Damage Control

by Lynn VanDorn

  The caller disconnected.

  “—boring.” Purvi hung up the phone. That was the third call like that she'd gotten this week. People were such assholes.

  As she walked up to the guest room, she started texting Tyler.

  Purvi: You do look like a hipster elf. The interview went well, I thought.

  Purvi: About this foundation. How is this the first I'm hearing of it? You're going to expect me to do everything, aren't you?

  Purvi: I better get a raise or I'm going on strike.

  Purvi: Oh, and I think it's time to get the home number changed again.

  Purvi: You were great tonight. Really. Give me a call later.

  Chapter 24

  Josh Wants to Know; Tyler Wants to Forget

  Friday, September 23rd, 11:00 p.m.

  An expensive hotel suite

  Manhattan, NY

  Tyler came out of the taping of the interview with Seth Meyers higher than a kite on adrenaline. From there they had gone to dinner at a Japanese restaurant, where Tyler had eaten his body weight in nigri, then to a nearby bar, where he’d consumed a similar volume of extra dirty vodka martinis. He was all over Josh in the taxi on the way back to the hotel, retracting his tentacles only long enough to pay the driver when they arrived.

  “I'm sorry,” Josh murmured to him as he and Tyler got out of the car.

  The driver shrugged and looked unimpressed. “No mess to clean up, then I don't care what goes on back there. I seen it all, believe me. That was nothing. The stories I could tell…”

  “I will give you twenty dollars not to,” Tyler said, and that seemed to satisfy them both.

  Josh and Tyler ended up sharing one of the hotel’s elevators with an exhausted-looking couple with two small children and a mountain of luggage. Josh was relieved that Tyler limited himself to a death grip on Josh’s hand and several significant glances.

  Back in the room, Tom and Sydney waited for them with iced champagne. Tom made a toast to a successful day and then discussed the interview with Tyler in what Josh thought was exhaustive and excruciating detail. After what seemed like an eternity, Tom and Sydney finally returned to their own respective rooms, and they were at last alone.

  “I think you’re drunk,” Josh told Tyler.

  Tyler gave him a loopy smile and batted his eyelashes. “Merely tipsy, my dear. ‘Take me to bed or lose me forever.’” He slipped out of his jacket and tossed it onto the sofa, leaving him in the “Threesomes Are Overrated” t-shirt and his slacks.

  “Did you just quote Top Gun at me? You weren't even born when that movie came out.”

  “After I was cast in the remake of Pretty in Pink, I went on a glut of watching eighties movies, including Top Gun, which might be the most unintentionally gay movie I've ever seen, with the possible exception of Fight Club. And Fight Club might have been intentionally gay. I haven't made up my mind.”

  “Was this what you were studying at UCLA?”

  Tyler frowned at him. “Yes, among other things.”

  Josh decided to sidestep the “wanna make something of it?” look on Tyler’s face. “So. Top Gun, you were saying?”

  Tyler narrowed his eyes at Josh, then dropped his scowl. “Yeah. Top Gun is still my blue-ribbon winner for gayness. The sexual tension between Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise in that movie is a fine, fine thing.” He smiled, pique apparently forgotten or at least shelved.

  “‘Show me the way home, honey,’” Josh said in an effort to retain that smile.

  “Oh, that is unfair, quoting back at me like that.” Tyler toed out of his shoes and socks.

  “I watched that movie enough times as a kid that I wore out the tape.”

  “Who did you want?” Tyler asked. “Maverick or Iceman?”

  “Definitely Iceman.” Josh had jacked off to more fantasies of sex with a sort of Val Kilmer/Ryan hybrid than he cared to admit.

  “A man after my own heart,” Tyler said. “Although I'd be okay with Maverick, too. Now that I think about it, I could go for a Maverick/Iceman sandwich. You know, to get the taste of that last one out of my mouth.” His smile was wolfish. “So to speak.” He grabbed Josh by his tie and tugged him in the direction of the bedroom. “But only if we’re talking late eighties Val Kilmer. Otherwise, no deal.”

  Josh felt his lips twist in a rueful smile. “I'm not really an Iceman or a Maverick type. Sorry.”

  “Stop fishing. It's unattractive and unnecessary for someone who looks like you do. You know, Purvi thinks you look like Hugh Jackman fucked Adrian Brody and got a nearsighted baby.”

  “Your friend is strange.”

  “That she is. Personally, I think you're closer to Independence Day Jeff Goldblum. Less dorky, though. Like this much.” Tyler held his thumb and index finger about an inch apart. “And better looking. Maybe Purvi’s right about her Jackman/Brody theory. I can kind of see it.” Tyler peered up at him, considering.

  “I'm not sure how to feel about that.” Josh pushed Tyler against the bedroom door and fumbled for the doorknob while he kissed Tyler’s neck.

  Tyler rubbed himself against Josh. “Flattered. You'll still be super hot in twenty years. Hell, probably indefinitely. Jeff Goldblum is a total gilf. I would absolutely fuck him now and he’s practically paleolithic. As for Val Kilmer, have you seen him recently? There's a reason for that. Iceman has not aged well. Tom Cruise, on the other hand, has made some sort of deal with the devil. He probably bathes in the blood of virgins.”

  Josh had a feeling Tyler would be the same, barely aging, looking like thirty when he was fifty. Josh would hate him if he wasn't so crazy about him.

  I shouldn't be standing so close to the edge of this cliff. I should probably back up. Carefully, so I don't trip on something and fall anyway.

  Josh pushed the thought away. He wouldn't be jumping off any cliffs tonight. “I want you.”

  “Mm hm,” Tyler agreed. “Yes, please.”

  “So polite. Who are you, and what have you done with Tyler?

  “Bite me,” Tyler said, his voice affectionate. “You’re going to miss my fine yet surly ass one of these days.”

  The thought of life after Tyler presented itself and Josh shrank away from the thought. No, not yet, not for a long time. He needed more time to glut himself sick on Tyler’s body, to tire of his sly humor and lovely face, and to start craving his freedom and peace and solitude. One day he'd be ready for Tyler to leave.

  Just not today.

  “Not a chance,” he said.

  “Talk to me, Dr. Rosen,” Tyler demanded. He pulled his t-shirt off and tossed it aside, then unbuckled his belt and started to remove his slacks. Tyler slipped his hand under the elastic of his boxer briefs and palmed his erection. “I want to hear everything you plan to do to me.” He pushed his underwear down far enough to expose his cock and he stroked it.

  “I'm going to take you apart, piece by piece, then put you back together.”

  Tyler’s eyes opened wide and his hand stilled. “Oh,” was all his talkative elf could manage as a response. Josh couldn't help but feel a little smug that he'd managed to surprise Tyler into at least brief silence. It didn't last long, however. “That’s the cliché you're going with? Really?”

  Josh ignored that and drew closer to Tyler. He tugged on his boxer briefs. “Off,” he said, and watched while Tyler slid them down his legs.

  “Are you going to stay dressed or what?” Tyler asked as he hopped onto the hotel bed and got comfortable. “While you take me apart and put me back together.” He said that last with an exaggerated roll of his eyes.

  Josh rushed through taking his clothes off, nearly falling in his haste as he tried to remove his pants before taking off his shoes. Tyler laughed so hard he snorted.

  Naked at last, Josh climbed first onto the bed, then onto Tyler, who at last stopped laughing and went back to stroking himself. Josh recalled what Tyler had said the other night, that he hadn't had anything but sex toys in his ass for almost three years. Josh imagined h
im, alone and naked, fucking himself with a dildo. He wanted to see that, to watch Tyler pleasure himself, abandoned and stripped down to raw need and desire, but not tonight. His need to touch Tyler hadn't been slaked quite yet.

  “Done laughing at me?”

  Tyler stopped touching himself and ran his hands over Josh’s stomach, tugging lightly on the hair there. “For now.”

  “Do you want to know what I'm really going to do to you?”

  Tyler’s fingers stilled for an instant, then trailed lower. “Oh, yeah. Lay it on me.”

  “I'm going to possess you, Tyler. I'm going to kiss you and lick you and bite you anywhere and everywhere I want. I'm going suck your dick until you come in my mouth, then I'm going to let you taste yourself on my tongue. I'm going to fuck you, first with my fingers and then with my cock. I'm going to make you scream. And you are going to lie there and let me do it all. Do you understand?”

  Tyler’s breathing went shallow and rapid, his skin flushed a delicate pink, and the head of his cock leaked precum. His eyes sparkled like jewels. He was a filthy elven whore. He was a perfect fairy prince. He was a flawed man in a scarred body. He was a work of exquisite art. Josh felt his heart lurch in his chest and it was like he was flying, or maybe falling. It was hard to tell the difference.

  “Fuck, yeah,” Tyler said. He ate Josh alive with ravenous eyes.

  It took what seemed like mere minutes and at the same time several hours to reduce Tyler to a desperate jumble of sensitized nerves, trembling muscle, and heated blood poised on his hands and knees, that gorgeous ass on display as he waited to be filled. Tyler was temptation incarnate.

  When Josh slid on a condom and pushed inside Tyler’s body, he swore he could feel Tyler’s sigh of aching relief. “Yes,” Tyler hissed as he flattened his back and met Josh’s initial, shallow thrust. “Fuck. So good.”

  It was. Tyler was perfect. So lovely, so hot, so needy, and so damned tight around his cock that Josh wasn't sure he'd ever get enough.

  “Harder. Come on, fuck me!”

  Yes, your highness, Josh thought, then allowed his body to take over and let his mind drift on a tide of lust and pleasure and satisfied desire.

  He didn't ever want it to end.

  –—

  Friday, September 23rd, 3:35 a.m.

  The bedroom of an expensive hotel suite

  Manhattan, NY

  Josh lay in bed alone, his thoughts on the man who should've been sleeping beside him but wasn't. Over the past week they'd slept together every night, and more often than not, Tyler had startled awake from a panicked dream. He'd allow Josh to hold him, but he always got up afterward and went to the bathroom. In and of itself that shouldn't have been concerning, but Josh had seen a new wound on Tyler’s leg tonight, and he couldn't help but wonder if he was adding a matching one to the other leg while he hid from Josh in the bathroom.

  Josh wrestled with his conscience while he waited for Tyler to return, going back and forth over if he should say something. He did have the right, he didn't have the right. It was his business, it wasn’t his business. Round and round it went in his head, going nowhere, and it all boiled down to one question he both wanted and didn't want to ask.

  What made that wound in you, Tyler, that you're trying to fill with sex and blood? It scares me and I don't know how to help you, and I can't stand not trying.

  The door to the room opened and Josh shut his eyes. He felt Tyler get into bed, and at first, he thought he'd leave it alone for a little while longer. Maybe Tyler would tell him without prompting if left to his own devices, and maybe Josh should leave well enough alone.

  Josh felt acid trying to crawl out of his stomach and into his throat and realized he couldn't live that way. Not again. Tyler could tell him to fuck off, and likely would, but Josh couldn't pretend that something wasn't wrong when he knew it was. He needed to say something, if only to get the weight of it off his chest.

  “Tyler, tell me about this nightmare you keep having.”

  While cocooning himself in the hotel’s duvet, Tyler stiffened. “I thought you were still asleep. I didn't mean to wake you up.”

  “Tell me what keeps waking you up every night,” Josh persisted.

  “Not every night,” was Tyler’s sulky reply.

  “Most of them. Is that normal for you?”

  “It's… it's nothing.”

  “Liar.”

  Tyler flipped around so he could glare at Josh, although the effect was mitigated by the darkness in the room—Josh could just make out the glitter of his eyes. “I don't need to talk about it. Talking about it does nothing. It doesn't help. Go back to sleep. If it's an issue, I'll go sleep in the living room.”

  That should've been Josh’s cue to back down and leave Tyler alone, but instead Tyler’s dismissive tone pissed him off. Josh rolled them so he was on top of Tyler, pinning him down. “No. Hiding is my thing, not yours. You going to start cleaning, too?”

  “Get off me,” Tyler hissed.

  “I guess I’ll have to take up using sex to avoid my problems, then, since you still have a lock on cutting, don't you?”

  Tyler’s body went rigid like stone. Like the marble statue of Perseus he reminded Josh of, the one he wanted to look at again at the Met to see if it was as beautiful as he remembered, like the man he had lying underneath him.

  “Tyler, did you honestly think I wouldn't notice a new cut? Don't get me wrong. You did a very nice job there. It's quite small. Very neat. Very precise.”

  Tyler squirmed, although Josh didn't think it was with embarrassment. Even in the dark, Josh could see his anger. “Let. Me. Go.”

  “Are you going to run?” Josh asked. “Avoid me and my inconvenient concern for you?”

  “Get off me. Now. You don't… you need to… move, dammit! Get the fuck…” In the middle of speaking Tyler started struggling in earnest, and his voice gained a frantic edge. Josh realized with a sick sense of horror that Tyler was on the verge of a panic attack. He rolled off him and to the side, leaving Tyler lying on his back, chest heaving, to say the last two words in a weak mutter. “…off me.”

  Josh started rooting on the floor for his underwear, found them, and put them on.

  “What the hell are you doing now?” Tyler asked, his voice gone back to peevish.

  “I'm leaving you alone. I shouldn't have trapped you like that. I'll go out to the couch.” Guilt stabbed through Josh. It was easy to forget how much smaller Tyler was sometimes. I'm inches taller than him and I outweigh him by at least forty pounds. What the fuck was I thinking?

  Tyler groaned. “This is blackmail, you know that, right?”

  “How the fuck do you figure that, Tyler?” Josh asked, annoyance creeping past and overtaking contrition.

  “Simple. You want me to open up. To share my feelings,” he sneered the word, “with you for some fucked-up reason. Then you act like an asshole about it, and when I have the gall to get pissed off after you try to intimidate me, you decide to go pout and sulk in another room, making me the bad guy. Nice job. Bravo. You win, I lose.” Tyler’s voice dripped with disdain.

  “This has fuck-all to do with winning or losing, Tyler. It isn't a contest.” Josh dug a hand through his hair. “Look, I'm sorry already! Do you want me on my knees? I hear that smooths over a lot of arguments.”

  “Screw you,” Tyler said. “I don't need this.”

  “Really? Because you just told Seth Meyers and whoever might have been watching you on national television that I’m a fabulous boyfriend. It'll look great when we're broken up before we can even get back to Chicago.”

  Tyler crossed his arms over his chest. “We're back to blackmail, then. What do you want this time, Dr. Rosen? Clearly not money. You’re already getting sex from me on pretty much a daily basis. What else is there?”

  “This isn't tit for tat,” Josh snapped. “Not everything or everyone is so transactional.”

  Tyler’s tone was pure ice. “Says the man holding me over a barrel.�
��

  “Tyler, please.”

  “Please, what?” Tyler sounded exhausted and Josh almost let it go, but he just couldn't.

  Josh should probably back up and allow Tyler his secrets and protective layers, but it wasn't enough for him that Tyler gave his body to him freely and without apparent thought. Josh found that he wanted more. Of course, he wanted more. What good was knowing every inch of Tyler’s physical form while being shut off from everything else? Josh wanted it all, even the scars.

  “Tell me about the nightmare, Tyler.”

  “This is not a good idea,” he said. “That is a can of worms you do not want to open.”

  “Just tell me. The things I can imagine couldn't be any worse than reality.” Josh settled himself so he was on the other side of the bed, as far away from Tyler as he could get without falling onto the floor.

  Tyler brought up his knees and hugged them. “You want to fix me.”

  Josh wanted to deny it. “Yeah,” he said instead. “I kinda do.”

  “You can’t.”

  Josh swallowed. “I know. I can't say if talking to me about it will help you or not. I hope it does. But it'll help me.”

  “I hate you,” Tyler said softly.

  “That’s okay.”

  “I can't… oh, fuck it.” Tyler snapped on the bedside lamp. “I can't do this in the dark. And come here.”

  “Uh, are you sure?” Josh didn't think he could stand seeing Tyler in a panic again because of his proximity.

  Tyler sat up and spread both his arms and legs wide. “If I have to do this, I'll do it my way: my back to a wall and you in front of me.”

  Josh moved so he lay in Tyler’s lap, the back of his head on Tyler’s shoulder, Tyler’s bent legs cradling his torso, and Tyler's feet tucked under his thighs.

  It seemed strange that Tyler wanted to hold him like this, and it wasn't until later that it occurred to him that rather than cradling him, Tyler had positioned Josh like he was a shield.

  –—