Beyond the Footlights, page 20
Tanner drifted his hand, light as smoke, down to the side of his face. The warmth and strength stopped when Tanner’s long fingers were near his ear, his smooth palm on Kilmer’s cheek. Kilmer’s freed arm sagged, but he held it against the wall anyway. Training won out and he remained where Tanner had put him.
“I see you, Kilmer. I see who you are. What you are.”
“Don’t,” Kilmer whispered. He turned his head away from Tanner’s touch.
“Don’t you.” Tanner gripped his chin and turned his face back so he could look Kilmer in the eye.
“You don’t understand.” How could he? Even if he understood the lifestyle, he was on the other end of the scale, always in charge, always the one who made the rules.
“I understand,” Tanner assured him. “I understand you lost your way. You forget what this”—he gave Kilmer’s head a small, gentle shake—“really means. You think it’s about being worthy of some random set of rules, of being what another man needs or wants and filling a role for someone else. You think it’s about bending into the person another man could love and want.” Tanner’s grip relaxed and his hand on Kilmer’s face went back to gentle. “You are so wrong. You’re the one who doesn’t understand.”
He leaned close, and before Kilmer could turn his face away, Tanner’s lips closed over his. The kiss was velvet and calm. It was warmth. Spice. Complete control.
Kilmer kissed him back for what could have been an eternity or a heartbeat. Inside the shelter of the kiss, time had no hold or meaning. It was the softest of prisons. The steeliest of bindings. It was everything.
And then it was over, and Kilmer was blinking and staring at Tanner, mind blank, breath gone.
“You tried to be what he wanted, didn’t you?” Tanner asked.
Kilmer swallowed, unable to make his brain form thought into words.
“You tried to follow his rules, to be his Boy?”
Kilmer managed a minuscule nod. How badly he’d failed to be what Jacko had wanted.
“You tried so hard to deny yourself for his sake and his rules. Don’t you see how wrong that was?”
“That’s the whole point,” Kilmer said. “That’s how it works.”
Tanner brushed fingers along Kilmer’s jaw. “You’d deny this for me. To be with me.”
Kilmer shrugged. “It’s sex. I can do vanilla.”
“You’re not even a very good liar,” Tanner said, eyes soft and voice sweet. “You’ll deny this for me. You’ll force yourself into a form you think I want to please me.”
“I’m not lying.”
Tanner’s lips lifted at the corners. It might have been the beginnings of a smile, but the expression was sad and troubled, and drifted away like he had no idea he’d made it in the first place. He trailed his fingers over Kilmer’s face, still flitting his gaze over him, seeking something. His expression clearly showed he wasn’t finding it.
“Then you don’t know the truth,” he said at last.
“What?”
“You’ve been trying to hide from me how much this matters to you since we met. Pretend you aren’t desperate to be tied down. Held down. Fucked. Whatever. Used any way I want to use you.”
Kilmer felt the heat rise and knew he was flushing. He couldn’t look away from Tanner’s intensity.
“Because you think I don’t get it. Don’t get you.” He caressed Kilmer with his thumb, running the digit over Kilmer’s lips, and licked his own as if he wanted to draw the taste from Kilmer’s lips onto his own tongue again. “But which one of us is the one who doesn’t understand you?”
Kilmer opened his mouth but found no words, not even a thought to voice.
Tanner thumbed his lower lip and he snapped his mouth shut. That brought a flash of mirth to Tanner’s eyes, made him quirk his lips before he turned serious again.
“I could hold you down and fuck you, you know.” He ghosted a breath over Kilmer’s face, rubbed their stubble together, and breathed softer words into his ear. “I could tie you down. Do all the things you want to pretend you don’t need like you need to breathe.”
As if Kilmer could breathe after hearing that. His cock grew in his pants and he squirmed.
Tanner moved back and lowered Kilmer’s arms to his sides, then pushed them behind his back. “But those things wouldn’t help you.”
Kilmer very much begged to differ, but he said nothing.
“Because you would do whatever I demanded, whatever you think I want, including deny who you are completely, so that I get what you think I want.”
“You don’t want kink,” Kilmer said. “You’re—”
“Don’t tell me what I am. Who I am. I know who I am, and I know I’m okay. I’m good. I’m happy.”
Kilmer’s heart stuttered, stopped, plummeted.
“You’re the one who is desperate, Kilmer. You’re the one so unhappy with your life you’ll twist it around to be what Vance wants, or Jacko, or me.” He stepped back. “What about what you want?”
“No!” Kilmer huffed out the word, wanting desperately for the heat and closeness back. “This is what I want!” He held both hands out to Tanner, wrists together, fingers curled into fists.
Tanner smiled that tiny sad smile again. “It isn’t going to work, Kilmer. No matter how tightly I hold on to you, I can’t keep you safe. I can’t keep you from losing yourself. I can never love you enough to make up for the fact you don’t love yourself.”
“What? I—” Kilmer stared at him, arms still out in front of himself, even as he realized Tanner was now too far from him to be able to reach any part of him. Another man stepping away from him. Another man seeing he was too desperate and pathetic to be worth the time and effort.
“This is what we’re going to do,” Tanner said.
“We?” Kilmer hated how small that word was.
When Tanner smiled at him this time, it was wide and reassuring. “Yes, we. You and me. Together.”
“Okay.” Kilmer’s voice shook, and he lowered his arms, pressed his palms against the wall at his back to steady himself as he pushed straighter. He wasn’t ready to stand without the support, but at least he could rise to his full height and look Tanner in the eye. Maybe.
“We’re not going to date. And we’re not going to kiss. We’re not going to fuck. No one is going to tie anyone else down, or any of the other things that consist of me stroking your ego and being the one you pin all your self-worth to.”
Kilmer frowned. “That’s a whole lot of what we’re not going to do.”
Tanner grinned at him. “It clears the space between us to build something else.”
“Like what?” Kilmer wasn’t liking where the conversation was going.
“Like friendship. Trust. Value. Understanding. I haven’t done this in a long time. The last time I did, it… didn’t work so well. I have to learn why it matters so much to you. I have to see if I can do it again. If I want to be that guy. I can’t make you promises I won’t be able to keep. And you can’t give me things you don’t have.”
“What? We’re not friends? You don’t trust me?”
Tanner’s smile changed again, soothing the briars from under Kilmer’s skin. “I want you to believe in yourself, Tex. To have faith and trust in yourself. To like yourself. I want….”
Kilmer waited.
Tanner took a breath and another, sharp ones, like he was having a hard time getting air. He breathed as if he’d run a hard run.
“What do you want?” Kilmer asked.
A lot of expressions flitted over Tanner’s face, too fast for Kilmer to identify them. “I’m not sure. You. Us. Something real. Something that won’t break. You. You’re the toughest man I’ve ever been with and you….” He stepped close enough to reach out and brush fingertips over Kilmer’s cheek.
Dampness spread under the touch, residual wetness from the tears Kilmer had tried very hard to pretend hadn’t fallen like acid over his face.
“You are so fragile. So delicate. I need to be sure I’m not going to shatter you. If I do this wrong, make a mistake, if I screw up when you need me to be strong…. God, Kilmer, if I drop you, I need to know you will be okay. That you can teach me and that my mistakes aren’t going to be the thing that kills you. I don’t know how to be what you need me to be, so you have to be it. You have to show me how it works.”
“What?” Kilmer snorted. “Be my own Master?” The thought chilled him to his marrow. Left him cold. Terrified.
“Yeah,” Tanner said with a shrug. “Who knows better than you how to be that guy?”
Kilmer shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“I don’t see any other way it could work. If… if you don’t know what you need, how to love you, who else could?”
Kilmer slumped back against the wall and turned his gaze to his feet. “I don’t know how to do what you want me to do.”
He wasn’t aware Tanner had moved until his hand, as warm and comforting as always, cupped his face. “Yes, you do. Remember your own worth, Tex. All the reasons Vance chose you to look after his place while he’s gone. The strength you had leaving everything you knew behind to come here for Vance when there was no guarantee you’d get anything in return. You did that because you knew you had the resources to survive without anyone or anything you’d grown up depending on. You can run an entire ranching operation. All those songs you played last night. The way you treated Rocky, when God knows you have every reason to hate him. Turn some of that energy and care in on yourself for a change.” Tanner’s warm brown gaze, piercing and unrelenting, delved deep into Kilmer.
“And in the meantime, what? What are you going to do?”
Tanner grinned. “Research. Sing.” He glanced around the room. “Fix your drywall, paint your house.”
“Research?”
“Strictly academic,” Tanner assured him. “We might not be doing things together, but I promise you, I am not going to be doing them with anyone else either. After everything you’ve been through, I would never do that to you. But I will be watching you, figuring out how you work. That kind of research.”
“I’m not that fragile. If you’re denying yourself sex just because of me—”
“I’m not denying myself anything I can’t live without for a while. I’m kind of a tough guy too. I can take a bit of abstinence if it means making sure my lover is safe and happy and healthy.”
“Lover.” Kilmer breathed the word, feeling its foreignness on his tongue.
“You say that like you don’t even know what it means.”
“I haven’t been anyone’s lover in a very long time. I’ve been their boy. Or pet, or… whatever.” But not a lover. Never that.
Tanner closed his eyes as if something Kilmer had said caused him pain. Then he reached, clapped a hand around the back of Kilmer’s neck, and stepped close. He wrapped both arms around Kilmer and kissed the top of his head.
“Well, then you haven’t been with the right guys. And they haven’t shown you anything nearly like what you’re worth. That changes now.” He tugged at Kilmer’s hair until Kilmer lifted his face to peer at him. “You understand me?”
Kilmer chewed on his lower lip. He didn’t. He didn’t understand any of it. He was going to nod anyway, but the truth escaped before he could catch it. “No.”
“You will. Before I’m done, you’ll understand.”
Kilmer hoped so, because as he looked ahead from here, he saw a lot of uncertainty in his life. He wasn’t a fan.
“Let’s get on with it, then,” Tanner told him, moving away. “Time to start over, and it begins with your dog. Whoever you think he belonged to, he’s yours now, and you’re going to look after him.”
Kilmer nodded. Tanner was right. The dog didn’t deserve to be bounced around between people he barely knew. At least Kilmer could give him a proper home and care.
“Go on and feed him and we’ll get to work.”
Kilmer did as directed, aware it was probably the one and only time Tanner was going to take such a commanding tone with him.
At least for that day, Tanner proved him right. They worked side by side on the house amicably, but Kilmer was tense. The chain hung heavy around his neck. He knew he should take it off, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go of the last vestige that someone, once upon a time, had wanted to keep him. It was stupid. He knew it was, but he couldn’t shake the sadness over that time being gone.
He played with it a lot and knew Tanner caught him at it more than once. He saw the disapproving look Tanner cast him, which didn’t help his stress levels. Eventually Kilmer slipped out into the yard to clip away at the overgrown bushes in front of the living room windows. The dog stuck close to him as he worked. Tanner stayed in the house.
22
EVENTUALLY, AS the evening light slanted toward the backyard and Kilmer could no longer work in the front, he packed up his tools and put them away in the garage. Tanner watched from the window, wishing there was some way to do this that wouldn’t feel so much to Kilmer like Tanner was walking away from him. He wasn’t. He didn’t want to.
But he didn’t want to be the crutch Kilmer used to get himself clear of his problems. He wanted to be his safe place and shelter, but not because Kilmer couldn’t fend for himself.
Kilmer took his time getting back to the house, stopping often to first look at the dog, then talk to him and crouch down to scratch behind his ears. As soon as his face was within reach, the dog licked at him and pranced around him, enticing him into a game of catch-me-if-you-can.
Kilmer smiled and tried to clap hands on the dog, who dodged him, got close enough to lick at his fingers, then darted away again. He enticed Kilmer to play, even to smile and laugh, and Tanner couldn’t begrudge them the time it took to get back to the house. He was drawn there eventually by the dog wanting his supper. The simple task of pouring food into a bowl and talking to the animal leeched some of the physical tension from Kilmer’s shoulders and back.
“You feeling better?” Tanner asked, keeping his voice soft and eyes warm. The last thing he wanted was for Kilmer to think he wasn’t sincere.
Kilmer nodded. “I’m sorry.” He stood from placing the dog’s bowl on the floor and faced Tanner. “About the collar thing, I mean. I should never have asked. It’s too much. I get it. Baggage and all that shit.”
“You get nothing, Kilmer, because you haven’t let me explain.” Tanner’s tone got tenser as he spoke, but as Kilmer’s shoulders went up and he turned to look out the kitchen window, Tanner shuffled into the room. “Sorry.” He mitigated his tone back to the soft, careful cadence.
Kilmer wouldn’t even turn his head.
“Tex, look at me, man. I need to say some things, and I have to know you’re listening.”
Kilmer turned to lean on the counter, but he kept his arms crossed in front of himself, forcing Tanner to keep his distance. That was probably for the best, though he didn’t like it.
“I know you don’t want—”
“Don’t presume to know what’s in my head, Tex. Show the respect of taking two minutes to listen to me.”
Kilmer stared at him, unmoving except for his heaving shoulders, like he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs once again.
“Come and sit down. I’ve made some sandwiches.” Tanner kept his voice soft but didn’t skimp on the edge of command.
Kilmer’s shoulders stiffened, straightened, but he did eventually shuffle to the table to take his seat. “Okay.” He dug the key and bell from his pocket and laid them next to his plate, then picked up a slice of cucumber. “I’m sorry. I’ve been selfish.”
Tanner touched his hand. “I’m sorry too. Please understand, it isn’t because I don’t want to do this for you.” He touched the key with a finger. “It’s because it isn’t my place.”
“It ain’t Jacko’s!” Kilmer yanked his hand back. “No way.”
“It’s yours,” Tanner assured him.
“I—” Kilmer’s face clouded. He frowned but looked more sad than angry. His focus was back on his plate, but he didn’t seem interested in the food. “Okay, then.”
“We were going to talk, weren’t we?” Tanner reached for his hand again, half expecting Kilmer to pull farther away. He was gratified when instead Kilmer reached for him too and laced their fingers together.
“I guess we were. This is where I unpack all the baggage?”
Tanner smiled. “What makes you think you’re the only one with baggage?”
Kilmer lifted an eyebrow, popped an olive in his mouth, and waited.
“Of course a thirty-one-year-old half-deaf construction worker who should be creating fine furniture but instead is trying to make a living as a country singer probably doesn’t have any issues at all,” Tanner said wryly. “And that doesn’t even touch on the ex-Dom bits of my life. I thought I was done with all that. I knew I was. Then you….”
Fingers feathery and fluttering, Kilmer touched the chain at his neck and swallowed hard. His chest was still heaving. “You’re good at all those things, Tan—wait. What? Half-what?”
“I have to tell you some things.” Because if Kilmer was ready to acknowledge that the chain was something more than an accessory, then it was only fair Tanner admit he was on that same page, how he’d got there, and why he had decided to rethink it.
“Things?”
“Bear with me, okay?”
Kilmer nodded. “Okay.”
Tanner pulled in a deep breath. “So. I… knew a guy,” he began, then shook his head. “No. That’s bullshit. We were together. Sort of. He wanted…. I was young, Tex. Very young and stupid, and it was a rush having him kneel and submit. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but we played at… something. Only deep down I knew I wasn’t what he needed. Not in the long run.”
“What did he need?”
“For starters, more help than I could give him. Serious professional help. And he needed to get away from his family and run with a better crowd. Everyone warned me off him, that he was volatile and had dangerous friends, and that he wasn’t to be trusted. They warned me that if he was outed, I wasn’t the one he’d side with. I thought I knew better—knew him better. That if he just accepted who he was, he’d be happier. If he let the people in his life know who he was and what he wanted, the real people wouldn’t care. The rest—the assholes—would leave, and he’d be better off without them. And maybe in an ideal world, that could have been true.”
