by Quin Perin
Alex was home alone, trying to cope with his father’s upcoming trial for attempted murder, assault, and historical child abuse. Nate still shook his head at the ignorance, the stupidity, in the world. Alex had been hiding his sexuality from his neglectful and abusive parents for years, and his coping mechanisms almost killed him. As an adult, Alex could now make his own choices, and Nate thanked his lucky stars that the beautiful young man had eventually chosen to trust him. It hadn’t been easy, and the upcoming trial was dragging the barely scabbed over psychological issues back to the surface.
Although he tried to hide it, Alex was barely holding it together. Insomnia, manic exercise, and poor appetite all screamed of increasing anxiety. Plus, Alex being Alex, communication had become increasingly difficult, and he’d retreated back into his hoodie wearing habit to hide from the world. All in all, Nate was on the verge of requesting that Alex be excused from testifying against his father on medical grounds. He decided to call Alex’s psychiatrist in the morning for advice.
Alex’s unlikely best friend, the effervescent Chris, and his partner, Jase, now ran the only gay nightclub, The ToolBox, in their small English town. Tonight, Nate would’ve been there with Alex if he hadn’t been called in for a cover shift. Although Chris had tried to persuade Alex to go on his own, Nate had been pleased when Alex declined. Yes, Jase would keep an eye on Alex, but he also had to keep an eye on Chris; never an easy task when running a bar. The hyperactive, hypersexual man was a 24-carat trouble magnet, whereas Alex still preferred to fade into the background. Nate liked that; he had enough ego for them both.
Six months since they’d officially got together, and Nate still stopped and stared at the younger man’s porcelain skin and white-blond hair. Alex resembled a living marble statue, but he blushed, boy, did he–
“Oi, doctor man, are you finished yet? The night is still young; fancy coming to party with us?” His blonde, blurry-eyed patient did a little shimmy, making her equally drunk friend giggle. In their mid-thirties and still behaving like teenagers. He wondered if either of them had kids.
He produced the devastating smile that provided exemplary service wherever he went. Yes, he was a high status, privileged, good-looking bastard, but he never apologized for his assets. He didn’t blame people for lucking out in the lottery of life either. What he did expect was for people to take responsibility for their own health and that of the people depending on them. Sometimes people slipped, like Alex, Chris’s mother, and his own brother; he didn’t blame them. The world could be a horrible, stressful place. The opportunity to help, to nudge people, sometimes forcefully, into seeing what they were doing to themselves before it became too late, was the reason he did what he did. And he had another prime candidate for a hefty shove right in front of him. Time to get back in the game.
“No, thank you, ladies. I’m going home to look after my boyfriend who lost his mum due to liver cirrhosis a little while ago. She was…” He made a show of checking the woman’s chart. “Ah.” He hit them with the panty-melting smile again. “Twelve years older than you. He had an exceptionally shitty and neglected childhood because of her alcohol abuse. If I were you, Mrs. Wallace, I’d make an appointment with your doctor for a liver function test. Your eyes look a little yellow. I could be wrong, but better safe than sorry, right?” He stood up from the little wheeled stool, ignoring the way his back cracked, snapped off his gloves and disposed of them and the used instruments in the appropriate secure yellow receptacles. He added a cheerful, “Goodnight,” as he left the cubicle. The women had stopped smiling. Mission accomplished.
Hours later, he drove home in his Lexus, the streets quiet in the before dawn twilight, wondering yet again why some people fucked up their lives and the lives of others. His patient’s eyes hadn’t been yellow, not yet anyway. But if one comment, backed by the authority of his lab coat, made a difference to a potential Alex, hell yeah, he’d stretch the truth to breaking point.
After parking in the secure underground carpark, Nate used the private lift to reach the penthouse above his family’s towering department store. If he wanted, he could spend his life traveling the world, doing nothing but enjoying himself. Instead, he worked like a dog and lived above a shop in a provincial town outside London. Although anyone who had seen his place probably wouldn’t dismiss it as living above a shop. Kitted out in tasteful, masculine décor, it boasted a roof terrace with a swim spa and state of the art fitness equipment. ‘Fucking awesome’ had been Chris’s opinion, then again, the guy had no filter. A smile tickled his lips. Chris was perhaps the highest maintenance, sexual guy Nate had ever met, but he was way too much for Nate.
One of the three bedrooms in his penthouse doubled as a rehab room. Before Alex had arrived, Nate had been helping one addict at a time to get clean and see that a different way of life existed. He helped them through withdrawal, got them a job in the department store or somewhere else, and found them a place to live. Some called him a ‘do-gooder,’ Chris had at first, and maybe the cap fit. But no one had noticed his brother’s addiction; no one had taken the time to see through the fake smiles, not even his parents, twin sister, or younger brother. That Nate had only been in his early teens at the time didn’t help his guilt. A cocaine overdose was a horrible way to die. No one had found Joshua for three days.
Alex living with him made rehabbing patients in the penthouse awkward, and with Chris’s nagging, he’d finally bitten the bullet. They’d used the charity fund set up in Chris’s mother’s and Joshua’s names, the Baccioni-Cooper Trust, to build a facility to help people recover from substance abuse and get back on their feet. When finished, the clinic would provide both inpatient and outpatient care via counsellors and doctors. In his experience, few people who choose drugs were happy, contented individuals before that first hit. They lacked something in their lives or wanted to escape overwhelming stress, and fell down the rabbit hole of the oblivion or artificial confidence illegal drugs provided. Solving those problems was as important as the physical dependency.
The facility waited, primed and ready to go, but it lacked staff. Being in overall control of the clinic didn’t bother him, but he also wanted to continue being hands-on in his work catching those who were falling before they became morgue statistics. He didn’t want to give that up, but his working hours impacted on his relationships. Before Alex, emotionless, fun hook-ups had been all he wanted, and he’d found most of them at the ToolBox.
The penthouse was silent as he let himself in, but the light from the living room showed Alex wasn’t in bed. Hopefully, Alex had merely dozed off before the TV went into sleep mode. That Alex might not have wanted to go to bed on his own boosted his ego. Egotistical bastard.
Not sleeping.
Leaning up against the doorway, Nate watched Alex, wearing a cute khaki onesie, sketch furiously, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. The times when Alex forgot himself were few and far between, and Nate treasured them, but this had all the hallmarks of mania rather than relaxation.
“You ok?”
Alex’s head shot up from his sketchbook and the many drawings that lay scattered around him. Nate was dog tired, but from the dark circles under his eyes, Alex hadn’t slept either. A blush colored Alex’s cheeks, and he looked back down.
“Yeah, I’m good.” He wasn’t, and they both knew it. “Good shift?”
Despite many months of therapy, Alex still hadn’t been convinced that his go-to coping method for stress, cutting his thighs with a razor blade, was intrinsically harmful. He seemed pale, but was he paler than normal? Were there fresh wounds under the fabric? He knew the fight with Alex’s demons might be a life-long battle, and they might never win that particular war. But if Alex could cope with his insufferable workaholic ego, and the decade and a half age gap, Nate would cope with Alex’s demons. Each filled a deep-seated need and desire in the other. But right now, Alex looked like he needed a doctor, not a partner.
“The shift was fine; you’re not.” With de
liberate care, Nate gathered up some of the drawings of inflamed and bloody wounds and sat next to the elf-like man with white-blond hair who had captivated his soul. Reaching out, ignoring Alex’s tense body, he brushed the back of a finger down Alex’s pink cheek. “Am I going to need my bag?”
Two
Eight hours earlier
Alone again. Their plans for the evening had once more been shelved because of Nate’s dedication to his work; Alex couldn’t fault him for that. Pride bloomed that while he sat here feeling useless, being useless, Nate was saving lives and soothing pain. But he’d wanted, needed, him here tonight. What with the ongoing trial, his own turn on the witness stand coming up, and Nate working and organizing the new clinic, there hadn’t been a lot of time for them. College and working in the tattoo studio weren’t enough to provide a sufficient distraction from his own head. Alex understood Nate’s dedication, loved him for it. It didn’t stop the stress building up till he felt like exploding all over Nate’s beautiful home.
His hands fisted, resisting the urge to trace the old scars on his thighs. God, that’d be so good right now. The feel of a cold porcelain bath on his naked body, the sting of a razor, a crimson stream heading toward the plughole taking the tension, the internal pain, with it. The dizziness, the floating feeling, and the relaxation of blood loss called to him. But the promise to tell Nate if he intended to cut stayed his hand. If he kept that vow, Nate would come home. People might die. And if he cut his thighs, the twin blue flaming phoenixes that disguised the scars would be ruined. There were other places to cut, but it wouldn’t feel the same and Nate would find the wounds. The last thing he wanted was to let Nate down. Knowing that Nate wouldn’t be angry, wouldn’t shout, didn’t help. A cathartic yelling match might be good, but Nate would clean him up, blame himself, and the stress would increase.
Looking out the window, he could see the ToolBox across the canal that ran through the center of town. The lights weren’t on in the huge flat, above the club, where Chris and Jase lived. He could go there without Nate. Spend time with his friends. Risk giving in to the urge to score. Despite Jase and Chris’s passion about their place being drug-free, Alex’s brief foray into that world made him aware of the signs of cocaine use. Scoring wouldn’t be a problem.
I could be high as a kite in less than an hour. The thought knocked on the inside of his skull almost as loudly as the urge to cut. Nate wouldn’t be back till dawn. If he went now, he could score, and be back and drug-free. Nate wouldn’t suspect a thing.
But what if he found out?
What if he didn’t?
The thought of Nate’s disappointment made his chest ache. He couldn’t do that to him. And even if Nate didn’t work out that he’d scored, did he really, truly, want to fall back into being a coke head? It’d been a wild ride, but it hadn’t solved anything; it’d made it worse. So, no cutting, and no going out. Drawing wouldn’t be enough of a distraction, and nothing on TV interested him. It didn’t mean he couldn’t watch something distracting though. A little porn, make that a lot of porn, but no coming, just might keep him occupied while providing an excellent welcome home for Nate. With a grin, he grabbed his laptop, and set it up.
Throughout his formative years, doctors and nurses had been the only people to show him any care, any consideration, and he’d developed quite a medical kink, which likely contributed to him falling for Nate so hard. However, as Nate refused to cross the patient/doctor boundary, Alex had firmly positioned himself as ‘not Nate’s patient’. It hadn’t been easy for either of them. Nate was a medic down to his toes, and Alex still fantasized about him in his white coat and nothing else. Every time Nate asked an even borderline medical or psychological question, Alex shut him down in case being his doctor spooked Nate again.
It left a lot of kinky stuff they could do in the bedroom, usually involving restraints and Nate being dominant, but no kinky medical play. It would put them both in an uncomfortable position, and not the fun kind. So Alex kept his fetish to himself, and this was a prime opportunity to indulge without Nate finding out.
As soon as the laptop booted up, Alex searched for medical kink gay porn and settled down to watch. The doctors were all so obviously fake, fumbling their instruments and making ridiculous conversation as they felt up their ‘patients’. The patients never questioned or objected to being touched inappropriately by a stranger conducting what normally turned out to be a ‘sports physical’.
Bored, he clicked through several almost identical videos until one caught his eye. The doctor’s features were obscured by a medical mask and a pale surgical hair net. Apart from his build and tanned skin, he could have been just about anybody, or any doctor. Alex perked up at the thought that the guy wearing scrubs and a white coat might actually be a real doctor who had to protect his identity while doing porn.
The scenario differed too. This time, the patient was a porn actor coming for his monthly physical. Which, Alex supposed, probably happened. He tingled at the thought that this might be real.
“How much is this gonna cost me, doc?” The muscled tattooed actor asked. “I’m kinda short this month.”
“I’m sure we can come to some other arrangement.” The doctor’s low, teasing voice had both the actor and Alex paying more attention. For the first time, Alex took his cock out of his sweatpants as the actor did his best to entertain and flirt as the examination proceeded, instead of the ‘normal’ silent medical porn scenarios.
The doctor had a gloved hand on the actor’s sizeable erect cock, when he asked, “Your notes said you were concerned about the distance you are ejaculating?”
Alex stopped stroking, concentrating on the action on the screen.
“Yeah, I’m just dribbling, but the boss likes shooters. Even when I don’t have sex or masturbate for days,” he shrugged, “it’s still not a fountain like it used to be.”
“Could be an enlarged prostate,” the doctor mused. Alex’s eyes widened as the doctor produced a huge lube syringe. The actor presented his ass, leaning forward on his elbow. The actor gave a filthy groan as the doctor depressed the plunger, filling the guy’s hole with lube. When he slicked up his latex covered hand, Alex’s own hole clenched in anticipation as he stroked himself again; this was more like it. Despite the seeming gallons of lube, Alex imagined it hurting, just a little.
The patient moaned, thrust against the still-disguised doctor as he kneeled on the genuine examination couch. Most medical porn didn’t bother with getting the set right, but this was so realistic, Alex had to wonder if he was watching a real doctor, in his real office. Usually, this was the cue for the porn actor playing the doctor to either shove his whole hand up there for a fisting scene or to lose his scrubs and climb up behind the ‘patient’ and fuck his brains out. Either would have been fine with Alex. A little pain with his fantasy sex always made it better, but Nate seldom went that far. Orgasm denial and a gentle flogging that tickled more than hurt was as far as they went, although Nate made delicious marks with his teeth and mouth all over Alex’s body. Rubbing a hand over his chest, he pinched his nipple under his shirt, imagining the red bruises Nate had sucked around his nipples the night before. The marks Nate put on him reminded him that he wasn’t alone, that someone wanted him; he loved them.
The doctor pulled his fingers out of his patient and snapped off his glove. “That all seems to be in order, nice ass by the way.” Alex had to agree. The guy was smooth with long tribal tattoos down his flanks that emphasized his muscular, athletic build.
The patient looked over his shoulder, a frown marring his forehead. His gaze flicked to someone behind the camera and then to the doctor. “I thought you were supposed to fuck me now?”
“I could, but then we’d never get to the source of your ejaculation pressure problem. You could be suffering from a narrowed urethra.”
The guy turned around, looking adorably nervous. “A narrow what?”
This appeared to be real rather than a scene. Alex’s dick tw
itched, but he joined the guy in having his jaw drop open as the doctor turned back around holding a long, thin, slightly curved, stainless steel rod.
“This is a urethral sound. I’m going to use it to see if your urethra is narrowed. Please turn around.”
The guy’s jaw snapped shut. Alex’s didn’t, in fact, it dropped further as the doctor slicked up the rod, added a dollop to the top of the now visibly nervous guy’s cock, and calmly inserted the rod into the straining erection. Holding it in place, he masturbated him so gently Alex didn’t think the guy could possibly come. From the actor’s curses, it felt a hell of a lot more intense than it looked.
When his patient gasped out, “I’m coming,” the doctor pulled the rod smoothly from the guy’s shaft. With a groaned, “Oh fuck,” he ejaculated, hitting the surgical mask the doctor wore. He almost collapsed back on the examination table, looking utterly exhausted.
The credits rolled, and Alex still stared at the screen. The guy must have shot three feet. Swallowing against a dry throat, Alex searched urethral sound on the porn site. The steel rods looked quite common, but not only did he not have one, they also looked damn scary and really long. Those must reach all the way to the bladder, and that thought gave him a delicious zing of dread. He stopped scrolling when a video of a man using a damn glowstick on his cock came up. The guy was meant to be a first timer, and after he stopped grimacing at what he said ‘stung’, he appeared to be having a great deal of fun. The thought of a little pain didn’t turn Alex off, in fact, the more intense the experience, the more it’d help him de-stress.
