Double Blind (42 page)

Randy flipped out. “Wait!” he cried. “You just had—”

“I wiped my hands off,” Mitch said. “And I’m wearin’ a glove. A new one. We both are. Hush now. Calm down.”
So gentle.
Jesus, it was like they’d gone back twelve years, to that first night. Randy shivered. Mitch stroked his cock again. “Don’t worry, Skeet. I got your back, just like always. We both do.”

Randy looked across the blanket to Sam, who was looking back at him, his eyes molten with lust as one of Ethan’s hands pinched his nipple and the other disappeared into the dark space between their bodies. Randy watched Sam jerk, then ease into the thrust of Ethan’s hand.

But Randy couldn’t let go, not yet. “We don’t play like this, Old Man,” Randy whispered. “Not anymore.”

“Wasn’t because I didn’t want to.” Mitch placed an open-mouthed kiss on the back of Randy’s neck, making his vision blur. “I remember your word. You gonna use it?”

It was his out. One word would end this. One word and it was over. One word and this admittedly enticing but highly scary door would stay closed.

Randy couldn’t do it.

“No,” he whispered. And then he melted into Mitch, terrified but trusting, and whether it was the magic of Ethan, or their own magic, or just dumb luck, this time, it worked.

Mitch nipped at the back of Randy’s neck. “Then I’m gonna fuck you, Skeet. I’m gonna finger-fuck you in front of my husband and your boyfriend. Right here. And you’re gonna open up and take it. You got that?”

Randy’s insides were melting. Mitch knew this, knew about him, knew he loved dirty talk. Really fucking dirty. “Yeah,” he rasped.

“Tell me how many fingers you want,” Mitch demanded.

Randy looked at Ethan, looked him right in the eye and let him see it, let him see that he liked this. Probably let him see the terror too. Ethan just smiled, pinched Sam’s nipple again, and let his eyes wander down to Randy’s cock.

“Three,” Randy said, so that they could all hear.

Mitch growled his approval against Randy’s neck and pushed one finger inside.

But that was just a tease. Mitch then lifted Randy’s leg so he was only kneeling one-sided, lifting it up over Mitch’s own knee. He spread him farther, putting him on the edge of his sense of balance. Mitch’s hand left, then came back cooler, more lubricated—Randy hitched a breath as fingers pushed up inside him, hard, thick, insistent. Randy looked Ethan in the eye and took it, took Mitch in because he liked it, because Ethan liked watching it. Because it felt good. Because it felt dangerous and safe at once.

When Mitch finished with him, Randy was panting and pliant—he went where Mitch aimed him, which was, weirdly enough, into Sam’s arms. Mitch and Ethan were working in some silent concert again, pressing Sam and Randy into one another. They were both kneeling, their aching cocks sliding together, Randy’s long and thick and uncut, a big boorish thing, and Sam’s slim and sleek and naked. Ethan pressed up behind Sam, Mitch behind Randy, and that was how Randy ended up with his hands on Ethan’s shoulders and Sam’s on his husband’s. But it was Mitch’s dick pressing between Randy’s cheeks, not entering him, just poking him, and he assumed that Ethan was playing the mirror of this behind Sam. Sam gasped and undulated, and so did Randy, their cheeks pressed together, their mouths at each other’s ear, and they stayed that way until they began to gasp almost in concert, matching their rhythms, rubbing their faces against one another, the caressed now caressing each other.

Then Mitch’s hands came down, one on Randy’s head, one on Sam’s, and turned their faces to one another. Randy looked at Sam, not even an inch away from him, and Sam looked back, sloe-eyed and heavy lidded, his eyes on Randy’s mouth. Randy’s eyes fell down, too, to Sam’s fat, parted lips, and he felt a deep, thick pang of desire. He tried to turn away, to look at Ethan.

Ethan’s hand came out and pushed him back, so that now he was held between both men’s hands.

Mitch bent down and whispered into Randy’s ear, “Kiss him, Skeet.”

Both Randy and Sam went very still, and their eyes opened wide, looking at the other.

Ethan and Mitch stayed calm, and Mitch spoke.

“I know how you feel about Sam,” Mitch said. “And I don’t care. I like it, actually. Because I know how you love him. And it makes me feel good. Makes me feel like I can leave him with you. Makes me feel like he won’t be so lonely, and so neither will I—won’t be lonely, either.” Mitch nudged Sam’s cheek. “Show him, Skeet. Show Sam. He’s the only one who doesn’t know. Show him. Please.”

For about five seconds, Randy couldn’t do it.
This is the most fucked up thing I’ve ever heard
, he thought, and decided he would not do it, that it was a bad, bad, bad idea. But then Ethan stroked his other cheek, and Sam looked up at him, and Randy understood, he thought, what Mitch was saying. He saw the same fear in Sam’s eyes that he’d felt that morning in the office, that he, Randy had felt. He saw, too, that as much as Sam hated being told this, he was still too young to really know how to handle that, that he wasn’t ready. Hell, maybe Randy wasn’t ready either. But he knew how to juggle it better than Sam, and so, in a move that Randy chalked up to “Never fucking thought I would see the fucking day, fucking ever,” Randy let himself slide even further under, not just under Ethan and Mitch, but under Sam too. He bent forward and brushed his lips against Sam’s. Sam, the beautiful young man who had turned his life upside down two years ago, the man he loved in a way that was not about marriage or partnership, but instead was about sex, and play, and, above all, about protection. There, under the watchful eye of two other men, Randy told it all to Sam. He told him with his mouth, with his hands, with a tenderness he wasn’t sure he could give to anyone else, not even to Slick, because Slick didn’t want it. Randy gave it to Sam, though, gave him the little boy that Sam drew out in him, the little boy nobody had seen since the day Uncle Gary had gone into the ground. Randy brought him out for Sam. And for Mitch. And for Ethan.

And for himself.

And as Sam opened his mouth and kissed him back, not seeming to fully understand what he was receiving but absolutely understanding the message—
I love you
—he accepted it, and even though Randy still hated therapy, he had to admit, this opening up thing was actually working out pretty good.

While Sam and Randy embraced, kissing deeply, like lovers, like children—yes, that would turn some, wouldn’t it? But they were children inside, the both of them still, and the children who had been lost in the both of them needed love too. Because this moment, this kiss, was not about sex. This moment wasn’t about anything but comfort, and it wasn’t about anybody but Sam and Randy and the lovers who knew enough about what they needed and loved them enough to give it to them.

On silent cue their partners switched behind them, and then the orgy was over, because as Ethan nudged himself inside of Randy and Mitch inside of Sam, it became not about pleasure or lust but only, for those few minutes, about making love. They thrust, they touched, and above all they kissed. Four bodies, eight hands, four mouths, four erections all blurring into one body, for this one time. They didn’t all come at once, but Randy would be damned if he knew who started and who finished, or even where he ended up in the sequence. But they all found release. There was one more confused, indistinguishable round of kisses, and then it was over, and they were moving—again, nobody giving any direction, just following some weird unspoken command—to their respective bedrooms, where Randy assumed Sam and Mitch did a lot of whispering and vowing, and where he and Ethan, flanked by a cat and a kitten, lay twined together and stared up at the ceiling.

“Wow,” Randy said at last.

Ethan stroked Randy’s head, and Randy could almost feel his smile. “So I did okay?”

In answer, Randy turned his face and kissed him. “Thank you.”

Ethan touched his nose. “I liked it too.” He was softer now, all his command sliding away.
Ace moving high to low.
“I’ve never done anything like that before, Randy. Ever.”

“I’ve always said you were a quick study,” Randy replied, and he smiled.

Ethan didn’t smile. He went even softer, then softer yet, then closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he could lift his gaze no higher than Randy’s chin. His fingers rested hesitantly on Randy’s cheeks.

“I love you too, Randy,” he whispered.

Randy felt joy rise up from deep inside him: a sunrise, a balloon, a bright white light. But he kept it still, kept it private, because he could see that Ethan was terrified. Hell. Part of him still was too.

So he just bent forward and kissed his forehead.

“What do we do?” Ethan asked, still terrified.

Randy had to laugh at that one. “It’s Vegas. We could run off and get married.” When Ethan went white, he laughed and kissed him again. “I’m teasing you, Slick.”

“It’s when everything slows down that I feel it,” Ethan said, still talking to Randy’s chin. “I’m fine when I’m moving. I can do anything when I’m moving. It’s when I stop, and think, and feel, and realize how fucking out of my element I am that I fall over. You, that out there, the casino, Crabtree, Billy, Vegas—it’s all easy, until I stop. And then I have no idea how a guy like me got here.” He sighed and stroked Randy’s cheek. “Sorry. I’m not being very dominant, am I?”

“I told you,” Randy said, his hands sliding around Ethan’s body. “I’m a switch. That means”—he nuzzled Randy’s nose, then stole a slow, bone-melting kiss—“that I like to switch.”

“Me too,” Ethan whispered.

And Randy watched him go under, sliding before Randy even had the space ready for him, so he just opened up and took Ethan in, all the way. His body was spent, but his heart, still hungry, still ready for more, led his spirit on, and they lay there in the dark, flanked by Salomé and Daisy, two members of an orgy of four now very content to do nothing more exotic than kiss.

But of course, as Mitch had always warned him, kissing was the most exotic and intimate act of all.

Ethan
was surprised at how much watching Mitch and Sam part affected him.

He assumed he was projecting his own experience onto them, that he was experiencing the goodbye with Nick that he had always wanted every time they left each other, the goodbye he realized now he had never received. The salt in the wound, he acknowledged, was that you couldn’t share the kind of sex they’d all been a part of the night before and not bleed a little when one of those partners gripped you close in a bear hug, gruffly holding back tears. It was hard to watch Mitch bearing up silently as he climbed into his bright blue cab, started up the engine, and drove away. Ethan didn’t even want to think of what Sam must be feeling. On one level, this was simply Mitch leaving to do a job, a very mundane sort of event. There wasn’t, as he had pointed out, any more risk in this trip than the many others he’d taken with Sam along. But it wasn’t about the job, Ethan knew now. It was about Sam feeling vulnerable—justifiably or not—and Mitch not being able to stay and shelter him from that emotion as he wanted to do, not just now but always. And yes, now that he’d gotten to know them, it affected Ethan. It wasn’t just that he empathized with Sam and Mitch, either. He watched them part, and he longed for someone to bleed like this for him too.

To his surprise, Sam managed himself pretty well. Randy had been ready, Ethan knew, for another meltdown. But none came. Sam was very quiet, and he wiped tears away every now and again. He leaned on Randy as he drove them back through town, but he didn’t melt down.

“Well,” Randy said at last, a little too brightly, “what will we do with our day? Still want to go to Zion, Sam?”

Sam shook his head and leaned harder on Randy. Randy, in turn, looked slightly panicked and turned to Ethan.

“I still need to go shopping,” Ethan said.

Randy seized on the idea. “
Yes.
Shopping. I forgot. Okay. So. Where are we going? Forum Shops? Miracle Mile again?”

“I don’t want to go to the Forum Shops,” Sam said, rousing himself to object.

“Sure. No problem. We can go anywhere. What about Fashion Show?”

Sam seemed to consider this. “The Apple Store is there, right?” From the look on Randy’s face, Ethan suspected if there wasn’t, he’d try to quickly get one built while Sam used the restroom. But Sam saved him by pulling out his iPhone and hitting several buttons. “Yes,” he said, after a few more taps. Then he turned to Ethan. “That okay? Fashion Show?”

Ethan was assuming this wasn’t actually a fashion show, but a place. “Sure.” He nodded at Sam’s iPhone. “May I see that? Because a phone is one of the first things I need to get.”

“Sure,” Sam said, passing it over. “I love it. Mitch has one too.”

Ethan turned the device over a few times in his hand, then started tapping buttons. It was surprisingly easy to use. “I had a BlackBerry before, which I’d just assumed I’d get again. But maybe it’s time for something new.”

“The games are great.” Sam sat up and leaned over to Ethan. “Here. You need Sheep Launcher.”

“Sheep Launcher?” Ethan repeated, dubious.

“Yeah. It’s a free app, though I splurged and spent the money to get the full version. See this sheep?” He pointed to an animated fluffy white beast in an aviator cap sitting at the bottom of a carnival game, the type where a mallet is meant to swing down and slam something up toward a bell. “Hit the button, and he’ll fly up. Keep tapping on him so he doesn’t fall, and he’ll just keep going and going and going.”

Ethan seriously doubted the utility of this action, but he decided he would play along for Sam’s sake. So he hit the sheep, watched him fly up, then saw him falling and failed to tap him before the screen announced that his game was over.

“Try again,” Sam urged.

Ethan did. And then tried again, and then again, and then his sheep was seriously airborne, and he lost track of how many times he’d kept it going, until it actually went into outer space. When the truck stopped, Randy’s call of “all right” distracted him, otherwise he would have made it all the way to the moon, he was sure of it. Ethan looked up at Sam, a little surprised to find that he was not animated and bouncing on a white pillow.

“I’m getting an iPhone,” he said, and Sam beamed at him.

The Fashion Show was actually a mall, and a high end one at that. It was as Vegas as everything else, full of lights and displays and a show on every corner. Though Ethan noticed the thing it was not full of was people. They practically had the place to themselves.

“This is bad,” Randy said, grimacing as he scanned the empty concourse. “Of course, as usual, this city is a metaphor for the country. We didn’t just bring everybody in to gamble: we brought them in to eat in fancy restaurants and shop in fancy malls and go to expensive shows. And now we’re the playground of kings and queens in a country full of overnight paupers and those who are afraid—and probably rightly so—that they’re next.”

And I’m going to resurrect a casino in the middle of this.
Ethan smiled grimly and slapped Randy a little too hard on his shoulder. “Thanks for the pep talk, Ace.”

“Anytime, Slick. You want your iPhone first, or are we hungry? Because I haven’t had sushi in a while, and RA is just around the corner.”

“Apple Store.” Sam was punching at the face of his iPhone again, then looked up and pointed down the concourse. “This way.”

Ethan ended up getting himself a laptop as well as an iPhone, and since he was already spending so much money he tossed on a set of casino and card games as well. They hung out in the store awhile, Sam gushing over everything Mac. He also sent several texts to Mitch, and at Randy’s urging, they sent him video of them stuffing sushi into one another’s faces, because that was where Randy dragged them after. Then they trolled for some more clothes for Ethan, some casual, some extraordinarily fancy, but at Ethan’s insistence, they were all highly conservative.

“When I’m at work, I like to be inconspicuous,” he said when Randy tried to push him toward wilder shirts and ties.

“But you want to stand out a little too,” Randy argued, not backing down. He handed Ethan a shirt that was traditionally structured but tinted lavender, and when you came close, the pattern hinted slightly at subtle stripes. “You aren’t an investment broker anymore. You’re a mob man. Dress the part.”

“I thought you said the best mobsters were invisible,” Ethan said.

“I said they were anonymous. I didn’t say their fashion sense put nuns to sleep. Here.” He handed him a stack of shirts. “Go put these on under your suit and then try and tell me I’m not right.”

Ethan arched his eyebrow as he took the clothes from him. “What, you aren’t going to come ogle me while I change?”

That made Sam smile, and Randy held up his hands in mock surrender.

“Well, if you’re going to
insist,
I suppose I must,” he said, and they all went back into the changing rooms.

Randy was right. The suits were good, but the right shirts and ties made them somehow even better. It wasn’t about being flashy. It was about… Ethan didn’t know what it was about. But it was about something.

“It’s a bluff,” Randy finished for him, when he caught Ethan staring at himself. “Or, it’s a bluff when you need one. You go in wearing the right suit, and people assume your hand. Fact of life.” Ethan cast a critical eye over Randy’s threadbare T-shirt and ratty jeans, and Randy grinned. “Bluffs go both ways, baby.”

“Hmm,” Ethan said, but he smiled.

They went to a discount store where Ethan picked up things he’d been borrowing from Randy for days now: shaving cream, shampoo, conditioner, hair product, and razor blades. He also picked up a pillow that, unlike Randy’s, couldn’t double as a piece of notebook paper. He bought his favorite snacks, and a few CDs that he was already starting to miss, and pretty much every this and that which caught his attention as he passed through the aisles.

“You’re kind of high-maintenance, you know that, right?” Randy observed as it all went by on the conveyor belt.

Ethan thought about pointing out that the night they’d met, everything he’d owned had fit in his pockets, but mentioning that night usually upset Randy, so he said nothing.

Sam picked up a CD from the pile of stuff. Then he grinned. “Olivia Newton-John! My mom loved her.”

“Mine too,” Ethan said. “And look, this one’s for you: a song with your name in it.” He turned the album over and pointed to track number seven. “See? ‘Sam’.”

Sam’s expression turned a sad sort of nostalgic, but it still seemed to be in a good way from where Ethan stood. “Yeah. Mom liked to sing that to me. But she stopped when I was in junior high because it drove me nuts.” He bit his lip, and the sad started to get the better of him.

“We’ll play it in the truck,” Ethan promised, and put it back on the belt.

They did play the song, and though Ethan could tell Randy worried it was going to make Sam too melancholy, it seemed to center him instead, which was good.

Back at the house, though, Randy pulled Ethan aside when Sam went to the bathroom.

“I have to work prop tonight,” he said, sounding unhappy about it. “Late. I tried to get out of it, but Billy felt like being an ass and said no. Would you—?” He jerked his head toward the bathroom, the question in his eyes.

“Absolutely.” Ethan scooped Salomé into his arms and stroked her absently.

“Just don’t teach him to drive the motorcycles or anything,” Randy warned.

Ethan gave him a wry smile. “I don’t know how to ride a motorcycle.”

“Oh? We’ll take care of that later, then.” Randy leaned in and brushed a kiss against his mouth. “Thanks, Slick.”

“Anytime, Ace,” Ethan replied.

They did okay for the first few hours, which were composed mostly of Sam enthusiastically helping Ethan navigate his new iPhone and computer. He was fine, in fact, until his own phone rang, a breathless female vocal that Ethan suspected to be Sam’s beloved Kylie declaring that no matter what was going on or who was around, “all I see is you,” and from the look on Sam’s face, Ethan knew this had to be Mitch.

“Hi, honey,” Sam said, his voice soft and tender as he answered, and he soon drifted back to his bedroom and stayed there for a long, long time. Ethan stayed in the kitchen, sitting up at the table and playing poker with the casino games program until he thought it might be wise to check on his friend. When he went back to the bedroom, he heard no one talking, just the quiet music of Kylie playing, this time from a small radio in the corner of the room. Sam was lying on the bed, stroking Daisy and Salomé, who had both curled up beside him.