Tough Love

by Heidi Cullinan

  No, now Chenco felt self-conscious. “But I don’t need you to do anything for me. I haven’t asked for anything.”

  “Yes, I know. I told them this, said we should let you know we wanted to help, but they said not to rush you.” Sam tipped his head to the side. “Am I rushing you?”

  Chenco had no idea what to say to this. “I don’t need anyone to help me.”

  Sam’s expression hinted he disagreed, but instead of contradicting Chenco, he said, “They need to help you, hon. I want to help too, but the others? Mitch and Randy and Steve? They need it, even if you don’t.”

  They sat together, awkward and uncomfortable while somewhere in the distance Mitch, Randy, and Steve shot at thugs. Insane didn’t begin to describe the moment.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Chenco said at last. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  Sam shrugged. “I’m not listening for anything in particular. I only think they’re wrong. You need to be prompted. I think Randy feels guilty about upsetting you when he figured out how you were connected to Mitch, Steve is doing backflips to avoid his attraction to you, and Mitch is so scared of losing his last real hope at family he’s paralyzed himself.”

  “You think Steve is attracted to me?”

  Instead of answering, Sam grabbed two glasses, a bottle of high-end mescal, a salt shaker, and a bowl of key limes. “I’m going to drink,” he announced as he sat at the kitchen island and began cutting the limes into wedges. “I’m going to get drunk, yell at my husband and Randy, and then we’re going to have wild monkey sex. You can get drunk with me, and I think it would be great if you helped me yell, but you have to find your own monkey sex. I’ll do all kinds of kinky, but I’m drawing the line at incest.”

  Chenco sat across from Sam, poured a liberal amount of alcohol into his glass, and downed it.

  “I have the lime and the salt,” Sam pointed out, but Chenco only flipped him off and took a second hit.

  By the third shot, Chenco’s tongue came loose. “He can’t be into me.” He watched the room slosh pleasantly while Sam sucked the juice out of a key lime. “He never does anything. He doesn’t even give me heavy glances.”

  “Not when you’re looking.” Sam tossed the lime into a bowl and refilled his glass. “I don’t know his whole story, but it’s twisted and weird. Steve kind of makes me tired. I mean, a big, bad top is hot sometimes, but he never fucking stands down.” He bit his lip, looking apologetic. “I mean, it’s okay if you like it, but it’s not my thing.”

  “Lincoln says he’s Mr. Benson.”

  Sam clapped a hand to his mouth. “Oh my God, he is. I never noticed it, but you’re totally right.”

  “Who the fuck is Mr. Benson?”

  Sam led Chenco down the hall. In Steve’s office, Sam went right to a bookshelf and emerged with a worn black paperback. “This is Mr. Benson. Go ahead. If Gordy has to go to the hospital, we’ll be waiting awhile.”

  “You want me to read it right now?”

  Sam shrugged and sank into a leather armchair. “Whatever. I’m a little drunk. I’m kind of open. And horny.” He touched his fingers absently to his lips. “Numb too.”

  Chenco clutched the novel as if he had a bomb in his hands and he didn’t want to set it off. “Lincoln said I wouldn’t like this book.”

  “Well, read it and find out. You’ll know pretty quickly.”

  “Do you like this book?”

  Sam’s look was inscrutable. “Parts of it. Sometimes. I don’t like the pain stuff at all. I don’t do piss play, and I wouldn’t lick anyone’s boots, but—”

  “Lick boots?”

  Sam motioned at the book, then another empty chair. “Sit. Read. I’ll go get us more to drink.”

  Chenco sat. He read.

  He had no idea what to think of the damn book.

  About twenty pages in, he almost tossed it across the room, but he accepted a shot of mescal from Sam instead. “This is what Steve wants to do to me?”

  Sam shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “But you said this guy was Steve.”

  Now Sam looked annoyed. “The way he acts, not what he wants. Though he is a sadist.”

  So this was Steve. Chenco read on, skimming sometimes, but mostly getting more and more upset. “If anyone was this cruel to me, this humiliating, I’d kick them in the face.”

  He’d expected Sam to commiserate, but to his surprise, Sam blushed. “The humiliation part is good. Maybe not as strong as Benson dishes out, but…” He took on a sly look. “Yeah. Some of it’s okay.”

  “You’d let someone use you as a toilet?”

  “It’s a fucking book, Chenco. No, I don’t want it so extreme. But to be used, let go so deeply? Yeah, it’s okay.” He waved a dismissive hand. “All those novels from the seventies and early eighties are full of piss and shit and crazy nastiness. Maybe it’s all the repression and anger. Or maybe it’s a different world. I mean, none of it could pretend to happen now. AIDS is only one thing to consider. Do you know how many STDs those guys must have had, if they were doing half this crap? Everything is too far, too extreme. I mean, wait until you get to the white slavery. I love how the day is saved by a secret sensor shoved up someone’s ass.”

  Chenco didn’t know how to respond, so he kept reading. He shut off his squick and tried to keep an open mind, tried to imagine Steve as this asshole and him as the idiot who let himself be used—and he couldn’t do it. Eventually he put the book down and reached for the bottle.

  “Lincoln is right. Steve isn’t for me, if this is who he is. This isn’t what I want. Don’t tell me this is fantasy—Steve’s hardcore. He said something once about edge play and liking needles. I can’t do that either. I can’t do any of this.”

  A funny look crossed Sam’s face when Chenco said needles. “I don’t think he does much with the edge play anymore. Not after Gordy.”

  Chenco couldn’t get all those nasty scenes from the novel out of his mind. Yet another goddamn place I’m not manly enough, not strong enough. “I can’t do this. I have to forget it. Steve’s not for me.” Which was an awful realization, as he hadn’t acknowledged how quiet and deep a pleasure pining for the man had been until it was taken away.

  Sam picked up the book and thumbed to the back before passing it over. “Here. Read the epilogue. I think it might change your mind.”

  Reluctantly, Chenco resumed reading—and then he slowed down, digesting carefully. After a few pages he glanced up at Sam, who had a knowing look on his face, slightly naughty but mostly understanding, like they were both in on the secret.

  This. This he did want. The love, the attention, the way Benson could see into Jamie as no one else could. The way he understood Jamie better than he knew himself.

  If this was Steve…

  Without consciously meaning to, Chenco went back to the point in the book where he’d left off. Eventually Sam murmured about being tired, and when he passed out in his bed, Chenco went with him to sit beside him and keep reading.

  It was as if somehow the book had changed, a layer taken away. Instead of Benson being a cruel man making fun of Jamie, using rough sex and humiliation to expose his toy, Benson became a safe space, a leader, a guide. No, Chenco would never ask to be a slave, and he would not be someone’s toilet, but…yes, a lighter version of some of this might not be so bad. He wished he could trust like that. Some of it…some of the taboo was thrilling in theory, filling him with dangerous want. But he couldn’t imagine letting anyone, not Steve, not anyone, treat him that way. Even for fun. Even to let go.

  Even if he wanted to.

  What do you want, Chenco? He still didn’t know. It wasn’t as if the book had made the answer to the question any easier.

  At some point he drifted off, and he didn’t wake until Mitch came into the room. Though his brother tried to leave, saying he’d take another guest bed, Chenco said no, he needed to brush his teeth anyway. He didn’t go to the bathroom, though, or the room he’d stayed i
n so much everyone referred to it as Chenco’s. He went downstairs, trying to find Steve. It was time they talked. About what, he didn’t know. He hoped he’d figure it out when he got there.

  In the doorway to Steve’s office, Chenco stopped, stunned into immobility by the sight of the man before him.

  This was not Mr. Benson. The man slumped in his office chair watching a black-and-white CCTV feed—this man was dirty, slightly bloody, and haggard. He was not a man in control. The person before Chenco was beaten, weary, uneasy and alone. Every muscle in his body spoke of tension begging for release, an escape he did not expect to find.

  Normally Chenco found Steve’s age an asset, a kind of vintage handsomeness, but it was as if the man had aged twenty years in the hours since they’d last seen one another, and not one of those hours had been kind. He had on glasses too, which Chenco had never seen before. The glasses weren’t a big deal, yet somehow they increased his appearance of vulnerability and helplessness. This wasn’t a big, bad top waiting for a bossy twink to offer himself properly as a bottom. This wasn’t a man who organized raids on white slavers. This man was so far from Mr. Benson they didn’t live on the same planet.

  This was a man so lost, so worn down, he didn’t bother to look up.

  As he watched Steve swim in his sorrow, Chenco’s heart flew out. Were he still young and foolish, he’d think himself in love, but it wasn’t. It was something far more complex and personal.

  Chenco stood in that doorway and saw Steve, saw him and knew him, understood the pain and hopelessness, comprehended it as only another who felt the same emotions could feel. He yearned to go to the man, to take him in his arms and hold him, to take the heaviness away. All thoughts of pain and humiliation and piss and degradation fell away—whatever Lincoln had seen Steve do, he hadn’t seen this. Something told Chenco no one ever, ever saw this.

  He’d seen it, and he wouldn’t forget.

  Leaving the room as quietly as he’d entered, Chenco went to bed. He could hear Sam and Mitch arguing, then as promised, heard them fucking. For the first time since overhearing his brother’s sexual adventures, however, he wasn’t jealous, wasn’t frustrated Steve never came to his door or invited Chenco to his bedroom. Instead he lay there thinking about the look on Steve’s face, playing it up against the moments in the trailer when Steve’s guard had come down.

  Those cracks in the facade were everything, he realized. Steve wasn’t all tough guy and leather. There was another man in there, a man who bled, who knew sorrow and fear. A man who, when he saw those emotions in someone else, stopped to try and help them, who couldn’t bear the thought of someone else hurting. A man who needed love.

  A man who’d resist anyone finding out that weakness, who gave all his love away so no one would notice how empty he was himself.

  A man who needed saving too.

  This, Chenco decided as he drifted off to slightly drunken sleep—this was what he wanted. To be the man Steve was looking for, who could crawl under the tough exterior and make the man accept affection for himself. To not just love but be the safe space for the man at that desk.

  To be his Mr. Benson.

  SOMETHING HAD SHIFTED with Chenco, and Steve would be damned if he could figure out what it was.

  It all stemmed from the night he, Mitch, and Randy had gone over to chase off the gang, and for a horrible second Steve worried Sam and Chenco had followed, had seen what “calming down” Gordy looked like. But no, Sam said they’d gotten drunk together and passed out in his bed.

  The idea of Chenco and Sam making out, while theoretically hot, made Steve go cold with jealousy. When Sam had caught the flicker of irritation, he’d only smiled a sly little smile and said he only fucked one Tedsoe brother, thanks, and sauntered off.

  Something had happened, though, because Chenco was different. Instead of hanging back and stealing moon-eyed glances, Chenco sat next to him and instigated conversation. Awkwardly more often than not, but he kept at it with a quiet determination that charmed Steve far more than it should have. He found himself opening up, easing around the young man, letting himself fantasize about relationships with Chenco he’d told himself weren’t on the table. They danced politely toward an inevitable conclusion, and though Steve knew this course of action wasn’t wise, he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

  One night as they sat alone on the patio, looking up at the stars, Chenco stopped being polite and went right to the point.

  “So, you told me we weren’t going to be done playing after the trailer, but nothing’s ever happened.”

  The comment came from so far out of nowhere Steve had to take a second to form a response. “You’ve never asked for anything else to happen.”

  “Steve, I’d like something else to happen. Please.”

  Steve’s head filled with crazy, carnal images of pressing Chenco down into the grass, tugging on his hair and taking his mouth in a deep kiss, swallowing gasps and groans. This wasn’t the serene, no-sex control and comfort Steve had given before.

  It was, however, what Steve wanted now.

  He tried to deflect. “Are you talking about the punishment over what happened with Randy?”

  “Not right now, no. I would like that sometime, though, if you’re still willing. I see him wincing and touching his shoulder when he works in the kitchen, and it makes me feel bad.”

  Yes, and Steve had left it way too long. Really, it was almost too late. The thought that he’d maybe missed the window to comfort Chenco made him ache with loss.

  Chenco ran a hand down Steve’s arm. “I’m not talking about Randy right now. I’m talking about playing. With you.”

  Mayday. “Playing how?”

  Chenco’s smile sent shivers down Steve’s spine. “However you like, Papi.”

  Steve sat up straighter in his chair and caught sight of Randy milling about in the kitchen. There’s your out. “Everyone’s still up. They might come outside.”

  “We could go somewhere else.” When Steve kept quiet, Chenco’s cheeks stained red. “Forget it.”

  Get a fucking grip, Steve. He swung his body to face Chenco. “I’m not saying no. But I need to know what you want.”

  “Well, I want sex, but I assume you’ll still tell me no.”

  That’s right, it’s not happening, Steve wanted to say, but once Chenco looked at him, sauce mixed with shy, fire dancing in the back of those hesitant eyes, he was undone. He didn’t speak, only stroked the side of Chenco’s face. Those brown eyes softened, guards coming down.

  Chenco nuzzled tentatively into Steve’s hand. “Do you want to have sex with me?”

  Yes, Steve did. He ached for it like nothing he’d ever yearned for, a want that terrified him. “I’m too old for you.”

  Steve almost laughed at the angry look Chenco gave him. God, to be twenty-four again. Thinking this, though, only made Steve remember how lost and helpless he had felt at that age.

  “I do want you.” Steve gentled his voice. “I just don’t know if it’s a great idea.”

  “What, do you think I’m going to be some kind of moony stalker? If we have sex, I’ll assume I’m moving in? Why can’t it be about having a good time?”

  Because I’m an old, tired man who forgot how to be carefree a long time ago. Because I’d love you to move in, even if I never so much as touch you, and that’s really fucking crazy. “I don’t think you’re a moony stalker.”

  “Okay.” Chenco relaxed a little. “I meant what I said. I don’t sleep around.”

  Steve couldn’t hold back a smile. “I know. You’re choosy. I like it.”

  “Booker says I’m a frigid prude.” Chenco’s face clouded. “Do you know, he hasn’t called me since that night? We’re due for another show soon, but we haven’t rehearsed. He doesn’t know about the trailer—hasn’t asked.” He ran a weary hand through his hair. “I think I’m going to have to move in with Lincoln. I don’t want to, but I don’t have any choice.”

  Yes you do. Come stay with me.
Play or don’t play, but stay. Let me make everything okay. Steve bit the entreaty back. “You always have choices.”

  “I had one choice—to let my mother turn me into someone I wasn’t, or to go off on my own. I chose my pride, and this is what it bought me. I live the real-life version of those romantic stories where the duke’s daughter runs off with the stable hand. They don’t live happily ever after. They live in abject poverty, miserable, cold, hungry. They have each other and nothing more, and pretty damn quickly it isn’t enough.”

  “Do you wish you would have gone the other way?”

  Chenco shook his head. “I don’t. But…I wish the fairy tale were real.”

  Steve couldn’t bite his tongue anymore, not without taking it clean off. He couldn’t stop this train, but if he schooled himself, if he did his job, he could keep it under control. Straightening in the chair, putting his hands on his knees, he looked Chenco dead in the eye.

  “Kneel.”

  Pleasure curled in Steve’s belly at how gracefully Chenco complied with the command. The boy was nervous, yes, self-conscious, afraid of rejection, afraid of being mocked—but he was determined too, and he was here, obeying. Playing. Brave, beautiful, proud Chenco, kneeling before a man.

  When Steve’s hand slid into that dark, curling hair, Chenco shuddered, and the reverberation rang all the way into Steve’s soul. So much want. So much yearning, so much need, but so much strength.

  This confident man wasn’t Gordy. How had he ever seen the two of them as the same?

  You don’t deserve him. You don’t deserve someone like this.

  Jesus, nothing was ever more true, but when Steve started to draw back, Chenco looked up at him, wounded, confused, and it was over.

  With a sharp pull, Steve drew Chenco’s face right into his crotch.

  The sharp, hot breath of surprise against his fly was better than any caress. Steve watched, want and pure, red lust burning as Chenco’s lips parted, as he stared at the bulge in front of him. The saucy bottoms Steve had tricked with in his youth would have leered up at him and reached for his fly. Gordy would have nuzzled in like a grateful bear cub, sucking up musk.