Author: Damon Suede
Category: LGBT
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/damon-suede/page,11,510994-bad_idea.html
“No doubt.” Trip laughed as he resisted the urge to lose control again so soon. “But I should get home. I’m trying to do this right.” He took one wobbly step back. “Gonna turn me into a sex demon.”
Silas sighed hard and adjusted his costume so he was semidecent. “Me too. God.” His sticky chest rose and fell, rose and fell. “Don’t you wanna come up? I’ll be a gentleman.” The air between them smelled briny. He pressed a hand over Trip’s heart. “Or at least I’ll try real hard.” His puckish eyes made it sound so reasonable.
I can trust him.
“Mr. Goolsby.” Trip cleared his throat and spoke the words almost formally. “I would like to see you again, if that would be acceptable.”
“Aw, man. I wanna see you right now.” Silas blinked, and he squeezed himself. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Trip grinned at his eagerness. “Okay. Yeah. But after shaking the bottle, I think coming upstairs and trying to keep the cap on might not be the most grown-up idea.”
“Debatable.” Silas looked disappointed and anxious. “That was the best… date I ever had, Mr. Spector. In my whole dumb life.”
“So let’s have another.”
“Yes, please.”
Trip straightened his clothes, secretly proud of the spooge on his jacket. “I’m not vanishing. I wanna get to know you, is all. Like a person.” That sounded weird. “You know what I mean.”
“’Kay.” Silas’s twang sounded thick as honey now, whether from exhaustion or horniness. Interesting. He didn’t seem aware of how Alabama he sounded, and Trip loved the lazy rhythm too much to point it out. “Feel like a new man.”
“I liked the old one.” Trip descended one step, hating to walk away but knowing it was the right decision. The evening had discombobulated him, and he couldn’t trust himself. “When can I see you?”
Silas’s answer was instant. “Any time.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” Silas sounded adamant. “If I have anything, I’ll cancel it.”
Trip grinned as he went down another two steps against his will, ashamed and exulted by what he’d just done. Just to be safe, he’d wait a few days to call. “Thank you, sir.”
“You are absolutely welcome, sir,” Silas called after him and laughed. “Don’t postpone joy!”
Trip backed away, slowly. His balls felt like they were being crushed in a wine press. His dick had rubbed itself raw.
Silas scuffed his boots in the dark doorway. “Can I get one more, Mr. Spector?”
“More than one.” Trip stopped, still shell-shocked. “But one now to tide me over.” He beckoned with his head, and Silas came right to him and wrapped himself around Trip so that he felt the delicious stickiness and the He-Man harness pressed between them.
Silas cupped the aching bulge in Trip’s pants and put his mouth to Trip’s ear. “You think you can save yourself?”
Heart… beat.
“Nah.” Trip met his gaze. “But I bet you can.”
7
SILAS had a gift for monsters. Scaring people, getting under their skin, gave him joy.
The morning after Catwoman and Trip and that crazy good-night kiss, Silas wanted to sleep in, maybe sculpt all day. Instead he caught the 6:00 a.m. production shuttle from Rockefeller Center out to Silvercup.
The production designer knew Silas because the same agent repped them. To the delight of everyone’s bills and budgets, Showtime had ordered a twelve-episode season three that cost a little over a million-per to produce. Undercover Lovers was about two detectives having an extramarital affair while busting up warring crime families. Sleazy as a bus station toilet, but it paid on time.
Silas leafed through the call sheet in the crisp air.
This outfit was a small production company used to working on the cheap, a step up from Baywatch but not exactly Boardwalk Empire. Still, it was TV, and a recent show on his résumé gave him street cred.
Silas just wanted to work. FX makeup had nowhere near the homo population glamor did. Beauty artists attracted a whole different clan, way gayer with an alien lexicon and skill set. He knew how faces worked, bones and muscles and shadows. He could make any model generically pretty, but fashion was beyond him and interested him not at all. On the other hand, he could crank out realistic pincers or an articulated eyestalk in nine hours.
At security, he waved to one of the showrunners. Francesca, her name was—scrappy, beautiful, Italian, and no-fucking-nonsense. She had a knack for upgrading the B-unit footage and a habit of covering for late actors, which guaranteed her popularity in the ranks. She’d end up an executive producer in a couple of years.
“They’re waiting on Benita Luiz.” She flicked through papers on her clipboard without raising her eyes as they walked and spoke. “You lit out of here yesterday….” She let the subject dangle.
“Friend.” He prayed she’d let it drop.
As he watched, she tried on a few smiles to see which fit before she looked up at him patiently.
“Okay, kind of a date. No, it was a date.” Silas had turned into a seventh grader at recess.
They reached the makeup trailer and stopped.
“Good?” Francesca’s question sounded sincere, respectful.
Silas let a slow grin flare on his face. “So good.”
She winked, but her face stayed serious.
Speaking of…. Silas dug in his pocket to check his phone. The screen was a spider web of cracks because he constantly dropped it and slammed it into things, but it kept on ticking despite the licking.
Trip still hadn’t called.
Only the accidental orgasm worried Silas. He’d tried to be a gentleman. He was so used to hooking up immediately that this dating thing was terra incognita. At the same time, if they were gonna date like grown-ups, dressing up as He-Man and then getting finger-fucked on his stoop might not have been the classiest option.
How did adults date anyway? Tricking he could do. He had random booty calls and fuckbuddies out the hoo-hah. But exchanging names, meeting for dinner, having adult conversations that didn’t involve inches or kinks… and he’d sailed off the edge of the map. Here be dragons.
“’Sup, pa.” A lean gaffer smoking near the video village monitors nodded hello. Mexican, maybe, in his early twenties with a shredded eight-pack and a dinged Leatherman clipped on his belt. He rotated his head to exhale smoke in a rush.
Silas clocked him, bandana to boots. He’d slept with plenty of bi-curious techies. The gaffer sized up Silas casually and lipped the cigarette again. A wad of tackle pressed against his left pant leg.
Great secret of every movie set: techies were the best lays, hands down. Hot as hell, most of them, and way more gritty-interesting-fun than actors. They didn’t scramble to get in front of every camera, and they tended to be pretty buff and clever. And since Silas spoke fluent geek, gay didn’t factor much. He’d take sweaty tattoos and a goatee over caps and a chemical tan any day.
Normally, Silas would have ambled over, eyed the chunk of meat hanging loose under the gaffer’s ripped jeans, and planted the small-talk seeds of a chorizo lunch break. He knew a bi-for-now offer when he saw one. Instead, Silas dropped his gaze and kept walking, his head full of Trip and that good-night kiss with benefits. What are you doing?
He unlocked the door to the trailer and climbed inside its warmth. The big five-station units were bigger than the cramped location trailers. Because the show had a small crew, the extra stations became holding pens for actors in the assembly line, giving them a place to park it while their magical gloop dried, set, and gelled.
Silas ignored the closed door and decided the Mexican gaffer wasn’t that cute. Besides, today was gonna be a busy day. Yeah.
“Paul.” Silas bowed his head at a stocky guy with a scraggly mustache and a backward baseball cap bending over a big hardware box.
Paul was one of the show’s longtime artists—fast and economical with his applications, not to mention very respectful with young ladies. He added Si
las for prosthetics whenever he could. His wife, Tiffany, had worked the New Year’s OutRun.
“We were worried you mighta eloped.” Paul took off the cap and settled it back on his hair. “You cleared out of here like shit through a Shriner.”
“Yesterday? Yeah.” So everyone on set knew Silas had had a date. Great. “I had to get to a screening.” He did not say it had been Catwoman.
Heading farther into the trailer to avoid further questions, Silas started loading up his airbrushes immediately at two different stations. Filming an accident this scale, reds and purples were gonna go fast. Ditto silicone, so he prepped the PlatSil compounds in two buckets so he could mix quickly when the background talent started pushing through. When doing this many burned extras, the important point was to convey a general impression of charred mayhem without getting bogged down in details.
Fair or not, most of the “background talent” would end up in the dark edges of every shot like scorched human throw pillows. Odds were this would be a high point in their careers and “Charred waitress” would be their biggest credit on IMDb.
TV folks always bent over backward to find ways to blow up buildings and get everyone’s tits out… but on a shoestring budget and in a family-friendly way. Like Lawrence Welk for sadistic juvies.
Suit-itis. Studio executives lived in mortal terror of new ideas, but they could only get ahead by taking horrible risks.
Narrow shoulders. Narrow bias. Narrow view.
Silas rummaged in the cabinet for the drums of TraumaSkin FX, both the pre-burnt and pre-blood, to skip the need for a base coat. Running thirty extras in this little time, he needed all the help he could get. Mixing additional pigment and flocking into the silicone cut his painting time to a third.
Paul spoke firmly. “Nothing too grim. And no exposed bone.” Finger wag. “A little blood is okay. Some contusions. But these ladies are strictly background.”
Silas left the buckets stewing and went back to his stations.
His pocket buzzed and Silas checked his phone. Not Trip. Kurt couldn’t meet later because he had a “Z meeting,” whatever that meant. So not only had Silas blown their date, he couldn’t get drunk and obsess about it with his best friend the way he wanted.
“Boys!” A busty starlet in a black robe waved hello, and Silas waved back as she stepped up into the trailer in satin mules. He had a major soft spot for Leigh Ann because she resembled a hot Sunday school teacher but flirted like a gangster’s moll.
Paul patted his chair and got her settled. She had long purple pieces sewn into her silky brown mane and a fake dragon tattoo across one creamy breast and around her throat. Silas assisted with the silicone piece for her left eye. Applying the PlatSil directly, he built up charring across her jawline onto her neck and the swell of her cleavage but mainly stayed out of Paul’s way.
Makeup occupied a funny gray area on a film set because it was a visual medium. They were below-the-line crew but literally in the actors’ faces and privy to every private moment, more than the director or costars, even. Makeup artists existed somewhere between therapist and terrorist, surgeon and janitor. A great makeup team kept the cast balanced and on time, sent them out looking fabulous and ready to catch lightning in a can.
“Here she is.” Paul beckoned. “Ms. Luiz.”
A slim girl wearing an orange kimono leaned into the trailer. Benita was gorgeous, light brown skin and sly doe eyes, but looked all of sixteen.
Leigh Ann waved and they puckered a hello kiss at each other.
Silas scanned the call sheet again and the words “Sex Bomb” at the top. Please tell me I’m not supposed to make this sweet kid into a mangled hooker. He kept his smile level.
“No worries. I’m the goody-two-shoes red herring caught in the crossfire.” Benita shook her head.
Silas relaxed.
“Everyone gets to wear spangles and thongs but me. And I’m a trained ballroom dancer. So dumb.” Benita’s face crumpled in irritation.
Francesca poked her head in from the cold and tossed a brown paper bag at Benita. “Bagel, butter!”
Silas leaned back just in time.
“Fran!” Benita caught the bag. “Saving me, girl.”
“By the way, it’s official: your boyfriend died in the shootout.” Francesca mimed cutting her throat and grimaced.
Silas whirled, horror-struck.
“Character, not life.” Francesca shrugged.
“Fitness model.” Leigh Ann twisted to comment. “He asked for a raise.”
“Idiot. I warned him.” Benita held her eyes toward the ceiling as Silas brushed adhesive onto her lower lid. Already the silicone was starting to set up, so Silas sculpted a little scabbing and thinned the edges.
All three women nodded sagely. Television was no country for weaklings or whiners.
Benita turned to him. “Can I wash my hands?” She stood and put the unwrapped bagel on her seat.
A couple of the walk-ons had hunkered down with their iPods and crosswords on the cramped breakroom couch in case they could get through makeup early. Poor closeted Barney rustled his newspaper in greeting; they hadn’t run into each other since New Year’s, but obviously he’d kept the candle burning.
As Silas tested the airbrush trigger, his phone may have buzzed again in his pocket, but he didn’t check it. Be cool. If Trip called, he didn’t need to reply instantly. And his agents knew where he was if it was a gig.
“Hi, Sigh.”
Fuck. A skinny blond boy stood at his station and dissected Silas with his gray-green gaze.
When they’d dated, Lance Tibby had been a day player on a soap: icicle thin with a serrated tongue. Because of his androgyny, leads were out of his grasp, but he earned a steady paycheck in cable and indies playing pervs, flakes, and weasels. Nothing permanent, but enough to keep him in Botox and Emporio Armani.
Lance perused himself in the mirror for a long moment. “I saw your name on the sheet.” His mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t. “Been ages.”
“Couple years at least.” They’d dated summer into fall on a sitcom shoot in Vancouver, back when Silas hadn’t known better than to believe what lanky bastards from South Dakota said when they were seven inches deep. “Look great, man.”
“You know me. Thirty-two and can’t keep weight on.” He studied the mirror again.
Silas frowned. What the fuck-a-duck had he been thinking? Easy to get sucked into casual hookups on set. Sometimes the makeup trailer was the only climate-controlled space for fifty miles and any shoot was 90 percent waiting around.
“Sigh…?” Lance scrutinized him dismissively. “If you need a gym, I could sign you into my hotel. It’s a shithole, but they have an elliptical trainer.”
Fuck you. “I live in Manhattan.”
Lance rubbed his taut belly, raising his shirt. “Crafty is hell on a six-pack.” He stared pointedly at Silas’s beefy midsection.
Craft services provided all the snacky crap on a set and consequently most of the calories on any shoot: anything from Dr Pepper and muffins to fresh-squeezed papaya and olive tapenade, depending on the budget. Cost a fortune, but the cushier the crafty, the happier the shoot. Smart actors steered clear because they had to mind their inches, but the rest of crew grazed nonstop like starving elk.
“You griping about our eats again, Tibia?” Stepping out of the bathroom, Benita raised her voice just loud enough that the whole trailer heard it. Her top-of-show billing put her about four rungs above Lance’s glorified walk-on as a dealer.
Which was exactly why Silas loved working actresses. Survivors, every fucking one of them, and protective of their posse.
“Nope. The food’s delish, Benita.”
She puckered her lips at Silas. “Who wants to fuck a coat hanger? Am I right?”
Lance wiped his hands and backed away, making for the door. “Gotta scoot.”
The ladies cackled in their chairs.
“Thirty-two! We sang medleys on cruise ships seven years ago, and T
ibby was thirty-two then, giving the closet cases crabs.” To their credit, nobody looked toward Barney, hidden behind his newsprint. Benita side-eyed Silas while he scorched her temples with a sponge. “Please.”
“We gotcha back,” Leigh Ann chirped and pointed to Benita. “Love her!”
Silas grinned and bowed a little to Benita. He felt better already. “I thank you, ma’am.”
“—Oiselle!” She beamed. “You made me so pretty, I hadta get brave.”
Paul beckoned. “Benita, right here.” He waved her over and helped Leigh Ann to her feet.
“I gotta get outta this goody-two-shoes gulag.” As Benita stood, she chewed a mouthful of bagel and swallowed. “My manager told me that if they don’t let you use handcuffs or a stripper pole, you end up in SyFy original movies.” She huffed and crossed her arms.
Leigh Ann exhaled grimly and sat down. She now wore three sets of fake eyelashes. “Or worse. Reality television. Gag.” She peeped at Silas in the mirror to include him in the thought. “Which are justa fancy name for fucking game shows with models and train wrecks.” Silas snorted in agreement. “Gotta be gorgeous, trashy, or both. You think Cate Blanchett ever worked on Price is Right? Bullshit.”
“I never thought of it that way.” Actually, he had, often, but actresses had the most hideous, degrading jobs on any set, so he did any fucking thing he could to validate them.
Leigh Ann smiled like Christmas. “Hey, at least I gotta shot playing an exploding lap dancer for two episodes. I’m on camera shaking my ya-yas. I’ma look smoking hot and tragic in flashbacks. Season finale, I’m even on the slab inna morgue.” She squenched her girlish face in distaste. “But the day I book a game show?” Her willow-green eyes brimmed with scorn. “Hell, stick a fork in me, I’m done.”
Silas used his fingers to smooth the flat line toward her temples, contouring her cheekbones for the neon and exaggerating the beautiful slope of her eyelids so that she looked like a Hungarian princess.
Leigh Ann sounded almost asleep. “You here next week too, babe?”
“Naw.” Silas raised his brow fretfully. “I gotta run to Florida for a drug commercial and two weeks later some Western miniseries out in Phoenix.”