If Liam played hockey, then Austin didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to know the guy this way, didn’t want to know him as a person and not a porno god. But more than that, didn’t want to think about him stomping all over everything Austin thought he knew about the lines between gay and straight. The lines girly-boy Bobby and mild-mannered Christian confirmed every day, even if their critical lack of manliness made Austin hate them a little.
But Liam didn’t seem to have any respect for lines at all. Straight became gay once you signed his contract. Porn star and real person shared the same business card. Conversation drifted seamlessly from fairies to full-contact sports. Lines, what were those? Liam embodied the grey space between black and white, didn’t he? Bisexual, he called himself. Not straight or gay, but something in between, something shifting and dangerous and a little bit of both.
Bobby’s fey fashion sense that moved him so easily between girl and guy might have annoyed and confused Austin, but Liam’s inability to follow the rules and respect the lines between gay and straight scared the living shit out of him.
Because if those lines didn’t hold, then what about the lines he’d drawn around himself?
The first of June came and went without an eviction notice, and Austin should have been happy not to be homeless, but this latest development with Liam had pretty much destroyed any hope of that.
The fact was, he’d lived his whole life following a certain set of rules. Rules dictated by what he thought were the clear lines between good and bad, man and woman, straight and gay, and now thanks to Liam, they were meaningless. The boundaries hadn’t merely shifted; they’d crumbled.
Like playing on a rink without lines.
No, it was worse.
It was like playing on a rink without lines and with teammates who’d never heard of zones, let alone icing and offside rules. Chaos. Offensive players in the goal crease, goalies at centre ice, everybody skating around helter-skelter and shooting the puck as far as they could make it go in whatever direction they liked. Hell, since they’d got to that point, why not just do away with the teams entirely? And the rules?
No penalty box, and people pissing in the Stanley Cup. It was like the hockey version of Mad Max.
And now it was Austin’s life.
As much as he wanted to blame Liam and Bobby and Rear Entrance Video for this, though, there was no denying that the first step across those sacred lines had been Austin’s. He was the one who’d first brought home that copy of STRAIGHT SUB SETUP 4. He was the one who’d put it in his computer and watched it. Let it get under his skin. And then he was the one who’d brought home more porn the next night, and the night after that. He’d jerked off to it. He’d willingly looked at guys fucking and sucking each other. He’d started worshipping at the altar of porn god Master Puck. He’d fingered his own ass.
He’d made his bed—his filthy cum-stained bed—and now he had to lie in it.
And “lying in it” meant standing in the group showers after a long, miserable morning of field drills with his bitter teammates, but instead of thinking about how to win them over, all he was thinking about was a porno he’d watched a couple days ago where the water boy had been ordered by his coach to service his whole football team in the showers and “improve team morale.”
Well, Austin’s team was definitely lacking in morale, that was for sure. To his left, Ben Kibby purposely had his back turned on Austin, making a big show of not including him in his conversation with Tim. Not that Austin cared—he didn’t want to hear any more of Ben’s blabbering about that pickup artist shit he was so into. Guy was practically a walking infomercial at this point, and he didn’t even have a girlfriend or fuck buddy or one-night stand to prove it worked.
It wasn’t only Ben giving him the cold shoulder, though, or else Austin might not have minded so much. It was all of them, every single member of his fucking team; the same team he’d been so damn loyal to for the past three years.
Apparently, now that he’d gotten Drew booted and himself promoted, that loyalty counted for nothing. Never mind the fact that he’d been a contender for the alternate captain spot long before the whole thing with Drew—ever since their last alternate captain had graduated out of the program last year. Never mind the fact that Drew had really deserved to be kicked off the team. What he’d thought was his teammates giving him a hard time had turned into a full-blown mutiny.
On the field this morning, they’d harassed him every time he’d slowed down on his pyramid sprints or stopped for a drink of water or slipped up on the wet grass:
You can do better than that!
Aren’t you supposed to be good at this if you’re alternate captain?
Drew may have been a slacker, but at least he could keep up!
Pick it up, pussy!
And now it was the cold shoulder in the showers, and he couldn’t help but think that maybe it was time to find his own table at lunch, too. Somehow, Austin had gone from a valuable member of the team to its whipping boy, like he was some loser freshman again, still to be put through the paces of hazing.
He should have been upset about this, worried, trying to elbow in on the conversation with a joke or a jibe, maybe even cut down Calabresi and see if a bit of his own scapegoating could get him in the team’s good graces again, if only by shifting their focus a little.
Should have.
Instead, here he was soaping himself up and thinking that maybe Coach (played in his imagination by Master Puck) could storm into the shower and make Austin get on his knees in the name of team morale. Suck Calabresi’s dick, and Riley’s, and Tim’s, and Warren’s, and then the dicks of the alternates, too, their entire B-team, and then at the end of it, Drew would swagger in and exact his revenge on Austin’s ass. Just the thought of it had Austin biting back a groan.
Ben had his back turned, but Austin could still see Riley’s dick out of the corner of his eye. As big as the rest of him, big and fat hanging against his muscular thigh, and Austin knew if he got hard it’d be even bigger, way more than Austin could hope to get into his mouth without choking. But Master Puck—Coach, damn it—would grab Austin by the back of the head and shove him forward until he had a noseful of Riley’s blond bush and a chinful of balls.
Aaaaand now he had a boner.
Reflexes honed by experience kicking in, Austin made to hide himself, which was when he realized:
He wasn’t wearing pads and a uniform. He wasn’t sitting at a table. There was nothing to duck behind. He didn’t even have any pants on.
He was standing in a shower completely naked and his dick was rock hard and any one of them could see.
See and tear him to pieces.
Because so far, calling him fag was a baseless insult, a word they used on everybody and anybody, regardless of suspicion. If they saw him now, like this, they’d mean it.
And then what would they do to him?
Nothing fucking sexy, that was for sure.
Ben still had his back turned. Austin, still with suds all over him, yanked the taps off and grabbed his towel. Threw it around his waist, where it made a humiliating tent. He ran for a toilet stall.
No jeers followed him, no shouts of disgust. Nobody chased after him in order to pound his head against the nearest pointy metal locker or hard wall of tiles. He’d gotten away with it, somehow. Gone unnoticed, thanks only to the fact that his teammates were all pissed at him.
But he wouldn’t be so lucky again.
There was only one option left, and Austin knew it.
Denial and punishment hadn’t worked. Giving in to his urges and gorging on porn hadn’t worked.
But there was still one thing. One person, specifically, who made all this make sense. Who made Austin feel secure even as he was falling off the edge of the world and into a pit of gaping assholes. One man who seemed to see through Austin’s solid jock exterior to whatever the fuck was boiling and seething under the surface; who knew it enough to pick at it and exploit it. One man
who could combine pain and pleasure together in a way that left Austin feeling like the fucked-up scales inside him of strong and weak—and gay and straight, and masculine and feminine—were finally, finally balanced.
So Austin wanted to be fucked? Humiliated? Treated like some disgusting cock slut?
Liam could give him that. Give him it and then some. And then, when it was painful and humiliating and Liam had torn his ass open with that big pierced dick, when Liam had taken Austin’s fucked-up fantasies and made them real, made them really real, well, there was no fucking way Austin could be seduced by the fantasy ideal again. How could he jerk off to gay porn when his ass hurt too much to sit in front of the computer?
Okay, so it wasn’t a flawless plan. A desperate one, more like. But still: Austin had played enough games, been up against the boards enough times, to know that sometimes desperate plans paid off, and even if they didn’t, just the possibility of them working was better than giving up early.
But this desperate plan was going to work. Because after this, what else was there? Pray away the gay? Electroshock therapy? Go back to punishing himself, only this time upping the intensity even more? He’d wind up having to cut off his own balls if he kept in that direction.
And that was how Austin found himself thinking of an excuse to go to the grand reopening event at Rear Entrance Video—I’ll help out pro bono, okay? I wanna prove I’ve turned over a new leaf. I wanna be a part of the family again—and making a show of hanging up a rainbow of streamers while he anxiously watched the door, waiting for Liam. At least standing on a chair gave him a good vantage point over the store.
“Who put the meathead on decorations?” Max griped, standing below Austin with his hands on his hips. “I thought it was common knowledge that he was only good for keg stands and heavy lifting.”
Ha-ha.
Well, at least Max was teasing him instead of berating him. That was a step in the right direction.
“They’re just streamers,” Austin said.
Bobby, setting out trays of local organic catering, scoffed dramatically. “Jeez, Max, stereotyping much? There’s no reason a straight boy like Austin can’t get in touch with his inner interior decorator.”
“They’re just streamers,” Austin repeated, a little more insistently.
He was already feeling insecure enough about the whole sexuality/masculinity thing, especially after deciding to let Liam fuck his ass. Even though he shouldn’t be insecure, because wanting it up the ass in order to teach himself a lesson and knock the rose-coloured (or should that be pink?) glasses off his face wasn’t as gay as wanting it up the ass for its own sake . . . right?
Max rolled his eyes. “I’m not stereotyping, Nugget, I’m telling you straight up, those streamers look like shit.”
“Why don’t you come up here and do them, then?” Austin snapped, then grinned, baring teeth. “Oh wait, you can’t. Even standing on a chair you couldn’t reach, couldja?”
Christian let out a quickly stifled snort of laughter at that one.
It made Austin feel light, like he finally belonged again. He’d never really been in on all of his roommates’ high-minded jokes, but before the whole thing with Bobby, he’d at least been able to laugh with them. (Even when he got the feeling that sometimes they were laughing at him.)
Maybe this whole crazy plan would work, after all.
And after it did work?
Shit, he wasn’t going to think about that. No point in trying to get ahead of himself when he was still ten steps behind.
Fuck it. Fuck it all. Why not be fucking happy for a little while? He forced a grin onto his face and went back to twisting the purple streamers into gay little curls, taping them up in their happy little rainbows with the rest of the colours.
Max, meanwhile, wandered off to the table of snacks, sneaking samosas and cupcakes behind Bobby’s back. Until he snatched one too many and Bobby rounded on him, slapping the back of his hand like he’d been taking lessons from the nuns at Austin’s old school.
“Hey, straight kid, nice streamers!”
Austin rolled his eyes and gave an exaggerated shrug, one of the rolls of streamers unravelling out of his palm and onto the floor. “Thank you,” he gushed sarcastically. “Finally somebody appreciates me.” And then he turned. Startled so hard that another streamer shot out of his hand.
Liam. Duh. Of course it was Liam. Who else called him straight kid that way, half a term of endearment and half an insult?
Oh and, y’know, the fact that he was the guest of honour at this shindig and the only reason Austin was here in the first place.
Liam stooped to pick up the fallen rolls of streamers and moved to return them to Austin’s hand. Shit, up close and upright the guy was a fucking eyeful: full on Master Puck today with those wide leather bracers around his powerful forearms and that leather harness around his chest. Not to mention the soft, well-worn denim jeans, riding low on his hips. Or those spit-shined boots.
Fuck. There went Austin’s boner. “Thanks,” he mumbled, taking the streamers.
“You do know you’ve got the colours in the wrong order, though, right?”
“Huh?” Austin stared dumbfounded at the ceiling, trying to focus on the hanging rows of streamers but somehow only seeing Liam’s bulge in those tight jeans. Was he really going to take that dick in his mouth? His ass?
Yes.
God yes.
“Rainbows. They go in a specific order. Don’t tell me you never learned ROY-G-BIV in straight boy school.”
“Who the hell is Roy G. Biv? Is he one of your straight subs you set up?”
Liam’s eyebrows shot up. “You watch my stuff?”
Yes. “No!” Austin coughed. Liam’s eyebrows rose more. “This dude comes in and rents it. So I see it then. Don’t take it personally, though, dude. I don’t watch any of this shit.”
“Hey!” Beverly protested from across the store.
“Sorry!” Austin called back sheepishly.
Shit, he hadn’t really considered the logistics of this whole thing. How was he going to proposition Liam when his roommates/coworkers were listening in on every word he said? Shit, shit, shit. He quickly turned back to his streamers, taping up a red strand and pointedly not looking at Liam.
“God damn it, what are you doing now, straight kid?” Liam exclaimed. “Oh my God. No. Stopstopstop before you pull something.” And before Austin could react, he leapt onto Austin’s chair with him, crushing their bodies together. He snatched the streamers from Austin’s hands, skin brushing skin, and twisted them around. “See?” he said, and was that just Austin’s imagination, or did he sound a little bit breathy? “Red first. Then orange.” He taped them both to the ceiling. “ROY-G-BIV. What comes next, straight kid?”
“Uhh,” Austin said, momentarily caught with too little blood in his head to think about coloured streamers.
“C’mon, kid. What colour starts with Y?”
“Y- . . . Y- . . .” Austin stuttered, twisting, trying to find some position where Liam’s huge chest wasn’t pressed against his own. The chair wobbled.
“Good job, good job, yes, that’s the Y sound.”
“I watched Sesame Street,” Austin bragged, as if it were an obscure European documentary series.
Liam snorted so hard he nearly fell off the chair.
Which meant that to stop himself, he looped his arm around Austin’s waist.
“Full of surprises, aren’t you, buddy?” he said with a laugh, and gave Austin a squeeze before pulling abruptly, awkwardly away. “Yellow. Yellow next. And then?”
“G! Green!” Austin shouted like an excited schoolkid.
Wow. Embarrassing.
And kinda sexy?
“Okay, okay,” he said, focusing on the task at hand and not the fact that though he was a pretty big guy, Liam still dwarfed him. “I get it, now. B’s blue, obviously. What’s I-V?”
Liam handed him the purple streamer. “Indigo, violet. That’s gay for purple
.”
“Oh. Right.” Austin hung the purple.
“Well, you seem to have a handle on things here,” Liam said with a cough. He jumped down from the chair and patted Austin’s butt awkwardly, like he’d do with a teammate, but at least a thousand times more gay and ten thousand times more brain-frying for Austin.
At least Austin’s boner didn’t show in these jeans. Small mercies.
And why was Bobby watching Austin so verrry carefully from the table where he was setting out glossy photos of Liam-as-Master-Puck and their selection of Mischievous Pictures DVDs?
God, this was going to be a long, hard day.
Austin had clearly underestimated Master Puck’s popularity. When they opened the doors to the store at 11 a.m., there was already a few guys waiting on the sidewalk, looking way too cheerful for a bunch of dudes standing out in the rain waiting to meet a fucking porn actor.
And at the front of the line was Zeke, the guy who’d been so proud of his straight hookups, the guy who’d first introduced Austin to the concept of straight guys ever doing anything gay. Thanks for that, Zeke.
“Oh my God!” Zeke squealed, and rushed through the door with his arms extended like he was greeting a lover at the airport. “It’s really you!”
Liam, from his seat behind the table, flashed Zeke a stiff, stern smile. In character now? Austin gulped and ducked his head, determinedly trying to refocus his attentions on greeting their, uh, exuberant guests. These were the dedicated fans, he had to guess, so maybe the people who trickled in later this afternoon wouldn’t be quite so . . .
No, you know what, no. It would be a dick move to be standing here salivating over the thought of having Master Puck’s dick shoved up against the inside of his cheek, while simultaneously criticizing Zeke and the other grand reopening early birds for acting too limp wristed about their gayness. Drawing lines between what was acceptable and what was “too faggy” had been what had gotten him in trouble in the first place.
And he really didn’t have a foot to stand on when it came to those judgment calls anymore.
Straight Shooter (Rear Entrance Video, #3) Page 9
