Spoiler Alert

by Olivia Dade

Then, after a squeeze of Alex’s arm, she let go of him and held out her hand for Marcus instead. He interlaced their fingers immediately and swept past his friend, allowing a surge of triumph to puff his chest just a tad as he stared meaningfully at Alex.

  “Bratty is about right, April,” he said, and pretended not to see his friend’s own raised middle finger in response. “You have him pegged. So to speak.”

  Rating: Explicit

  Fandoms: Gods of the Gates – E. Wade, Gods of the Gates (TV)

  Relationships: Cupid/Original Character

  Additional Tags: Alternate Universe – Modern, Porn without Plot, Smuttity Smut Smut, Half-Human Disaster Cupid, Bottoms Up, The Peg That Was Promised, Actor!Cupid

  Stats: Words: 3027 Chapters: 1/1 Comments: 137 Kudos: 429 Bookmarks: 40

  Taking Him Down a Peg

  CupidUnleashed

  Summary:

  Cupid has a hard day on set. Off set, things get equally hard. By “things,” I mean his penis.

  Notes:

  Thanks to AeneasLovesLavinia for the beta. You’re the best, dude. Also, any resemblance to current worldwide television hits is entirely unintentional.

  No, wait. The opposite of that last one.

  * * *

  Robin’s hands on his bare chest were small but hot and so very soft. “What happened today? You seem . . . tense.”

  She was straddling him now, her solid, welcome weight keeping him in place. Maybe he could move if he tried, but he didn’t. No, he wanted that sense of helplessness right now, that sense of safety. More than that. He wanted to forget, to drown in pleasure until he couldn’t think.

  “The usual,” he sighed. “As I’ve said before, the showrunners were incompetent from the very beginning. The only things that saved them were the talented crew, my fellow actors, and the books. But now that we’re past the books, everything’s gone wrong.”

  She was frowning down at him, concentrating. Concerned. “How can I help?”

  “Take me,” he said, and she got up on her knees and began to move over him, only to halt at his next words. “No. Take me.”

  She bit her lip, even as her cheeks bloomed with heat. “Are you sure?”

  “You bet your ass I’m sure.” He grinned up at her. “Or, more accurately, my ass.”

  When they laughed together, he was certain of two things.

  First: she was going to peg his brains out that night.

  Second: by the time she was done, he would no longer care that his character’s entire arc had been torpedoed in the final season for no damn reason.

  20

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK?” APRIL GAZED UP AT MARCUS FROM her couch the next evening, nose crinkled in concern. “Is it terrible? I’ve only begun tackling book canon recently, and I’m not sure my writing voice is particularly suited to it.”

  After Alex had left for the airport and April had disappeared into the bathroom for a shower, Marcus had retreated to her little office. He’d sat at her desk for a good half hour, listening as his text-to-speech app read the draft of her most recent fic aloud to him, once and then a second time. For those few minutes, he’d allowed himself to become Book!AeneasWouldNever again, beta-reading his friend Ulsie’s writing to check for character consistency and plot holes and any other tarnished spots he could help her buff to a gleam. As always, he’d jotted a few nearly indecipherable notes to himself as he listened.

  The familiar routine had settled around him like the fur-lined cloak he’d worn in Gates’s wintry first season. Warm. Comforting. So heavy his shoulders hurt.

  In one sense, her request was helping them reclaim parts of their relationship she’d never know they’d lost. But even in that welcome moment of reclamation, he couldn’t entirely be honest with her. If he gave her exactly the same feedback as his fanfic alter ego would have, in exactly the same way, she might grow suspicious. She might recognize him as her longtime friend and writing partner.

  Besides, the version of him she knew now hadn’t spent years helping with her fics and writing his own. He wouldn’t be as familiar and comfortable with the revision process as Book!AeneasWouldNever, both in general and with her. Which meant he couldn’t be as helpful to her for that reason too.

  If they kept doing this for months or years to come, if she kept asking him to read and respond to her stories, maybe he could slowly transform into the writing companion he’d once been in a credible way, a way that wouldn’t set red flags flapping. But not now.

  It was a bitter note on his tongue, noticeable even amid so much sweetness.

  Because this moment was sweet. And so was her story.

  “I think you underestimate yourself,” he told her. “There are a few words that are a bit too modern”—dammit, he needed to make this plausible—“or at least, the scriptwriters never had us say them, and we should probably look up when they came into common usage. ‘Okay,’ for instance. But otherwise, I think you managed to capture the feeling of the books.”

  Her expression smoothed. “Oh, good. I wanted to figure out a way I could keep writing in this fandom without it getting, uh, weird. Especially if I included explicit content.”

  Which she had. Very ably and descriptively. That particular content had necessitated some explicit readjustment of his jeans in her office, because damn.

  In the past, when she’d written about an Aeneas who looked like him, he’d avoided beta-reading sex scenes, a stipulation Ulsie had accepted without demanding an explanation. By mutual agreement, she’d excised those bits before sending him her drafts, noting any major developments he’d missed in a dry author’s note of a sentence or two.

  But at the beginning of this fic, she’d described a dark-haired, stocky Aeneas, thick with muscle, eyes as richly brown as fertile soil. Book!Aeneas, not Show!Aeneas. Not Marcus, in any recognizable way.

  So, yes, he could and would read those bits now, and do so without discomfort.

  Well, without the old, familiar type of discomfort, anyway. Which reminded him: “Also, during one of Aeneas’s love scenes with Dido, Carah and I were told that the word you used for, uh . . .”

  Eyes bright behind her glasses, she raised her brows in amused inquiry as he squirmed.

  “You shouldn’t use the word ‘pussy,’” he finally forced out. “It’s anachronistic.”

  In all her modern AU fics, that term was more than acceptable. But not in canon-compliant stories, given the time period involved. Wade had used a different word instead. One Marcus was even more reluctant to utter, in case April found it offensive.

  She pushed her frames up onto the bridge of her nose. “So I may need to cross the C-word Rubicon, is what you’re telling me.”

  “If you want a canon-compliant term that’s less euphemistic than, um, ‘wetness.’ Or ‘heat.’ Or . . . things like that.”

  Shit. He was getting hard again, his gaze involuntarily drifting down to the flirty hem of her soft, swinging nightgown, which only reached midthigh when she stood and rucked up even higher when she sat. When she shifted her legs like that—

  Oh, that was deliberate. Her saucy wink only confirmed it.

  The rest of his feedback could wait.

  He tackled her on the sofa, maneuvering them both as she giggled—finally, a giggle he’d elicited, so Alex could just fuck right off—until she was flat on her back and his hips had fallen between her open, round thighs and his hand was sliding between those thighs, beneath her nightgown.

  “Use that word again,” she whispered in his ear minutes later, as he pressed his open mouth against her neck and moved above her, inside her. “The first one. Say it.”

  She was tight around him, trembling, so wet now he could hear every thrust. When he raised himself a bit higher above her and ground against her sex, she gasped and closed her eyes.

  He told her the absolute truth, then, hot into her ear, his teeth on her earlobe. “I love your pussy. Love it. When you’re at work”—he managed to slip a hand between them, down low, because he
wasn’t lasting much longer, and shit, the sound she made when he rubbed her clit—“When you’re at work, I fist my dick and think about filling your pussy with my fingers, my cock, my tongue . . .”

  She arched beneath him and rocked, pushing against his fingers, fucking herself on his cock. Then she broke with a sob, shuddering, her sex convulsing around him as he bucked into her and gripped her hip and groaned.

  Afterward, they lay panting on the couch, and she ran a hand down his damp spine. “That was an inspired performance, worthy of the academy’s recognition. The award for best initial foray into dirty talk goes to . . . Marcus Caster-Rupp! Hooray!”

  With a huff of amusement, he angled his head so he could press a row of soft kisses down her sweaty neck. “If I was inspired, you deserve all the credit.”

  Yes, he was definitely fine reading her sex scenes now.

  In fact, he was going to encourage her to write more of them. The sooner, the better.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, over a belated dinner, they talked more about her story.

  “My only other concern, at least upon first reading, is whether Aeneas is a bit too . . .” Marcus waved his forkful of spaghetti squash, searching for the right phrase. “He may be a bit too emotionally aware for a man of his background and time period.”

  She nodded thoughtfully, twirling strands of pasta around her own fork. “I can see that.”

  There was no offended snap in her voice, no hurried defense of her writing choices and characterization of Aeneas. As she chewed, though, she was blinking down at the table, no longer smiling.

  “I’m sorry.” Reaching across the table, he covered her free hand with his. “April, I’m sorry. I should have said that more gently. Besides, what do I know? Nothing.”

  At his touch, she looked up. “You did say it gently, and you’re completely right. I just . . .” Her mouth trembled, but she pressed her lips tight. “What you said, it reminded me of things my former Lavineas server friend used to say. The guy I told you about.”

  “The one who has dyslexia too,” he said slowly.

  Her obvious grief twisted his heart. Her unwitting insight into his lie twisted his gut.

  “Yeah.” Her shoulders, now slumped, hitched upward a millimeter. “He kind of acted like a dick at the end. But we were friends for a couple of years before that, so it’s hard to just . . . get past it. I miss him.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words emerged ragged, and God willing, she would never know how much he meant them. “I’m so sorry, April.”

  She stared down at her plate for another few moments before raising her head, eyes glossy, and offering him a faltering smile. “Thank you, but it’s okay. I’m okay. And none of what happened with him is your fault.”

  As small as he’d once felt in front of the disappointed, disapproving gaze of his parents, as guilty and wrong, this was somehow worse. Even as a child, he’d been able to cling to a thin thread of conviction: I’m trying my best. There is nothing more I can do.

  That fact—that he was offering everything he had, everything he was, to them, and it still wasn’t enough, would never be enough—had rended something inside him. It had shadowed him for so many years. Too many years.

  Now he had to acknowledge a worse feeling: a guilt that wasn’t helpless, but fully earned.

  I could do something more, but I won’t. Because I’m scared I might lose everything.

  His palm was getting sweaty. After one last squeeze of her hand, he let it go and disguised his distress by busily straightening the napkin in his lap. “How did you start writing fanfic? What drew you to it?”

  She considered the topic for a minute, the pinched sadness leaving her face as his distraction served its purpose. “Please don’t take what I say next the wrong way, but I mostly started writing fanfiction out of sheer spite. Your showrunners fucked up Lavinia from the beginning, and I was so pissed. I wanted to fix what they’d done and put back everything I loved about her and her relationship with Aeneas.”

  Well, he couldn’t blame her for that.

  “So I took what was best about the books—Lavinia, the contours of her relationship with Aeneas—and what was best about the show—that would be you, Marcus—and mashed it all up into gloriously fluffy, smutty fics, and it was pure pleasure. Especially once I found a community on the Lavineas server, and . . .” She trailed off. “A good friend and writing partner.”

  Another wrench in his chest.

  If he could, he’d meet her tale with his own, as a sort of apology. He’d tell her how a young woman in full, impressive Aeneas regalia had mentioned Gates fanfiction at a convention, and he’d been curious and bored enough that night in his hotel room to find some and start reading. Only to discover that some of the stories, the best ones, echoed and expressed insights about his character and the show that he hadn’t shared with anyone but Alex. Only to find he could use modern technology to make reading so, so much easier than he remembered.

  That night, for the first time, he read something other than scripts of his own volition. Without pressure. Without stakes. For sheer enjoyment, about something he valued. About something where he was the expert, for once.

  It was life-altering. Triumphant, in ways he couldn’t fully express, to discover that he could read and love it, entirely for himself and no one else.

  But even in the best fics, there were aspects of his character other authors missed. It was his compulsion to share his own insights that eventually drove him to write his first one-shot as Book!AeneasWouldNever. No one knew who the fuck he was or cared whether he misspelled the occasional word or dictated instead of typed. He did it for himself alone.

  He’d expected crickets or criticism, not kudos. Not support, despite his shoddy editing.

  And then, somehow, he was part of a community. Somehow, he enjoyed writing, and it was yet another proud reclamation of himself, for himself.

  Somehow, he’d found Ulsie. April.

  Somehow, through fandom, he’d discovered who he was. His own interests. His own talents and possibilities, after decades of pretending to be someone he wasn’t, believing he was someone he wasn’t.

  But he couldn’t share any of that with April. If they stayed together, such a crucial part of his history would remain forever sealed, and she’d never hear that particular story.

  Across the table, she was finishing their late dinner as they sat in comfortable silence. When she looked up and saw him studying her, her lips curved. She stretched out her leg to tease his bare ankle with her big toe. It tickled a bit, as she very well knew, and he snorted and shook his head at her.

  Unapologetic grin wide, she shrugged and turned back to her remaining garlic bread.

  If you’re still worried I don’t know who you are, show me who you are, she’d told him, and he couldn’t. He couldn’t. Although, last night, he’d lain awake in her bed long after she’d fallen asleep, his arm possessive around her waist, and wondered.

  Whatever lay between them, he was holding it in his hand and squeezing as hard as he could, keeping it close and safe and tight in his grasp, hoping all that effort and pressure would transform them. Into a diamond, as she’d once explained to him. Brilliant. Hard to damage.

  Maybe what they had wasn’t rock, though. Maybe it was water.

  Maybe the harder he squeezed, the less he actually held.

  But he didn’t know how to open his fist. Not when it came to April. Not when it came to his career and his public persona. Not when he knew precisely, precisely, how it felt for that outstretched hand to remain empty. Always empty.

  “Marcus?” April’s gaze was gentle. Concerned. “Are you—”

  Then, as if he’d summoned her with his earlier thoughts—a horrifying possibility—his cell rang, and Debra Rupp appeared on the screen.

  “It’s my mother. I can call her back later,” he told April.

  Much later. Possibly never.

  She waved her fork dismissively. “It’s your choice. I certainly won’t
be offended if you want to talk to your parents.”

  He didn’t, so he let the phone ring itself to silence while they both watched. A few seconds later, there was another chime. A voicemail. His mother had left a voicemail.

  With a simple tap of his forefinger, he could delete it without listening. Instead, he lifted the cell to his ear and listened, consciously straightening his shoulders and letting the back of the chair brace him against whatever he might hear.

  “Marcus, Madame Fourier saw your picture in one of those trashy magazines at the grocery store. She told us you’ve apparently been in San Francisco for weeks. Visiting your new girlfriend from Twitter, according to the article. She was obnoxiously pleased to know more than we did concerning your whereabouts and activities. We had assumed you were back in Los Angeles or on set somewhere.”

  He couldn’t quite decipher his mother’s tone. Was she hurt he hadn’t informed them of his proximity or visited in the past month? Aggrieved that her former colleague had been gifted an opportunity for gloating? Or was she merely stating facts?

  “Call us at your earliest convenience, should you find yourself so able.”

  Well, that was definitely sarcasm.

  After he’d heard it all, he deleted the message, as he probably should have done when his instincts first urged him that way, and pushed the phone away a few inches. Then another few inches, more, more, until he couldn’t reach farther across the table, and April laid a light, warm hand on his forearm.

  “Marcus?” So low. So sweet.

  Would she still be so sweet if she knew everything?

  He shook his head, shook the thought away.

  Their hidden history on the Lavineas server didn’t matter, not right now. This part of himself he could show her. This story he could tell, even though it gathered and thickened in his throat in a way that made speaking difficult.

  Really, the outlines of the situation were so simple. It was stupid to struggle so hard for words. “I, uh, I hadn’t told my parents I was in the area, but one of the teachers at the school where they used to work saw an article about us and informed my mom. She wants me to call her back.”