MARCUS - reply

I was still on my hands and knees in the cupboard under the stairs, trying to find the loose connection in the junction box, when I heard noises from outside in the bar. A couple of voices – unfamiliar ones. A quick run of notes on a guitar and then laughing. I peered at my watch in the dim light, wondering whether it was past the time that Dex usually opened up. I’ve got used to his routine over the last few weeks. The bar stays open until the small hours of the morning at the weekends, but then he closes up until the early evening. No cutesy Sunday lunch menu for him, or opening for business for the dog-walkers and exhausted shoppers in the afternoon. He opens when he chooses, and to suit a certain clientele. I wonder sometimes how well the bar is doing as a business proposition, but of course we aren’t on the kind of terms that let me ask about his bank balance.

That’s when I’m not wondering exactly what kind of terms we are on.

I gripped the wire strippers in my hand and started to wriggle backwards out into the hallway. I nudged a poorly-stacked pile of boxes of paper towels, and the top one rocked on its base. When I leaned to avoid it, I caught my sleeve on a rusty nail on the door frame. “Fuck.”

There was a chuckle from behind and above me. I peered over my shoulder and saw him there, Dex, carrying a couple of replacement bottles of spirit, and obviously on his way into the bar. I was on my knees so I didn’t have much choice, I suppose, but my eyes ran from his extravagant boots up the long, lean legs in pale jeans, and up to the narrow waist. He was wearing a belt with a wide, bright silver buckle, like some urban cowboy. He had that ease with his body that made him look great, whatever he wore. Or didn’t.

“Pretty clichéd, I know, but can I assume you like what you see?” he grinned. His eyes were smiling but there was a glint in them as well.

I huffed, embarrassed. My jeans tightened across my groin, even though I was rather awkwardly hunched up in a cupboard with a ceiling no higher than a man’s shoulders. Of course I liked it. It’s in the way he moves; the teasing tone of his voice. I get hard more often than I’d like to admit, though it’s not as if it’d embarrass Dex if I told him. It’s just it’s not something I ever used to experience so vividly when I was dating. Even when I was living with Allan.

“Don’t get any ideas about me on my knees,” I joked back. “Do you want me to leave this for the night? I can finish tomorrow. You don’t need the side lights over in that corner, anyway. It’s only for Paolo when he plays. He can use the old arrangement of twisting the lamp around until I’m done.” I fumbled around in the dark to find my other tools and gather them together.

Dex grinned. “Love to hear you tell Paolo he has to make do with an old arrangement. Guy lives for novelty.”

“Guy’s afraid to stop still long enough to see what else is on offer,” I mimicked Dex’s drawl. “But he’s stuck around here, hasn’t he? Around you?” I didn’t mean it to sound snappish. I really didn’t. When I glanced back over my shoulder again there was an odd look on Dex’s face.

“Sure, he has.” His teeth worried at his lower lip, though outwardly he was still smiling. “I must pay good rates for a musician.” He stared at me a little more carefully. “That’s all it is, Marcus.”

I hid a sigh. “Sure. That wasn’t meant to sound… like it did.” And it wasn’t my business anyway, was it? We were both free agents. I’d gotten to know Paolo, Dex’s resident guitar player a little better by now, but we were uneasy companions. Just such very different men. Not that Paolo hadn’t been brazen enough to suggest a threesome late one night, and go so far as to touch me up in the john. Not that I’d ever have Dex’s charm, Paolo had slyly lisped, but I had a cute ass that he wouldn’t mind putting tongue and teeth to.

My response had been devoid of any charm at all. Paolo hadn’t talked to me again for a week.

Dex had laughed when he heard about our… confrontation. His eyes had shifted to Paolo, where the fey young man was playing some country ballad as if he’d never stepped away from the ranch, despite the fact I knew he’d been a city boy all his life. Paolo had blown him back a kiss; Dex had grimaced. I’d shrugged with a mature carelessness I’d been working hard on. “You two, okay,” I said, slowly. “Just don’t think it’s my scene to join in.”

Dex’s grimace had hardened, but he hadn’t said anything more. We never returned to the subject and Paolo kept his distance from me.

Dex laughed softly now, though it sounded a little less enthusiastic than before. “He’s got some company tonight – there’ll be a couple of them playing a set later on. It’s going to be a busy night, I hope. Some of his fan base is in town.”

I moved quickly – too quickly, because the nail ripped more fabric away and I caught the edge of my ear on a box. “Shit. Okay, so I’d better get out of the way down here -”

“Hey.” Dex spoke softly. He put the bottles down on the floor behind him and took my arm to help me up to my feet. “No problem. I just wanted you to know what the early opening was all about. They’re rehearsing.” He didn’t let go of my arm, even when I was upright again and only a foot away from him. “Marcus…” His eyes rested on my mouth and his tone had lowered. The word seeped seductiveness. He had that way about him, that made me smile at the same time as turning me on like the red interactive button. Fast. “You’re not the hired help, you know.”

I smiled back. I could feel his breath on my cheek. “The place is looking good, though, right?”

He nodded. “You’ve done a great job.”

“We both have.” It hadn’t taken long to fix the wiring in the club, but Dex had been keen on my other ideas, too. We’d changed the light fittings in the bar area and replaced the counter and given the whole place a bit of a makeover. A business contact of mine had offered us some cheap reupholstering of the bench seats and Dex had an artist friend who reworked the wall behind the bar with something tastefully erotic. It had all been done between sessions and late at night after the bar closed, because I was working long hours, and anyway, Dex couldn’t afford to close down completely. It didn’t matter to me, though. I enjoyed doing it, I suppose it was showing off what I could do. But I wanted to help out the bar. And it meant more time spent with Dex.

Most times, when it got too late for me to go home, we’d share a beer or two and a takeout, and catch up on what else we’d been doing. Then he’d kiss me – or I’d practise the new boldness I was becoming damned good at, and kiss him, and we’d take it from there. Didn’t ask either way, we were adults, after all – though if he’d said no, I’m not sure what I’d have done. But he never did.

Dex took showering together as part of the fun, which had startled me at first; maybe I was too used to a guy who wanted privacy in the bathroom. Or didn’t want me to share it. It was one of the things I liked best, nudging up close to him, naked and wet and laughing. Dex was synonymous with laughter. I felt like some kid in the showers after games, fighting with him for the soap. Then the kid thing would wash away with the foam, because he’d spin me around to face the wall and lick all the way down my spine. While I held myself upright as best I could against the slippery tiles, he’d drop to his knees behind me and peel my buttocks apart to wriggle his tongue in between.

Then we went to bed, after times like that.

Dex was synonymous with great sex, too. We’re similar in age, but the experience thing… no way could I compare. I didn’t talk much to him about it – didn’t ask for highlights of his adventures, either – but he knew Allan had been my first proper relationship. I think he also knew the sex hadn’t been that good, or that regular; of course, as I finally found out, Allan had been using up his sexual stamina on another, willing, transient ass… or ten. So maybe I was a disappointment to Dex, though he never said so. He never made me feel clumsy or stupid, I did all that for myself. But I learn quickly, is all I can say.

“I know something else is looking good,” he murmured now, nudging up against me in the hallway.

This time I laughed aloud. His face was very close to mine, his eyes sparkling. “I doubt that, with cobwebs in my hair and a pencil flashlight behind my ear.” I lifted a hand self-consciously to brush some of the dirt off my face, but he caught it on the way up, grasping my wrist.

“It’s not that.” His lips brushed against my jaw. “It’s the look in your eyes, Marcus. It’s perfect. When you’re laughing. When you look relaxed.”

He never called me Marc, like other friends did. It was always the full Marcus, and the syllables slid over me like a real caress. I was still embarrassed sometimes by his bluntness. “You’re saying I didn’t always look like this?”

He kissed me, then. No answer except a full-on, hard-as-sin kiss, though he stayed gripping my hand, didn’t move to pull me fully against him. Both of us knew the answer to the question, anyway – the pathetic state I’d been in when I first met him. His lips were warm and wet and his tongue thrust in quickly, pushing my own lips open to take it. I gasped, my cock hardening even more. “It’s like a filthy sauna in that cupboard, Dex. I’m sweaty and I smell.”

“Yeah,” he murmured into my mouth. Mischief sounded and tasted like Dex. “You smell of us.”

We’d had sex more than once since we went to bed the previous night. I’d been doing some work on the bar’s kitchen, and after it got to midnight, Dex offered for me to stay over. He made me a late sandwich while I was finishing off, busying himself at the counter. I stopped to watch him for a few minutes, his long hair caught back in his trademark ponytail, his hands quick and steady as he buttered bread and sliced the meat. It was always a bittersweet feeling, watching Dex. I stepped up close behind him and snagged my hands around his waist. When I lowered my mouth to his neck and nipped at him, he arched back against me. I dropped to my knees on the kitchen floor and sucked him off, there and then, his jeans tugged down to his thighs and his hand tangling in my hair, guiding me back and forth. When I glanced up at him, he was grinning. He often made jokes about payback for the blowjob he gave me in the restroom the night we met. Last night, I tightened my lips and his grin turned to a groan. Like I say, I learn quickly.

We fucked again, late this morning, Dex waking me as he got back into bed after seeing to the early deliveries. He slipped his shirt and sweats back off, naked underneath them, his skin chilled from being outside in the yard. My cock stirred sleepily, the goose bumps running along my legs from his touch. His breath was steamy on my neck and when he pressed his chest against my back, I could hear his heart beat speeding up. He bent my upper leg and pushed it forward over my body, opening up my ass to him. I heard the gentle rustle of a condom packet opening, and the soft sucking noises as he slicked himself with lube. I moaned as he pressed into me, and then he paused, lodged inside, his breath panting slightly. Maybe he thought I was still asleep, or complaining for some reason. But we both knew what we were together for. For fun… for satisfaction.

“Marcus?” His voice sounded strained. “You looked so good, lying there. I’m sorry, I didn’t think…”

“Fool,” I muttered, yawning at the same time. “It’s good. Do it.” I felt his cock rock gently inside me, then it wasn’t rocking any more, it was thrusting and I was clutching the sheets and growling.

Growling hadn’t been something I did, before I met Dex. Add that to the list.

Now he was kissing me in the hallway behind the bar and I was kissing him back. “I want you,” he murmured, his hands starting to roam over my body. “God, really badly. You’ll stay the rest of the weekend, won’t you?”

I felt hot with pleasure, like a flush all over my body. “You might have other plans…”

“No,” he said, quickly. He sounded a bit annoyed for some reason. “Just you.” He slid his hand to the front of my jeans and palmed the bulge. I sucked in a breath.

“Paolo’s around, and his friends. You know a lot of them. You’ll be with them, too…” I didn’t know what the hell I was saying, really. Obviously, he still fucked Paolo, and probably his other guys, too. I mean, that was the lifestyle, and he was entitled to it. Though I was grateful I never saw evidence of the rest of his life, the rest of his sexual conquests - he was good that way. And I didn’t want to change Dex, the way he was. He was cool. I wanted to be cool like that.

Just wasn’t quite so good at it yet. If ever.

“Shut up, Marcus,” he hissed. His mouth was greedier now, nipping at my lips, his tongue thrusting into me as he stroked my erection. “You can be a real prick sometimes.”

I was breathless with the lust, and maybe I was confused, too. “Because I won’t fuck in the hallway?”

He laughed, then, and pulled back. “Sorry. No. I mean, I shouldn’t have said that.” His eyes gleamed with excitement, though for a second, I mistook it for nervousness. “Though that’d be damned good, too. Over the stair rail, your jeans around your ankles, gripping the bars…”

Ludicrously enough, I found myself about to explain they wouldn’t take it – the bars, that is, because the moorings still needed to be strengthened – then Paolo appeared in the entrance through to the bar. He tossed back his dark curls in a petulant gesture, a favourite of his.

“Get a room,” he muttered, glaring at the pair of us then – surprisingly – letting his gaze drop away. “I want to change the stools over by the window, someone gonna to help me here?”

Dex peeled himself away from me with a sigh. “Sure. Like you artistic types can’t lift some furniture.” His hand trailed away from mine until only the fingers were touching, then he strolled away into the bar. I heard some of Paolo’s group call out to him, laughing; cheering at his arrival.

Paolo still stood at the doorway.

“Look…” I said. “What’s your problem?” God knows what else I was about to say.

Paolo seemed to know better than I did myself. “You’re the problem, Marcus. You’re a screwed-up, confused little prick, and we both know it. Dex helped you through your melodramatic bust-up and now you want him instead.”

I stared in shock. Paolo had never been so blatantly hostile before. “Fuck off, yourself. We’re all free agents. That’s what it’s about.”

Paolo stepped into the hallway, as if trying to shield our conversation from the babble outside in the bar. “How many other guys are you fucking, Marcus? Just how free are you?”

I flushed with anger. “That’s not the point -”

“Fucking is!” he hissed back. “You’re fucking Dex about and I won’t have it, you hear?”

Now I was just plain confused. “What are you talking about?”

Paolo glanced over his shoulder, then back to me. His eyes looked strangely wide and wet. “You’re playing your bed-hopping games with him and he’s letting you. He’s turning into a screwed-up prick, too. It’s chewing him up inside.”

I let the insults pass – even though they were untrue. “He’s fine with it all. We just get together now and then and have some fun. It’s what you guys do, too…”

Paolo winced. “Dex hasn’t been available for anyone else since he met you, you stupid bastard.” He must have seen the shock in my face because he rushed on, “This isn’t some sour grapes thing here. Don’t flatter yourself. I liked fucking Dex and he liked me. But I’ve got other guys I like more – and anyway, it’s just not happening now. He’s hot and he’s needy but it’s all kept inside. All for you.” He frowned, the contrast with his boyish good looks making him seem like some disgruntled cherubim. “And you don’t want it. Not all of it. You just want the casual sex and his generosity and his attention. He got you on the rebound and I guess his ass is just one of your many, safe little havens…”

“No!” I hoped I didn’t shout, though there was a sudden lull in the conversation outside. Paolo was so wrong, so very, very wrong. Everything was turned about! Didn’t he see that? It was the freedom of Dex’s lifestyle that I’d wanted; that I’d aspired to. That was the best for everyone, I thought. But it was Dex who lived that way, not me, despite all my pathetic attempts, despite the occasional nights I’d gone to other places and tried to pick up some easy company. Fuck, I had tried! But the guys had been scary, or strangely empty behind the eyes, or else there’d been no spark of interest in my groin, let alone my head…

And I’d just returned every time to Dex. That’s the only place I’d wanted to be. Ever since I met him – even before Allan left.

Paolo was also totally right, too. I hated him at that moment. What had he said? Just how free are you, Marcus?

“Do one thing or the other,” snapped Paolo. He was watching my expressions with interest. “Fuck around with plenty other guys if you want, but don’t include Dex. Or pull yourself together and be there for him when he wants.”

I was aghast. I couldn’t speak. Screwed-up, confused. Christ, it was true. And it looked like I’d been dragging Dex along with me.

There was some concentrated strumming going on in the bar and Paolo looked distracted again.

“I can go,” I said, numbly.

He rolled his eyes. “Stupid, stupid.” His voice sounded softer, more like the gentle, lyrical cadence of his songs. “Like that’s what he’d want. Think about him for once, will you? And yeah, before you say it, I’m no lonely hearts expert, so don’t give me any shit about that.” He glared at me again. “But I’m honest.”

I stared at his back as he swayed back out. Games, he’d said. I was playing games, and with Dex, not just myself. Was that how it looked? Was that how Dex saw it?

I stumbled forward to the doorway myself and peered out into the bar area. The door out to the street was unlocked but there were only a few people there, it was still early. Paolo had joined a couple of other guitarists at the far end of the room where there was a makeshift platform and a few stools set up for them to sit and play. Paolo’s music was poignant, as always, the sound a thread in my ears, the occasional bum note and their laughter just more of the soundtrack.

Dex was moving a table over to the side to give them more room. He was grinning at some more guys who were there to support, and he’d passed around beers for them. I saw him straighten up with his familiar, easy grace, running his hand through his hair where it had slipped out of its tie. He didn’t need to speak for me to hear his voice in my head; he didn’t need to touch me for me to feel the comfort and excitement and warmth inside. The relaxation, like he himself had said; the ‘stopping still’.

A wave of shock passed over me like nausea, keening at me.

Then a couple of things happened at once. Dex turned and saw me, and grinned. His eyes lit up – I’d never seen that as anything but lust before; hunger, not delight.

And then one of the guys around Paolo turned, too, and stared straight at me as if he’d been expecting me to appear at any time. A tall, well-groomed man in pressed pants and deceptively casual polo shirt. A man with the dark, chiseled good looks you always seem to expect in fiction, and an unusual contrast to the musicians around him.

It was Allan.