’t think I was anything. Just a whore.

  “A few weeks after that, Étienne asked to paint me. One thing led to another, and we ended up snogging and it turned out I liked it. I really liked it.”

  Deck’s nose twitched.

  “That’s when I started to think about it. Found myself looking at men. Not johns, of course. But just in general. Women didn’t do anything for me, but sometimes I’d see a guy and it felt different.” He stopped, and neither of them said anything for a while. He lifted his hand and absently brushed at Deck’s scar.

  Naim sighed and spoke again after a few long minutes. “It took me a long time to figure out I loved Étienne. I knew I wanted to be with him, but there was no way that could happen. Not then, like that. But at least I started to understand that how I got money and what I felt and wanted were two different things.”

  He moved to sit up and straddle Deck’s lap, leaning forward for a kiss. He needed to remind himself where he was and whom he was with, and that he was safe. He inhaled deeply through his nose, smelling Deck, filling his chest with prickles and his head with a rush of warm vertigo. Deck kissed him back gently, soft, damp lips pressed delica
tely, breathing and tasting with light and lazy tongues.

  Naim held Deck’s face, pulling back just enough to see each other in focus. “Before you…” He drew in again and caught Deck’s upper lip between his, tickling at it daintily with his tongue. After a moment he released it and mumbled against Deck’s mouth. “I don’t think I’d been kissed more than…more than a dozen times in my life.” He closed his eyes and smiled again, thinking how much he loved kissing Deck—just simply kissing. Touching mouths, biting at lips, teasing and tasting with tongues and the powerful intimacy that came with breathing from another person.

  Deck rubbed his mouth against Naim’s, running his hands in long sweeps across the soft skin of his naked back, solid and gently muscled as Naim shifted himself on Deck’s thighs, and Deck resented Naim’s sweatpants with a smile against his lips.

  After tasting again, Deck pulled back, “You,” he started reluctantly, “dated before, though. You said that things changed when you got to college. I mean—” He hooked his hands around Naim’s back and over his shoulders, but didn’t press down. Letting Naim stay above him. “At some point between Marseille and me, you…got…ya know…” He made a face.

  Breathing out an easy laugh, Naim took Deck’s mouth again and felt the aching love along with the heat. He breathed as they separated, and touched his fingertips to swelling pink lips, too sweet and pretty on such a man.

  “Comfortable with my body?” He moved a hand to Deck’s shoulder and touched him lightly, smiling to himself at what Deck’s magnificent body had just done to his.

  Deck nodded. “I mean, you…I was all wrong before, right?” He sighed and twisted his mouth and looked around the room awkwardly. “You like sex. I mean…ya know…”he mumbled.

  Naim laughed, genuine and relaxed. “Yeah. With you. This is pretty amazing.” He grinned.

  They both shifted and scooted to the headboard, where Deck propped a pillow under his shoulders, and Naim made himself comfortable, still straddling Deck’s belly.

  He looked down at Deck’s chest for a moment, then back up to his face, and smiled with his eyes. “Time helped, naturally.” He spoke thoughtfully. “I think it was my year in England too. I spent my third year of uni in Southampton and lived with this huge, deranged host family. They were amazing people, and—” He frowned and laughed at the same time. “They weren’t pervy or exhibitionists or anything, but they were really”—he paused, trying to think of the right word, then shrugged—”comfortable about sex.”