by Amy Lane
John was filming, because he and Dex had been working together a long time and he knew Dex’s moves and Dex was comfortable with him. Dex didn’t realize how much of his emotion showed on his face until John said, “Dex, get your hand out of your pants and get over here.”
Dex was happy to get his hand out of his pants. It wasn’t doing much in there anyway. He just kept remembering the way Kane had rested his head on Dex’s shoulder, and how sad he’d been while he’d clutched that tiny little body.
“What’s up?” Dex asked, and John shook his head.
“Was gonna ask you the same thing. You not getting it up? That’s a first. You getting some on the side?”
Dex blinked. “Since when is having a relationship ‘getting some on the side’?” he asked, and John sighted Bobby through the camera viewfinder.
“Kid?” John said kindly. “Maybe back off a little. You’re gonna blow right here.”
Bobby’s hand stopped midstroke and he shuddered, and in that shudder, right there, Dex saw Kane, right the way he’d looked after Dex had come in his mouth: a little embarrassed, a lot turned on. Suddenly Dex wasn’t having such a hard time getting his flag to the top of the mast.
“Don’t worry,” Dex said, and he smiled his most reassuring smile. “Give it a pat on the head and tuck it back into your pants. It won’t be there for long.”
The boy smiled back, his soft brown eyes going sort of moony, and Dex walked up to him while he buttoned up. Up close, Dex could still see the freckles on his cheeks. He had a long, almost horsey face, made pretty by the softness around the jaw and full lips, as well as the wild curly hair. He smelled like Old Spice, which was the smell of a kid who used his father’s aftershave. Dex had skimmed his profile—he was nineteen, which was about a year younger than Kane, but Kane had never felt this fresh off the truck, and Dex felt a momentary pang of guilt.
Then Bobby looked into his eyes and smiled tentatively. “Is it bad that I really want this?” he whispered, and Dex suddenly felt honor-bound to tell the truth.
“Nothing we do here is bad,” he whispered back. “It’s gonna feel good, and you’re going to enjoy the hell out of it. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s bad until it’s not right for you anymore, you hear me?”
Bobby’s smile was sweet and soft, and Dex gave John and the other cameraman the go-ahead signal for filming before he went in for the kiss. But it wasn’t Bobby’s smile that he thought of as the kid’s lips surrendered to his own. It wasn’t his smile or his youth or his ten-inch cock. All Dex could think about as he ran his palms up under Bobby’s brand-new Aeropostale T-shirt was the trust in Kane’s red-rimmed brown eyes when they’d been sitting side by side in a freezing room, honoring dead animals with brains smaller than sunflower seeds.
This kid, at least, Dex wouldn’t let down.
WHEN they were done, Dex collapsed on top of him, looking down on his face while their bodies stuck together with sweat. Dex saw the softness in his eyes, his mouth, and sighed. This would be difficult. He didn’t want the kid to be attached, but he didn’t want to be a bastard either.
He kissed the kid on the forehead and said, “You were great, kid. It’s going to be fun working with you in the future.”
The kid blinked like he was waking up, and as Dex rolled off of him and put on his robe before they progressed to the shower scene, Dex saw him nod sharply.
“It’s been a pleasure,” he said. He sounded like a grown-up, and Dex was relieved. Maybe, if the shower scene went quick, he could finish editing in time to stop for something on the way home.
He called Tommy before he went, and Tommy came to help him select it because Tommy was working at PetSmart now and knew about these things. Tommy took him around PetSmart after his shift and told him what to pick out. He looked really tired.
They stood there looking at a terrarium full of turtles with a cart full of terrarium supplies, and Dex waited in the silence for him to say something.
“He’s still crying a lot,” he said after a moment.
Dex looked at him, not knowing what to say back. Two weeks before, Chase had broken down sobbing in the weight room for what had seemed to be no reason whatsoever. He hadn’t taken visitors for a few days after that, but lately, Dex thought he’d seen an improvement.
“He’s not doing that talk in his head thing as much,” Dex offered, and Tommy looked up and smiled a little, his dark eyes glinting under the fluorescent light.
“Yeah—that’s sort of cool. He told me to fuck off the other day and then looked just fucking baffled that those words came out of his mouth. He’s funny now that he’s not keeping all that shit in his head.”
Dex felt suddenly better about Chase, the lost boy. “Well, that’s something I don’t have to worry about with Kane. That boy never did have a thought he didn’t care to voice.” For a minute, he wanted to clap his hand over his mouth. Oh no! People don’t even know we’re rooming together! But Tommy wasn’t in a state to hear.
“Yeah, he’s a total spaz,” Tommy said, but he said it with a smile. “I took him clothes shopping two months ago, and you know where he ended up buying shit?”
“Walmart,” Dex said, because he saw those clothes every day.
“And you know the thing that pisses me off about that?” Tommy asked in admiration.
“He makes it look better than all your high-end mall shit?” Dex said, even though it wasn’t true—Tommy looked like a runway model, even if Chase was the only one to really notice that when he had his clothes on.
“Yeah.” Tommy shook his head. “Fucking pisses me off. Here. See these guys? Good color, they’re moving around good, they’re eating. Sort of like my turtle Oliver, but these guys are sliders, so they get a little bigger. One of ’em’ll fit into that outfit you got. You sure he’s got enough room to fit a setup this big? You said he lost a gecko—their setups are smaller if it was only one.”
Dex didn’t know why he didn’t tell Tommy then, not just about the roommate situation but about the fuckbuddy thing too. Maybe it was because he and Tommy had once had a one-and-done back before Tommy and Chase were set in blood and stone. Maybe it was because everybody had known about his thing with Scott, and Tommy had been undergoing a similar situation with Chase, and Dex just felt naked and exposed when Chase had done a nuclear detonation and Scott had proved to be so unworthy of all that pain.
Maybe it was because he was eight years older than Kane and he should maybe be treating this thing as not so serious, since God knew he’d managed to royally fuck up pretty much every other relationship he’d had since the real Dex.
But then, Scott had been his one relationship out of the closet too, and that had taken a cocaine-fueled implosion to kill dead, no grace necessary, thank you very much.
Maybe it was just because Tommy so obviously didn’t need someone else’s bullshit to contend with. Yeah, maybe it was mostly that. Tommy didn’t need Dex’s bullshit, so he’d keep that precious raw moment of Kane weeping on the floor over his dead lizard and some feeder mice tucked up against his own chest, and nobody else needed to have it.
So he didn’t tell Tommy that he knew there was enough room because he knew how big the empty spot on the floor was, and that it could hold two grown men sitting down, plus enough room to walk around, plus a gecko terrarium that he no longer needed, and so it would probably fit some more turtles. He just bought the setup, thanked Tommy for his time, and told him he’d be in to see Chase tomorrow morning, and maybe Tommy and Kane could go out for pizza the next night, after Tommy’s visit. Tommy brightened at that. When Chase got out of his mandatory psych time, he was going to live with Tommy, and Tommy could have him all to himself. But in the meantime, Tommy was lonely and scared, and he’d told Dex that he didn’t know if his lover was going to be coherent or catatonic from one day to the next. Company for dinner? That sounded fantastic.
Dex gave him a hug as they got into their own cars, and Tommy clung to him fiercely.
“Tommy?�
� Dex asked when they separated. “How come it never happened with us?”
It should have, he realized. But it hadn’t, in spite of the one-and-done when Tommy had been grieving for his mother and Chase had left him alone. It seemed to make sense—Tommy looked like the real Dex, even more than Scott, and that seemed to be his type.
Tommy squinted at the question, though, and pulled his lip up over those pointy canine teeth. When he spoke next, all of his South Boston was in his voice. “’Cause you like to plan and manage shit, Dexter, and I’m sort of plan-and-management resistant. All I need in my plan is one guy, and he’s enough of a planner for the both of us. You got people goin’ out for pizza, having barbecues and shit. I don’t think that far ahead.”
Dex laughed a little and thought that might be about right. “Well, I’ll plan a barbecue for you any time,” he said. He also thought that Tommy was a little too tough for him. Tough was probably a good thing for Chase but not so much for Dex. Dex liked a little softer, sort of like the softness of Kane’s bubble butt, which might have been one of the reasons he’d never felt the need to kiss Tommy the way he was starting to yearn to kiss Kane.
Tommy nodded. “Good. You get all excited about planning. ’Cause Chase is coming home in three weeks, and I want the whole world to greet him.” Tommy shook his head, his voice growing dark as the night sky. “I need that fucker to know that if he’s gonna try and take himself out again, he’s gonna leave a hole in the world. I gotta go now, he’s waiting for me.”
Dex swallowed, arrested by Tommy’s intensity for a moment, and Tommy hopped in his car and took off. That was some serious love, Dex thought. Maybe that’s why his lovers hadn’t worked out so far. Maybe before you got someone who would fight to have you, you had to be ready to kill or die for them first.
He drove back home, very carefully not asking himself what the fuck he thought he was doing with Kane.
Kane
KANE had ordered pizza, because otherwise he knew Dex would come home and cook or at least try to tell Kane what to cook, and he didn’t want to have to worry about food when all he wanted to do was touch Dex’s naked skin. It was set in his brain now, this one priority. The day had sucked.
He’d spent the morning on the phone with Lola, trying to get her to take the baby to the hospital because she had a low fever, which babies couldn’t do when they were recovering from leukemia, he knew that. Finally he’d shown up at the house, and Lola wouldn’t put the baby in the Navigator with him because he was a sex pervert (it was all so casual how she said that, he had to believe it was true), but he followed her to the hospital and made sure she took the baby in. He’d waved to Frances over Lola’s shoulder and the little girl had waved dispiritedly back, and he’d sat there in the parking lot of Kaiser, feeling helpless and miserable, until the asshole behind him honked his horn.
He went to work out then, and then went to visit Chase, and Chase had been… well, probably better than trying to off himself, but brother had been quiet. He was starting to lose muscle mass now that he wasn’t eating well or working out so much. Kane still thought he was pretty, and he liked blond hair and rangy builds (and he was starting to like Dex’s longer body even more), but Chase’s cheekbones were getting pointier and his chin too. It was weird, though: every time Kane looked at him, he thought of Frances. He wanted Chase to get strong again because Kane liked hanging out with him. He was a little funny, and very quiet, but mostly just good people. He was smart, and Kane respected smart because he had so little of it himself, but Chase was also nice to people who didn’t have that going for them. It felt good when someone smart was nice to Kane. Made him feel like he wasn’t quite so deficient. It was something he liked about Dex too.
But Chase couldn’t be nice to him when he was so sunk in his own head, like he was today. Chase had his own shit to sort.
By the time Dex got home, Kane was feeling… lost. Alone. Vulnerable. And Dex was late, which made him feel forgotten. So the last thing he was expecting, as he sat at the table and munched cold pizza and warm salad, was for the door to open and Dex to come staggering through with a big king-size terrarium balanced in his arms.
“Holy fuck!”
“Jesus, Kane, could you lend me a fucking hand?”
Kane dropped his pizza on the free paper plate and wiped his hands off on his jeans. Dex’s blond hair was windblown because it was cold and still windy outside, and his cheeks were pale and blotchy with the cold. His jacket was dotted with water, but his angel-blue eyes were all for the terrarium, which Kane helped him balance.
“What in the hell?”
“Here… through the hall….”
They’d done this before with the rest of the cages, so it was easy for Kane to lead walking backward while Dex issued orders for which way to turn. They got to the door of the guest room and walked in, and Dex huffed, “Jesus, Kane, is it good for them to be this warm?”
“Shit!” Kane and Dex set the terrarium down in the empty spot—Kane had put Tree-Squirt’s cage up in the garage, so there was plenty of room. Then he turned the oil heater down.
“God,” Dex panted, unzipping his jacket, “I forgot what a pain in the ass that was.”
“Yeah, it is. Why did we just do that again?” Kane was down on his knees, checking out the little guy in the terrarium. “A turtle? I already got turtles!”
“Yeah, but you got box turtles, and this guy’s a slider. By the way, did you know those box turtles are gonna grow a lot bigger than that box you got? I grabbed a book on these guys. If we’re not careful, they’ll break my fuckin’ house. We gotta be careful with ’em. In the summer, they need to go outside, and we’ll have to make wooden enclosures and maybe a big brick box or somethin’. They’re territorial too, so maybe two of ’em.”
Kane looked up at Dex, whose narrow pretty face was all matter of fact as he made all these earnest plans for turtles, and he had to blink really hard to make sure this was what he thought it was. “If we gotta be careful with ’em, how come we got another one?”
Dex’s full, pouty mouth compressed like he was biting back an answer. “Well, I didn’t want to get you a gecko because for one thing, they were out. I thought about getting you something with fur because, I dunno, a baby rabbit doesn’t sound like a bad deal, but that didn’t seem to be your deal, so I passed.”
“Yeah, Dex,” Kane said, still on his knees in front of what was apparently a gift. “But why get me anything at all?”
Dex’s eyes darted restlessly toward the door. “Because you were sad, and I don’t like you sad. Was there pizza? I could swear I smelled—”
Kane could move fast for a big guy, he knew it, so he knew he’d catch Dex by surprise when he launched himself up into his arms. Dex caught him, though, and in spite of the fact that he’d had a scene all day and that nobody felt like sex after they worked a scene, Dex turned his head into Kane’s kiss and kissed him back. Kane relaxed after that, and the kiss wasn’t aggressive or all lustful or anything. It was just… thank you. And it went on and on and on and on, and Dex returned every foray and met every stroke of Kane’s tongue.
Although Kane could feel his arousal building, his body beginning that tingle he’d started to associate only with kissing another man and especially with kissing Dex, he suddenly remembered enough about Dex’s day to pull away. Dex was tall and that was nice, because Kane could just rest his head on Dex’s shoulder nuzzle his neck. Dex smelled good. He brought his own soap to the shower scenes like he was remarking himself after wearing someone else’s skin smell.
“What’s wrong?” Dex asked quietly, and Kane shook his head.
“Nothing,” he said softly. “It’s just a real nice turtle, that’s all.”
“You like?”
“Yeah. I gotta come up with a name. Besides Oliver.”
Dex laughed, because he’d heard the story of Oliver the turtle from Tommy too. “I don’t know, Kane. Given what I read about the damned things, we should probably call him Bru
iser.”
Kane nuzzled his neck again, licking experimentally, pleased with himself. “Bruiser—or how about Tractor. Tractor the Turtle.”
There was more laughter, and Kane felt a kiss in his hair. He closed his eyes then and imagined… just imagined.
Dex’s stomach grumbling broke the warm silence, and Kane pulled back far enough to look at him. “You ain’t eaten yet?”
Dex shook his head. “Naw. Wanted to bring the turtle home too bad.”
Oh. Oh geez. “I ordered pizza for you. Let me dish it up. I, uh, started eating it before you got here.”
But Dex didn’t hear that part. “Pizza?” he said dreamily. “I haven’t eaten pizza in forever. I miss pizza.”
“Yeah, we ain’t ordered pizza in almost a month.” Since Chase scared them so badly, but Kane didn’t want to say it. “Why in so long?” Kane grabbed Dex’s hand and pulled him to the kitchen.
“’Cause Tommy.” Dex went to the sink to wash his hands, which was a real good idea after touching the turtles, so Kane joined him. “After he got sick or made himself sick or whatever, I started eating better to keep him company.”
Kane grunted and took the towel from him so he could dry off too. “Too much of that’ll make you nuts. Why work out if you’re gonna eat carrots?”
Dex grinned and sat down at the island where they often ate as opposed to the dining room table. The table seemed to exist specifically to hold Dex’s mail. “Because not all of us make it muscle! Some of us get spare tires around our middles instead of outrageously shaped man tits, Kane. But… mmlllmfff….” Dex grabbed a slice and dug in. “That doesn’t mean I’m not still a fan.”
“So how’s the new kid?” Kane asked, picking up his half-eaten piece and going for it.
“Hung like a fucking elephant,” Dex muttered, shivering. “God, I know I’m getting old, but seriously, I’m just as glad I don’t have to ride that thing.”
Kane looked at him assessingly. “Seriously? Some guys like ’em that big.”
