Shades of Henry Read online

  “I will talk about it. Anytime. Anything you want to say. I….” He grimaced. “There’s some stuff that you can’t keep secret, and it would kill you to try. I won’t kick you out. I won’t turn my back on you. Ever. Understand? I might not go to prison for you, but I’d write you every fucking day, okay?”

  Henry swallowed hard and tried not to laugh at that idea. Straight-arrow Henry, go to prison? Daddy’s favorite? Naw. “Roger that,” he said, like the military speak could keep his emotions in check.

  David touched his pocket again and sighed. “Hang tough, Henry. I’ll get back to you with your living sitch, okay?”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Davy.”

  “’Course. Washing machine’s in the garage.” David waved to a connecting door on the far side of the living room, and Henry took the hint and left him to his phone call.

  As he emptied out his duffel of pretty much every scrap of civilian clothing he owned, he fought the burning in his eyes and the horrible conviction that facing his brother would have been a helluva lot easier if Davy had beaten the shit out of Henry like he deserved.

  It was funny that Davy mentioned prison, though—Henry wondered if any of the troubled kids Davy had known had ended up there. It had seemed so random, but then Davy’s life was a lot different from Henry’s. Maybe his friends were targets for unfair prosecution.

  Henry swallowed. They would have been, if they’d been in his barracks. He and Mal had known that right off. Maybe there was a reason for Davy’s brain to go there.

  And maybe it was just God, warning him of things to come.

  Den Mother

  “LANCE! MAN, do you have any laxatives? I’m….” Randy’s pink freckled nose scrunched up, making him look about twelve instead of barely nineteen. “I’m sort of… you know. Stopped up.”

  Galahad “Lance” Luna grimaced. “Randy, what have we talked about?”

  Randy shifted uneasily. “Eating vegetables.”

  “What else?”

  “But it’s just so—”

  “What else?”

  “Gross!”

  “Yes, but so is a bowel torsion. Stop douching every fucking day, Randy. Whoever you’re fucking can deal with a blowjob. That shit kills the bacteria in your bowels that helps you crap. You are literally a constipated douchemonkey. Man, I get wanting to get some between your scenes, but you know one of the really outstanding things about using condoms?”

  Randy swallowed. “Easy cleanup?”

  Lance touched his nose. “Bingo. Now I’ve got some stool softeners in my bag. I’ll get them. But man, stop trying to live on diet soda and come, okay? It’s bad for you.”

  “Okay, Lance.”

  “At least drink some coffee with cream—it’s a natural laxative.”

  Randy perked up. “Really? I did not know that!”

  Lance restrained himself from ruffling the kid’s hair. Randy was a fully functioning adult and hell-bent on proving that his private parts functioned better than all the rest of him put together—including his brain.

  “Add it to your vices,” he said graciously. “Diet soda also kills the good stuff in your stomach, so consider it a twofer.”

  Randy grinned, because that was his kind of humor, and Lance left the kitchen for the bed he’d marked as his.

  God, these kids needed a nanny.

  He fetched Randy his laxative and then went back to his textbooks, because in spite of the lovely late March day outside, he had to pass this damn exam in the morning, and then he had a shift to work for his residency at UC Davis Medical Center immediately after. God…. He’d wrapped up his postgraduate internship just a few months earlier, and now he had three more years of following Dr. Schearer through his residency in cardiac medicine before he could look for a fellowship or establish a practice.

  So he could finish paying off his student loans.

  He actually made a decent amount now that he was finally a resident. Not scads of money—but certainly better than a credentialed teacher after twenty years of tenure. But Lance had expenses, and he was paying off his debt, and secretly, in the place he never wanted to admit, Johnnies and the guys there had become his home—so much so that he fed their misunderstanding that he was still in school. It was just easier to stay in the flophouse if people thought it was because he needed the money.

  He still did a porn scene every two months or so, not so much because he enjoyed them—although he did, because cutting loose his inner hedonist and fucking the shit out of somebody, no strings attached, was a voyeuristic rush—but because all the guys, with all their drama, made him feel wanted.

  He wasn’t above feeling wanted. Everybody needed validation, right?

  But he didn’t have to look at his finances to know that he could move somewhere, anywhere, even if it was another apartment in this complex where he could still watch over the guys.

  One of the first things that had become apparent when he’d started this gig three years ago—when his school tuition had run out and his parents had stopped talking to him and he was so close to his internship, he could almost taste the steady income—was that most of the kids who started in the porn business really were kids. They were young, energetic, and could fuck like gods, but they were also rash, impulsive, and led by their hormones.

  The first time Skylar—who had moved out to be exclusive with Rick nearly a year ago—had dropped his drawers in the living room and moaned, “Help me, Dr. Lance—what’s wrong with my butthole?” Lance had realized that someone needed to offer nonjudgy, no-frills advice, even if it was just “Hemorrhoid cream, my brother, and maybe lay off bottoming until your next scene.”

  Dex tried.

  Lance had seen that when Dex had told him about the flophouse in the first place. He remembered the way Dex’s pretty blue eyes had studied Lance’s face intently, like he was looking for something Lance wasn’t sure was there.

  “Yeah, the flophouse,” he said thoughtfully. “Who told you about that?”

  Lance had still been capable of blushing back then. “Uh, Skylar. We just did a scene together, and I mentioned I couldn’t afford the dorm this year.”

  Dex had leaned forward over the desk in his office and steepled his fingers. “Medical school, right?”

  It had occurred to Lance at that moment that Dex was maybe only three years older than he was, and he was studying Lance with the astuteness of a school counselor. “Yeah. I’ve got one more year to go, and then I’ll be paying off my loans. But all my parents’ assistance dried up—”

  Dex raised his eyebrows, and Lance blew out a breath. “Yes, they found out I was gay and that college fund my father had saved for me was suddenly my little sister’s.” It hadn’t been that much anyway, which was why he was helping Morgaine out with law school. Their parents might have decided not to speak to him, but Morgaine was still his biggest fan.

  Dex nodded. “Would you believe it’s not the first time I heard that?”

  Lance felt his mouth twist. “No, really? Geez, mister, I thought I was the only one.”

  Dex let out a little laugh. “Not everybody who does porn here is gay,” he said. It had been about six months before they’d started hiring women and diversifying, so Lance’s eyebrows had climbed to his hairline. “No—seriously. Some of the guys are bi, and some of them are straight but not hung up on it. They have to do a lot of mental and physical gymnastics to get hard, though. We really do prefer the guys who are into it. But yeah. It’s an issue. You seem to have dealt with it, but….”

  Dex bit his full lip, and in spite of spending six hours having sex with the irrepressible Skylar, Lance felt his libido flutter. Dex had still been doing scenes at that point—God, wouldn’t it be great to do a scene with Dex?

  “But what?” Lance asked, feeling emotionally naked for the first time in the six months since he’d been kicked out of the house.

  “But the flophouse, where Skylar gave you an invite to crash, is sort of… think of an unsupervised playroom where ever
yone is over eighteen and used to being naked.”

  Lance smirked, because he had this cartoon image of guys with boners just boinging around the house.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s worse,” Dex confirmed. “I try not to recommend it to the guys who’re making more money or have their shit together. There’s drama—scads of it. It’s naked high school with no girls to keep it sane. I break up a cat fight at least once a week. If I could afford to hire a gaybie-sitter, I totally would.”

  Lance shrugged. “Honestly, it sounds like the dorms, but nobody’s saying, ‘I only touched a penis ’cause I was drunk.’ I start my internship in less than a year. How bad could it be?”

  “Suit yourself.” Dex stood up and shook his hand. “Now Kelsey will cut you a check for the scene today—but don’t forget to check with her at the end of the month, because that’s when the royalties come in, okay?”

  Lance nodded, remembering that he got a flat fee for filming the scene and then a cut of the profits every time it was downloaded. The more popular the actors, the more they got paid, which was pretty cool, really. Kelsey, the receptionist, seemed a little disorganized but also pretty competent, and she’d been cheerfully normal about the fact that everybody entering the ordinary-looking office building was going in the back to have sex.

  “Will do. Thanks, man.”

  Dex winked. “Thank you! Gotta tell you, you make really pretty porn.”

  Lance smiled, feeling the heat of the compliment way down to his toes. Dex had been behind the camera and had made him feel professional and respected for six hours, while Lance, in his birthday suit, did the thing with a pretty, flirty model who probably worked out with ben-wah balls six times a day to obtain that kind of control over his sphincter. Until this moment, right now, there hadn’t been a single moment of connection or sexuality between them.

  But now, with that pretty angel’s mouth coming up in the corners and those blue eyes sparkling, Lance felt the hint of possibility. And part of the attraction was that Dex was watching out for him, making sure he was happy.

  Lance had admired that sort of responsibility, even then. It was the thing that had driven him through medical school, the idea that if everybody helped their neighbor, the world would be a better place.

  Now, three years later, he was really glad he and Dex had gotten to film that scene together—but he totally regretted not moving on that spark of attraction outside the office. Dex had started dating Scott not long after that, even though everybody knew Scott was a douchebag. And when that imploded, Kane had apparently been waiting to move in. The two of them were married now, and both off-screen but still working the business. Lance had watched Dex organize medical watch for a model who’d tried to hurt himself, prepare Christmas for the guys who weren’t allowed to go home, and find apartments for guys who got kicked out. He’d found lawyers, helped place siblings who needed mental health care, and with the help of John Carey, the founder of Johnnies, he’d started a job-placement project for guys who wanted life after porn.

  Dex was more than just a boss for Lance’s part-time gig—he was a role model for anyone in the sex industry who wanted to see how to be an adult and an adult-film star.

  Unfortunately, Lance had been too focused on his endgame to even see where that attraction would have gone.

  He sighed and dug into his medical journals, trying not to pine for something that never was. The thought kept haunting him, though, that it wasn’t that he had missed out on Dex, but that he was missing out on something bigger.

  Here in apartment 126C, he pretty much had sex on tap—but he hadn’t been interested in anyone for over a year. And even then, it had been Reg and Bobby, who were better together than they’d ever been with him. He’d been their pity fuck, both of them, and other than that?

  Well, it was a good thing he filmed scenes once every six weeks, wasn’t it?

  He was officially too old for this shit. But he had no intention of growing up in the near future, and that was depressing the hell out of him. Jesus, was it so hard to fix his life so he could find a guy of his own?

  He had just settled down finally when a knock on the door jerked him out of his concentration. He looked up to see Randy lying on the bed across from his, Billy sitting naked on his face. Billy—small, compactly built, with dark hair and big sloe eyes, was returning the rim job by sucking Randy’s surprisingly thick cock, their sex sounds muffled in each other’s flesh.

  Damn—he really had gotten used to blocking things out.

  “Lance!” Dex called from the landing. “Lance! I’ve got someone here for you to meet. Could you make sure nobody’s naked in the living room?”

  Lance looked at Billy and Randy again, his libido waking up in a big way. He probably wouldn’t have participated—he’d been avoiding sleeping with the flophouse guys because God, who needed the drama?—but voyeurism was very very acceptable here, and he could have given himself a big favor watching that.

  As it was, he grunted, stood up, and left the bedroom, then padded out into the living room and checked the door to the other bedroom. He heard very specific noises coming from there, too, and sighed. What, was sex in the afternoon a thing now and nobody had passed him the memo?

  “Coming,” he called, opening the door. “I mean, on my way. But I can’t make promises about the nak—” It wasn’t just Dex out there. “—ed?” Standing next to Dex, who was rangy and blond and tall and built and constantly flashing dimples because he liked to smile, was a shorter, stockier version of Dex. This guy had the same color hair and the same color eyes, but his jawline was squarer, he had slightly less neck, narrower shoulders, and more attitude. He was built too, but his muscles looked like they’d seen some hard use.

  Everything about this not-Dex screamed military, and Lance wrinkled his nose in distaste.

  He really wasn’t that great with authority.

  “Hi, Dex. Uh… hi, Dex’s twin brother?”

  The newcomer rolled his eyes. “Hi, porn star,” he sneered.

  Lance recoiled, surprised, and Dex smacked the guy on the back of the head. “Dammit, Henry—it’s this or living in our garage. Take your pick.”

  “Sorry,” Henry muttered, rubbing the back of his head. Then, to his credit, he met Lance’s eyes and managed to look a little ashamed. “Sorry. I’m an asshole. This is a bad idea all around. I’ve got a little bit of savings—”

  “Did I show you the cost of living around here?” Dex said sweetly. “We spent a couple of hours on it, remember? If you could manage not to piss Kane off with every sentence, the garage might actually work, but you can’t, so mind your mouth. Remember—five guys besides Lance live here. They’re all gay, and they all do the same thing for a living. You may be built, but I’m pretty sure if they all gang up, you’d be history and I could help them hide the body.”

  Lance held his hand up in front of his mouth so Dex’s little brother—it had to be a little brother—wouldn’t see him smirking.

  Henry closed his eyes and opened them again, and this time when he looked at Lance, he seemed to see a human being. “I really am sorry,” he said. “I’m… I’m afraid I’m not very… what’s the word?” He looked at his brother in earnest supplication.

  “Progressive?” Dex offered.

  “Yeah. I’m not very progressive. I’m going to try not to be an asshole and likely fail a lot. If you could… I don’t know, don’t kill me in my sleep and maybe give me some pointers, I’d be grateful.”

  Lance put everything they were saying together. “Wait—don’t kill you in your sleep? Does that mean you’re going to be sleeping here?”

  “Please?” Dex said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “He’ll pitch in for the rent, and in spite of being an asshole of the first order, he’ll be helpful. Kane, John, and I can lend him our cars so he can help you guys out, because I know only, like, one of you has a car, and he can help with the plumbing and help the guys fill out their student loan applications—”
r />   “Oh God,” Lance muttered. “That deadline is coming.” It was practically the reason the kitchen table was invented. The last three years, they’d made a party out of it, inviting the other students they knew from Johnnies, with everybody bringing their shit and their laptops and their forms. One of the most interesting things that had happened was Lance had learned everybody’s real names—which was another reason he’d stopped having sex with his roommates.

  He knew them as people now.

  Dex nodded. “See? He can be useful, and he’ll be running errands for John and me until he can get his shit together.”

  “Understood,” Lance said. A loud groan issued from his room, and he grimaced—Randy and Billy were apparently reaching a, uh, climax. There was a stack of shoes in the entryway because it was wet outside and nobody wanted to track mud in. Lance slid his feet into a pair of loafers that were probably his and reached for the coat hook for a hoodie that was definitely not.

  “Here, Henry? Is that your stuff?”

  Henry slid the military duffel off his shoulder. “Yeah, uh, should we come in?”

  “No. Definitely not. Give me that, and you and me can take a walk around the apartment complex, and I can explain shit, okay?”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” And that came from the room next to them, where Curtis and Zeppelin—at least Lance assumed it was Zeppelin—were. The fact was, the Johnnies guys got tested regularly, and they knew one another. There was a lot of fucking around in-house because they could trust that their partner had a clear health screen, the other guy definitely knew the score so no strings attached meant no strings attached, and they tended to be friends before, during, and after.

  So who knew who was naked in the other room?

  Which was sort of what Lance needed to talk to Henry about.

  Henry’s blue eyes—the same shade as his brother’s but not as guileless or as innocent—had opened wide. “Are there, uh… is anybody, uh—”

  “Yes, yes, and yes,” Lance said bluntly. “Now give me your duffel, say goodbye to your brother, and you and me need to have a little talk.”