No Sacrifice Read online

  “No kidding,” Patrick said, staring. He frowned. “That’s… gotta suck, actually, all the work you have to put in. Maybe you’ll sell one of your songs soon.”

  Chance chuckled. “I’m not holding my breath on that. But I’ve got a couple new ones. I need to find someone to sing them for me. My voice doesn’t do them justice….”

  “Bullshit,” Patrick muttered. When Chance looked like he was going to argue, Patrick hurried on. “I’m not that good at it. I mean, I can sing,” he said when Chance raised an eyebrow. “I learned in school, you know, but I’m more… classically trained. But if I hear of anyone who does sing like that, I’ll say something. Never know what you’d pick up on set, you know?”

  Chance nodded. “Thanks and, yeah, I know. I’ve met some interesting people on set. And some real assholes.”

  “They’re in every profession,” Patrick agreed.

  “Okay, well, if you need anything, let me know,” Chance said, standing up. He went in and put his cup in the sink, then headed to the door.

  “Thanks again for everything. I’d probably still be staring at boxes if you hadn’t organized this.”

  Chance shrugged. “I’m happy to do it. Get some rest, okay?”

  Patrick nodded. “You too. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  “Thanks,” Chance said, chuckling.

  “Any time… what are best friends, if not honest?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye.

  Chance laughed. “Right. Honest. You look like death, then. Go to bed.”

  Patrick snorted. “Thanks. Maybe not too honest, huh?”

  Chance threw a wave and started down the stairs.

  Patrick watched until he disappeared around the curve in the steps, then closed the door.

  He was alone.

  He was tired, but he knew if he didn’t make this phone call, he’d lose his nerve. So, with a sigh, he picked up his phone from the little bar between the kitchen and dining room and woke it up. Before he could talk himself out of it, he’d dialed Rhys’s number.

  Rhys answered on the first ring, confirming the suspicion that he’d just been ignoring Chance. “Hello?”

  “Hi,” Patrick said.

  “How was Hawai’i?”

  “Not as good as I would have liked,” Patrick said. “How’s your break going?”

  “Good. Got a small part for a movie. I hear you’re a little busy for that right now, though. You’ve got Avery now?”

  “Yeah.” Patrick flopped down onto his couch and stared at the little books on his coffee table. “He’s with me full time now. So, uh…,” Patrick started, not sure how to bring it up.

  “So, are you still willing to practice with me?”

  Patrick frowned. Well, there went that hope. “Yeah. I got the script for the first few episodes. Our first naked scene is in it, so we can rehearse that one specifically.”

  “Yeah, I saw it. I take it you haven’t had time to read it yet?”

  “No. I just moved. Like… today.”

  “Okay,” Rhys said slowly. “So… what, a couple of days?”

  “I still have other things to do, Rhys. Um….” He paused to glance down at his watch—a digital with the date and other stuff on it. “Today’s Friday. Okay, how about… Monday? I can study it by then, at least enough to know what Jack wants. Did you see the notes from him?”

  Rhys snorted. “Yeah. He acts like we’ve never been in bed with anyone before. I put a call in to him. Told him we want to rehearse it, and he said he’d try to send notes for the other one too, but James hasn’t written that episode yet.”

  “I’d have been surprised if he had. It’s still a ways out.”

  “It’s not the last episode, like I thought, though. It’s about halfway through, so sometime in January, I think.” For some reason, Rhys didn’t sound happy about that, though Patrick couldn’t think why.

  “Well, let me know if he gets that to you. Otherwise, I guess I’ll see you on Monday. I’ll text the new address.”

  “Is Avery going to be there?” Rhys asked.

  Patrick hadn’t thought of that. But he’d find someone to watch his son. It would be one thing if, someday, he and Chance were together and kissed now and again in front of Avery. He had no qualms about showing a loving relationship to his son—and giving a good example of what they should be. But he didn’t love Rhys, didn’t even like the man much these days, and this was something entirely different. Especially if Chance was right and Rhys insisted on fucking. “No,” he finally answered. “I’ll get a babysitter.”

  “Good, okay. Well, see you on Monday, then.” And without another word, he hung up.

  Patrick blinked at the phone and shook his head. Something was up with Rhys, but Patrick had given up on trying to figure him out. Maybe he’d find out Monday. Then again, he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

  Patrick noted that when he was dreading something, the time toward it seemed to fly. He wasn’t exactly dreading the “rehearsal” with Rhys, but he was certainly not looking forward to it. So he found himself staring morosely into the fire late on Sunday night, annoyed that it was so close.

  He’d been surprised when Chance had offered to keep Avery for him. He would have gone to Marcy and asked her, but he liked the idea of Avery being in the building and not having to go far afterward to pick his son up. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see Chance right after being with Rhys.

  The whole thing was just all kinds of fucked up.

  It occurred to him, however, that with the rehearsal less than a day away, he had no idea, really, what went on in gay sex. He figured it was close to what he did with Emily, but he’d certainly never been on the receiving end of it, and, well, he didn’t know exactly what to do with two dicks. He shook his head at himself but retrieved his laptop and set it up on the kitchen table.

  He delayed a little longer by brewing another cup of coffee he knew he wasn’t likely to drink. But once it was done and mixed, he could put it off no longer.

  He needed to have some kind of idea what to expect. So he did what he’d do for any other aspect of his acting: research. He could admit, too, he wanted to have at least a small clue if he ever found himself in bed with Chance. He knew Chance knew he was clueless, but that didn’t mean he wanted to stay that way. If they did end up in bed together, he didn’t want to give Chance any reason to not come back.

  He fired up the laptop, waited for the log-in screen to finally appear, and then for Windows to eventually load. Then his desktop showed Chance and Avery from the beach smiling back at him. The same picture had become his phone wallpaper too, and he was rather grateful Chance hadn’t seen his phone or computer.

  He clicked on his web browser and waited for it to start. When the page came up, he paused to consider what he’d put into the search box. Gay sex seemed ridiculously simplistic, but with nothing else coming to him, that’s what he did and hit “enter.”

  The first result he got was for an amateur porn site. He frowned and clicked over to “images” to see what came up. That wasn’t very helpful. Even when he realized “Safe Search” was on and turned it off, it didn’t tell him much. The first few included kissing pictures—which made his cock twitch with interest. He ignored it and scrolled, but they just got more bizarre as he went. He saw a few actors—not in scenes, just their faces—a mess of Internet memes he didn’t really get and more kissing, but that was about it.

  He went back to the search results and clicked the first link. A pop-up came up, asking if he was over eighteen, if he was male or female, then gave him check boxes to say whether he liked men, women, or both. Well, he liked both, but he suspected if he clicked “women,” then he’d get as much or more heterosexual porn, and while he didn’t mind it, he was looking for something specific this time.

  The pop-up went away, and Patrick frowned at the results. He couldn’t tell what half of it was supposed to be by the thumbnails on the screen. He saw a spot on the side that offered h
im the chance to “browse by category.”

  He blinked at the options for a moment, completely lost. “Amateur, Anal, Anime, Asian, BDSM, Bear….” What the hell did they all mean? He could figure out some of them—he certainly knew what amateur, anal, and anime meant, could guess at the Asian and, though he’d never gotten into it, had heard plenty about BDSM. But he didn’t know what they meant by “bear,” wasn’t sure he wanted to contemplate “daddies” too closely—Avery’s picture flashed into his head, and he shuddered—and “twinks” didn’t make any sense to him.

  That man wants in your ass…. Patrick remembered Chance’s comment from moving day and clicked on the “anal” button. It got rid of a few of the videos on the page. Patrick scrolled through, easily skipping over anything that mentioned “piss” or “fists.” He passed up a couple that mentioned “monster toys” and clicked on the second page. Finally, about halfway down, he saw a promising one: “Raw couch fuck.” Mostly because it looked like pretty much straight fucking, he clicked. Once it loaded, he hit “play” and sat back.

  He was greeted by a camera aimed straight at the point of penetration. Well, at least he could see that part. One rode the other for a moment, then turned around, and Patrick got a clear view of uncircumcised, ringed dick, dead center of the screen. And discovered he was starting to get a little turned on.

  The couple on screen started talking about something, but Patrick had the sound turned down, so he couldn’t make out the words. It didn’t much matter. His eyes were glued to the image of the cock thrusting in and out of the ass and he couldn’t seem to look away.

  The video ended abruptly, and Patrick scrolled through the “related videos” off to the side. But they all looked like they were going to be pretty much the same thing. And he needed more, he needed to see faces. How was he supposed to know what his face should look like when he was getting a cock in the ass if he didn’t see someone else’s? He may allow Rhys to stick one in his ass, but that still didn’t mean he’d know what he should look like to make it believable.

  He hit the “back” button a couple of times to get back to the search results. The next link looked… clinical but promising. “How To Have Anal Sex.” Perhaps he could at least understand all the mechanics. Emily had never been interested in it, nor had the few girlfriends he’d had before her. So he’d never even touched an ass before.

  The page came up, and he saw two videos, one labeled “I’m a top” and one labeled “I’m a bottom.” He didn’t even know what that meant. He rolled his eyes at himself. If he was going to catch Chance at some point, he was going to have to learn this stuff. He read the descriptions, remembered that the assumption was that Rhys would be doing the fucking, and clicked on the “I’m a bottom” video.

  It asked if he was over eighteen and wanted to watch it. He clicked the yes button and waited for it to load. The first thing it told him was he’d need condoms and lube. He’d known that in some distant part of his brain, but he hadn’t thought about condoms with Emily since not long after Avery was born. She’d had surgery to keep from getting pregnant again, and they’d ditched them completely. He’d have to go buy some and lube, as he had no idea what Rhys may have done and wasn’t about to trust the man’s word. He made a note on the pad of paper he had next to the computer and refocused on the video.

  He found he was kind of grateful for the clinical aspect of it. He managed to make it through all five minutes and twenty-two seconds without getting turned on. He’d even chuckled when it mentioned that it was “his ass, his rules.” It went through how to put on a condom and even how to relax so it didn’t hurt. Patrick frowned at that, not sure he was looking forward to that part of it. But the video assured him that, if given enough time, it could be enjoyable, so he tried not to let the idea of pain get to him and instead clicked over to the “I’m a top” video to see if it said anything different.

  It just rephrased the same stuff. But there was a whole bunch of information on that site, and Patrick found himself lost, clicking through this link and that until his head was buzzing with information. He bookmarked the site so he could come back after he’d let it settle a little bit. He both felt better and disturbed at the same time. There was an entire culture out there surrounding gay men, and Patrick felt so out of his element, trying to figure it all out. He’d read about “saunas” and “glory holes” and, of course, safe sex. He even ran across a section that mentioned cleaning himself out. He paled a bit at that but made more notes. He hadn’t even thought about something like that, but as he wasn’t into weird stuff, he didn’t think either Rhys or Chance would be, and that meant he should probably be clean.

  All of that was good, but he still hadn’t figured out how he was supposed to look. He backtracked to the search results page again, deleted “sex” and added “porn” to the search box, then hit “enter” again. Well, all that got him was pages of links to still more amateur sites, the vast majority of which didn’t show any faces. He frowned, added “studio” to the search box, and finally saw a few promising links. He went ahead and clicked the “sponsored” link at the top to land at a porn studio website. He scrolled past the big picture at the top—which didn’t show any faces either, but that was because it was from behind—and looked over the gallery of videos at the bottom.

  Most showed faces, thankfully, and he slowed down. He leaned in, peering at the different videos. One had Asian men, one included big and hairy men, one looked like he was barely legal. Patrick figured there was as much preference in gay porn as straight, but he didn’t see much of his preference there, then realized that was because none of them were Chance.

  He shook his head at himself and focused on faces. But in every single one of those videos, the faces looked… absolutely ridiculous. They were cartoon-worthy exaggerations of what a face during sex should look like. He may not have known what a bottom looked like when taking dick in the ass, but Patrick knew what sex should look like, at least to a point. He rolled his eyes and backtracked again. He scrolled, clicked, then hit back. Again and again. Finally, he landed on one that didn’t seem quite so outrageous.

  They were young, like the “twinks” he’d seen on the other site. But most of them were built, some a little too muscular, and Patrick realized he really was developing a preference when it came to men. He liked them to have meat, it seemed, something to their chests. He didn’t like seeing an entire rib cage; that was for sure.

  This site was organized by star, rather than promoting just the newest scenes. Patrick scrolled through this gallery and paused when he got to a guy with long blond hair, a bit of scruff on his face, bright blue eyes, and didn’t show an entire rib cage. He didn’t have Chance’s facial structure, but Patrick realized it was pretty close.

  He paused first to read the guy’s stats and somehow wasn’t surprised to see information on cock size and whether or not it was cut. He chuckled over the “shoe” size, which seemed a bit redundant if they were giving cock length anyway, then scrolled farther. At the bottom was another gallery—this time of all the videos that particular actor had participated in. They looked pretty similar; the only difference was the person he was fucking. Patrick shrugged, clicked on one and read the description, then clicked “play” for the one-minute “preview” video.

  And Patrick’s cock twitched to life. Before the minute had ended—even considering a good ten seconds was taken up with credits and disclaimers—his shorts were more than a little uncomfortable.

  He glanced up toward Avery’s door, then decided to check in. When he was sure his son was asleep, he closed the bedroom door and came back to the kitchen table. The closing image for the video was up, and Patrick stared at the screen for a long moment, then glanced once more toward his son’s bedroom door.

  He retrieved his headphones, then shucked his shorts—for comfort, he told himself—and sat back down. His dick, already half-hard, jumped when he clicked back and started on the next video. He reminded himself he was researching
, not just out to watch and jack off to porn and, thus, kept his hand off his cock. His dick didn’t seem to appreciate the insistence, but he tried to ignore it and concentrate on the research.

  He clicked through other videos, watching the previews. His cock liked most of what he saw, and he had to admit, so did he. He backed out, clicked on a link on the navigation bar at the top, and scrolled through the “recent” videos, trying to get an idea for the other actors as well.

  But before too long, the previews started to get frustrating. He was well aware there was only so much variety they could include in porn, but the previews, though they hinted at much more, were remarkably the same. And of course, at the end of each one was the “To get the full video, subscribe at the link at the bottom of the page!” message.

  Patrick knew he could very likely get every one of those videos for free somewhere. He also knew all too well how piracy worked, and while he’d never done it and didn’t know, exactly, how it impacted the porn actors’ salaries, he certainly knew how it could affect his. He pulled out his credit card, kept himself to “thirty days access, nonrenewable,” and hit submit.

  He went back to the guy who reminded him of Chance. This guy, apparently, topped more than anything, but that didn’t really bother Patrick. He picked a video he remembered liking the preview for and sat back to watch.

  He tried—he really did—to keep his hand off his dick and focus on it as research. But before he was halfway through the video, he was slowly running his fingers along the underside and teasing his balls. His cock was already hard as a rock, dripping precum, and considering the last time he’d done anything even remotely sexual had been the rather unsatisfying encounter with Emily, it was no wonder he was already seriously aroused.