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Dex in Blue

Page 36

by Amy Lane


  Kane thought about it. “No, that’s fine. I got no problems with that. Can we dress up? You’d look pretty sharp in a suit, Dexter. I ain’t never banged a guy wearing a suit.” The thought sent a tingle through his groin that he thought maybe he’d explore when he wasn’t covered in bandages and doped up on painkillers. Bending Dex over in a suit would be sweet.

  “I’ll wear one if you wear one.”

  “Yeah, but we do that, we gotta wait more’n a week. I don’t wanna be wearin’ these bandages in that fancy picture everyone puts in their living room.”

  Now both corners of Dex’s sweet Kewpie bow mouth were tucked up. “Okay, so, maybe a month, then. We can do it right. Buy Frances a pretty dress. Have it catered. Do the big cake. Find someone who wants to do a ceremony in the living room or something. Whatever. God, you make shit complicated.”

  “Yeah, fine, you’re the one who suggested it. Why we doing it again?”

  Dex’s voice went funny places, and Kane made an effort to keep his eyes open so he could see that face—that long, almost girlishly pretty face, with the strong chin to keep it all boy. “You could have died,” Dex said softly, and before Kane could protest, he kept talking, and Kane let him. “You could have died, and maybe three people in the world would have known who you were to me. You could have died, and I would have had to fight my way in here to have a funeral. I never would have seen Frances again, and I would have spent my whole life wondering how she was. I would have had to give your house and your car to your worthless sister, who, by the way, is not ever fucking welcome in our home or your house again, in case you were fucking wondering. I don’t give a shit what people think about our porn, or our past, or two gay guys raising a kid—but they had better know that we’re together, Carlos. Forget the porn and the business degree and anything else I try to do with my life, if people know me, they’ve got to know who you are.”

  Aw, fuck. Kane hated being stoned. It made him all weepy, and that was no fun at all. “Man, if one of us goes first, it’s gotta be me. You’re the only one of us who could survive shit like that.”

  “You know, that could be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Dex told him, and it wasn’t Kane’s imagination, there were tears in his voice. “I think we need to have a ceremony because if you ever pull that shit again and I just drop dead, everyone’ll be able to put a reason to it. ‘Yeah, didja hear Dex got his heart ripped out of his body and died?’ ‘Sucks, dude! At least they’ll be rooming together in the cemetery.’”

  Kane squinted at him. “Great. So we have a commitment ceremony, both of us drop dead, and we’ll still be what we started out as. Roommates. Fucking awesome. At this point, I’m going the long way around to bang a guy in a suit.”

  Dex’s chest started shaking, which made Kane happy, because for once he was being funny on purpose. “Yeah, well, let’s hope there’s a heaven, because knowing you, you’d probably try to bang me in our coffins, you perverted bastard.”

  “Coffin. If we’re going out together, we’re sharing the same space.”

  Dex wiped under his eyes and took Kane’s hand to his lips, careful of the bandages. “Great. So we’re getting married. We’re getting custody of a kid. We’re gonna be roommates forever. Who knew quitting porn could change your life?”

  Kane looked at him, serious again. “You knew. You’re smart like that.”

  Dex shook his head and for once didn’t say anything. He just sat there, cradling Kane’s hand like a precious thing, shaking his head.

  Kane felt himself falling asleep and blinked at him. “You should go home,” he said muzzily. “You can’t really sleep here.”

  “No,” Dex said, settling back in the chair and closing his eyes. “Anything that makes us sleep apart is a bad thing.”

  Kane couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t even try.

  THREE months later Kane woke up early, which almost never happened. He thought maybe it was the sunshine streaming into his window in the morning, which was great because it meant that Tomas and Ms. Darcy would be out basking. Frances was all set up in their room now, with a real little girl’s bed, the Barbie kind, and she loved looking at the reptiles when they were awake. She also liked looking at the mice when they were busy. As of yet Kane hadn’t told her why they had all those little fancy mice, but there was a reason he kept the bunny in her room and the mice in his. So far the bunny didn’t seem to be able to spot the two reptiles in the room, which was good, because he was a tiny little brown dwarf bunny, and Kane didn’t think he’d be so cute if he worried himself bald.

  But they’d taken Frances to the zoo the day before, and she was tired out and, with any luck, would sleep for a long time, which was good, because Dex was warm and pliant with sleep, and Kane thought they might have some time to get busy. He liked having Frances and all, but he missed all the extra sex. It was okay. He figured he and Dex would still be pretty young when she went away for college—there’d be time.

  Dex was snugged up against Kane’s front the way he needed to be every morning, and Kane stroked the smooth skin of his stomach, liking the way Dex sighed when he stretched. Kane thrust his morning wood against Dex’s ass insistently and knew he had the guy’s attention when he grunted.

  “Yeah?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Absolutely. Here, roll over.”

  God, this guy really would do anything for him. Without protest, Dex rolled over onto his stomach and let Kane strip his boxers off. He pulled the lube from under the pillow, where they’d left it last night, and without a lot of fuss had Dex greased up and ready to go. Sliding into his body was sweet and easy, and Kane spent a lot of time kissing his shoulders while pushing into his satiny heat and pulling silkenly out. Dex started making nom-nom sounds, soft ones, not loud porny ones, and Kane realized that now that they were married and daddies and everything, the soft nom-nom sounds turned him on even more than the loud porny ones.

  Oh God… that sweet space at the back of Dex’s neck—it still smelled all sweaty from the night before, and Kane buried his nose into it and behind Dex’s ear and then grabbed his chin and kissed him over his shoulder, not caring about the morning breath. Everything. Just everything.

  Dex was flush against the mattress, and Kane could tell he was humping up against it, so he backed off and let Dex control the tempo, suspending himself above, still embedded in Dex’s body and enjoying the glide of his tight clench around Kane’s cock even more. Suddenly Dex scrabbled for the pillow and shoved it in his mouth, muffling his groan as he came, and all Kane needed was a hard thrust, and then another, and then he was biting that smooth, freckleless gold shoulder and shoving his hips forward to come inside him.

  Being naked inside him when that happened was a feeling that was not getting old.

  Kane collapsed on top of Dex and moaned in a good way, resting his nontender cheek on Dex’s back. He didn’t think about it much, but it still hurt, and the puckered scar was a surprise in the morning. On their wedding day, Dex had told him it made him look rakish. Kane had needed to look that shit up and was still all puffed up and proud about that word.

  The wedding had been… well, easy. They got an old Johnnies graduate who was a Unitarian minister and a librarian now, and he performed the ceremony—with his wife and kids in attendance too. Kane was still blinking over that. Apparently some of the guys in gay-for-pay really were straight. Who knew?

  Anyway, they’d had their friends in their home and had stood up, holding Frances in her sweet little dress with the red velveteen bodice and floaty white skirt, and pledged to be a family. Kane, who still hadn’t heard from his parents or his sister, had gotten a little teary then. He’d made his own family when he really hadn’t believed he could effectively take his own dump without help. But then, Dex helped him do shit better.

  Dex had looked so beautiful. Kane hadn’t really thought seeing his groom standing across from him would make his chest tight like he’d always imagined his bride there, but God. It was Dex
. How could you look at Dex and not think he was the most beautiful thing in the world?

  And now they were partners officially, but the best and funniest thing was that it felt like they had always been like this, and they would always be like this, and that the world would ebb and flow around them, and they would be fine.

  It made waking up and making love in the sunshine from their window almost like church.

  “You comfortable up there, Carlos?” Dex’s voice was sounding a bit smushed.

  “Yup.” Kane hmmed and thrust again, because his cock wasn’t quite soft.

  Dex groaned a little. “I could probably do this all day, but I got plans, remember?”

  Kane grunted and rolled off of him. “On the weekend?”

  Dex rolled over to his side and Kane busied himself tracing the lines of come on his softening erection. It was a lazy, stupid, dirty thing to do, and it made him insanely happy. It must have made Dex happy, because his erection wasn’t soft anymore, and he groaned comically into his pillow.

  “Oh my God, Carlos! Really?”

  Kane grinned. “Heh heh heh heh heh.”

  “Jesus—I got a meeting today, remember? It’s important.”

  Fuck. “Yeah, why are you seeing him again?”

  “Because we’re still trying to be friends.”

  Yeah, well, friends showed up to your wedding. Kane didn’t say that, though, because John’s wedding present had been 15 percent more of the company for a total of 40 percent. Now that Dex was in charge, the place was doing great—thriving, in fact. And Dex wanted to go public. Kane had no idea what that meant, because the shit he’d done when he’d been filming at Johnnies had been as public as anything he could imagine, but Dex seemed to think it would make them a lot of money. So that’s what the meeting with John was about today, and Kane was not particularly happy about it.

  “So why do we need all that money?” he asked, and it was the first time he’d asked that, but now, faced with Dex letting him put his mouth on that beauty of a boner or rolling out of bed, extra money was not a necessity.

  He was not prepared for Dex to get all serious, and suddenly he was on his side and close, so that their chests were only inches apart. “What?” Kane asked. “What are you thinking?”

  Dex flushed. “Okay, I got this plan, and you can’t laugh.”

  “Why would I laugh?” They laughed a lot, but always together.

  “Because the only plans I’ve ever made that didn’t include you went to shit.”

  Kane didn’t really see that, but Dex kept saying it, so he nodded. “So run it by me, and it’ll be all good.”

  “’Kay. So, you know how Tommy’s PetSmart is going out of business, and he’s going to have to transfer to one farther away in a couple of months?”

  Kane nodded. There were PetSmarts everywhere, but still, it was a hassle. “Yeah?”

  “I want to buy it.”

  “You want to what?” The thought of owning… just all those animals… it made Kane dizzy.

  “Well, see—I figure this. We get the company to go public, and we’ll make some money. I make some money from Johnnies and suddenly I can buy this other company, and Tommy can be the manager there, right?”

  “Yeah. Like the guy who runs it, like you run Johnnies. Gotcha.”

  Dex smiled a little like he was gaining confidence. “Right. So Tommy runs it, and we revamp the reptile department in a year, and guess who runs that?”

  Kane’s smile felt like it was going to spread and crack the room in two. “Oh my God, really?”

  “Don’t get too excited!” Dex said, looking panicked. “If I can’t do it, I’ll feel like shit!”

  “Don’t piss on my high, Dexter. Tell me more! You got all this shit planned—I want to hear!”

  “Well, we can put Kelsey in charge of sales, right?”

  And Kane nodded, because Kelsey kept working at Johnnies just because her friends were still working there, but she was due in a couple of months, and Kane was getting antsy to get her out of there. “Yeah, can we do that right away?”

  “As soon as she’s back from maternity leave, if this thing goes the way I want.” Dex looked concerned too. “And you know how Ethan’s been watching Frances, right?”

  “Yeah?” Because Ethan had been doing that for them, and they cut him a break on rent. He was great with her, and it gave him a chance to be loved for just being Ethan, which was something they figured he needed. Kane’s old house had four bedrooms—they set up two for Frances to sleep and play in, but it was a whole lot of room. Ethan and Kelsey had been rooming together pretty successfully, actually, and the idea of Ethan watching her baby too made Kelsey really happy. Of course, they all knew that only people who had been in the business with Ethan would be able to understand why he was such a good choice to leave around children. For Ethan, life was all about being hugged. When Frances hugged him at the end of the day, he looked completely at peace, and there wasn’t anything dirty or scary about that.

  He still worked the occasional video, but that thing with the kid in the pet store seemed to be progressing beyond friendship, and Kane could see that Ethan’s porn days might be over too—and Kane and Dex were pretty damned relieved.

  And the entire idea made him excited. “So, like, Ethan could watch the babies—you know he’s taking units, right?”

  Dex nodded. “Yeah, right! So he can be a day care person and start helping Frances with her numbers and letters and shit. So Chase and Tommy’ll have day care after their baby’s born too, and Ethan can make a business doing that, right?”

  Kane looked at him with big eyes. “Dexter, you… you got us all a way out! You buy that business and we can, like, give people a start after Johnnies, right? I mean, there wasn’t anything bad being there when it was time, but… you don’t realize it, but you’re trapped there for options if you’re not careful.” Kane hadn’t realized how hard it would be until he’d only wanted to be with Dex ever. “That’s… that’s a real fuckin’ good plan, there, Dex!”

  Dex smiled shyly, obviously pleased. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah! I mean, you’ll get your diploma and shit, but I’m thinkin’ you already fuckin’ graduated!”

  Dex’s shy smile popped his dimples, and his face went blotchy and red and so did his chest. Kane had a sudden realization of how much his good opinion mattered, and although he already knew it in a way, seeing it now, patterning Dex’s skin and making him smile like that shy angel, it gave Kane the same chills he’d had when they were speaking their vows. Suddenly he smothered Dex in a massive all-encompassing hug.

  “You done good,” he said, his throat thick with pride and sheer, balls-out joy.

  “I haven’t done it yet,” Dex warned in a small voice. “Remember, it’s taken me nearly ten years to get my damned degree.”

  “Yeah, but you became a whole other person in that time, and he’s awesome.”

  Dex started kissing his neck then, and his chest, his lips soft and reverent on Kane’s skin and they just might have had themselves another round before Dex went off to conquer the universe, but they heard Frances’s usual morning knock at the door.

  Suddenly they were all about sliding on the boxers and finding their T-shirts and their sleep shorts and making themselves respectable so they could go be the daddies. That part they’d just had—the part when they were in bed, skin to skin—that would always be waiting for them. It was just private, that was all.

  Kane got to the door first and opened it, and Frances was standing there in her pink floaty nightgown, holding her stuffed bunny, not the real one, and looking disgruntled.

  “I’m hungry,” she said, and Kane smiled because that appetite meant she was healthy, about as healthy as she could possibly be.

  “What do you want?” he asked, scooping her up and kissing her cheek. She kissed him back and rode in his arms like royalty rode one of those chair things held up by peasants.

  “Pancakes. Unca Dex makes the whipped cream.�
��

  “Yeah? Why not me?”

  “You made it yellow.”

  Oh yeah. Last time Kane had used the wrong beater attachments and had ended up with butter. It had tasted real good on toast, but it wasn’t whipped cream.

  “Yeah, okay. Uncle Dex has to go do business—”

  “After breakfast,” Dex said mildly, coming around to Kane’s other side and kissing Frances’s other cheek.

  She turned her head and kissed him too. “Cartoons?” she said hopefully, and Kane was going to say, “Yeah, why not?” but Dex said, “Want to help me make whipped cream and pancakes instead?”

  She lit up visibly and decided to do that, so Kane set the table and listened to Dex give her directions. He did a really good job of that, and she listened attentively—and then sat and ate an outstanding-sized spoonful of whipped cream while Dex made the pancake batter and cooked them some pancakes. Sometimes when she smiled, Kane saw Lola in her, the Lola who’d loved him and protected him and made him feel like he was a good kid in spite of being chubby and slow, and it was getting so that didn’t make him sad anymore. It was getting so he wanted to see that, because there was hope that maybe someday Lola could find her second chance too.

  But Kane wasn’t giving her Frances back—not without a fight or a compromise or something. Frances smiled with him, and he thought maybe he got to raise her as some sort of reward.

  Breakfast was finally served, and they sat down at the table, Frances on her little yellow chair and Dex and Kane on either side of her, and ate pancakes. Dex made them with blueberries inside and strawberries outside, and Kane thought he could probably eat a thousand of them, but he only got through about five when the phone rang. Dex got up to answer it, and suddenly his whole long body zapped up straight like he’d touched a wire.

  “Ohmygod, really? She did? Already? Isn’t she like, early? Two weeks, yeah, that’s not bad. Oh geez, really? The baby? It’s okay, right? That’s awesome! So when do you take the baby home? Two days? Yeah—yeah, we’ll be able to help. Wait—what’d you have?” Dex rolled his eyes and grimaced at Kane, who was sitting on the edge of his seat. It could only be Chase and Tommy, because Kelsey wasn’t due for another two months, and Tommy had been helping the mom with the Lamaze and everything.

 

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