by Amy Lane
Kane didn’t want to move, and Dex didn’t complain, so they stayed there, tangled and merged, until Kane turned his head and saw Dex’s eyes half-closed.
“Don’t go to sleep yet,” he said. “I’ll clean us up.”
Kane shivered as he rolled off and went to the bathroom for a cloth. When he came back, Dex was turned on his side, huddled under the blankets. He didn’t resist when Kane wiped him down, but he didn’t relax under the tending either. Something was wrong. Kane came back to bed and slid behind him.
“You’re not going to feel bad about that, are you?” Kane asked, his voice thick with sleep, and Dex took Kane’s hands and tucked them up next to his chest.
“You were wonderful,” Dex said, still sounding distant. “It’s not you.”
“Then what?” Kane felt hurt blooming in his chest. He’d felt… warm and close during the sex. He didn’t want it to make Dex feel bad. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Dex shook his head, that bright, shiny hair sopped with sweat.
“It felt good,” Dex whispered. “It felt great. And you were awesome. And for a minute I felt… like me. Like David. And then I remembered that you don’t know who that is. David is a long way away.”
Oh. Was that all? Kane hugged him so close he heard Dex grunt and his ribs creak. “David, Dex—you’re the guy I just fucked blind. You’re perfect, sweetheart. Don’t stress about names. The guy right here, he’s a good guy.”
Dex laughed a little. “Aren’t you supposed to be straight?” he asked, but his body relaxed into Kane’s, and that made Kane happy.
“I am straight,” Kane mumbled. “Except when I’m fucking guys, I’m plenty straight. Now shut up and sleep. And don’t feel bad. That was amazing. You can’t feel bad about it.”
“God, you’re bossy in bed.”
“It’s because it’s the only place I know what to do. Now hush.”
“Thanks, Carlos.”
“My pleasure, David. Now do I need to gag you?”
Dex giggled tiredly. “Not today. We’ll save that for later.”
Kane thought about that, Dex with a blindfold and a gag, his thighs spread, his ass open and begging, and his cock got a little hard again, even as he fell asleep.
Reforming the World
Dex
THREE weeks after Chase Summers survived his suicide attempt, Dex woke up to two things. One was Kane where he’d been for the last three weeks, jammed up against his back and holding him so tight that breathing was optional. That was familiar. That was the direct result of putting the critter cages in the guest room and packing up the bed, combined with the ease of having a live-in fuckbuddy who buggered Dex senseless pretty much every chance he got.
That was okay.
The other thing was a cool metal-slick muscular rope rippling smoothly up the inside of Dex’s thigh.
That was not okay.
Dex’s eyes flew open. “Kane?” he squeaked, and Kane grumbled in his ear. “Kane!” he squeaked again, and Kane grunted this time instead of grumbled. “Kane!” Dex’s voice rose to a furious, hoarse whisper. “If you don’t wake up right now I will never suck your balls again.”
Oh, that got his attention. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
Dex had been listening since that first time together. Kane didn’t call anyone else “sweetheart.” Not girls he talked to, not guys, not Tommy when Tommy was falling apart, not Chase when Kane was being that sublimely gentle person that so few people could see but who was so very apparent when talking to the wounded, mentally bleeding Chase. But Dex got called “sweetheart.” Normally that would be very interesting, especially because Dex had never been big on endearments. He wasn’t particularly big on using them, had never really gotten them—but Kane called him “sweetheart,” and it was starting to make him feel like normal was warm.
But right now, being Kane’s sweetheart was not something that concerned him.
“Kane?”
“Yeah?” Kane started to stretch—he did that, stretched his toes in bed first, then his calves; then he wiggled his hips and finally cracked his hands overhead and took care of his torso, shoulders, and arms—but Dex needed him not to stretch at this moment.
“Stop stretching and do me a fuckin’ favor, okay?”
“Yeah?” Kane sat up like he was suddenly catching a clue from Dex’s tone of voice, which was good, because the rippley, muscley coolness was slicking right up over his hip near the crease of his thigh, and Dex was very, very close to panicking.
“Kane, could you get your fucking snake out of my fucking shorts? If that thing touches my dick, I won’t ever fuck again, and I’ve got a scene to shoot today, so that would be a real fucking shame!” He’d thought he was done with scenes, but everyone was doing an extra scene to fill in for Chase and Tommy.
Kane grunted again, but this time in acknowledgment. “Shit, Tomas, what you doin’ out?” His hand was gentle on Dex’s skin as he peeled Dex’s boxers back and let the snake curl up his arm. “Oh geez, he feels cold! Dex—is the power on?”
Dex sat up, suddenly panicked for a whole other reason. Sure enough, the clock next to his bed was blinking and the heater had that dusty smell of having just kicked on again. Outside, the wind was blowing in what had been a killer thunderstorm the night before, and now that Tomas was no longer threatening Dex’s livelihood, he could reach over to the phone and check the time. Okay. Good. Plenty of time to get ready for the shoot. But that was the least of their problems.
He looked at the time on the clock and then the time on his phone and did some subtraction in his head. “Probably about two hours,” he muttered. “Okay, you go check the guys and I’ll go get the space heater from the garage. We can warm them up quicker that way.”
“But it’s cold in here!” Kane sounded panicked, and Dex swallowed and said a quick prayer. Kane talked to them. He went in after his day and told them what he did. He picked up the snake and stroked its scaly black, scarlet, and gold body, and let the gecko ride the space of his shoulder. He had a small iguana that got to run around the room when the door was closed. He even talked to the mice before he put them in Tomas’s cage for feeding. He told them they were good mice and would come back in their next life as good snakes.
Dex went into the guest room as little as possible—quite frankly it skeeved him out—but Kane? Kane could be found in there, sitting cross-legged, listening to rap music, on any given day. Dex was starting to think the gecko’s eyeballs throbbed to Drake and Usher, but he didn’t want to say anything in case Kane thought he was crazier than he already did.
“Okay,” he said now. “You check them out and see what you need to do, and I’ll go get the heater, right? Let’s go!”
He didn’t stop to put on slippers or anything, and the garage was fucking cold, but all he could think was that Kane’s babies were going to need the heat before his creaky old heater kicked in. He got back into the guest room, pretty sure his balls weren’t going to surface in time for his shoot, to find Kane cuddling the gecko in his hand with the snake still coiled around his arm.
He looked at Dex with abject pain. “He’s moving really slowly,” he said, and Dex nodded and plugged in the heater.
“Okay. I’m warming up the room, you stay in here. I’ll go get the heating pad.”
There you go—stroke of genius! Dex could fix this. He could. He couldn’t go back in time and tell the shrink about the razor blades, and he couldn’t warn the other Dex about the deer in the road. He couldn’t warn himself that Scott was a douchefucker out for a piece of easy ass, and he couldn’t tell his old self that he’d get so immersed in Johnnies that he’d rather edit porn than get his degree, but he by God could keep Kane’s little green friend from dropping off planet Earth too soon.
He popped the heating pad in the microwave and got a wet towel to wrap around it. He knew reptiles and amphibians sometimes needed water—he figured it couldn’t hurt. The heater always dried out the air, and Dex and Kane had taken to rubbin
g bee jelly cream on their hands and faces because it was odorless and they needed something so they didn’t chap in the early November chill.
He brought the heating pad in and sat down next to Kane, holding it out to take the gecko, but Kane looked at him miserably and shook his head. Dex thought Oh fuck and reached out his hands anyway. Seriously, who knew with lizards, right?
Yeah, the lizard was dead. Its sticky little paws were flung out wide on the hilly surface of Kane’s palm, and its pale-green skin was turning blue, and its little tongue was even flopping out between its gummy little lips.
Dex looked at it for a second and sighed. “Aw, man. I’m fucking sorry. Seriously fucking sorry. How’s everybody else?”
Kane shook his head and clutched the lizard back to his chest, his lower lip thrust out like a little kid’s. “I didn’t want to check.”
Dex nodded and looked around greenly. Oh holy fuckin’ jebus. Ick.
“Here, let me give it a go,” he said. He looked into the cage with the little breeding fancy mice first, because hell, at least they were mammals. Sure enough, two of the little bodies were still, and the rest of the mice were huddled into a corner, trying to keep each other warm. Dex swore and ran off to get a shoebox and tried to come back before Kane could even think to ask.
Quietly and without fuss, he gathered the little bodies of what were essentially snake kibble before moving on to the other cage. The iguana gave him a scare, but Ms. Darcy (Dex had no idea how Kane knew it was a girl) was huddled under her log and a bunch of wood shavings, her horned scales bristling along her skin, and apparently doing just fine. Now that the heating filaments under the cages had started warming again, she was starting to twitch, and Dex smiled in relief. For one thing, Ms. Darcy the iguana was about three feet long including her tail and might have been too big to fit in the shoebox.
The amphibian terrariums with the little frogs and the salamander and the turtle seemed to be doing okay. Apparently those creatures got used to temperature drops in the water, thank God. In the end, the worst casualty was the gecko.
Which Dex dreaded getting out of Kane’s massive, delicately cupped hands.
Dex turned to Kane with a pained expression on his face. “Kane, buddy, I’m sorry….”
Kane nodded his head. “I hear you,” he said roughly. “So just the two mice?”
“Yeah, everyone else is okay. They might need some reassurance, though—at least Ms. Darcy might.” Tomas seemed to be relaxing a little around Kane’s forearm. At least Dex hoped so. Kane’s fingers were discolored from the lack of circulation.
Kane nodded, but those cupped hands stayed close to his bare stomach anyway. Dex sighed and came to sit next to him, their bare shoulders touching in the mercifully heating room. From the room next door, his cell phone buzzed, and Kane grunted.
“What’s that?”
“That’s John. I’m late for my shoot.”
Kane bumped him at the shoulder. “You should go.”
“John can wait,” Dex said easily. He still had the shoebox of dead mice in his hands.
Suddenly Kane looked up from his hands, a brilliant smile on his face. “Hey, after this shoot, we can start fucking again, can’t we?”
Dex had to laugh. Kane had done a scene three days before and Dex had one today—it meant they had almost gone a week without Kane holding him by the back of the neck and nailing him to the bed. Kane had bitched enough about the three-day moratorium on sex before a scene, but when Dex signed up to take Chase’s place on the roster, Kane’s whining got particularly acute.
“Don’t you like having sex with me?” he asked when Dex came back from editing and told Kane he was filling in.
Dex smacked him on the back of the head. “Yeah, asshole, I like it fine. I’m doing a favor for a friend, okay? Two of ’em, if you count John, who already had plans to fly this kid out for this shoot.”
Kane glared at him sourly. “You just want to know what it feels like to have a ten-inch dick up your ass.”
Dex rolled his eyes. “Been there, been fucked by that. Besides, I’m topping. Chase was a real good top. John wanted someone to break this kid in gentle.”
Kane’s glare tweaked instantly to an evil grin. “So that’s not me, right?”
They’d been sitting next to each other, watching Dancing With the Stars, because Kane never missed an episode and Dex had been sucked right into the madness. Impulsively, Dex leaned over and kissed Kane’s temple with more gentleness than play. “No, baby. You need to be an expert to take you up the ass. That’s why I’m lucky that way.”
Kane’s evil smile fueled his evil laugh, and they went back to watch the show with Dex hugged securely to Kane’s chest. That night had been the last free night they had before Kane’s abstinence started, and Kane had fucked Dex until Dex was tempted to wave the little white flag, but he hadn’t. This was lucky because when he finally blew his third load—down Kane’s throat—Kane had come just from swallowing. Kane had crawled up his body, apologetic and sheepish, but Dex had kissed him, the taste of his come still in Kane’s mouth.
Kane had melted against him, soft and pliant like Kane was never soft and pliant, and Dex had that memory of him, sweet and gentle in the circle of his arms, to keep him satisfied during the next six days.
Which were supposed to end today (or tomorrow, after recovery) when Dex got his worn-out whoring ass to the set.
Kane reached out his hands and had Dex open the box. He set the gecko inside with a tenderness that made Dex absurdly bleary-eyed, and stroked the little body so lightly it hardly moved.
“Bye, Tree-Squirt. You were a real good little lizard—real sweet. You were the best first pet a guy could have. Sorry ’bout the fuckin’ heater. Wasn’t how I’d planned for you to go.”
Dex thought wretchedly that if he walked into the set late with his eyes all puffy from bawling, John would fucking kill him. He closed the shoebox and pressed it into Kane’s hands. “When the wind lets up, you can go out back and bury them in the flowerbeds or under the tree. I was going to put a pond in the center there this summer, so maybe not there, but you know. Somewhere he wouldn’t mind hangin’, okay?”
Kane nodded and then looked up at Dex, obviously embarrassed by his watery eyes but not able to hide them either. “That’s real nice of you,” he said softly. “I can do that before I visit Chase, how’s that?”
“You say hi to him for me,” Dex said, thinking with a little bit of shame that he was relieved not to be going there today. Usually he went and worked out with Chase at the mental institution gym, which was actually so crappy Dex had to come back to his regular gym to do the workout he needed to do if he didn’t want to get fat since he was closer to thirty than twenty. Chase knew he wouldn’t be coming today because of the scene, and Dex? Dex could see Chase fighting clear of depression and all sorts of horrible, nasty demons with every visit. But Dex usually visited Tommy after he visited Chase and found him rocking himself in a ball in his own bed, and Dex would sit and comfort him too. As much as this shoot was a favor to John and a favor to the company so they could keep up their schedule, it was a fucking relief for Dex to only have to go fuck with his body for a change, and not open his heart up for everyone else’s pain to come fuck it.
But telling Kane that it was going to be all right and that he could survive the death of his little green lizard felt like something different.
He realized—and it surprised the holy fuck out of him too—that he didn’t want anyone else in this room, sitting next to Kane, giving him a shoebox full of dead little bodies. That was Dex’s job, and he didn’t want to bail out of it.
Kane was still sitting there, his powerful shoulders drooped, and Dex wrapped his arm around them. “Kane?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you freezing your balls off yet?”
Sigh. “Yeah.”
“Me too. If you promise not to do any kinky shit, we can shower together and get warm.”
Kane shook his
head and laid his head on Dex’s shoulder with a touching faith. “I always want to do kinky shit to you. I don’t know why. I mean, I done guys off set before, but that was always like, one and done, and they were guys from the set anyway, and they knew the score. You? This last week felt like school it sucked so bad. You need to go shower and do your enema shit and get out of here.”
Dex grimaced. “You know, uhm, the night after I don’t always feel like….”
Kane shrugged. “All I gotta do is jack off on your ass, man. I just need to touch you naked.” He sighed and shifted like he was going to move, but Dex stroked his thick black hair and tightened the arm around his shoulder to keep him there. He didn’t want to say it, but those were actually damned romantic words, coming from Kane.
THE shoot was… well, it was a porn shoot, right? Back when Dex had been telling himself that he was straight, he’d talked about nerve endings getting fondled, but he’d known better. There was an anticipation when you were getting touched by the person you wanted to touch you—even if it was just make and not specific model. There was an electricity, a singing in the blood, an incense in the smell…
It was intoxicating. Dex knew that. Even when he’d been with Scott, on those rare occasions when he’d found himself back filming a scene, he could still enjoy that cold electricity running under his skin from the idea of being with a guy for a shoot.
Dex looked at the sweet boy grinning at him, his ten-inch cock rampant and eager in his hand as they sat in the room and fluffed, and tried to summon some of that anticipation.
What was his name? Bambi? No—Bobby—that was it. Who had ever heard of a porn star named Bobby? Bob B. Long, maybe, but Bobby?
