by Amy Lane
He glowered at the damned thing and refused to cry, but Digger picked up on his mood damned quick.
Digger was a Johnnies institution. He had probably fucked and been fucked by every guy who had ever been at Johnnies, at least twice. He had a body like a god—so tight and so compact and so muscular that he was like a five-foot-six-inch gorilla. He had blond hair that came to a sparse widow’s peak, and he was constantly experimenting with dyes and cuts to maximize his hair and minimize his skull. At the moment, it was shaved to blond stubble.
He was, in his own words, probably getting too old for this porn bullshit, but he had a seven-inch penis, a high school education, and no clue what to do with his life. He was twenty-nine and probably the oldest guy at Johnnies besides John, the guy who owned the place.
And he and Ethan had shot a scene that day, and he’d been at a loss for something to do.
Ethan was grateful for the company. Digger wasn’t bright—by his own admission—and he wasn’t witty, but he was solid.
“You really love this car,” he said softly.
Ethan tried to shrug. “Doesn’t every boy want a race car?”
Digger leaned over his shoulder and dug his chin into Ethan’s shoulder. “Yeah. Most boys do. And then they grow up.”
Ethan turned his head and grinned. Digger was a riot in bed, loud as hell; he played chase and catch because he loved it when Ethan caught him and then nailed him into the floor. “You growing up any time soon?”
Digger snorted. “Me? Naw. I’ll be banging pretty guys for cash until I lose my teeth—and that’s a whole other skill set!”
Ethan laughed at the totally gross joke and handed Digger a stack of promotional posters. They finished the stuff transfer and went back into the dealership to seal the deal.
And then Digger casually asked Ethan if he wanted to go back to Digger’s place and seal another deal all over again.
“You up for that?” Ethan asked, laughing, and Digger shrugged, looking not the least abashed. They had literally fucked for hours, and here he was, asking for more.
“Hey, you came, like, three times! I only came once—you owe me, you lucky fucker!”
Ethan laughed, not ashamed either. It was one of his best tricks on film—Dex called him a cum pony on the website. Ethan was good for at least two shots a bang.
“I wish I could,” he said with honest regret. “But it’s my night to stay with Tommy. Last night Kevin stayed over and I slept on the floor—”
“The floor?” Digger had big blue eyes, and they looked almost guileless as he stared at Ethan in horror. “God, why not in bed with Tommy? Jesus—you were on your abstinence period and everything!”
Ethan shrugged and grimaced. “Yeah, well, Kevin’s a civilian, you know? We just didn’t want to strain his brain—the last thing Tommy would do is cheat on Chase, right?”
Digger sighed, and for a moment, he looked so honestly lonely that Ethan felt really bad. “You know, there wouldn’t be any fucking, but Tommy probably wouldn’t care if you came and hung and watched a movie or something. You want?”
“It’ll do in a pinch,” Digger conceded. His eyes were shadowed as he looked up at Ethan. “It’s just… you know. Hard to find a bedmate who’s not into the industry, right? ‘What do you do for a living?’” he imitated in the high pitch of a woman. “‘Well, sweetheart, I fuck other guys.’ ‘Well, doesn’t that make you gay?’ ‘Not necessarily—wanna find out?’ ‘Eww, no, you’re sick! This guy over here wants to do a gangbang with his softball team, that’s much healthier. We’d invite you, but, you know, they don’t want you looking at their asses. Creeps ’em out.’”
Ethan groaned. “Oh God. That must suck in the really sucktastic bad way. I’m sorry, man! I used to have the opposite, right?”
“The girls who would rather get off watching you and your buddy do it? Yeah—I’ve had those. And sometimes that’s okay, right? But it’s… well, you know?”
“You’re not really gay.” Ethan nodded in sympathy.
“And there you go. Just easier to bang guys who know, right? You all don’t care if I’m gay or not, you just….”
“Just touch you and make you feel all right,” Ethan said, and the goodwill of the bad stories faded.
They shared a look then, one of understanding, of the simple need for human contact and the levels of depravity they’d suffer to steal it.
Step 5—getting addicted
“WHO are we meeting again?” Amelia asked for, like, the five-hundredth time.
“A guy I met at work. He’s a friend of the new manager’s.”
“Whom you like.” She was looking at him suspiciously, and he couldn’t blame her. He’d simultaneously bitched about Tommy and felt bad for him over the past four days.
“He’s a good manager,” Jonah said after a few moments. “He’s just… I think he’s really tightly wound right now.” It had taken him a while to put stuff together, but that angelic guy had come by a couple more times, and every time he did, Tommy seemed to become Dex’s favorite little brother. Jonah had overheard a few more conversations, and he realized that all of the hushed references to Tommy’s boyfriend and his illness had actually been references to mental illness, and Jonah wasn’t sure what to think about that. And then he’d heard “not suicidal anymore” and he was sure that Tommy, who was starting a new life and taking care of someone who couldn’t take care of himself, deserved whatever break Jonah could give him.
And that included nodding and saying, “Yeah, sure!” even when Tommy was more gruff than tactful.
“Dammit, Jonah, could you get the fucking fish food? I don’t know who forgot to stack it, but I wanna spank them with a four-by-four.”
“Yeah, sure!”
“Fuck it—I don’t give a fuck when we’re scheduled to clean the cat cages, they smell now! Get someone to—no, dammit, you don’t do it, you’re the only reason I don’t fucking kill everyone in the fucking store!”
“Yeah, sure!”
And finally—tonight, actually—“Dammit, Jonah, Ethan’s gonna be hella fuckin’ bummed if you don’t get your ass outta here and get ready for your date—”
“It’s not a date!”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever. Get the hell outta here. I’ll finish the stocking.”
“Yeah,” Jonah said, finally realizing that Tommy’s gruffness, his manic intensity, and his overuse of the F-word did not actually make him a bad person. It just made him gruff. “Sure, Tommy. Thank you.”
“You been a good helper this week, kid. And Ethan needs a good night out, even if it’s a not-date. Get your ass outta here, ’kay?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Jonah smiled tentatively, and Tommy’s grin back was truly remarkable. Pointy teeth, glittering brown eyes—no matter how shadowed—and hard-apple cheeks. Jonah’s heart beat just a little faster, but he didn’t linger over that smile.
He really wanted to see Ethan again.
For one thing, he’d worked out three times in the week since they’d last talked and made the date (not a date date, just a date) to see the movie. Jonah was sort of proud of the working out—and even prouder of the unexpected side effect.
Amelia was getting excited about it too.
The first time he’d brought workout clothes to the gym, she’d been her usual snotty-little-sister self. “No, Jonah, I don’t think they make weights in two-pound increments!” But he noticed that at the end of his workout, when he went to get her from her personal trainer, the one only partially paid for by the health insurance, she was actually putting a little effort into her time at the treadmill.
Her trainer, a tiny woman with dyed red hair who was probably in her fifties but looked thirty-five, was ecstatic. “Oh my God! Who are you and what have you done with Amelia!”
Amelia was panting too hard to answer, but Jonah hadn’t needed her to. She was working—really working—just because Jonah had taken an interest.
His back and shoulders had hurt, and he�
��d needed to take an Advil for the pain in his thighs, but watching his sister actually show some interest in her own health?
He’d do it again, and do it harder and bigger, just to get her to work out like she meant it.
So he did.
And he wanted to tell Ethan that—thank him, in fact—because the last time he’d gone to the gym, Amelia had been waiting for him to get off work, and she’d beaten him down the stairs. His mom had actually been asleep on the couch, free, for once, from worry and the crushing responsibility of making another person care for herself, and Jonah had wanted to cry. Had this been all she’d needed? When had they stopped playing with Amelia and started making her treatment their burden?
It didn’t seem fair that all she’d wanted was their company.
But sure enough, Jonah had timed his workout to cool down on the treadmill next to her, and she’d challenged him to a race.
She’d won—and had ended up coughing for a good ten minutes afterward. But the look on her flushed face as she crowed in triumph? Jonah suddenly didn’t care about his skinny body or how soon he’d blossom into Jonah Isaac Stevens, sex god and nonvirgin. He just wanted to see his little sister healthy.
So it was wonderful, and Jonah had Ethan to thank, and now—oh my God! Here he was, striding through the fog around the Tower Theater, cracking gum and smiling so wide it was like his teeth actually glinted.
“Heya,” he said, casual like. “You got the tickets?”
Jonah nodded and patted his back pocket. “Yeah, but they’re not seating yet. We should go inside, though.” He cast a nervous look at Amelia, who looked sheepishly back. She was practically mummified against the fog, but it still wasn’t a great night to be out.
Ethan nodded earnestly, though, and gestured as though the historic old building with its phallic white stucco marquis was his all along.
They got in line for drinks and popcorn, and Ethan kept up a steady patter. “So how’s Tommy treating you—okay?”
“Yeah, it took me a while to realize he was actually a really good guy. If you just listen to his voice when he talks, he sounds like he’s going to eat you. All the frickin’ time.”
Ethan laughed heartily, and said, “I need to tell Chase that—not that he’d believe you. I think Chase brings out the gentle in Tommy.”
Jonah bounced on his toes for a second and winced. “That must be some guy!”
“Yeah. Chase is a keeper. If he can get past this rough patch, I think he’s gonna be okay. So Tommy sounds like an ogre, but really he’s a prince? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
Jonah laughed. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m trying to….” He winced. God, he had the most irritating pull of muscle right in his upper thigh. “Say,” he finished belatedly.
“What’s the matter? A large popcorn,” he ordered in the same breath. “Do you guys like butter, or that special salt?”
“Butter!” Amelia burst out, and Jonah grimaced.
“Oh God. Yeah, butter. Did you bring your enzymes?”
She’d been listening to their conversation with interest, and now her shoulders sort of slumped. “Yeah,” she said in a small voice. “But only one shot of insulin. So, you know, no soda or candy.”
“Fair enough,” Jonah said, trying to do the math in his head and failing. He was just going to have to hope.
“Candy’s not a great source of nutrition anyway,” Ethan said, taking them both very seriously. “Stuff that does double duty—spinach, right? Because it’s protein and veggies. Or soy, because it’s protein and it helps you go poop, ’cause anything that helps you go poop, that’s a good thing, right?”
Amelia giggled, and Jonah wanted to just kiss the guy. God, she’d been so happy—and this movie was supposed to be a treat. He so wanted her not to remember that there was boatloads of shit she shouldn’t do.
“So no sodas?” Ethan asked, and Jonah shook his head and got two vitamin waters from the fridge.
“Excellent, get me one too.”
And Jonah caught it. There was a false note of brightness in his voice, and as Jonah’s hand closed on the cooled plastic bottles, he thought, He really wanted that soda. He did that for us.
“Okay, so while we wait in line here, is anyone gonna tell me what Jonah did to hurt himself?”
Jonah grimaced in embarrassment and Amelia made triumphant fist pumps.
“Yeah, I tried to work out too hard,” he muttered.
“And you lost!” she crowed and then started coughing. Without even breaking stride, Jonah pushed on her shoulder so he could pound on her back. She signaled after a few seconds, and he gave her a gentle little shove. She toddled off to the bathroom to get rid of the phlegm that had built up as they’d stood in the cold.
“Does she have a cold?” Ethan asked, watching as she stopped and hung on to the doorframe and coughed.
“Sort of a perpetual one,” Jonah explained. “She just builds up fluids and phlegm really quickly, so quick it’s hard to digest. So she’s always eating—constantly eating, right, but the disease also gave her diabetes, so if she eats, say, a chocolate cookie—”
“Insulin,” Ethan muttered, and Jonah sighed.
“Yeah. It’s like… like this one little chromosome just causes this train wreck of shit in the body. And keeping her active has sucked, right?”
The couple in front of them—fortyish, dressed completely in natural fibers, both with long, graying hair—got their gummy bears and moved on. Ethan pulled out his wallet and gestured to the popcorn and the waters so smoothly, Jonah didn’t even realize he’d done it.
“Yeah?” he said while handing the clerk a twenty. “She doesn’t like to exercise?”
“She didn’t,” Jonah said. “But, you know, you told me about working out, and I thought, ‘Hey! Self-empowerment! I could get me some of that!’ and so I added myself to the membership. It’s weird—last three times she’s been, just seeing me sweating on the floor too, that’s done something for her, you know?”
Ethan took back his change and winked at the girl behind the register. This wasn’t a Regal or a Cinemark—she was wearing a pair of black jeans and a T-shirt featuring Yugi and Sasuke having a sweet first kiss with a caption that read “Be a lover, not a fighter!”
“Nice shirt!” he said, and she blushed, smiled, and murmured thank you to the nice Italian god, but Ethan didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he just picked up the popcorn and two of the waters, leaving Jonah to get the last one.
“Really?” Ethan’s face sort of lit up as he picked up the thread of the conversation. “So you’ve been hitting the gym and that’s helped her? That’s awesome! I mean… that’s… you know, it’s sort of great when something you believe in helps people, isn’t it?”
There was such a wonder in his voice—Jonah had to laugh. “Yeah—exactly. So I thought I’d tell you thanks—”
“And not tell me you pulled a muscle in your ass trying to beat your little sister,” Ethan supplied, and then walked to the wall near the bathroom and settled patiently to wait. They could hear Amelia’s coughing fit subsiding inside, but Jonah knew it would take her a couple of minutes to rinse her face and fix her makeup and come out looking like it had never happened.
“Yeah,” Jonah confessed, feeling foolish. “Well, she does work out every day.”
“And you work an active job—you gotta be careful.” Ethan nodded like it was no big deal, and Jonah’s pride, which had been smarting a lot more than his ass, healed over in almost a millisecond. And then Ethan sort of blew his mind. “But you’ll have to let me try to massage it later. I can walk you to your car, and it doesn’t have to look like I’m groping you in public, but you know, you work out a while, you get the hang of which things get stiff, which things like to be rubbed, how to make it all feel good—”
Jonah could not even fathom what his expression must have looked like. He knew his eyes were big, and his vision was unfocused and, well, yeah, his mouth was open, but it must have bee
n pretty dire, because Ethan suddenly stopped talking pornographic ass massages and they met shocked and horrified eyes.
“I, uhm,” Ethan said, right when Jonah said, “You probably didn’t mean it like that.”
Ethan started to giggle, which was probably the least cool sound Jonah had ever heard, and he put his hand in front of his eyes like a little kid. After an awkward moment, he caught his breath and peeked out at Jonah through his fingers.
Which was when Jonah realized he was still staring at Ethan with his mouth slightly open and an image of stiff things that liked to be rubbed throbbing in neon behind his eyeballs.
Ethan grimaced and dropped his hand. “If I told you that I should know better than to say things like that, would you forgive me?”
“Nothing to forgive,” Jonah said, his mouth dry.
Ethan shook his head and muttered something under his breath. “Jonah, I just… I really want a friend right now, is that okay?”
The word dropped through Jonah’s brain and sank in his stomach. “Friend… oh yeah. I get it. Like… you know, the answer to whether this is a date or a date. It’s not a date ’cause it’s just friends and….” He floundered out of the verbal ocean and flopped there on the shore for a moment, and then Ethan joined him there.
“Not that I wouldn’t… uhm, date you, right? Cause you’re hella cute, I just… oh God.” Jonah watched in wonder as Ethan’s olive-toned skin pinked right up. “I am in such a bad place right now for a boyfriend,” Ethan told him, and then he took a deep breath like getting that out was most of the battle. “And you don’t want me anyway. I’m a hookup guy, a one-off. I… I worked really hard to be that guy. You… you’re—”
“A virgin?” Jonah’s voice cracked in the middle of the hated word.
“Holy fucking merciful Christ giving Peter a blow job.”