Beneath the Stain - Part 4 (4 page)

Trav walked past Mackey’s room, feeling sort of bad about keeping family time short. He was going to stop and tap on the door when he heard a… noise.

A grunt. A breathy moan.

Oh hell, face it, the unmistakable sound of a hand beating flesh as quick as humanly possible.

Trav’s knees went a little weak, and he leaned against the entryway with a thump. In the bedroom he heard a muffled groan—climax, orgasm, come.

Trav’s cock lit up like a solar flare. His entire groin—his thighs, his asshole, his taint, his stomach—throbbed harshly with the ache of arousal.

He was leaning, head against the wall, shuddering, too undone even to move, when the door flew open.

Mackey stood there wearing plain gray sweats and a white T-shirt, faded thin and hanging to his thighs. Both of them were stained around his crotch, and he held a white towel in one hand.

The look he leveled at Trav was saturated with sexual heat and not friendly at all.

“You got anything to say to me?” he demanded.

Trav shook his head weakly. “No, Mackey,” he said, feeling helpless and exposed, like he was the one standing onstage with his boner extended for the whole world to see. “I’m… I’m sorry. I heard a noise and… I didn’t mean to mess up your… private time.” God. Could he sound any more like a spastic teenager?

And like most things that made Mackey laugh, Trav didn’t see this one coming.

“Yeah, well”—Mackey smirked—“don’t mind interrupting my private time. I see you so good in my head, it’s like you were actually there, helping make the mess instead of messing me up.”

“I’m… nungh….” Fuck.

Mackey’s smirk grew wider. “Yeah, Trav. You know what you were doing to me? It’s too bad you missed it. I was on my knees, and you know, I ain’t paid attention to a cock in a long time. I used to
love
having one in my mouth. I used to swallow that thing down, bury my nose in the pubes, and swallow, fondling the nuts too. I loved that. I loved it when I could get my finger all wet with spit and tease up the crease and just plug that thing right in the as—”

“Stop it!” Trav commanded.

Mackey’s smirk didn’t fade. “Sound good?” he asked, moving closer. Trav could smell the come on him, could smell his sweat and whatever he used as aftershave that already turned Trav on.

“God,” Trav begged. “Mackey… fuck….”

“You let me know if that sounds good,” Mackey whispered, close enough to lean his head forward. Trav didn’t leave him hanging. He leaned his head forward too, until they met in the middle. “’Cause you say the word, Travis, and I’ll be on my knees—”

“I’m already there,” Trav rasped. “I’m on my knees, begging you, give it just a little more time.”

“When? Dammit, tell me when! I want a sign, an end game, a
something
to let me know this is real and not just a stupid carrot on the string at the end of rehab. You wouldn’t fuck me just to be a carrot on a string—I trust that, Trav. But the pit of my stomach, the root of my cock—they don’t got no promises, you hear me?”

Trav nodded dumbly, realizing he’d been out-mind-fucked by someone he kept trying to think of as a kid. “Date,” he said, grateful for an answer and feeling a little stupid. “We gotta go on dates. Make it real. In public. Holding hands. Like it’s real. More than one. Can you deal, Mackey? Can you deal with a guy you gotta date and look in the eye the next day?”

Mackey sighed, and the smell of come and sweat got stronger for a minute. He rubbed his lips against Trav’s.

“More’n one?” he asked, like he was making sure.

“Real dates, Mackey. Three at least.”

Mackey chuckled low and evil. “Can I go down on you on the second date?”

“
No
!” Trav snapped, jerking back.

That fuck-off-and-love-me grin never faltered. “Then we’d better make it some kiss,” he purred. He brought his hand up and rubbed Trav’s lower lip with his thumb.

“Taste it,” he demanded. “Dream of me.”

With that he turned back to his room and the attached bathroom. Trav watched him go, licking his lips unconsciously, and then tried not to curl up in the hallway and come in his jeans when he realized the bitter-salt he was tasting.

He made it to his room instead, slammed the door behind him, shoved his hand into his jeans like a teenager, and squeezed his cock just hard enough to hurt—which made him come.

Then he sank to the floor, breath rasping in his chest, and leaned his forehead against his knees.

Dates. That was it. They were going to date. He was going to date a kid just over half his age, and if he was lucky, that kid wouldn’t chew him up and spit him out before they actually got to make love.

A part of him was laughing viciously, like Terry would laugh if he ever found out, but a part of him was terrified. Mackey had him enraptured, shredded, dependent on a recovering addict for all smiles, all tears, all joy.

What would happen if Mackey couldn’t keep those promises to stay clean and sober, not to drive himself beyond exhaustion, not to yearn for Grant Adams?

Oh, fuck it, Trav
—
rehab won’t fix you if Mackey breaks you. There won’t be enough of you left for Mackey Sanders to snort.

Fuck.

He willed himself to get up and change into a clean pair of sweats, wash his hands, and go to work at his desk. He would do this eventually, but not at first. At first he had to stay curled on the floor, seeing all of the possible ways this could go wrong and Travis Ford would never find himself again.

For the very first time, he felt with all of his heart why Mackey had taken that first pill, that first bump, that first shot of juice.

Because this? This promise of pain? This was one of the fucking scariest things Trav had ever felt.

He should be as strong as Mackey.

I
T
WAS
unaccountably nerve-racking, going on that first date. For one thing, Mackey did not have a
clue
what to wear. He finally had to ask for advice from the one person in the household who could actually dress but who
wasn’t
Travis Ford.

Shelia was thrilled.

“Something sexy,” she said, poring over the computer catalogue with him, “but not… you know. Not your concert stuff, where you look like sex on legs.”

Mackey grinned at her. “I
am
sex on legs,” he crowed, but she didn’t follow him down the bantering lane, and he was disappointed.

“Here,” she said, thoroughly engrossed in the shopping aspect. “These jeans, right here. The black ones that come right to your hips—”

“Not the low-waisters?” Mackey had waxed again and everything.

“I thought we weren’t doing strangers in the green room anymore,” she asked, but without judgment or even sarcasm. She was just trying to make sure.

Mackey smiled at her, and it occurred to him that she was a sweet kid, and he liked her, but they weren’t ever going to be best friends. “No,” he replied, perfectly sincere. “No strangers in green rooms. Just a trip to the movie theater. It’s not even a premiere. Then dinner. Then a walk on the beach.” Mackey held up the Post-It Note, which, true to form, had the date, Saturday, and the time—leave the house at six—and the itinerary. “See? Schedule and everything.”

Trav had probably been aware of the irony.

Shelia just nodded.

“Okay. Good. Then we know what we need. A jacket—nothing too fancy, something sort of classic…. Here. Black, like the jeans, with that white seaming so it’s trendy? Yeah, you see.”

“And if we order this now, it’ll get here in time?” he asked.

Shelia nodded. “It will if you pay the extra shipping. It’ll probably get here tomorrow—I think the distributor is in LA. I used to work for them.”

Now that
did
surprise him. “So you worked retail before you… uhm, met the twins?”

“Oh yeah. You probably don’t remember, but the last time you played the Coliseum in Oakland, there was a radio contest to go backstage. It was one of those festival things—you guys were in the middle, which meant you did like six or seven songs—and there were a bunch of us just eating off the cart. You disappeared, but Stevie and Jefferson came over to talk. I’d gotten fired to show up that day, you know? And we stayed up all night talking, and they asked me to go to Portland for the next concert, and eventually I just resigned my lease to my roommate and stayed.”

Mackey couldn’t even laugh at that. “Just followed the music, huh?”

Shelia smiled, so completely at peace with her life, Mackey sort of envied her. “Yup. Just lucked out that Jefferson and Stevie were part of it. And that they didn’t make me choose, because I couldn’t.”

“Are you kidding?” Mackey snorted. “They’ve been looking for someone who could love them both for their entire lives.”

She had magnificently wide green eyes, and she turned them on Mackey and blinked slowly. “You and your mom are maybe the only two people in the world who get that. Who totally accept it. That they’re not gay and we’re not perverts, we’re just in love.” Her smile didn’t even twist. “Your brothers really love you. I’m so glad you’re going to be okay.”

Mackey turned away, uncomfortable. “Well, happy is happy,” he muttered. “Can I get the bright blue shirt? The one like a November sky?”

“Oh my God,” she murmured. “That’s why you write songs, isn’t
it?”

Ack! “Can I?” he insisted. “Because I don’t believe you when you say it’s going to show up before the damned date.”

“Yeah, sure, but I think the emerald green would be better since you’re all blond again.”

Mackey looked at both the colors side by side. Yeah. He could see her point. “Green is fine. Shoes? Socks?”

“Yup—here’s the website right here. I still don’t know why you didn’t want to go shopping—there’s boutiques just down the….” Shelia looked outside the window and sighed. “Yeah. Still there. It was nice of them to give you a break right after rehab, wasn’t it?”

Sure enough, the small cadre of paparazzi who had started camping out on the sidewalk in front of the driveway was still there. Soccer chairs, Starbucks, long-range cameras. Mackey had asked if he could stand on the roof and beat off in public just to give them something to do. Trav said he’d move back in with his old boyfriend if Mackey did that; apparently the fucker had cheated. Mackey figured that was a serious threat right there.

“Yeah, well, it wouldn’t have been a big deal if someone hadn’t gotten the bright idea of going to get a quote from my little brother.” God. Fucking Cheever. They’d warned Mom, and she’d warned Cheever, but the fucking school had let the reporters in anyway, and there was Mackey’s pain-in-the-ass little brother, living off their dime, saying, “Just because he’s a rock star don’t mean that’s right that he does that. I ain’t gay like my brother.”

Jesus.

“You could take the car,” Shelia said. Everybody
but
Mackey, Trav, and Blake had gone out the night before. Some new nightclub—Kell wanted to scout it out to see if they played any good music. They all came back early to report the music was trance bullshit, and that was that. But Kell hadn’t been able to drive the sweet little Mercedes he’d just bought, because they’d needed the security guy who was authorized to run those people over behind the wheel—or at least that was what Mackey hoped.

“Well, that’s how we go to work, sweetheart,” Mackey said, trying not to be bitchy. “And that’s probably how we’ll go out on this damned date. But right now? I don’t need that shit. I just spent four goddamned weeks learning how to live a simpler life—how in the hell am I going to do that if I can’t make the damned choice between catalog shopping and going somewhere the girl will offer to blow me if I make commission?”

“Do they do that?” Shelia asked curiously. “I barely get soda water.”

“Kell and Blake used to go shopping
just
to get BJs,” Mackey confirmed sourly. “Man, once I got my fucking jeans, I was
done
.”

“Well, punch in your credit card right here and you can buy your fucking jeans and be done,” Shelia said. He got the feeling that she was laughing at him just like he sort of thought she was stupid. Well, that was only fair.

“Thanks, Shelia,” he said, meaning it. “You were a real help today.”

She kissed his cheek. “Just have a good date, Mackey.” And then she danced away.

“Your mouth to God’s ears,” he muttered. For just a stupid trip to the movies followed by dinner and a walk somewhere that didn’t suck, this was starting to really scare the shit out of him.

H
E
FIDGETED
in the driveway as the car pulled up, trying not to fiddle with his hair. He’d just gotten it layer cut, so it was a little too short to fit comfortably back in the ponytail, and he resisted the urge to drag his fingers through it.

Trav was late. Trav was late and he lived in the same goddamned house.

Get your ass down here
, Mackey typed irritably.

OMW.

“Fuck that,” Mackey grumbled, turning around and getting ready to stomp into the house. “On your way? You’d better be fucking on your way. Get me all dressed up and sweating through my pits at the end of fucking October, and you’re on your fucking—oh.” Mackey scowled at him. “Hey, Trav.”

Trav twisted his mouth in that way that told Mackey he wasn’t fooled at all. “Getting impatient?”

“You’re ten minutes late. We can’t leave for our run more than thirty seconds late or you are up our asses like an ugly bug. I dress up for a date for the first time in my
life
, and you are fucking
late
?”

Trav grimaced. “I was confirming our reservations and they put me on hold. I got pissed, I canceled the reservation and got a line on some place not quite so exclusive but hopefully pretty good. How’s that?”

Mackey squinted at him. “You didn’t pull any Hollywood douche bag crap about ‘Do you know who I work for?’ Because if you did, this relationship is over.”