Ethan in Gold

by Amy Lane

  Pain. It was the best touch he was ever going to get.

  THE scene ended, they talked in the showers, and Dex called him aside. “Ethan, what’s up with the tattoo? You were a wild man today. Is something going on?”

  Ethan just shook his head, feeling shitty, feeling used and debased for the first time in two years. “Man,” he said, not even sure where to start with Jonah, “I’m just missing my family.”

  Dex already knew he’d been kicked out, but now Ethan told him haltingly about his sisters leaving the state so Allie could keep seeing her baby. Dex wrapped an arm around him that meant nothing but comfort and then pulled Ethan into a hard, warm hug, the kind that Ethan had gotten into this business for.

  Ethan huddled there for nearly ten minutes, shamelessly accepting Dex’s unconditional love and hating himself for not being stronger.

  “It’s just so fucked up,” he whispered. “It’s all just so fucked up.”

  The next night at Chase’s party, he saw Chase and Tommy together and relaxed for them—it looked like Chase might actually make it, and Ethan wanted to cheer. Someone was going to make it. Someone was going to have a happy ending.

  Kane came over to where he sat, and plopped next to him, wrapping Ethan in a bear hug, and Ethan went.

  This, he thought, trying to spill just enough of his troubles on Kane’s shoulders, this was home. This was why he couldn’t start waiting tables to date Jonah. He needed this. He’d needed Bobby’s touch, he’d needed Dex’s, and now he needed Kane’s. He needed this touch, needed this love, needed it to be this way whether other lovers came and went or not.

  Ethan needed dependable love, not great love. He was sure of it.

  AFTER the party, though, when he drove up to his shitty apartment building, Jonah sat outside, copping a squat on his front stoop.

  “Jonah?” he said uncertainly, because as Ethan walked up, Jonah’s face looked grim and hurt and angry, and he didn’t know how to deal with this version of him. Before he could get a handle on this Jonah at all, Jonah opened his mouth and said one word.

  “Johnnies.”

  Ethan sighed. “Yeah. Johnnies. Come on in, you can scream at me without waking the neighbors.”

  Without a word, Jonah got up and followed him into his shitty apartment with the bald yellow lights and the weird-ass smell.

  “You can’t tell anybody about Tommy,” he said as soon as the door closed, and Jonah let out something at sounded like a growl.

  “I don’t give a damn about Tommy!” he snapped. “How could you?”

  Ethan very deliberately took off his leather jacket and laid it on the couch, then dropped his keys on the end table and turned around, looking at Jonah cautiously. “Is that a trick question?” he asked incuriously. “Because I’ve been fucking guys on camera for money for two years—it’s pretty easy. You go in, you get hard, shit happens—”

  Jonah took two steps up to him and to stand right in his space. “The tattoo, asshole. How could you do that—do you think I don’t know who that was for?”

  Ethan flinched. “Me,” he said rawly. “It was to remind me that thing gets rented out by the megabyte and I don’t get to just give it away.”

  Jonah’s hand cracked across his face with enough force to snap his head sideways, and he stumbled backward.

  Ethan stared at him, eyes wide, holding his hand to the stinging bruise rising on his cheekbone, and staring at the sweet kid he’d never suspected of having that much force in him.

  “Fuck you!” Jonah panted, the color high in his cheeks and his chest heaving. “I don’t want your ass, or your cock, or your tongue, or any of that bullshit I saw on the fucking screen!”

  “Sure you did,” Ethan told him, trying to keep his voice steady. “You wanted the handsome prince, the guy with experience, right? You wanted the guy who could come and rescue you from your virginity, and I’ve got the right parts—I was perfect.”

  Jonah closed his eyes and put his hand on his stomach like he was trying to keep his dinner down. “Yeah, if you were so perfect, why’d you walk away?”

  “’Cause I need back,” Ethan said. He dropped his hand from his cheek and wandered to the table so he could lean on it and keep his back to Jonah, because facing him was too scary. “I need more than you can give, Jonah—”

  “Try me!” Jonah snarled, and Ethan couldn’t look at him.

  “Look, man, there’s a reason I picked porn, okay? There’s—”

  Jonah’s arms over his shoulders, holding him when he was still shaking from the smack on his face, derailed every rational thought, every word in his defense, every way of explaining his own need. He shivered hard enough to click his teeth together and rounded his back, curling his shoulders into his chest. For the first time in forever, he felt safe, and cared for, and warm.

  “You need touch,” Jonah whispered in his ear, brushing the lobe gently with his lips, and Ethan’s cock grew immediately and electrically erect, and he hated himself for it.

  He wrenched out of Jonah’s embrace, shivering more with the loss of his warmth, and whirled around, shoving Jonah hard in the center of his chest. Jonah went stumbling backward, tripped over the coffee table, and landed awkwardly on the floor.

  Ethan stared at him, horrified. Jonah stared back, narrowing his eyes, and gave a feral smile.

  “Don’t,” Ethan said, the word dropping between them like a flat ball.

  “Why not?” Jonah asked, pushing himself off the floor, that fierce, painful smile still twisting his mouth. “You let people you don’t give a damn about—”

  “Those guys are my friends!” Ethan snarled back, angrily protective of the guys who had touched him, who had hugged him for the past two years. “They take care of me—”

  “I’ve seen them!” Jonah returned, still angry. “I’ve seen them taking care of you—you laugh afterward and you make come jokes and they hug you and you think it’s all good. It feels like love, doesn’t it, Ethan—”

  “It is,” Ethan said, vulnerable and exposed. Two years he’d had his body on display, and he’d been proud of it, and he’d looked good doing it, but he’d never felt this naked, not even on film. “It’s not… not, you know, in love love—”

  “It’s not what you need!” Jonah argued, his voice shaking. “It’s… God, Ethan, don’t you want your touches to be special?”

  “Special?” Ethan’s voice cracked. “Who gets special? Okay, of all the guys in the fuckin’ world, I don’t get special. I needed something and I went out and got it, and you know what that qualifies me for? Shit, that’s what it qualifies me for. I don’t get the nice guy, Jonah. I don’t get special. I get my guys, and they may not get me, but they give me what I need.”

  “Why not?” Jonah demanded. “You’re a good guy—”

  “Yeah, Jonah—I’m so good I almost got my sister’s baby taken away from her, okay? The drug addict they’d let back in the house, but the sex addict—”

  “You’re not an addict, Ethan. If you were an addict, you would have fucked me dry when I was panting for it.”

  Ethan couldn’t look at him. “Well, whatever you want to call it. I need it, and you don’t want a guy who needs it like that, and so I’m not your guy. I….” His voice broke. “I really wanted to be friends,” he said, his throat so thick he could hardly talk. “I just really wanted… to be with you, but, you know, not—”

  Jonah rushed him, his scrawny body suddenly up in Ethan’s space, and Ethan backed up against the table, pushing it back with his thighs, trying to evade Jonah’s questing hands.

  “Tell me you don’t want me for sex,” Jonah murmured, putting his hand on Ethan’s bicep. His fingers barely spanned the front half of Ethan’s arm, and it made Ethan excruciatingly aware of how fragile he was, this boy who kept saying he was older than Ethan, who kept trying to say he could take it.

  He couldn’t, Ethan thought wretchedly. He couldn’t take the wreckage of Ethan’s life—it was too much to ask him.

&n
bsp; “Not interested,” Ethan lied, but his voice wobbled when Jonah splayed his hand across Ethan’s stomach. “Stop it!” He broke an octave again as he grabbed Jonah’s hand, and Jonah’s eyes grew shiny.

  “I don’t want to molest you, Ethan—I just want you to talk to me!”

  “You can’t molest me,” Ethan snapped. “I have all the power.” God, thirteen years with Dr. Uncle Stottemeyer should have taught him something, right?

  “But you don’t!” Jonah snapped. “Look at you—you’re a wreck. You’re talking about how you’re going to take advantage of me, but you can’t even tell me no! You need to be touched, you need it so badly you’ll sell yourself for it, but you won’t ask for it, and you won’t take it when it’s offered to you, and I don’t have a clue, not even a fucking breath of a clue, as to why you think you don’t deserve it. C’mon, Ethan, talk to me!”

  Ethan closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands against them. “Go away,” he muttered. “I don’t want to talk to you. I’m tired of talking. Thirteen years of therapy, and I’ve got this knot in my chest, and the one thing I actually need, actually need from the universe has me so fucked up I’m trying to keep virgins out of my bed. Just go away. Please, Jonah—”

  Jonah’s mouth fell softly on his, soft and tender and all of the things Ethan ever dreamed about sex and gentleness when he’d been a virgin himself.

  It was so sweet he couldn’t stand it, had to squash it, had to kill it, because it was the one power he had and the one way he knew how the world worked. He brought his hands to either side of Jonah’s cheeks. The bare prickle of Jonah’s late-night shadow on his palms just inflamed him further, and he ravaged, plundered, tore into his mouth, mashed his lips so hard against Jonah’s that he felt Jonah’s teeth biting into his own. He dominated, shoving Jonah back, leaving the table, forcing him against the kitchen wall, where he shoved his hands down Jonah’s pants, grabbed two handfuls of ass, and squeezed.

  Jonah shoved his own hand down the front of Ethan’s tight jeans and grabbed his own handful—and squeezed.

  It should have been hard enough to hurt, but Ethan was reckless, angry, and in pain already. His erection thickened, throbbed, and started to drool in a matter of moments.

  Jonah’s squeeze became a stroke. Ethan groaned into his mouth and closed his eyes tight enough to see stars. His hands clenched convulsively, and Jonah mashed them together, trapping his hand down Ethan’s pants and increasing the pressure to the next point of pain.

  Jonah broke away long enough to pant, “If this is supposed to scare me off, you’re doing it wrong,” and coupled that with a squeeze and another stroke.

  Ethan buried his face in Jonah’s neck and groaned. “God, Jonah—you don’t want to do this—”

  “Then talk to me—”

  Ethan crushed his mouth again, and Jonah’s frantic, stroking grip grew harder and faster. Ethan felt it, the familiar rolling wave of annihilating orgasm, the helplessness, the shivering, and for a moment he panicked because this wasn’t his safe place, this wasn’t a person who would know, who would take care of him, and he half sobbed into Jonah’s hair. “Oh God, oh God, I’m gonna… I’m gonna… I’m gonna fuckin’….”

  Jonah wrapped an arm around his shoulders and kept stroking and, even worse, started whispering. “C’mon, Ethan. C’mon, you gonna? You gonna?”

  Oh no—it started in his thighs, his balls, his taint, and his still-sore asshole. It clenched his stomach muscles, knotted his chest, stopped up his throat, and shivered up his spine. He gasped and sobbed and spurted in Jonah’s fist, grateful when Jonah hugged him hard across the shoulders and nuzzled his ear.

  “Sh… sh… it’s okay… it’s over—”

  “Oh you wish,” Ethan rasped and kissed him hard all over again. He swallowed Jonah’s gasp of surprise and, with one hard shove, pushed Jonah’s jeans off his hips. He dropped to his knees and sucked Jonah’s cock all the way to the back of his throat, making his mouth sloppy and slick, all the better to thrust that thing into his asshole where it belonged.

  Jonah groaned, grabbing his hair and pulling, pulling until it stung, and Ethan kept sucking, kept teasing, kept fondling. He was paid to do this—knew how to hold Jonah’s testicles in one hand and slide the finger back along Jonah’s taint and probe his entrance, making Jonah desperate, making him crazy.

  “Ethan, dammit! Ethan, get up! Ethan, I don’t want to come in your mouth!”

  Ethan stood up, shoving his soiled boxers down and kicking off his leather loafers in a practiced motion. “Then fuck me, virgin!”

  The apartment was so small, it took two steps before he was bent over the front of the couch, his ass in the air. He looked defiantly behind him and spread himself, not even wincing as he exposed his hole, raw and red from the scene he’d shot the day before. “It’s all I’m good for.”

  He anticipated Jonah’s body, hard and aggressive, plastered against his—it was what he’d prayed for: plain, hard sex, reducing this fragile attraction, this sweet interlude, to basic body function.

  He was unprepared for Jonah wrapping his arm around his ribs and splaying his hand at his throat, forcing his head up.

  “Not like this,” Jonah whispered, his voice strained to shattering.

  Ethan let out a harsh whimper and pushed back. Jonah was hard and wet, lodged in the crease of his ass, Ethan’s own spit stinging against his entrance.

  “You wanted me,” Ethan pleaded. “You wanted me. You said, you said you wanted me—this is the me you get!”

  The cold at his back shocked him, but no more than the hands at his armpits, hauling him up. He staggered to his feet and Jonah pulled up his pants and boxers. They twisted and knotted—belt, waistband, everything—and Ethan fumbled with them, feeling stupid and humiliated and helpless. He couldn’t make himself turn and look at Jonah, couldn’t face what he’d tried to make the boy do. He heard the sounds of Jonah fixing his own clothes, though, and thought that maybe he didn’t have to deal with him. Maybe he’d succeeded and Jonah could go away, and Ethan’s dysfunctional world of glass could resume its course.

  He untangled the denim from the belt from the cotton stretchy undershorts, and took one step toward his room, but Jonah’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

  “I’m worth more,” Jonah murmured, and Ethan heard tears in his voice.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “So are you.”

  “Don’t text me anymore.”

  “Say it.”

  “Please, Jonah—I can’t do this with you.”

  “Say it!”

  In reply, Ethan took the hand on his shoulder and held it to his cheek and then kissed his palm. His face was wet, and he knew Jonah felt it, but he didn’t have the words he needed, and hoped that would do.

  “Ethan—”

  “Evan. Evan Costa. It’s good someone knows it.” He had to look over his shoulder, and his mortification didn’t abate one bit when he saw that Jonah’s eyes were red and his face was wet too. “You need to forget me, okay, Jonah? Just—”

  “I’ll get back to you,” Jonah said, his breath shaky. “Take care of yourself, Evan.”

  “Jonah—”

  The kiss on his cheek surprised him.

  “No more words. I can’t stand it. Not tonight.”

  And then he turned and left. Ethan staggered to his bed, shedding his jeans and turning off the lights as he went. He didn’t want sleep so much as he wanted safety, and he crawled in wearing his sweater and his T-shirt and his underwear, pulled the covers over his head, and huddled there until merciful sleep took him under.

  Part III: Starting Over with a Brand-New Handbook

  Step 1—walls and tumbling down

  I WOKE up this morning worried about you. How are you?

  I don’t want to talk about it.

  I’m fine thanks. But I have to talk to my boss and I think he’s pissed at me. Thanks for that.

  I didn’t say anything.

  I wish you’
d say something to somebody.

  Evan?

  Evan?

  Evan?

  Okay, fine. Have a nice day.

  Tommy pulled Jonah to help him stack dog food, and Jonah had to admit that working out with specific muscle groups and stuff really helped with this. His muscles flexed, and he was able to lift with his arms and his shoulders and his thighs, and not his back. Hefting dog food had never felt so empowering.

  “So,” Tommy said, lifting the fifty-pound bag like it was three pounds of flour, “what in the fuck did you do to my friend?”

  “Ethan?” Jonah asked, trying to brazen it out. If Ethan wasn’t talking, Jonah wasn’t talking.

  “No, asshole, the other friend who’s getting drunk every night just to get to sleep.”

  “He’s not even twenty-one!” Jonah protested and then felt stupid. Of all the things to be worried about—God.

  “No, but he’s built like a gorilla and he lives in a shitty side of town, so who’s not gonna sell to him? And we have to drag him out of bed to work out in the morning. If it wasn’t for fuckin’ Chase, I don’t know if he woulda made it out of bed, period. So I repeat, what in the fuck did you do?”

  Jonah had to stop schlepping dog food, because the image of Ethan drinking alone in his furnished fucking apartment shattered a pattern of broken glass right over his chest right… fuck. There. Right in the feels. For a minute, it was hard to breathe.

  He concentrated, staring up into the vaulted warehouse ceiling, and wondered if his voice would echo around the tiled floors and concrete ceiling just like everybody else’s. How many people would hear Ethan’s whole life story if he told Tommy about all his worries now?

  “He’s broken,” Jonah said, almost to himself, and Tommy threw another yellow-and-blue fifty-pound bag higher than his head.

  Tommy waited for the sound of kibble rattling around in brittle paper to subside and then turned to him, shoulders squared and fists balled at his sides. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he demanded. “I gave you a perfectly good friend and you broke him?”