Chapter 9
nine
. . .
Asex tape. Technically a digital recording made with a cell phone, but the end product would be the same.
The idea wouldn’t budge from Nikky’s head.
Not as he helped Harry clean up after breakfast, not as he said goodbye to Maggie and Laura, who were apparently his new best friends and self-appointed mentors, and not as he gathered up his things to head out to the studio for the day.
“I’ll walk you to work,” Harry said once Nikky was almost out the door.
Nikky tensed as Harry reached past him for his jacket, hanging on a hook right next to where he stood.
The gesture brought Harry so close to him that he could smell the man’s morning-fresh scent and feel the heat of his strong, firm body.
The part of Nikky that wanted to be so, so bad that Harry would call him a good boy, the part that had enjoyed every second of the club the night before, shuddered within him.
The part of him that wanted to make a sex tape with Harry throbbed.
“You don’t have to come,” he said instead of throwing himself at Harry and climbing the older and wiser man like he was a greased pole. “I can find my way through London on my own.”
Harry shrugged, so cool and casual that Nikky melted even more for him. “It’s not that far. And it’s not like I have anything else to do with my life at the moment.”
The comment prickled through Nikky, bringing with it a rush of pity that felt completely out of place with how much he idolized and wanted Harry.
He’d missed something about Harry’s personality in the time they’d spent together so far.
They’d both been so focused on what Nikky had going on in his life that Nikky hadn’t stopped to consider what might be going on in Harry’s.
It hurt to think that what might be going on in Harry’s life was nothing, but that was essentially what Harry had been telling him this whole time without saying the words.
“If it makes you happy, you’re more than welcome to come with me,” he said, smiling and reaching out to squeeze Harry’s arm like he was the strong one, which was blatantly absurd.
Harry returned his comment with a tempting, lopsided grin, but also with a slight pinch of his face that hinted he was trying to figure Nikky out.
If he did figure him out, Nikky hoped Harry would share, because he was a long way from figuring himself out.
The walk to the Tube was casual and refreshing.
It was a lovely morning in London, and the few people that were out and about so early were more concerned with getting to work than recognizing Nikky and asking to take selfies with him.
It made a nice change. Maybe the key to living his life out of the public eye and away from people like Holberg was to live it in the morning.
He couldn’t imagine Holberg being up so early just to get the scoop every time Nikky sneezed.
Or maybe the key to turning off the public was to get caught on tape being fucked into oblivion by an older man with a reputation of his own.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Harry commented as they emerged from the Tube station at the other end of their ride and started down the street to the studio.
“Hmm?” Nikky glanced to him, both pleased and intimidated by Harry’s concern. “Oh. I’m just thinking is all.”
Harry nodded and let a few more steps go by before asking, “Maggie and Laura weren’t too much for you, were they? They can be a little…eccentric.”
“Oh, no, they’re great,” he said with a smile, genuinely meaning it. “I mean, they’re wild and not at all what I would have expected from women that age.”
Harry laughed. “Never underestimate women past fifty. They ran out of fucks to give a long time ago and will eat you for lunch if they feel like it. Especially lesbians.”
“Yeah, I think I got that,” Nikky laughed with him.
He got it, and with each new step he took, he was more convinced they were right.
He needed to record a sex tape with Harry.
He wanted to record a sex tape with Harry.
He wanted to have sex with Harry. He had from the start. It should have been easy. Two guys who were hot for each other generally just laid it all out on the table and got on with things, right?
Easier said than done when your entire life was under a microscope.
And even before the microscope, from the moment Nikky had realized boys did it for him and not girls, he’d never dared to say anything or act on it.
Pamela and Brad had flipped out when his foster sister Megan had dyed her hair pink and joined their school’s chapter of PFLAG.
They’d forced her to quit and had a talk with the school’s administration about the whole thing.
Even though they’d encouraged him to act, they had opinions about his career choices, which was why he didn’t talk to them as much as he probably should have anymore.
“Is it Albion?” Harry asked as they reached the studio. “Is it the prospect of recording more shit music again today?”
Nikky blinked back to the present moment, embarrassed that he’d drifted again. “No, not really,” he said. “I think I’m still a little hungover.”
Harry hummed and nodded, then stepped ahead to hold the door. He didn’t make any further comment.
The whole process of recording an album Dean Albion’s way was still fairly new, but Nikky had already gotten used to the studio and its staff.
He smiled and waved at Belinda, the receptionist, as he and Harry walked past and into the heart of the building, then paused to say good morning to Benny, one of the recording techs.
Albion might have been intimidating as hell, but everyone else who worked for him was nice.
It had him feeling just a bit off-guard when he and Harry stepped into the booth where Albion was already at work mixing things, only to have Albion take one look at Harry and snap, “Again? Have you appointed yourself Nikky’s babysitter or something?”
Nikky flinched, both over the bare aggression in Albion’s entire presence and over the implication that he needed a babysitter. That didn’t bode well for his plan to convince Albion to let him record more of his own music during that day’s session.
“I’m his friend,” Harry replied, filling Nikky with frantic butterflies. “Which is more than I can say about you.”
“Yeah, you’re his friend, alright.” Albion removed the headphones he was wearing and stood in what looked like an effort to intimidate Harry. “The whole world knows how much of a friend you are to Nikky now, thanks to your little escapade last night.”
More anxiety spilled through Nikky as he took a half step back from the two warring men, like he needed to get out of the splash zone once blood started to splatter.
“We went out to a club,” Harry said, shrugging and looking as cool as ice, though Nikky was starting to know him well enough now to see the underlying tension in his stance. “We’re both grown adults entitled to have fun however we’d like, whether you approve or not.”
“Fun.” Albion huffed. “I know exactly what you were doing.”
Nikky’s breath caught. Albion knew the whole thing was orchestrated. He was going to call Nikky out for it, cancel his recording deal, and maybe start the ball rolling on his career flagging and him sinking into blessed obscurity.
“You were trying to ride the coattails of a genuine superstar to resurrect your own sad and pathetic career,” Albion said instead.
Nikky froze, his eyes going wide. That’s what Albion thought?
Was that what everyone else would think, too? That the whole thing was Harry’s way of getting back into the spotlight and not Nikky’s way of getting out of it?
“Harry is a friend who took me out for a good time,” Nikky said.
He wouldn’t have stood up for himself under ordinary circumstances, but he would stand up for Harry against a hurricane if he had to.
“Some people took pictures. People take pictures of me and post them online all the time.” Which was more or less the point of everything.
Albion turned the same disapproving scowl that he had for Harry onto him.
A normal man would have shrugged it off or stared right back.
Nikky felt the more than a decade’s worth of the scrutiny and conditional love that had marked his childhood crashing into him.
He lowered his head and drew in his shoulders.
He needed to do something. He needed to make this better.
He couldn’t cause trouble or make anyone unhappy. He’d be turned out of he did.
“It won’t happen again,” he said, choking on the words as they wheezed out.
Harry sent him a quick, puzzled look.
“See that it doesn’t,” Albion told him. “And if I were you, I’d stop spending so much time with this loser.” He nodded tersely at Harry. “How did the two of you meet anyhow?”
“Um—” Panic raced through Nikky at the thought of admitting they’d met through Rent-A-Boyfriend.
“We met through friends,” Harry said, crossing his arms and glaring at Albion. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Anything having to do with Nikky is my business until this album is finished,” Albion countered. He turned to Nikky and said, “Charlotte agrees. She’s flying over here as we speak.”
“Oh.” It was the best reaction Nikky could manage.
The thought of his manager flying to the rescue after he’d made a splash on social media should have been reassuring.
Instead, it filled him with the worry that he would end up right back where he’d started, tossed from one uncomfortable situation to another without enough agency to plot his own way in life.
They really needed to record that sex tape.
“Nikky is not some commodity you can squeeze and package however you’d like,” Harry stood up for him. “He’s a grown man with a will of his own.”