by Amy Lane
“Are you Bobby?” And a really sexy Southern accent, Bobby thought bemusedly.
“Yes, sir. You are….”
“Galen,” he said, extending his hand. “Galen Henderson.”
Bobby held up his hands, grease- and grill-stained, and grimaced. “I wish we could shake,” he apologized. “I’m sort of all crappy. But thank you. Seriously—John’s lawyer said you’re the reason I’m not rotting in jail still. You wouldn’t even let my mom pay you. I can’t thank you enough.”
Galen’s mouth twisted, and he kept his hand out. “I’ll shake your hand any day,” he said softly, and Bobby had no choice but to wipe his hand on the ass of his denim shorts and take it. “I’m just sorry I couldn’t do more. If I’d been here, maybe I could have kept you out entirely.”
Bobby smiled tightly. “I had shit to learn,” he said, his voice gruff. “Two weeks was plenty of time to learn it, but it needed to happen.”
Galen tilted his head. “What is it you learned, young Mr. Roberts?”
Bobby shrugged and looked around. His mom was still putting stuff out on the table, and everybody else was talking to Reg. He hadn’t talked about this to anybody, and it was suddenly pressing against his chest, begging for release.
“My whole life I was afraid of being my old man,” he said. “Beating the shit out of people because it’s the only way I could think of to deal. Having to pin Reg’s sister felt like the worst thing I’ve ever done, and she was trying to kill us. When I attacked that cop, all I could see was red. But two weeks in jail and I know I can walk away. I got muscles, and I got build, but I got common sense too. I know how to use it.”
Galen’s smile was unexpectedly pretty. “You, sir, are a force to be reckoned with. I’m proud to have helped in your defense.” He gave an almost courtly bow then, and Bobby remembered why Galen hadn’t been there for the arraignment.
“Weren’t you in Florida?” he asked.
Galen nodded. “I was. Like you said, some lessons you have to learn, even if they’re painful.”
“What lessons did you learn?” he asked, suddenly hungry to hear he was not the only one living life by touch.
Galen gestured to the cane Bobby hadn’t seen, leaning up against the table, next to two suitcases. He must have come here from the airport, Bobby realized in surprise.
“I learned the difference between accepting help and living with a crutch. And now I can do one and not the other,” he said, a slight smile on his lips.
Bobby grinned. “You are way too smart for me,” he decided. “But I sure am glad you’re here. I bet John will be too.”
“Your hot dogs are burning,” Galen said dryly, and suddenly Bobby had something else to do.
But he did have a moment, about half an hour later, to see Galen and John’s first kiss, after John got back from the zoo.
For a moment in time, Bobby didn’t exist. Nothing existed but these two souls, reconnecting, learning the feel and taste of each other all over again.
Bobby watched them, entranced, and swallowed.
He wanted that. He could have that. He could have that with Reg.
He found out later that Galen had stayed in Florida to finish rehab, to learn to walk without the cane, to make himself worthy of a life with someone he thought was wonderful.
And then he’d come to claim the love he deserved.
That day, Bobby left soon after the last of the plates were cleared. He helped his mom put stuff in the truck and said a quiet goodbye to Dex and John. He had a scene next week and some playdates planned at the flophouse, so he knew he’d be seeing everybody again.
Reg managed to stay as far away from him as possible, the entire time. But Bobby wouldn’t forget the look they’d shared.
That look—that was everything.
It said that love was there for the claiming. Bobby just had to choose his moment, his time, his place.
He began to make plans.
A WEEK later, after his scene—some kid named Chris who had almost passed out on Bobby’s cock, he’d been so excited—Bobby stepped into Dex’s office. At first he’d been worried that Reg would be there, but Kelsey was back on the receptionist desk part-time until they could find someone full-time and permanent, and she told him Reg would be out talking to the manager at a new club, so he was safe.
“Hey, Dex?” He smiled tentatively, and Dex turned away from his editing computer and swiveled his chair around.
“Take a seat,” he said, then looked over his shoulder. “Want a cookie?”
Bobby blinked. “Is this part of the service now?”
Dex shook his head and fished a tin from his desk. “No. Kane has been on sort of a kick, now that it’s not hotter than balls. He keeps trying out new recipes, and I swear to Christ I’m gonna get fat. Help a brother out here and eat some goddamned carbs for me, willya?”
Bobby laughed and snagged three. “You’re the best boss ever,” he said after wolfing down a little disk of heaven. “And it would totally be worth getting fat if you could eat these every day.”
Dex eyed him dispassionately. “You only say that because you just turned nineteen and you still have the metabolism of a fucking Trojan. I swear that kid’s entire purpose in life is to watch me grow love handles.”
Bobby smirked. “Well, he wants something to hold on to,” he said mildly, and Dex grabbed two more cookies and set them on the desk in front of him.
“Work those off, smart guy. What can I do for you?”
Bobby finished his second cookie and took a deep breath for courage. “I think this thing with Reg has gone on long enough.”
Dex sighed and stole one of his cookies. “Word. He’s… he’s starting to say you’d be better off without him. I think… I think he’s depressed. No sister. No boyfriend. He’s hit that groove, you know?”
Bobby swallowed, the cookie turning to sawdust in his mouth. “The one where you think you suck and everybody would be better without you and how can anybody love a fuckup like you are?”
The cookie tin came out again, and Dex dealt them another round.
“You been there too?” he asked quietly.
“I got the condensed version in jail,” Bobby told him, eyes level. “And then you know what?”
“What?”
“I fought off the third guy who wanted to be my daddy and decided I really was the belle of the goddamned ball.”
Dex guffawed and clapped a hand over his mouth. “That’s fucking awful,” he said when he could talk.
Bobby shrugged. It was partially true. “It was a shitty situation, Dex. He never should have gone through it. I know I wasn’t up to it, but I did my best. How’s his sister?”
“Climbing the ladder again,” Dex said, referring to the institutions she would get transferred to, one after another, until she got to one with a marginal amount of freedom.
“When’s she going to be back where she was?”
Dex let out a breath. “According to Reg, she’s got another two months. She had to do a long stint in the one for violent patients—no visitors, no outside stuff—because, you know—”
“She tried to kill us.”
“Yeah. I guess she’s actually showing remorse for that now, but then, every time they switch her drugs, she forgets what she did.”
Bobby tilted his head back and groaned. “Mental health shit is so fucked-up,” he muttered. “Seriously. They gotta give those places more money. They’ve got to have better places. I just… he never would have tried so long if she’d had better places to go.”
Dex nodded soberly. “But it’s out of his hands now—and he’s made his peace with it.”
“Really?” And until he asked, Bobby had forgotten how hungry he was for the answer.
“Why?” Dex looked over Bobby’s shoulder, like he was checking for Reg to just appear. “What did you have in mind?”
Bobby outlined a very simple plan, and Dex grimaced. “Do you think he’ll agree to go back in the game?”
&
nbsp; “You did,” Bobby reminded.
Dex smiled slightly. “Your eyes were so goddamned wide.”
Bobby winked. “I’m still a country boy at heart, Dex. Not all the dick in the world changed that.”
“Yeah.” Dex’s smile was reassuring. He was as married as a guy could get, but he didn’t regret a goddamned minute of his past. “Okay, country boy. Am I going to be losing you after this?”
Bobby shrugged. “We’ll ask Reg. If this works.” He smiled, and it held all the hope he could summon. “He really does like to watch me fuck, you know.”
A week later, Dex’s laughter, warm and a little dirty, gave him the confidence to walk into the scene room and take his shirt off and pretend this was like any other scene.
When Dex left the room, Bobby looked over to Reg, tired, small, huddling in on himself without his usual cockiness, and thought This is it. He needs me. It’s time to take him back.
Breaking the Circle
REG CUDDLED into Bobby’s chest, suddenly understanding the entire purpose of being there on the shoot with Bobby.
“Dex set me up!” he said, feeling betrayed.
Bobby nodded, unbothered. “He helped me out,” he said, those strong arms around him still. Then he closed his eyes. “God, Reggie—it’s been two months. Are you ever going to forgive me?”
Reg rested his cheek against Bobby’s bare chest. “I’m old,” he said, because the thought had been nagging at him, haunting him for the last week. “You… you and me—maybe we’re just better off—”
Bobby kissed him then, mouth warm and sweet, hard like a man’s, demanding.
God, he was so good at giving Reg a center, a thing to do, a place to be, a person to strive for.
Reg opened to him helplessly, all his trepidation washed away in the heat of his body. In the heat of his kiss.
“What’s it gonna be?” Bobby whispered again. “I want you back. I want us back. I went to sleep with the man I love and woke up with nothing.”
Reg feathered a touch along the healing scar on his stomach. “How can you… look what she did,” he whispered. Then, even more horribly, “You went to jail because of me!”
Bobby shook his head and cupped Reg’s chin between his fingers. “I’ll say this once out loud, and it’s important. I went to jail because of me. Because I got violence in me, Reg. You were there to pull me off Keith Gilmore, but I needed to hold myself back off that cop, and I didn’t.”
“You were under—”
“Extreme duress,” Bobby said, sounding like he’d recited the words a thousand times. “It’s why it was two weeks and not three years. But even if it was three years, I woulda gotten out and come looking for you. I woulda written you letters, embarrassing ones, like in the books we read, because you’re who I would be thinking of the whole time.”
Reg nodded, closing his eyes tight, listening to Bobby’s heart beating in his chest. “I would have broken my heart and died if I couldn’t see you for three years,” he said, all the missing him of the last two months washing over him.
“What’s it gonna be?” Bobby asked again.
Reg looked around at the pretend bedroom, where so many people had fucked each other raw for fame and money.
“Not here,” he said wretchedly. “I don’t… I don’t want to do it here.”
Bobby half laughed into the hollow of his shoulder, and his chest shook. Reg was going to ask if he was crying when he realized that he, Reg, was the one whose eyes were burning, the one who couldn’t catch his breath.
“Can we go—” Bobby started out, and Reg interrupted.
“My house,” he said, voice broken. “You drive, Bobby. I… I don’t even want to be in the car without you.”
They dressed and slipped out of the room. As they went, Reg gave a last look around, at the wretchedly uncomfortable bed and the laundered thin sheets, the tape marks on the floor and the mirror that had witnessed a thousand orgasms or more. He was done with that room. He had no business in there, not as a model. Not anymore. Bobby had known that—so had Dex when he’d asked.
Reg knew it now. He’d found a different life.
It was something he wanted to tell Bobby as Bobby drove, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed, toward Reg’s house.
“The guys kept telling me I was stupid,” he said after a few moments of tense silence.
“They shouldn’t have—”
“No!” Reg interrupted. “I was. I was stupid. About you. About what I heard you say. And afterward, you were going to jail, and I….” Reg closed his eyes. “I felt so bad, Bobby. You have no idea. My sister was in crazy-person jail and you were in regular jail, and I was in the hospital because I was useless. Just fucking useless. And how was I supposed to tell you I still loved you, when I was the person who let all that happen? How was I supposed to make that better?”
Bobby sighed, and some of the tension left his face, his arms, his hands on the wheel.
“Baby, none of it was your doing.”
“But it was,” Reg surprised himself by saying. “I… I should have let her stay, in the spring. I should have grown up and realized—she couldn’t be my big sister anymore. She hadn’t been for years. The kids we were—she wouldn’t have wanted me to take care of her like that, not for as long as I did. We were….” He swallowed hard, because this was a new word to him. “We were terrorized by our mom. And then she grew up to do the same thing to me.” Oh God. This hurt. “I should have let her go, Bobby. And I didn’t. And she almost killed you, and she ended up in the shitty place. And it was my fault. I just—”
“Stop.” Bobby reached across the seat and squeezed his knee. “Just… being mad at yourself kept you away from me for two months. I’m the violent criminal, Reg, and I just let it go. You need to let it go.”
“I’m sorry,” Reg said, the words freeing. “I got mad because I thought you weren’t treating me like an adult. But an adult would have made that decision sooner, and I’m sorry.”
Bobby let out a half laugh. “Growing up happens to us all,” he said softly. “Are you going to kick me out?” he asked, surprising Reg.
“No!”
“Are you going to wake up one day and blame me for your sister being gone?”
And Reg saw where he was going. “No,” he said soberly.
“Do you forgive me for saying you couldn’t do it?” Bobby’s voice throbbed, and Reg could hear it—the pain of that decision. The pain of admitting Reg couldn’t do it all.
“Do you forgive me for not admitting it sooner?” Reg asked. He felt like Bobby had more to forgive.
“Done,” Bobby said softly. “Done that night, waiting for my mom in jail. All the good things I love about you—they had a part in not wanting to let V go. It’s why I had the balls to do what I did today. Because you don’t give up.”
Reg found himself wanting to laugh forever and ever. “I don’t give up?” he chortled. “I don’t give up? Oh my God, kid! Last year this time, I thought I was straight! You damned near cuddled me into falling in love!”
Bobby chuckled. “Well, we use the gifts God gave us.”
“No,” Reg said, suddenly sober. “God gave you a ten-inch cock, Vern Roberts. You gave yourself kindness. And….” He struggled for the words. “Don’t-give-up-ness. And forgiveness. And that thing you do where you fix my house when nobody’s looking. All the good shit—that’s you.”
“Cock helps,” Bobby said, but his lips were quirking, and Reg knew he was kidding.
“I can buy the cock online,” Reg said, not kidding even a little. “The Bobby that comes with it—he’s got to be mine in his heart or it’s no good without him.”
“I am,” Bobby said softly. He pulled up to Reg’s house and turned in his seat before turning off the motor. “I am. Baby, I was waiting for you, was all. Your whole life changed in one night.”
Reg swallowed and felt his shame cut deeply. “I’m sorry I told you to fuck off,” he said, voice rasping. “I’m sorry I felt so bad abou
t it I couldn’t even look at you.”
“I’m sorry I broke your heart,” Bobby said, cupping his cheek. “Because I know you heard me say you couldn’t do it, couldn’t take care of her, and….” His lower lip wobbled. “You trusted me, and I let you down.”
“No.” Reg trapped his hand. “You were doing the grown-up thing when I couldn’t. I was the one who let you down. I’ll never do it again.”
Bobby nodded. “It’s okay if you do,” he said softly. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be all grown-up at once. I didn’t fall for Dex or John. I fell for you.”
Reg smiled, feeling it glow from the inside out. “Damned if you didn’t.” And then Bobby pulled him in for a kiss.
THEY MADE it into the house, and a lot after that was a haze, a blurred whirl of clothes coming off and Bobby’s hands on his skin while he grabbed for as much of Bobby as he could manage.
Finally Bobby backed him up against the wall, hands held over his head. “Breathe,” he commanded, chest laboring. “Breathe. Not so fast.”
“Want it all now,” Reg demanded, forgetting all those resolutions about being a grown-up.
Bobby smiled, slow and wicked. “You’ll get it all—but not all at once.”
Reg reached down and squeezed him through his briefs. Big. Thick and long. “You are bigger than your cock,” Reg said, closing his eyes and breathing in the heat and the vague sawdust smell that made up Bobby Green.
“Yeah,” Bobby whispered, teasing his ear, nibbling on his lobe. “But the cock has its place.”
Reg chortled—and tried not to let his knees buckle. “My ass, right?”
Bobby sucked hard on his neck, making him whimper, and let the flesh out of his mouth with a pop. “Yeah, Reg. It’s going up there.”
“Oh, thank Go-awd?”
Bobby dropped to his knees on the floor of Reg’s room, shucked his briefs, and sucked the head of his dick into his warm, skilled mouth.
Reg gave a soft shriek, a happy sound. Oh hell—he’d been too depressed to even beat off these last two months. His dick was prime, aching—
