Chase in Shadow Page 15

  Yeah. They’re discussing a tag team.

  Who with?

  Me, Kane and ?

  Dex.

  You think?

  Just broke up with his girlfriend. Needs the

  distraction.

  How do you KNOW this?

  He just came by my place asking to be distracted.

  I said no.

  “DEX?” Chase said out loud, and John and Kane both looked at him, smiling.

  “Perfect!” John said excitedly.

  You have no idea.

  CHASE might have walked out of there feeling smug. Chance had given him an opportunity to do what most gay guys dreamed of: bang the guy who banged your guy, right? Revenge as porn video? But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t even weird. All that mattered was that Mercy thought he was going to be out of town for a week and Tango was going to be waiting out front for him.

  Kane walked him out, talking excitedly about bodybuilding and asking if Chase went to his gym. Chase did, and they had just made arrangements to meet in the mornings when Kane looked up and saw Tommy.

  “Tango!” he hailed, coming up to the side of Tommy’s silver Acura TL. “Man, so good to see you! I haven’t seen you in months!”

  Tommy smiled genuinely. “Yeah, I know! We should get together sometime. Video games, movies, something!”

  Chase had his duffel over his shoulder and he swung around to the back door around Kane’s body to throw it in.

  “Yeah, me and Chance here have a bargain to start working out together next week. I could use some tips from this guy, eh?” Kane gave Chase’s ass a smack as he passed by. “I’ve got a bouncy butt, but Chance here? You could bounce a quarter off this guy’s ass!”

  “Tell me about it!” said Tango dryly. “Yeah, whatever his workout secret, I think he should share. I can join you guys if you like. Same gym?”

  Kane nodded. “Yeah, no problem. So next week?”

  Tommy glanced at Chase and Chase smiled softly back. “Yeah, Kane. Next week’s good. Monday?”

  “Yeah, bro. Here, give me your cell. I’ll put in my digits, okay?” Chase handed his phone over to Kane, who entered his information, talking the whole time. “Yeah, see, you’ve got all the wrong guys in here. You’ve got Dex and John and Tango—seriously. Where’s that going to get you?” Kane flipped the phone around and took a sleazy picture of himself so his face would pop up when his number rang. Chase and Tommy were laughing by the time he was done, so when he looked at them and said, “Where are you two going anyway? Camping or something? I don’t know if anyone told you, but it’s fucking February, right? You go camping in the summer, right?” The question seemed to come out of the clear blue.

  It was Tommy who answered, without even looking at Chase for permission. “Man, playing house, right?”

  Kane raised an eyebrow, and with the little soul-patch goatee he was nursing, the expression made him look absolutely wicked. Tommy may have been Loki, the lunatic sex god, but Kane was definitely Puck, the mischief making hell-raiser. “Now Tango, you kept your profile cagey, but I could swear blondie here is straight.”

  Chase didn’t even blush. He was chewing strawberry-mint gum; he threw another piece in his mouth and cracked it, saying, “Yeah, you know those porn profiles. People lie on that shit all the time.”

  Kane tossed back his head and laughed long and hard, and by the time he could stop to say good-bye, Chase was in the passenger seat and belted up.

  “You two have a nice little time playing house, okay? I’ll see you both next week.”

  Tommy was still chuckling as he pulled away from the little office suite, but he did manage to shoot Chase a sideways glance.

  “That doesn’t bother you?” he asked quietly, and Chase looked back at him with the same look on his face he probably wore when he was a kid and he got to spend the night at Donnie’s house because Donnie’s mom wanted to take them on a picnic the next day and Chase’s dad didn’t give a ripe shit.

  “Chase Summers, Mercy’s boyfriend, Victor’s son? Yeah, that scared the shit out of him and pissed him off too. But I’m not that guy anymore.”

  Tommy looked at him, surprised. “You’re not?”

  “Naw. I’m Chase Julian Summers. I can do anything.”

  Tommy didn’t laugh at him like Chase expected him to. He sent him an inscrutable look, and shifted the car.

  “So you have to be another person to be with me?” Tommy asked, his voice troubled, and Chase swallowed and looked away. It was the beginning of February, and at the moment, the sky was the color of concrete dust, the sun barely peeking out of it like a dull pewter coin.

  “I have to be a better person to be with you,” Chase said, and Tommy sighed.

  “The only person you ever have to be is yourself.”

  Sorry, Tommy. Most of myself is in my chest, holding shut that damned door.

  “Can I be myself when we’re in your house, naked?” Chase asked guilelessly, and Tommy laughed and then squinted at him.

  “Aren’t you sexed out? You shot a scene and some stills today, right?”

  Chase nodded and was abruptly brought back to the twinges, aches, and bruises that came when you had sex for an hour some way that you would not actually ever want to have sex if you were not in front of a camera. His calves were cramping and his thighs ached and his member was raw because Kane was tighter than the o-ring on a Maserati.

  “Yeah,” he said, some of his enthusiasm deflating a little. “But… God, can we just be naked and not have sex? That… that would be so awesome.”

  Tommy looked at him as he took a right on G Street. “Yeah, Chase Julian, I can hold you.”

  Chase blushed. “What?” he asked, feeling foolish.

  “Sometimes I think the only reason you ended up with Mercy is because she’s a human being who hugged you.”

  No one else was going to do it.

  “It’s as good an explanation as any,” Chase said mildly, and Tommy made a soft sound, something resigned and a little sad.

  “What?” Chase asked again.

  “What’s the worst thing that can happen if you actually tell me, of all people, what you’re really thinking?”

  That red door in my chest would bust open and disintegrate, and all the shit that’s going to barrel out will drown me, destroy the glue and fairy dust that’s holding me together, and all that will be left is the color red, and it will be so bright it will singe your hands and burn your heart and eyes to ash.

  “You’d realize what a complete douche bag I am and not want another fucking thing to do with me.”

  Tommy’s jaw locked, and his chest went in and out and he turned the car into the driveway of a nice little stucco house, gray on the outside, with a neat postage stamp lawn bordered by annuals that would probably start blooming in a month. There were hedges in front of the windows and bordering the fences that wrapped around the back, and shutters, eaves, and doorframes painted construction-worker orange. He clicked the garage door opener and pulled into a neat space with basic man-cave requirements: basic car maintenance tools, basic home maintenance tools, old cans of paint, and, Chase was amused to see, brand new litter box, cat feeding station, and little cat door carved into the door that led from the garage to the kitchen.

  Chase smiled appreciatively as he got out and reached into the back of the car to get his duffel. “Nice, Tommy! I like it! The neighborhood association didn’t give you crap about this?”

  Tommy shook his head no as he got out and trotted up to unlock the inside door. “They were thinking about it, but one of the guys on the block is an accountant for most of the rest of the block. His boyfriend thought it was cool, and every mommy on the block has been trying to mother the two of them since Kit moved in anyway. They kept it from being awkward, which was cool, because I really liked the color.”

  Chase followed him up. “Nice,” he said, and Tommy shrugged.

  “Yeah, they’re nice.”

  “So why’s your nose all w
rinkled like that?” Sure enough, when Tommy wrinkled his nose and let his pointy canines show, you could almost see him as the freckled kid from the pictures that Chase had packed up.

  Tommy shrugged. “Yanno, I think they’re fans. They’re too polite to say anything, but… well… Jesse keeps looking at me and clapping his hand over his mouth like he’s trying not to giggle like a little kid.”

  Chase was about to laugh and give Tommy shit, but Tommy was obviously mortified. “Why’s that such a bad thing, yanno?”

  Again that shrug as Tommy threw his keys on a nice, plain, barely used kitchen table and threw his camouflage jacket over the chair. After Christmas and his exposure to real winter, Chase had found a pea coat in an Army/Navy store and he loved it. It was sturdy, hearty, felted wool, and Chase didn’t care how it made him look, it made him feel safe. He kept it on for a minute, reluctant to give that feeling up.

  “Someday,” Tommy said slowly, “you’re going to be an engineer, right? And that’s what everyone’s going to know you for. You’ll probably be great at it, because… I don’t know. You’re just good at everything. Baseball, sex, trying to be a good person. Whatever. And that’ll be you. Chase Summers—even if you’ve got the crappy middle name. Engineer. And you won’t even have to think of porn star when you make your resume. But….” Tommy looked up at him, unhappy. “That’s never what I wanted to be either, but it looks like I might be here a while.”

  Buster wandered out of the darkened living room behind the kitchen and Chase bent down to pet him, feeling the age in his sharp bones and loose skin. The cat didn’t care, apparently, that he was like a piece of living history, because he purred under Chase’s hand, insinuating himself until Chase picked him up and touched noses with him.

  “Hey, Buster,” he said to stall for time. He felt out of sync somehow. He’d been prepared to leave this behind. He and Mercy maybe lived three miles from this place, their apartment building by the college, graceless and inelegant off of Howe Avenue. To him, answering Tommy’s call of Need to see you. Now! had meant that they had entered a pact of sorts, a secret world. Tommy’s house would be sacrosanct, a sanctuary from all of the shit that they did and they said and they felt cornered into that they weren’t proud of and couldn’t look in the face twenty-four-seven.

  But not to Tommy. Tommy wanted him maybe because Tommy wanted someone to hold his hand while he looked that shit in the face, and Chase felt a surge of admiration for him. Tommy Halloran was so fucking brave. Chase would never, in a million years, feel worthy.

  “What do you want, Tommy?” Chase asked seriously as Buster settled into his lap to drool on his coat. Tommy looked at him and smiled, but his crazy Loki-the-lunatic-sex-god smile didn’t reach his eyes. They weren’t bright and gleaming anymore; they were dark and sad.

  “I want you.”

  Chase closed his eyes. “You have me. Whatever parts of me I can give you, you have them. You have them if you work porn, you have them if you get fat, you have them if you go back to school and run an animal shelter or become a scientist or a history major or a poet. I’m a douche bag. What I’m doin’ to you ain’t fair. But as long as you want me, in pieces or whole, you have me.”

  He felt Tommy’s breath on his face, and when he looked up, Tommy had moved from across the table to kneel in front of him.

  “What you’re doin’ to me ain’t half as bad as what you’re doing to yourself,” Tommy said quietly.

  It’s been done, Tommy. Don’t worry about it now.

  “Can we not talk about it?” Chase pleaded. “I… God. I feel… thin. Like paper. Please… I just want to hold you so I feel strong again.”

  Tommy’s arms went around his shoulders and Chase actually trembled. The day slid away, like water down a shower drain. It didn’t matter who Chase had been with or who he had touched. It didn’t matter that he had spent an hour on his toes fucking Kane while Kane’s foot had been propped up on a dresser and he’d been executing a three-quarter split. That wasn’t a part of him anymore. All that made up Chase Julian Summers was Tommy Halloran’s arms around his shoulders.

  One of Tommy’s long, bony hands slid beneath the heavy blue wool on Chase’s shoulders, and Chase shuddered. With the other hand, Tommy scooped Buster off his lap and put the poor old man gently on his feet, scratching him on the top of the head before giving him a gentle shove toward the living room. Tommy stood up again and positioned himself in front of Chase, looking down at his upturned face in a way that made Chase feel pinned to his seat by the weight and the heat, and the longing.

  “Take your coat off,” Tommy whispered. “Stay a while.”

  Tommy slid the coat down his arms, and before Chase could do much more than shudder, Tommy had cupped his hands around Chase’s face and captured his mouth in a kiss.

  Porn kisses were quick and hard. It was like every touch of lips to skin was a power exercise in finding an erogenous zone and lighting it up like a pinball machine. Tommy’s kisses weren’t like that at all. This started out with a brush of lips, a whisper. Tommy whispered against Chase’s skin once, twice, again, and enough for Chase’s lips to practically tingle, and then Tommy opened his mouth, pulling Chase’s open with it, and Chase gave a whimper and melted.

  Chase’s mouth was open and wide and Tommy was plundering him with his tongue, and Chase’s skin felt like it was jumping off his body.

  Chase’s breathing started to quicken, and his groin gave a tortured throb and the sound that was strangled in the back of his throat was hungry and pathetic at once. Tommy pulled back and rubbed Chase’s lips with his thumb.

  “No worries, okay? Here. I know what you need—it’s what I always need after a scene, okay? It’s Tommy Halloran’s treatment for being oversexed all day and needing to give your dick a break, okay?”

  Chase laughed a little and closed his eyes, enjoying Tommy’s hands framing his face. “That sounds amazing,” he said, and two hours later he felt the same way, only squared.

  It turned out that in addition to painting the house gray with neon-orange trim, Tommy had also added a Jacuzzi bathtub in his bathroom, big enough to sit two.

  Chase spent an hour in that bathtub, just stretching in the quiet with Tommy at the other end. Tommy had put some music on the stereo—Coldplay, a band Chase loved—and they talked softly, desultorily, covering everything from Chase’s classes to Tommy’s unfortunate ennui.

  “Man, it’s gotta be something,” Tommy said with a sigh. “I mean, I love working out, but I can’t do it more than two hours a day, it makes me fucking crazy. But… it’s like none of the stuff I want to do makes any sense, you know?”

  Chase slid down to his neck in the water and gingerly moved his feet around Tommy’s hips so he didn’t accidentally kick him in the balls.

  “You know that guy—whats’isname—Adam Somethin-or-other? Used to do The Man Show, now he does some sort of thing about cars?”

  “Adam Corolla?”

  “Yeah! That’s the guy. My friend Kevin is crazy about him, mostly because Kevin’s crazy about things with tits, and me, not so much, right?”

  “No kidding,” Tommy said dryly, and Chase splashed some water at him, too relaxed to do much more in the way of “fuck you.”

  “Anyway, so this guy wrote a book, and it’s a best seller, and the thing is, one of his favorite things to say is, do something you love not for money, just do it to do it. Do it to get better at it, do it to enjoy it. Do it because you love it, and eventually, you’ll find a way to make a living doing it. And it worked for him, you know? He started off working at a radio station for free, and he just kept… I don’t know, going there and learning his trade, right? That’s what you’ve got to do.”

  Tommy blinked. “Work in a radio station?”

  “Volunteer with animals, dumbass! Go into a shelter or a vet’s office and volunteer, and see what sort of jobs are out there and what you need to do to get them. Then you’ll know what to train for, right? And in the meantime, after you
work out, you’ve got something on your roster that makes you happy!”

  Tommy reached down and ran a hand along Chase’s calf. Maybe, on another day, Chase would have gotten hard from that touch alone, but after the shoot with Kane, the touch just made him want to be touched all over—but not sexually.

  “We’ve been here a while,” Tommy said. “Here. Let’s get out, and you dry off and put on some sweats or something. I’m going to go get us some food and meet you in there, okay?”

  Chase shuddered. “It’s real nice of you, taking care of me, you know?”

  “Shut up and get out of the tub.”

  Chase did, and he was sitting on Tommy’s bed with a shitload of books spread out in front of him, looking curiously at the big painted plates of what even Chase knew were classic painters. Tommy must have had a thing with color, Chase thought happily. The bedspread was rust with indigo highlights, and there was an indigo area rug on the hardwood floor. The kitchen had been white and yellow and china blue, and although he hadn’t gotten a good look at the living room, Chase imagined that it would be something pretty and coordinated and rich too. He loved it—it was like his whole life he never thought of how happy that much color could make him, and he was content to wait for a little while and just indulge in all of it. Still, he was starving and relieved when Tommy came in with what looked to be delivered Thai food in two bags and a towel to put over the bedspread so they could just sit on the bed and eat. Chase realized that he’d barely had half a grapefruit that morning for breakfast and almost swooned with the smell of some real fucking food.

  “God, I love you,” he swore, and then carefully closed up a volume full of Vincent Van Gogh paintings and stacked it on top of one with Renoir and Degas, then very respectfully put them back on the bookshelf behind Tommy’s bed. Tommy spread out the boxes with the food and gave Chase a ceramic bowl—pretty, in a deep indigo color—and sat down with his own, and for a minute they were occupied with dishing the takeout. Tommy had specific preferences—but only two—and it was easy to see when he took almost all of the Thai noodles and did the same with a neutral steamed vegetable dish, leaving Chase just enough to taste.