Dove, Tarnished
By Byrne
R
Archived at Pastorale, Bellum Viri



The shine had worn off.

It happened quickly, like watching a silver platter tarnish in one of those weird time sequences on TV, so fast that Dove could watch each bit of glitter as it vanished. All the shiny flecks, like so much chrome peeled off the handle bars of a new bike, sort of scattered on the floor of Damon's kitchen.

Too many metaphors, too many chances taken and paid off. He'd felt pretty good at first, pulling back from Not A Nice Place and going there only when he had to. Not for the paying customers, but for him. Only there when he had to put his monster to rest, not caring about the management or Tracy or keeping his name at the top of the list. Using the place like the clients used him. It was different that way, more primal and more in tune with the source of his edge. He liked it like that.

He got his money the easy way, going into the studio when the calls started coming in-and that hadn't taken long. The first time was weird and strange and left him feeling okay. The guys were mostly all right, friendly in a strange sort of "yeah, I'm gonna be in your mouth in about twenty minutes" way. Took him about ten minutes to figure out which ones were gay and which were gay for pay, not that it mattered.

They mostly sat around waited, talking about movies or clubs or people they knew, and then it was time to go to work. And it was okay, really. It wasn't hard, and it wasn't kinky, although Dove would have done kink. It was just sucking and fucking and lame assed scripts that were only there to keep the action under some sort of control and not a free for all orgy.

In one Dove was supposed to be a customer at a garage, getting his bike looked at. They all agreed the casting was fucked on that one-he should have been the gas jockey, not the biker, but hell, at least he topped that time.

That was something he had been only sort of prepared for, the thing it took a bit of time to wrap his head around. Dove had no issues with sucking cock, getting come on his face, fucking strangers… but he sure as fuck wasn't used to being bottom boy all the damn time. Sure, he'd known he'd be doing it; it was porn. And he knew that more than likely he'd be taking it up the ass more often than not-he was pretty and looked his age, which was barely legal. So, it stood to reason.

But that didn't mean he liked it.

Maybe with a bigger studio, or more of a name-like, any name-he'd have a say. But as it stood he was just another pretty face with a big cock, and so he did his job and took the money. There were a lot of big cocks in gay porn.

It was a couple of months before it got sorted out that Dove also had a good arm and control enough to handle a good flogging without drawing blood. That moved him out of the string of bad band crap he was filming and into stuff a bit more his style. Damon had thought it kind of amusing that Dove got to sit behind a drum kit for about forty-five seconds before the clothes started coming off, and Dove said that it was as close to musical talent that he ever got.

But eventually he wound up doing bondage shit and using a crop, and that should have been better. But it was worse, a tease. The fucking was bad enough, with the countless retakes and faked shots to fill in the stuff that was missed or to make the scene longer. But faking a flogging stirred him up, made him pissy and mean, and he wound up going to the club more often.

Damon was getting restless, not talking about anything at all and looking resigned all the time. Dove didn't ask what was wrong, mostly because he knew and partially because he wasn't sure he wanted Damon to know he'd even noticed.

"What about The Chamber?" Damon finally asked one night when Dove staggered in the door too tired to fuck and not even willing to make up an excuse for it.

"Simon took a runner," Dove said. "No Simon, no gig."

Damon had tilted his head and bit his lip but hadn't said anything, hadn't asked the hard questions. Dove thanked his lucky stars and went to the shower, tried to coax one more round of fun out of his body.

He didn't want to think about Simon. Didn't want to think about how he'd brushed off the first call that didn't get a call back, or how pissed he'd been when Simon didn't call at all and they'd lost The Chamber. Didn't want to think about the worry that followed.

But mostly he didn't want to tell Damon about Jay showing up at Not A Nice Place and asking if Dove knew where Simon was. Because that had scared the shit out of him, and he'd known Simon was gone for good, and fuck but that hurt. He'd just shaken his head and told Jay that he didn't know. It was true. End of story.

Or it would have been if he hadn't wandered around for a week thinking Simon was dead somewhere and then gotten pissed out of his skull and hopped a bus. Dove had at least told Damon this time that he was going, but not why. A quick "I'll be back in a couple of days," and he'd gone.

He drank, he danced… god, how he'd danced. He fucked some guy in an alley and went back in and did someone else in the john. Through it all he could smell Simon's sweat and hear him laughing in Dove's ear, mocking him.

Then he had to use his arm, and he was too far from home, too far from a place where they knew him. It was bad and he was shaking with the need, his blood dancing in his veins and he couldn't be still, so he asked around and headed to a place called the Dungeon.

And when he saw Simon he stopped shaking. Enough to leave anyway, to get home to Santa Clara and Damon and his job.

He should have called Jay, he knew. But he knew that if Simon didn't want Jay to find him, there had to be a reason, and Jay would hurt knowing what Simon was doing. Simon would kick Dove's ass if he got Jay into that place and Simon wasn't ready to go back.

So he didn't call. Instead, he went to work, fucked for money, flogged for release, and watched Damon start to pull away.

And every day the shine wore off a little more.