Journey to Mirage

The scene filmed in the bathhouse sauna had left a fearful impression on Rick. Even though it hadn't been the reality scene he thought had been meant for him, after his initial shock of so much intense coupling developing before him, Rick had been caught up in the orgy nature of it almost as much as Billy Dan had been.

Rick had become lost in the throes of the event, having been taken himself and then watching Billy Dan being cocked numerous times. In some ways, the scene in the sauna was more of a never-ending violation of innocence, with Rick doing nothing but joining in, than the scene in the meadow had been. This was largely because as each man took up a position crouching over Billy Dan's body, Rick had thought about it being him—had almost salivated for it to be him—until the older man had seen the effect it was having on Rick and mounted the bench in front of him, roughly slapped his thighs apart, grabbed and spread-eagled his ankles, and then was giving Rick what Rick couldn't help but wanting.

Phil had briefly come over, prepared to pull the old man off Rick if Rick signaled that's not what he wanted. But Rick didn't signal that.

After it was all over, though, Rick had sought Phil out and apologized.

"Apologies for what?" Phil said.

"For giving in like that in the sauna. For not being able to control myself."

"As you've said, it's your life and your decision," Phil said.

Despite this license by Phil, however, in which Rick hadn't detected any enthusiasm, in those last few days before everything fell apart, Rick did try for some form of restraint. And to help himself strive for that, he stayed as close as he could to Phil. He figured as long as he was near Phil, he would be doing what was expected for him and no more.

Groton helped him in this respect. That night, Groton never left the bed Billy Dan was occupying to come to Rick's bed.

"Close your eyes and imagine," Groton was whispering to Billy Dan from the other bed as their bodies were entwined and Groton was slowly masturbating Billy Dan. Two video cameras facing the bed on stands were whirring softly. "Where are you in your fantasy?"

"I'm on the roof of a building in a city," Billy Dan murmured.

"Alone?"

"No, I have been told there is something he wants me to see on the roof of the building. He is the superintendent of the building, and I lived there—with my boyfriend. But my boyfriend isn't there, and this man is at my door, saying he has something to show me on the roof."

"And was it his cock that he has to show you when you get to the roof?"

"Yeah."

"And he fucks you on the roof?"

"Yeah."

"Just the two of you?"

"The building is lower than the ones around it. It's in the middle of the day. A working day."

"And what you are doing draws an audience to you from the windows of the surrounding buildings?"

"Yeah."

"Do you enjoy the fucking?"

"No. He is rough. And he smells of garlic. I agreed to it, but I didn't know it would be that rough. He's grabbed me and wrestled me to the tarpapered floor of the roof."

"Is he violent?"

"He hits me a couple of times. I'm dazed and this makes me stop struggling as he pins me to the top of a skylight with his cock inside me. I look down through the skylight and men in the room below are looking up, watching him fuck me."

"Does no one help you?"

"A policeman comes . . . but . . . but . . ."

"But he stands there and watched and then fucks you too after the other man has finished?"

"Yeah, he does."

"And you want him?"

"Yeah, yeah, I do. It's special with the uniform—him bein' a cop."

"Is that all?"

A pause as Billy Dan moaned deeply, Rick not knowing whether it's because he was close to coming under the attention of Groton's hand or whether it was from some fantasized element of his story.

"He has a billy club . . ."

"And he uses it on you?"

"Yeah."

"And then there are the men from the room below the skylight?"

"Yeah."

For a reason Rick could not identify, he didn't want to hear Billy Dan's ejaculation, so he covered his head with his pillow—and waited for Groton to finish fucking Billy Dan and then to come for him.

But Groton didn't come into his bed, and Rick went to sleep thinking if he could just stay close to Phil tomorrow—Groton having said they'd be here one more day—maybe he could start bringing some level of calm, dignity—and backbone—back into his life.

And maybe tomorrow was the day he could confront Groton over some sort of regular pay. Groton was covering Rick's room and board and giving him a few bills here and there when Rick asked for them—and he had replaced any clothes that had been ripped off Rick's body during scene filming. But thus far Rick hadn't received the thousands of dollars Groton had told him he'd be paid. He still had the nest egg he'd come with, but Phil had remonstrated with him more than once that he needed to be paid more regularly and substantially by Groton as they journeyed toward the film festival in Mirage, that he couldn't trust Groton to pay him in full what he'd agreed to pay only when they'd reached Arizona.

Maybe, Rick thought, Phil would be there when Rick broached the subject with Groton. Maybe Phil would give Rick the confidence to make his claim.

* * * *

When Rick woke, he thought he was alone in the room. It was late morning, and whenever he had slept in before, Groton and Billy Dan had already gone down to breakfast.

The room was still fairly dark, because the curtains on the window were heavy, but they didn't meet squarely in the middle, so there was a strong beam of light, heavy with dust particles, streaming across the room and onto the other bed.

Rick heard the sounds of the groaning and slurping and he followed the cast of the sunbeam to find Billy Dan still curled up on the bed, but his hands raised, holding Spike's naked buttocks close to him, as he serviced Spike's cock. Spike's hands were on the back of Billy Dan's head, guiding the young blond's motion, and Spike was holding what Rick could tell were leather restraints in his hands as well.

"Spike," Rick called out in surprise. "Where's Mr. Groton? You know he won't want—"

"Doug and the cameramen have gone into downtown Asheville to look for film supplies. He told me to look after you two until he got back."

Phil. Phil wasn't here, Rick thought, in panic. But what he said was, "I don't think this is what he meant by looking after us."

"You can stay here and watch or not," Spike said gruffly. "Billy here wants me to fuck him. Don't you Billy?"

There was a murmur of "yeah" from the bed.

"You want me to bind you to the bed and punish your ass, don't you?"

A whimpered, "Yeah."

Rick curled up in the corner of his bed and watched in mixed concern and envy as Rick tied Billy Dan's wrists together over his head and at the slats of the headboard; scooted his knees under Billy Dan's buttocks, raising the young man's pelvis to him; and, holding Billy Dan's legs out wide, spiked his ass with that thick, long, black cock of his and pumped in slow, deep strokes, as Billy Dan writhed under him and breathily repeated over and over again how much he was enjoying the cocking by the big, black stud.

When Rick couldn't take anymore of watching Billy Dan getting what he ached for, he tumbled off the bed and raced down the hall to the bath at the end of the hall. He turned on the shower and stood under the stream of water, trying to drown out the memory of the sounds of Billy Dan begging for more of Spike's cocking.

"You really want to shower alone, pretty boy?"

Rick turned and saw that the shower door was fully blocked out by a leering Hispanic of gigantic proportions.

The young man went down on his knees on the wet tile floor in front the Hispanic monster and took the bulb of his cock his mouth and cupped the man's heavy-hanging balls in his hand.

The Hispanic fucked Rick against the tile wall of the shower, the water streaming over their steaming bodies, with Rick's legs hooked on the man's hips and the power of the man's cock pushing Rick's back up and down on the slick, soap-encrusted tiles of the shower wall. Another Hispanic man entered the bath and Rick opened his legs for him as well.

All of the time, Rick's mind was flipping back and forth between wishing it was him bound on the bed with Spike's cock working inside him and cursing Phil for not being there and helping him to stifle those thoughts, desires, and instincts.

* * * *

When Rick returned to the rooming house chamber, Spike was still fucking Billy Dan—or was doing it again, or for the third time. And he was splitting him so totally that Billy Dan's eyes were cloudy with cum and he was almost unconscious with exhaustion and was moaning lowly.

Spike left before Groton returned, but when Groton did return and entered the room, Billy Dan was still lying on the back, legs spread, and moaning. It was obvious to Groton that someone had been at the young man. He looked at Rick, huddled back on his own bed, reading magazines, and Rick just shrugged and said, "It wasn't me. I'm sure you can figure it out."

Groton left the room again and Rick waited for a half hour before dressing in jeans and a T and venturing forth. Only Roger was downstairs, in the dining room, when Rick entered.

"Where's everyone?" Rick asked.

"Phil's up in his room, I think," Roger answered. "Doug and Spike have gone back out. Doug said he had more to do in town."

Rick stood around for a few minutes, shuffling his feet and deciding whether he wanted to eat or go back to his room, but it didn't take long for him to decide to go back upstairs. The two Hispanics from the shower were there in the dining room, sitting at a table with three other guys. They all were taking furtive glances at Rick and exchanging words punctuated with low-toned laughs. Rick felt like he was being undressed with their eyes, and, Groton having made him fantasy prone, he was beginning to have a vision of them coming for him and slamming him down on a table top and taking turns with him. Somehow he didn't think that Roger would do anything to prevent that. Most likely, judging by his performance in the sauna the previous day, he would be the second one slamming his cock up into Rick's channel and then would stand back and film the rest of it.

Rick turned and went up the stairs again. But he didn't go to Groton's room. He walked right on beyond that and stood in front of Phil's door for almost a minute before knocking on it.

"Come in," Phil's voice rang out from the other side.

Rick was filled with relief. Phil was here. He'd be safe now.

He entered the room. Phil, just in shorts, was sitting at a small desk and writing a letter or a note.

"Rick," he said, as the young man entered the room.

"I couldn't think of anywhere else to go," Rick said. "I wanted to be safe. So I came here."

Phil rose. He had a pained expression on his face.

"You won't be safe here, I'm afraid, Rick. I can't take it anymore. I won't be able to keep my hands off you unless you leave now. Right now."

"Then don't even try," Rick whispered, his heart leaping in his chest. "I want to stay."

They came together like two freight trains mistakenly shunted off onto the same track. As they hungrily kissed, Phil's fingers went to Rick's T and then to his jeans zipper as Rick's hands went to the snaps on Phil's shorts.

Phil encased both of their cocks together, and the two stood there, trying to meld into the other, still in a deep kiss, as Rick's hands palmed Phil's buttocks and his fingernails dug into yielding flesh there.

Phil pushed Rick down onto his back on the bed and then he knelt between Rick's thighs and made love to Rick's cock and balls with his mouth until, with a cry, Rick exploded in a gush of cum. Then, turning Rick on his side and lifting his leg to his shoulder, Phil fucked Rick's hole in a side split while they conveyed the totality of the fuck with their eyes locked on each other.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't leave without this," Phil murmured, as they lay on the bed, their bodies stretched along each other's as closely entwined as they could manage, Rick's buttocks cuddled into Phil's crotch.

"Leave?" Rick moaned. "You can't."

"I have to. I can't watch this happening to you anymore. I wouldn't be here with you, like this, now, if I wasn't going to leave. I can't be any part of this. I'll leave you my cell phone number. Anytime you want to pull away from this, call. And I'll come get you."

"I can—"

"No, I don't think you can . . . yet. But I hope that someday you will."

"Please, don't leave. I'll—"

"I promise I won't leave in the next twenty minutes. In fact, my cock's going to be so far up in your channel and making such complete love to you that you'll forget all about my leaving."

"Oh, god. Yesssss! Oh, shitttt! Mooaaan. I've . . . it's never been like this . . . before." Rick turned his face to Phil, and they went into a deep kiss, every other point in their bodies trying to merge, become one . . . forever, but Phil resolved that it would only be for the next twenty minutes.

* * * *

The next morning was like a whirlwind. Groton hadn't come back to the room that night, but when Rick went downstairs the next morning—walking on air, because the hour he'd spent with Phil the previous day was the closest he'd ever come to a love-based merging—Groton was there, in the dining room, looking both disheveled and livid.

He was holding a letter—which Rick recognized as what Phil had been writing when Rick went to his room. Groton waved it in Roger's face and was babbling almost incoherently. Or at least it seemed incoherent to Rick at first, because, as he saw the letter, he remembered what Phil had said about leaving, the blood rushed to his ears, and he had to sit down in the nearest chair to keep from fainting.

"The worst possible time," Groton was growling. "And he really gives no reason. Now we'll be delayed. I need another cameraman and I need to think whether Spike needs to be replaced or not."

He calmed down a bit then, though. "Perhaps it's all for the best. I need to review what we have already, to do a first cut on that—and it's time to pick up someone to help me with that, someone who can hold a camera as well and keep his pants zipped. Here's as good a place as any, I guess, to do a first cut of what we have. Go up and roust out Billy Dan, though, and get these two packing up. One thing I know is that there's too much going on here and now I'll have to move them and find someone to watch over them—no, don't even suggest it, Roger—I've seen what little restraint you have."

"Replace Spike?" Rick asked in a faraway voice, having caught at least that much of Groton's rant. "What is this about replacing Spike?"

"I put him on a train back to Baltimore last night. I don't want to lose his talents forever, but he was paid to perform for the camera, not to mess up the goods off camera. Now go on upstairs and get your things together. You're moving someplace else. There're too many randy guys around here, and I know you've been putting out for them for free too."

Somewhere else turned out to be a rundown motel several miles out of Asheville to the west. While Roger was checking Rick and Billy Dan in, Groton went off and returned with a fat middle-aged black guy who looked like bad business. He looked every inch a seedy club bouncer, which, undoubtedly was what he was at night.

Billy Dan and Rick were locked in the motel room and the fat black guy sat down on a chair in front of the door and under the overhang between the motel building and the parking lot.

Rick settled down, turning on the TV and flipping channels until something half interesting showed up, but Billy Dan started fidgeting and pacing back and forth almost immediately. He obviously didn't like being cooped up and just as obviously was in need for something else.

Rick watched Billy Dan pace and mutter under his breath with both concern and disgust. Was this what he too had been reduced to—being used so often in so many different ways in fantasies he himself had voiced that it had become an addiction, that he couldn't get enough of it often enough?

Surely not. Rick reasoned that he didn't need it now, wasn't in some sort of sweating frustration like Billy Dan was for the lack of it. But then, he'd been with Phil just the previous day. And it had been very different with Phil. Rick felt completely satisfied with Phil's fucking—like he didn't need anything but that, and from Phil only. He thought that there could be so much more to it with Phil than just the physical scratching of an itch, a temporary fix of a need.

Billy Dan was at Rick to do something with him, but Rick still felt like doing it with Billy Dan—even letting the guy suck him off—would be like a masturbation of himself that brought no satisfaction. They were too much alike. Maybe if Rick wasn't still in an afterglow of his afternoon with Phil . . .

The times the fat black guy came in to use the can were also opportunities for Billy Dan to offer himself, to beg. But the guy wasn't having any of that. He probably didn't even like men, which was evident from the disdainful look he gave Billy Dan.

At last Billy Dan's itch was scratched, though, when Groton came to the motel, all smiles and walking on air because of what he considered a success both in someone who could help him edit the films and would stand in as a cameraman but also because of how well the film he had reviewed and begun to edit was falling into place.

"Got a winner here," he said to Rick, as Billy Dan sank to his knees in front of Groton and began scrabbling as the man's trouser zipper.

Groton took him missionary style on one of the double beds, Billy Dan clutching Groton's waist tightly with his legs and giving little yipping sounds at the depth at which Groton was stroking him, while Rick watched a European soccer game on the TV. He knew nothing about the teams and little about the sport, but he gave the TV set all of the attention he could to try to wipe out the sounds from the other bed.

Rick was fidgeting now himself and felt like pacing the room, but he forced himself to concentrate on the TV and didn't even identify the source of his frustration until after Groton was finished with Billy Dan, who laid there on one of two double beds in the motel room, bedspread and sheets tussled, legs akimbo, moaning in satisfaction and at least temporary satiation of need. Groton left without even touching Rick, and the disappointment Rick felt as Groton closed the door behind him caused him to tremble with fear at the realization that deep down—and maybe not so deep down—he was no different at all from Billy Dan. Only the thought of Phil had stood in the way of that. But Phil was gone now, and the memory of their afternoon was beginning to recede.

If only Phil had stayed—or, better yet, had taken Rick with him.

Late in the night, when Rick, still awake and fretting, heard the door to the motel room quietly open and felt the bulk of the fat black man, somehow having become naked between the door and the bed, come down heavily on top of him; the man's hand going over his mouth to keep him silent, his hot, sour breath and his musky in-heat man scent mingling to both repel and entice Rick's senses, Rick felt no compulsion to scream or reject whatsoever. To the man's surprise and heightening lust, Rick reached down and took the man's thick, hard cock and balls in his hands, knowing it would be black and as strong as Spike's—and Pete's—spread his legs and hooked his heels over the base of the man's bulging buttocks, rolled his hips up, and guided the hot cock into his channel. As his channel awakened and undulated over the cock as it drew the member slowly in and the man groaned and grunted and panted his unexpected good fortune, his hand still over Rick's mouth, but a thumb having been sucked in between Rick's lips, images of Spike and then of Pete raced through Rick's mind. Rick tried to think of Phil as well, but what was happening now was no part of Phil's world.