Dex in Blue

by Amy Lane

  Kane flushed. “Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, pleased that Tommy was in a good enough mood to give him shit. “You take one trip to frickin’ Cabo San Lucas….” Kane had never traveled before, and for some reason jet lag had hit him hard. So the rest of the guys had been out sightseeing or getting busy between getting busy (it had been a fuckfest from the beginning to the frickin’ end—Kane’s dick had been rubbed raw by the time they left, and he hadn’t needed to whack off for a week) or even finding different ways to work out, but Kane? Kane had been sleeping. He was lucky Dex had woken him up when he fell asleep in front of the pool the first day, or he would have been fried like a potato in oil.

  Tommy laughed a little and clapped him on the arm, and Kane was comforted some more. Still Tommy. Tommy had always been a good lay but really intense in private. Kane loved him, but maybe it was good that someone like Dex, who was easygoing and got along with about everyone, was his best friend.

  “Looks like Donnie’s going to go see how he’s doing,” Tommy said. Kane heard the restraint in his deep breath.

  “Donnie’s good people,” Kane contributed. Tommy looked at him—really looked at him—again.

  “Donnie is,” Tommy conceded. It sounded like it was hard. “I’m not really the jealous psycho I sound like. I….” Tommy grunted. “It’s complicated, Kane. I know you like Donnie—you just keep liking him, okay? I think we’re gonna be friends, the whole bunch of us. Me and Chase, we’ll be the daddies. Donnie and Dex’ll be the uncles. It’ll be good.”

  Kane’s heart made a painful misstep, and he grunted. Frances’s little face—the eyebrows growing back, the blonde/brown stubble getting thicker on her bald head—swam in front of his vision. He didn’t get to be the uncle to that baby no more. Lola would barely let him in the house to fix shit when she needed it, and he was still making the payments.

  “Can I be the uncle too?” he asked, and if it wasn’t for Frances’s big brown eyes, thickly lined with dark lashes now that they’d grown back, he would have been really embarrassed by how much need was in his voice.

  Tommy’s smile was absurdly gentle for how fierce Tommy could be, and he looped a companionable arm around Kane’s shoulders. “Yeah, Kane. No worries. You can be the uncle too.”

  Dex came up that moment on Tommy’s other side. “Who’s gonna be an uncle?” he asked, and then Tommy told him, and Kane spent a few smattering heartbeats watching the play of emotions on Dex’s face.

  “Is he sure about this?” Dex asked after a moment, and Tommy shook his head.

  “Not yet. Not yet. But he’s gonna be.” Tommy had a deceptively square jaw, and it jutted out now as he watched Donnie come back from the hallway, glare at his mother, and say something sharp to her. A girl who looked like Donnie’s sister was smiling at Donnie in that quirky way that said she thought he could probably do no wrong, and Kane wondered if Lola had ever looked at him that way. If she had, she didn’t now, he thought and turned his attention back to Tommy, who was telling Dex in a few simple, specific words how very sure he was that Chase would raise his own child.

  Dex looked at Kane, expecting eye contact, and Kane gave it with a nod, wondering if Dex was thinking about Kelsey but not sure. He was suddenly tired. He knew why maybe Chase might want to go to sleep sometimes and not wake up. The world was confusing and hard when everybody could think faster than you, feel faster than you, so when he turned around and saw Ethan sitting alone on the corner of the couch, Kane ambled over to sit next to him.

  Just that quickly, Ethan had his arm over Kane’s shoulders and was resting his chin on Kane’s chest.

  “Put your arm around me, man, I need a hug.”

  Kane did what he asked, aware that Ethan was one of those people who needed to be petted constantly, like a cat. When they were shooting a scene, it was great. Any little bit of attention made Ethan’s cock swing north, and he made some of the greatest noises. Ethan made work so fucking easy, it was almost not fucking—it was almost like eating pudding instead, except that sounded really gross when you were talking about coming and sex. But doing a scene with Ethan was effortless—it didn’t even require any teeth or chewing, just slid down nice and smooth and you got a whole lot of bang for your buck.

  Off the clock, Ethan needed stroking too, just not the sexy kind. Kane loved the guy, but he was glad he hadn’t ended up rooming with him, even though Ethan had been his second choice. If he and Ethan had ended up sleeping together, Kane would have had to touch him constantly, and if Kane liked being body humped that much, he would have gotten cats instead of snakes.

  But now it was perfect. It was like borrowing a friend’s cat (Kane had seen Chase and Tommy’s kitten, Paulie, haul ass for the back room when he walked in, or he would have been playing with it now), and that was always fun. Ethan laid on him and Kane petted him, and Ethan snuggled.

  “Heya, big guy,” Kane said, relieved. Ethan was like him—uncomplicated—and Kane was looking forward to some of that. “How’re they hangin’?”

  “So low they’re getting squashed flat,” Ethan said glumly and then snuggled in a little deeper.

  “Oh Jesus, Ethan—what the fuck?” Kane’s balls shriveled up and hugged his groin in sympathy.

  Ethan burrowed against his chest some more. “Sorry. Horrible thing to say about the guys. It’s just that….” Ethan let out a whimper just like a puppy’s sound.

  Kane wanted to cry. God. He wanted his people to be happy.

  “What’s wrong?” Kane rubbed a solid palm along Ethan’s huge bicep, and Ethan sighed.

  “Does your family know about the porn?” he asked, and Kane got a nasty clenching in his gut. God, not this.

  “Bad?” he asked, not wanting to talk about Lola and Frances and the house that wasn’t his house anymore and how happy he was at Dex’s. He really didn’t want to talk about how happy he was in Dex’s house. It felt like he would jinx it if he brought that up. It was funny—he’d brought the guys over to Dex’s house, and nobody had even questioned how he’d gotten in. But as everyone was leaving, Tommy had turned to him and said, “Thank Dex for letting us use his place, okay? You gonna stay here and give him back his key?”

  Kane’s stomach had dropped a little, and he realized that somehow, he and Dex had become a secret. “Yeah, that was the plan.” He hadn’t even tried to keep a secret from his sister—he sucked at it. But just that suddenly, that moment, every night of hauling Dex’s body next to his, of relaxing his big bulky muscle against Dex’s leanness, became sacred, something he didn’t want to talk about to anyone, especially Dex’s acerbic best friend.

  But now, confronted with Ethan’s open-skinned misery, he could understand how Ethan might want to say something.

  Ethan shuddered and Kane hugged him harder. “How bad?” Kane asked again.

  “I… it’s going to be a lonely holiday,” Ethan said quietly, and Kane dropped a kiss on his hair, because that’s what Dex had done for him.

  “We’ll find someone,” Kane said. “Don’t worry. I mean, yeah, I know we all fuck for money, but that doesn’t make us bad people. We’ll find someone. I promise.”

  Ethan sat up a little and just rested his head on Kane’s shoulder. “Thanks,” he said softly, and Kane sat there in the corner, hugging his friend, until the party started to break up and Dex quietly came and got him to take him home.

  “You guys ride together?” Ethan asked, and Kane won the fight not to take Dex’s hand and say, We are together! He didn’t think Dex would like that, at least not without a conversation, but hadn’t Kane just proved he sucked at those?

  “Yeah,” Dex said. “See you tomorrow!”

  “You’ll see all of me tomorrow.” Ethan leered, Dex winked, and Kane wondered how come he got to see Ethan fall apart when Dex would have handled it so much better.

  They got outside and the air was damp and cold and foggy, like it could get in late November.

  “Nice place,” Kane said, pulling on the coat Dex had been holding for hi
m. It was a leather jacket, business-suit cut, with a soft fleece lining. He didn’t spend a lot on clothes, but he and Dex had been at the mall because they’d needed to go to Sears for sheets (Dex’s were wearing out from being washed so much), and Dex had seen it in a store and shoved Kane in there after it.

  “But what am I going to do for a hat?” Kane had complained. That’s why he liked his old school lettermen jacket—it had a really nice lined hood on it, and he hated it when his ears got cold.

  “I’ll get you a fuckin’ hat—hell, I’ll get my mother to knit you one.”

  That had stopped Kane. He’d written his parents several times in the last year, but Lola must have told them about the porn, because they hadn’t answered back. She told him that they were fine, so he figured it must only be him.

  “Would she really?” he asked plaintively, and Dex had paused in the act of smoothing the coat over his shoulders.

  “Yeah,” Dex said. Then he added honestly, “As long as she doesn’t know about you and me or Johnnies, yeah. I mean, I’ve never asked her before, but do you want me to?”

  Kane looked at the jacket and decided he liked it. “We’ll buy a hat on the way out,” he said quietly. “I don’t want your moms making me anything that would be a lie.”

  Dex nodded and avoided his eyes, and Kane felt bad. But that night, when they got home, Dex caught him in the hallway and framed his face with both hands, then kissed him slowly, sweetly, with such terrible softness and tenderness that Kane almost embarrassed himself by crying before he came. All of that fucking—and he’d be the first to admit he’d done his share and the neighbor’s share and their kids’ share and even people they hadn’t met’s share—and he didn’t think he’d ever felt that good when he was coming.

  “Yeah,” Dex said now, pulling him away from his spiffy new warm coat and the purple Kings stocking cap he’d put over his ears. “It is a nice place. They’re going to have Thanksgiving there, if you want to go.”

  Kane brightened. “Not so many people?” he asked. Dex smiled at him, a quiet, real smile that told Kane he hadn’t been able to hide his discomfort at all the people—Chase’s baseball team, Donnie’s family—that he hadn’t known.

  “No. Mostly Johnnies, I think, maybe Chase’s friend.”

  “Good,” Kane said, putting his hands in his pockets. The temperature was in the low forties, and they’d parked around the block because there’d been so many cars. Dex had leather gloves on, and Kane thought wistfully that he planned to get some every year, and every year he forgot. “That way we can bring Ethan. His folks told him not to come this year.”

  Dex grunted. “Fuck. How’d they find out about the porn?”

  Kane shrugged. “I didn’t think to ask. He just needed… you know. He needed pets. You’re the one who gets into why and shit. I’m just muscle.”

  Dex’s hand felt comfortable around his bicep as he squeezed. “Yeah you are. Hey—Chase is back home, and Tommy’s actually working at the pet store. You want to go work out with Chase and me tomorrow?”

  Kane grinned. He liked routine, and having Chase in the hospital had seriously screwed his up. “Yeah! I like working out with you, man. I can’t remember the last time I had fun at the gym!”

  Dex hadn’t let go of his arm, and when he squeezed again, Kane patted his hand so he’d know he could leave it there, that Kane didn’t mind. “Yeah—it is fun with people, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It’s fun with you.”

  “How bad do you want sex when we get back?”

  Kane smiled, completely content. “So frickin’ bad. I hope you stocked up on lube and rubbers, man. I’m gonna nail you into the fuckin’ mattress.”

  Dex made a sound suspiciously like a purr. “Fantastic. Can’t wait.”

  And it was awesome. But at the end, when Dex was a puddle of goo (not literally—Kane had gone and gotten the cloth and cleaned him up this time) and Kane had dragged him against his sweating body in the cooling dark, Kane stopped fighting the urge to smother Dex and just draped his body over Dex’s shoulders, practically smashing him into the mattress.

  “Kane, you psycho, I can’t breathe!”

  “Yeah,” Kane admitted. “I know. I’m sorry. I just need to.”

  Dex’s chest fought up and down, and then again. “Yeah, okay. Just resuscitate me when you decide to climb off, ’kay?”

  Kane laughed a little, but he stayed there for a few more of Dex’s hard-fought breaths. When he finally rolled off, he clenched Dex to his body harder than usual, and Dex grunted.

  “Something I should know about?”

  “I got no words,” Kane apologized. “When I get words, I’ll let you know.”

  It was just that there was something missing, in a way. When he held onto Dex, it was all perfect—best part of his day perfect, best part of his life perfect. Just… just sunny spring day perfect, with soft grass where you could see worms and spiders under your feet perfect, and even lizards sunning themselves on granite boulders. Perfect. But when they weren’t touching, there was something… empty. Kane couldn’t figure out what it was. Was it because Dex was a guy?

  Kane pulled him tighter, felt his cock come alive again just at the brush of Dex’s ass through his boxers, and thought that couldn’t be it. It wasn’t the guy/girl thing, was it? They were happy, right? What was the problem? Why the need? The craving? The fear that he’d wake up one day and Dex wouldn’t be there?

  Kane had no words. He just didn’t. But Thanksgiving—yeah. Thanksgiving blew it all out of the fucking water. At Thanksgiving he found his words, and he was lucky he found them in time, because it was almost Fucked-ups-giving, because Kane didn’t have no words.

  THEY made pies that morning, and Kane enjoyed the hell out of that. Dex looked up two recipes, and Kane went out and shopped the day before. On Thanksgiving Day, while Dex was in the shower, Kane started reading the directions. In the past he hadn’t been great at that, the directions part, but he thought he could handle it now. By the time Dex got out, Kane was pouring the pumpkin/cream cheese mix into the graham cracker crust, and Dex was damned impressed.

  “God, Kane, it looks awesome! Here, you shower and I’ll make the next one!”

  Kane preened under his praise and then remembered to take off the apron, which he’d worn over his boxer shorts as he’d worked, and put it over Dex’s dressy shirt and slacks.

  “You don’t want to get that shit dirty,” he said seriously. “You look real good.”

  And now Dex was preening under his praise, and Kane was so warm in his chest he had to grab Dex behind the head and pull him in for a kiss. He pulled back and saw that Dex’s cheeks—which were really, really pale pink, even in the summer, when he was pale gold almost everywhere else—were blotchy, like he wasn’t just turned on, he was pleased. Kane’s warmth spilled over to his face and he pulled away, thinking if he didn’t, they’d end up in bed again, and they had shit to do.

  He felt bumbling and awkward as he stepped back, and then he noticed that Dex was biting his lower lip like an adolescent girl and looking purposefully at the recipe like that was the only thing on Earth. For a minute Kane was tempted to make a dirty joke or something, but something—the angle of Dex’s head, something—made him think that suddenly they were beyond dirty jokes, and he just kept going to the shower like nothing had happened.

  When he got out, though, Dex was done with the pie, but he was still standing in the kitchen with a little bowl of chocolate pie filling and some graham crackers.

  “There was some extra,” he said, smiling so wide his dimples popped. “You want to help me eat it?”

  “Oh man, that’s awesome!”

  Together, they leaned over the counter and dipped the graham crackers in the filling, eating very carefully to not get the pie remains on their nice shirts. Dex had taken Kane shopping again, and instead of a Henley and jeans, which is what he was pretty sure he would be wearing at this moment, he was wearing something sort of silky, in black,
with little geometric patterns on it. He was wearing jeans too, but they were black, and they were a little more fitted than he was used to, with white stitching on the inseams. He had to admit that with as much time as he spent making his hair look good, the new clothes made sense, but right now, being very careful not to get them dirty, he was a little embarrassed. Usually getting his clothes dirty wasn’t a problem.

  “So—mmm… God, this is good, Dex. I hope my pie tastes this good.”

  Dex giggled and wiped his finger on the corner of Kane’s mouth, then licked off the chocolate that had been there. “I’ve tasted your pie, Kane. Trust me, it’s great.”

  Kane was about to protest that his pie was in the refrigerator, perfectly unmolested, when he had a sudden vision from the night before, in the shower, when Dex had surprised him by going down behind him and licking him from balls to the small of his back, paying special attention to Kane’s asshole. Kane could still feel Dex’s tongue penetrating him, licking all over, being dominant and hungry, and just like that, he was blushing over pie and getting a hard-on and a double entendre.

  “Yeah,” he muttered, “well, I didn’t mean like that. But that’s fine too. You should taste my pie more often, I liked it.”

  Dex turned his head sideways a little, looking at Kane from the corner of his eye. “You don’t usually let me… I don’t know. Taste anything. It’s usually the Kane the Dominator show.”

  Oh God. Would he ever stop blushing? “It’s what… I don’t know. I’m good at it. On set. It’s my boy-sex mode.”

  Something… weird happened then. Something cold, and alien, and sad. Dex’s face closed down, and the space between them, which had been intimate and close the moment before, was now chilly and vast. Kane straightened, feeling that horrible inarticulate fear again, that thing that had made him practically crush Dex to the bed a week ago. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but suddenly he had Dex’s shirt in his fist and Dex back against the refrigerator and Dex’s mouth open under his. Dex was responding, but his back and arms were tense, and Kane wasn’t satisfied with that.