Deliver Us (18 page)

Later that day, Darrek is sitting alone in the house, nursing his third beer and staring at the lifeless, blank screen of his computer. Gabriel left and has gone off to work, saying he has a client to meet with and is also scheduled to assist Trace that night.

After they had gotten out of bed and cleaned up, Gabriel had become more and more distant. He seemed almost eager to leave and be away from Darrek. The news that he was leaving to go to work was blurted out in a very clipped and cold way. After a brief kiss at the door, Gabriel was gone, without even a promise to call Darrek later.

Darrek had understood. He still does. Gabriel is clearly just battling his own demons, and it’s to be expected, with his history. But for the first time, the idea of Gabriel’s profession is not sitting quite right with Darrek. He doesn’t like that Gabriel is off with some other man, interacting in incredibly intimate ways with him while Darrek is sitting at home alone and questioning where their relationship is headed.

Darrek trusts Gabriel completely when it comes to the two of them together, but the standoffish vibe he gets from Gabriel sometimes, the sharply evident suspicion in his eyes, the defensiveness, all hurts more than he thought it would and makes Darrek uneasy.

He realizes that it is not technically cheating, that Gabriel is not letting his submissives touch him, but the plain fact is that he is giving other men pleasure. He is giving them sexual services, and with Darrek’s history, with the betrayal he has already suffered at the hands of Sara and Steven, he is having a hard time reconciling it.

He had asked Gabriel about who he would be with that night, and what he would be doing, but Gabriel told him only that he couldn’t talk about it due to a privacy clause in their contracts. After the almost loving intimacy of the morning, it has all become a thorn in his side and made their parting strained.

And there is no easy solution.

This is Gabriel’s job. This is his life, and who is Darrek to ask him to suddenly change his life for him? How can he expect Gabriel to trust him so completely after the violent trauma of his adolescence when Darrek is himself having trouble trusting Gabriel in return, at least in this respect?

So, he stares at the monitor and pouts, sipping his beer. Stuck halfway between real happiness, the possibility of
love
and total loneliness, both of their trust issues are like a cement wall standing solidly in their way.

He wants to look at Diadem’s website. He wants to see Gabriel interacting in the videos and pictures with other people, to see what feelings it stirs in him, and to see if he can handle it.

But he’s afraid. He’s afraid that it will not be okay, and that it will drive him to ask things of his new lover and Master that he has no right to ask for.

There’s a knock on the door.

“Come in,” he calls, not getting up. He has been expecting Kyle to show up after a brief phone call during which Darrek told Kyle that they needed to talk. “It’s open.”

Kyle steps inside, glancing around the silent, darkening house—not a light on though the sun is almost completely set. Sierra is curled up and forlorn at Darrek’s feet. Her ears perk up as she sees Kyle. After a quick sniff at the air, she bows her head again and lays it back down on her paws.

“Wow, who died?” Kyle asks, falling into a nearby chair, watching Darrek watch the blank screen.

Darrek sighs heavily and takes a long drink from his beer.

“I have something to tell you, man,” Darrek confesses.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, um... that number you gave me? I called it. I actually...” he pauses, picking at the paper label on the glass bottle. “I’ve been there twice already. And that guy... Gabriel... he’s the person I’ve been seeing there. He’s... he’s kind of in charge of me.”

Kyle gets very still for a second, going deathly pale, then catches himself, trying to shake off the reaction. He wants to not appear overly guilty, but knows that his face in that moment must look unspeakably so. He brushes his fingers back through his hair and thinks fast for what to do. He had not planned on this—on complete
honesty
.

Darrek’s hands skim over the keyboard and he hits the power button. The computer starts to boot up and the screen glows brightly in the dim space. They both stare at it, fixated.

“What are you doing?” Kyle asks, his voice hushed, a knot of fear coiling in the pit of his stomach. Suddenly, with Darrek’s confession, with the look on Darrek’s face, the trust he’s showing in Kyle by admitting to his secrets, everything is coming apart. Everything is threatening to be revealed. All of his defenses are slipping from between his fingers. He could lose it all. He could lose it all right here in the next few minutes.

“I’m going to check out their website. It’s called Diadem. I want to see... I don’t know. Everything, I guess. I want to know the whole picture.”

Kyle speaks even before he knows he is going to.

“Don’t!” he cries out, sitting up straight and stiff-as-a-board in the soft chair.

Darrek looks confusedly at him. His large hands still making their restless movements at the peeled-back edge of the label.

“Shit...” Kyle curses, crumpling forward and rubbing a palm over his lips. “Okay. I have a confession, too.”

“A confession?”

“Yeah. And it’s kind of a doozy, so you have to promise that you won’t hate me if I tell you.”

He jumps off of the chair and grabs a pad of paper and a pen from the desk. Handing them to Darrek, he says, “Here. You have to write ‘I swear that I won’t hate Kyle,’ and then sign your name.”

“Are you shitting me?” Darrek laughs.

“No! I’m not. This is important. You’re my best friend, Dare, and I am not losing your friendship over this shit. Please just humor me?”

Still laughing, Darrek writes and speaks aloud as he does, “I solemnly swear that I won’t hate Kyle. Love, Darrek.”

“Don’t joke about this, dude.”

“What’s going on, man? You’re being weird. Or, well, weirder than normal. You’re... skittish. Jumpy.”

Kyle grabs one of the chairs from the kitchen table and brings it over, setting it in front of Darrek’s chair by the desk. Kyle sits at it, knee-to-knee, face-to-face with Darrek.

“You’ll probably understand why in a minute. Trust me.”

The words jolt Darrek, because he realizes that he
does
trust Kyle. He trusts him much more than he trusts Gabriel with his clients and it’s a pain the burns through his heart.

“I do. I trust you,” Darrek says seriously, his smile and laughter long gone.

Kyle’s face relaxes at the words and the no-nonsense tone in Darrek’s voice.

“I’m just gonna say it, okay?” Kyle tells him.

He pushes the paper with the promise scrawled on it over the surface of the desk and more toward Darrek’s hand. The paper’s edge nudges gently against it and Darrek lays his hand on top of it. Then Kyle twists his fingers together, his heart hammering away and his words sticking in his throat.

“Please don’t hate me, Dare,” he whispers desperately.

Darrek can see Kyle’s usual smart-ass façade stripped away. His lip starts to quiver. His eyes slowly redden and fill with tears.

“Holy shit, Kyle. What’s wrong?”

He answers simply, with three little words.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, man,” Darrek responds at once.

“No, you don’t understand.
I love you
. I’ve loved you for years.”

“What? Are you serious? ...Oh my god. You are, aren’t you?”

“I warned you that I’m a douchebag. And I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. I tried not to feel this way, and just be a friend to you, but I’ve been lying for a long time here. I’ve accepted that you’ll never feel
that way
about me. I really have. I get it. But, I just want to be totally honest with you now. I want to tell you everything. You deserve that.”

“Okay,” Darrek nods.

“There’s more,” Kyle warns. “Do you hate me yet?”

“No I don’t hate you,” Darrek scoffs. “Stop it. I’m not going to hate you.”

“Well, for a long time, I didn’t want anyone else. No one but you. I got a little obsessed. But then I just... I needed
something
, you know? And I hated myself for not being honest with you, and for feeling the way that I did. I felt like such a crappy friend, a crappy
person
. So I started going to a Dom. I became a submissive. His name is Ben.”

“Ben...” Darrek murmurs, and it all starts to make sense.

“And I liked that he made me hurt, because I
wanted
to hurt. I wanted pain and to be punished. I just hated myself so much. I deserved it all. I deserved everything he could dish out.”

“When did this start?”

“Over a year ago. Almost two years, actually, now that I think about it. Before you even moved up here with me. And it’s kind of... escalated. I’ve been doing BDSM videos and live webcam stuff. They pay me for it. I’m a professional sub now. And I’ve let Ben—my Master—I’ve let him do things to me. I was trying to save some stuff, some parts of myself, for you, even though, logically, I knew I’d never have you. It was something that was mine, you know? It was special. But then... I couldn’t wait anymore. I let Ben have sex with me a few times, and I do care about him. He cares about me too, but I don’t
love
him. Not like I love you, Darrek. And I just... I just want you not to hate me. Please? That’s all I’m askin’ here. I just want to be able to stop lying and still be your friend, because I don’t think I could bear it if I lost you completely.”

Darrek reaches out and takes one of Kyle’s hands, tears pricking at his own eyes as he looks into Kyle’s vibrantly blue ones, at the rivers streaming down his cheeks, at the openness of his expression.

Kyle laughs brokenly and claps his other hand over Darrek’s, squeezing it gratefully.

“I still don’t hate you,” Darrek says softly.

Ignoring the words, not believing that they could be true, Kyle continues with what he needs to say. “I know you’re dating Gabriel now, and I have to say, just as your friend, that he does
NOT
deserve you. You deserve a total commitment and real love.
You
are the most amazing person I’ve ever known, Dare, and you’ve been through so much shit. I just want you to know that if someday you could ever care about me like that, I would devote myself to you completely. I would be
yours
. In whatever way you wanted me. I love you so much, and...
god
... it feels so good to finally say this stuff out loud. I just want you to be
happy
. That’s all. Whatever I can do to make you happy, I’ll do it. So... I apologize, again, for lying. There were never any girlfriends. There were no women. It was an act. I’ve known that I’m gay for a while now, I just couldn’t tell anyone because I’m a coward and a fake.”

Kyle stares down at where Darrek’s fingers are brushing lightly over his, and the kindness in the gesture is almost too much for him when he had expected disgust and anger and nothing more.

“End of sappy speech. That’s all I’ve got. Um... I’ll go. You probably want me to go now.”

“So, you knew Gabriel, didn’t you? Before I did.”

“Hell, yeah. I’ve known Gabriel for a long time. He assists Ben with me a lot more than I’d like. He runs all the video shit. If you go on the website, you’ll see him in most of my stuff. I don’t like him, Dare. I won’t lie about that either. The dude is closed-off and cruel. And maybe I just don’t know him like you do, so feel free to ignore me completely. It’s just my opinion. But, I mean, come on! He busts balls for a
living
, man. That really the person you want to
date
?”

“Why did you give me the number?” Darrek asks quietly, still lightly brushing Kyle’s hands and handing him a tissue from the box on the desk.

Kyle takes the tissue and wipes at his face with it.

“I thought it might help you. They’re starting to train Alyssa to be a Dominatrix, so I thought they might let you have a go with her. Figured she’d go pretty easy on you. I didn’t think they’d give you to Gabe.”

There’s a moment of silence, where they’re just touching. Kyle’s confessions seem to fill the air around them, invisible but heavy and thick.

“I can’t really handle you being nice like this to me,” Kyle whispers. “It’d be easier if you were pissed off.”

“You really love me?”

Kyle looks plaintively up at him, and there’s such heartbroken urgency in his face that it destroys Darrek a little.

“Yeah. I do. I love you so much, Darrek. Always will.”

Kyle can tell this is going in a way he didn’t foresee at all. It’s out of control. Something snaps in him then, and he presses his lips closed to hold in a weak sob, jumping out of his chair.

Kyle almost bolts for the door, but Darrek grabs his shoulder and keeps him there.

Turning back to face Darrek, Kyle pleads shamelessly through gritted teeth, “Just let me go, okay? I can’t do this. It’s too hard and it’s not fair to you or Gabriel. Let me go. You don’t need me. Nobody needs me. I’m like this leech just taking shit and infecting people’s lives. I don’t want my problems messing up your life. I’m just messing everything up.”

What happens next is the last thing he expects, at least on a surface level. Underneath, deep down in his heart, he knows it has always been leading here.

The selfish part of him is glad.

Darrek curls one of his strong hands around the back of Kyle’s neck, into his short blond hair, and brings him in as he closes the distance and claims Kyle’s mouth in a kiss. After a small, pained whine, Kyle grabs Darrek with both hands, licking over his lips eagerly then deeply into his mouth, kissing him back fiercely with a year’s worth of need and want pouring into it. It goes on and on, and when Kyle finally pulls away, Darrek’s lips are tingling, swollen and hot, his head spinning.

“Thank you,” Kyle whispers against his cheek, “I’m sorry.”

Then he turns, dashes through the door, and is gone before Darrek can even blink.

“Come on...” Darrek groans, dialing for the fifteenth time. It goes right to voicemail.