Ethan in Gold

by Amy Lane

  “No, but I’m staying at Dex’s. I’ll probably get a little one for there. You want to help?”

  Jonah smiled. “Yeah. Can I see all Kane’s critters?”

  Ethan shrugged. “Sure, after they leave. I’d take you now, but Dex is like, having kittens. He’s trying to organize all our schedules and get us all caught up so we can all go on vacation until the day after New Year’s. It’s really sort of cool and awesome, you know? He does this every year so he can go visit his family and pretend to be straight, which I think really sucks for him, but he tries to make it nice for everyone else.”

  “Well, it’s not like you shoot videos every month, right?” Jonah asked.

  Ethan grimaced. He had, in fact, shot one two days earlier. “Ethan?” Jonah asked, and Ethan could tell that it sort of dawned on him that Ethan’s other life didn’t stop because Jonah wasn’t comfortable with it. It was like going to the bathroom. Just because you didn’t mention it on film didn’t mean it didn’t happen and get edited out.

  “Oh,” Jonah murmured, some of the shine going out of his eyes.

  “I don’t know which you’d rather me do,” Ethan said truthfully. “Tell you about it or pretend it doesn’t happen.”

  “Are you going home with whoever it was you fucked?” Jonah asked, his voice harsh.

  Ethan shook his head. “Chester? No. He got flown back to Milwaukee and his pregnant girlfriend. He’s got no interest in me.” In fact, the guy couldn’t keep it up with a guy unless he did Silver Sword and God knew what else before a shot. Ethan felt bad for him—he was a really nice guy, and he really needed the money, but he had zero interest in guys at all. He’d been lured in by John’s new endeavor making straight porn, and he’d stayed for the extra cash doing gay-for-pay. He looked good on camera, but Ethan had never had to work so hard to get a guy to keep his wood.

  Jonah sighed. “Then tell me, okay? If I can’t handle it, I shouldn’t be stringing you along.”

  Ethan suddenly needed his mouth, needed his kisses, and he brushed Jonah’s lips with his own softly, and again, and a little harder, each touch more insistent, each moment gentler. Jonah opened his mouth then, gasped, pulled him in. Jonah’s lips were soft, plush, and Ethan wanted to spend time just stroking with his tongue, but Jonah didn’t let him. He groaned, deepened the kiss, and Ethan thrust his tongue inside. Hot and wet, salty from the pizza, hoppy from the beer—Ethan could have lived in that kiss forever.

  Ethan didn’t have any gloves on, so his hands were chilly on the warm flesh of Jonah’s bottom when he thrust them under Jonah’s jeans. Jonah made a sexy little groan, and made sure to touch Ethan, sliding his palms under his jacket against his T-shirt, covering his chest, his stomach, his biceps, his shoulders, the back of his neck. Like he always did when they were kissing, Ethan started shivering, that ultimate physical demand for touch building up inside of him. He was afraid that this touch would be taken away, but Jonah was good to him, knew not to stop with the touch, knew to slide his hands under Ethan’s shirt and stroke his back, his ribs, his stomach.

  Ethan’s shudders got worse the deeper the kiss, and he held Jonah still and ground into him, frotting right there on the street in the kind of low-income neighborhood that probably wasn’t big on equality, but Jonah didn’t seem to give a shit, and Ethan was being touched. He’d longed for it, sitting next to Jonah, their thighs touching. He’d talked to Jonah’s dad, laughed at his jokes, smiled at Jonah’s mom, and the whole time, he’d been thinking touch, touch, touch, touch, touch, and now, omigod… omigod…. Jonah’s hands all over him, his skin stinging, rippling, gooseflesh forming under Jonah’s palms….

  He pulled back from the kiss and buried his face in the hollow under Jonah’s jaw, his cock so swollen in his jeans it hurt. He was shaking, shaking, blind, his nose buried in Jonah’s neck with that sweet smell like lavender and sweat, and Jonah’s skin under his hands, and….

  “I’m gonna… gonna….”

  His orgasm blew him up from the inside out, his cock aching and heaving in his pants, his arms convulsing, his breath panting so harshly in Jonah’s ear, he could hear his own sex-whimpers echoing back at him against Jonah’s skin. He was helpless, cocooned in the dark, dependent on this kid to shelter him, keep him from strange eyes, from the barbs and tiny wounds he wasn’t ready for as his body took over his mind and flew.

  He came to, gulping air, eyes burning against unwanted tears. Jonah was stroking his hair, whispering “sh, sh, sh” into his ear, and he had to stand up and grind his teeth until his jaw ached. If he had been filming a scene, he would have known this part—this was the first come, and his partner would move in, ramp him up further, fuck him harder, or bend over and take it more.

  But it wasn’t a scene, it was real life, and he wasn’t even in a friend’s bed. He was on the street and he had to take care of himself, and Jonah looked worried, and….

  He managed a cocky smile. It was wobbly on the edges, but it would still do. “Sorry,” he said, leaning back against the car. He couldn’t seem to fix his vision. Jonah’s luminous eyes, his swollen, kiss-bruised mouth, the space beyond his tousled hair…. Ethan’s gaze kept jumping from one thing to another, and he had to shut his eyes or he’d get dizzy. “Sorry. Too… didn’t mean to.”

  Jonah’s hands, gentle on his cheeks, stopped him. “’S okay,” he said, his voice thick. “I’m gonna be beating off for a week, but it’s okay.”

  Ethan swallowed and wiped under Jonah’s eyes with a thumb. The wet of salt tears chilled on his skin when he was done. “If it’s okay, what’s this?”

  Jonah shook his head and worried his lower lip with his teeth. Ethan ran his thumb over that too, and a little smile quirked at Jonah’s mouth as he licked the salt water off. “You’re not at Dex’s house yet?”

  “No. They’ve got three more days, and I’m gonna let them fuck like lemmings before they get on the plane. Why?”

  “’Cause,” Jonah said softly. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I’ll be at the hospital tomorrow after I work out,” he said, and Jonah shook his head like they both knew that wasn’t what he was talking about. “Jonah?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I… I don’t think it’s ever been like this,” he said, trying to put it into words without using the big scary one. “I’m not sure I’ve ever felt… I mean, I’m easy, but I don’t come in my pants just for anyone, right?”

  He could see Jonah’s throat bob when he swallowed. “That’s real fucking romantic, Ethan. I love you. I love you a lot. I want to sleep with you in the worst fucking way. But I’m thinking about someone else doing this for you when you’re naked, and it fucking wrecks me. I’m not even jealous—okay, I’m plenty jealous, but mostly….” Jonah framed Ethan’s face in his hands and kissed him softly on the mouth. “Mostly,” he breathed, “I’m just afraid for you. I don’t know if anyone in the world is gonna have your back the way I would. And until I get over that, I think this is as far as we’re gonna go.”

  “You mean… break up?” Ethan’s voice cracked, crumbled at the end, and Jonah shook his head vehemently.

  “No—God, no. You just started returning my texts. I just mean, you know, all the way.”

  Bubbles of hysteria broke from Ethan’s throat, and it sounded like laughter but worse. “Good,” he said, and he felt shaky all over, like he’d been sick for a week. “Good. Because, you know, if this is us with our clothes on, I think… I’m afraid. Clothes off. That’d be scary.”

  “It’s never scared you before,” Jonah muttered, one corner of his mouth quirked up, like he got the irony and was not appreciative.

  “I told you,” Ethan said, trying not to sulk, “you’re special.”

  “So are you,” Jonah told him and then kissed his mouth again, slow and personal, before he pulled away. “See you tomorrow.”

  Ethan nodded and got in his car, waiting until Jonah disappeared up the stairs to his apartment before turning the car on. And then he waited a f
ew minutes more, until his knees didn’t feel trembly, floaty, and uncooperative, and his chest didn’t hurt from uneven breaths.

  Step 3—digging holes

  JONAH walked up the stairs, not sure whether to laugh or to cry. God, Ethan was a good man. Not just “Hey, he’s a nice guy” but “I can count on this nice guy to be whatever and whoever I need, because he is that solid and he does follow through for the people he cares about!”

  He was the best.

  If only he wasn’t fucking other guys for money.

  The thought always slammed him out of nowhere, made him laugh half hysterically and then fight tears. He used to watch those movies where the guy was in love with the prostitute and she actually cared for him but kept working for the money, for the life, for the pride, or just because she didn’t trust the guy, and those movies used to piss him off. How could the guy love her when she cheated on him like that? How could she say she loved him when she slept with a zillion other people?

  But he knew now. What Ethan did in front of a camera wasn’t cheating. In fact, it had nothing to do with how Ethan felt about Jonah. And the parts of Ethan that Jonah could see when he wasn’t naked were almost as vulnerable and bare as Ethan’s body when he was. Jonah found himself resenting Ethan’s waxed-bare chest and underarms, his completely naked pubic area—God, he didn’t even have basic mammal hair to protect him.

  Just like those guys in the movies, Jonah realized that all the sex in the world couldn’t protect Ethan from the things that hurt him. Now the trick was getting Ethan to realize that.

  Jonah opened the door to the apartment, and his parents looked up from their spot cuddling on the couch and burst into giggles.

  “What?” Jonah asked, feeling blank and stupid.

  “So, uhm, how was your talk with Ethan?” his dad asked, manfully holding in a chuckle. He had two days’ worth of stubble on his cheeks, some of it flashing silver in the lamplight. He and Mom looked exhausted and close, like children clinging to each other on a life raft, and he found he couldn’t resent their laughter even if he seemed to be the object of it.

  Amelia was scaring the shit out of all of them.

  “It was….” Jonah swallowed and flushed. “Uhm. Why do you ask?”

  They giggled again, and his mom rested her head on his dad’s shoulder. “Go look in the mirror, sweetheart,” she said gently.

  He closed his eyes. “Oh God.”

  It was worse than he thought.

  His hair was tousled because Ethan had been running his hands through it, and his shirt was rucked up around his hips, and that was bad enough. But his lips were swollen and his neck was stubble burned, and there, right under his jaw, he had a big hickey where Ethan had suckled on his neck probably without even being aware of it.

  “Oh God,” he moaned from the tiny hallway bathroom. He tucked his shirt in and washed his face, and then he went back out to sit in front of the television with his parents.

  His mother met him in the hallway, her face still relaxed and smiling.

  “He’s a lovely boy,” she said quietly. “He laughed at your father’s jokes and ate pizza like he wasn’t counting every calorie, and he looks at you like you’re a superhero. We’re really happy for you.”

  Jonah wanted to let her be happy. He wanted it with every fiber in his being, but his smile must have been more strained than he thought.

  “What is it?”

  Jonah grimaced. “He’s… Mom. He… you know. He does stuff you wouldn’t approve of.”

  Laura’s smile faded. “Do I want to know?”

  Jonah shook his head. “I worry. He’s… vulnerable.”

  “So are you.”

  “Not like him.”

  She tucked her hands behind her at the small of her back and leaned against the wall like she was settling in for a chat. “Yeah? What’s the difference?”

  Jonah smiled, and suddenly he had a way to deflect her question and let her go to bed with some glow. God knew they could all use some happy glow when Amelia wasn’t in the house to help them along. “Because I know I’m loved,” he said softly, kissing her cheek. “And so does Amelia. He hasn’t had that in a while. I win.”

  His mom smiled and then surprised him with a hug, hard and warm, and a few tearful breaths near his ear. “You are loved,” she said softly, and then she wiped her face with the back of her hand. “No matter what else or how our family ends up—you need to know we love you, okay?”

  He knew what she was talking about. It had been the thing he didn’t want to tell Ethan, especially with all the time Ethan had been spending with Amelia over the last two weeks.

  “I know,” he said roughly. And then, before he could lose this moment, this rare moment of being in tune with his mom, he asked her. “Mom, if Amelia had a boyfriend, would, you know, this would be the time for him to visit?”

  They’d left Amelia that afternoon in an oxygen tent, her lungs laboring wetly, a morphine drip to dull the pain of not being able to breathe.

  “Oh God… she never told me!”

  “Yeah.” Well, she’d thought she was invincible, right? Other kids drove drunk; Amelia skipped gym. It didn’t seem to be equivalent, did it? “Well, you know. She told me.”

  His mom nodded and wiped her face with the back of her hand. “I think that would be good. Can you get hold of him?”

  “Yeah,” he said confidently, although he was really not that confident at all. “No worries. I’ll work on it tonight.”

  His mom kissed his cheek again, and he moved to his room, unwilling to face his father’s questions. Not tonight, when nearly everything was made of worry, and so very little of it was made of hope.

  But as he sat down to look up the e-mail for every teacher he knew his sister had ever had at Encina High School, he kept remembering Ethan’s total trust in his arms.

  Okay. Some things were made of hope. But not this thing. This thing he was doing, that was made of surrender.

  He did it anyway. At least when you surrendered, you had time to kiss the people you loved good-bye.

  HE SET his alarm for six the next morning, in case any of his e-mails bore fruit. By seven fifteen he was on his third cup of coffee, his fourth video of Ethan’s, and his second boner. He wasn’t sure why he was torturing himself watching Ethan’s videos while he kept hitting refresh on his e-mail, but it seemed to feed something inside of him. Maybe it was the way he watched Ethan’s body repeatedly leave Ethan vulnerable and helpless—and the way the guys in every scene seemed to take care of him, just like Tommy had hinted they would.

  Maybe it was Ethan’s fearless sexuality—and Jesus, it was stunning to watch, because he demanded, begged, vocalized, touched, absolutely everything that it pleased him to name, beg for, or stroke. No fear. It was something Jonah had admired his entire life.

  So those were two reasons Jonah kept watching Ethan on the remainder of his one-month subscription, but as he hit refresh for the fifty-eleventh time, he had to admit that they weren’t the main reason he was doing it.

  The main reason—and he wasn’t ashamed of this in the least—was that not once did Ethan hide his face or ask for shelter in any of the videos Jonah had seen.

  But when he was with Jonah, he did.

  Fine. Jonah wasn’t his one and only, and he wasn’t in Ethan’s bed yet—but it was perfectly clear he had a claim to Ethan’s soul that not even his closest friends at Johnnies had, and Jonah was proud and unashamed to exploit the holy hell out of that until Ethan was all the way his.

  So Jonah hit refresh on his e-mail and was about to switch back to his porn movie when a new letter caught his eye, and he paused it instead. (This film featured Ethan and Dex, and Jonah was a little embarrassed at how much he liked Dex. The way he kissed Ethan on camera was slow and hard and passionate and sexy, and if he hadn’t been kissing Jonah’s boyfriend, Jonah was pretty sure it would have made his toes curl. Jonah was taking notes.)

  The movie took a backseat to the reply he got fro
m Amelia’s English teacher, giving him the phone number of one Dylan Kripke and asking him for reassurance that Amelia would be all right.

  He thanked her for the information, but he didn’t reassure her. The doctors had stopped reassuring him and his parents a week ago.

  His cell phone was cold in his hands as he dialed the kid’s number. “Hello? Uhm, can I speak to Dylan Kripke, please?”

  The voice on the other end of the line was female, middle-aged, and brittle. “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “Yeah, uhm, this is Jonah Stevens. He’s got my sister in English class—”

  “The gay brother?”

  Oh. “Uhm, yeah.”

  “My son’s not gay,” she snapped.

  “And I’m not dating him!” Jonah snapped back, irritated. “But he is a friend of my sister’s!”

  “The sick one.” And a wealth of judgment in that.

  “Cystic fibrosis. She was born with that. May I speak with Dylan, please?”

  “I’m sorry, I really don’t think—Dylan!”

  “Give it a rest, Mom—I’m done! Is this about Amelia?”

  The boy talking into the phone sounded irritated—and thirsty for news. Jonah had been all ready to write him off too, based on his mother. He shouldn’t have. He had a sudden thought of Ethan and what growing up in that household must have been like, and suddenly he wanted to be Dylan Kripke’s friend so very badly.

  “Yeah,” he said, and his voice was soft enough that there were a whole lot of things he didn’t have to say.

  “Is she going to be all right?” Dylan’s voice fractured and Jonah couldn’t make himself answer that head-on.

  “Would you like to visit her?” he asked instead. “It’ll be… hard. She can barely talk. But, uhm, I think she’d like to see you.”

  “Yeah. When?”

  Oh hell. This kid was still in high school. “I was going at one o’clock—”

  “Can you pick me up at the school? I’ll take the cut—”

  “Dylan!” His mother’s voice crackled in the background, and then Dylan proved that he was strong enough for what Jonah had just asked him to do.