Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 03:06:13 -0800 (PST) From: egiggles@moose-mail.com Subject: The Gentlemen's Club: Eric THE GENTLEMEN'S CLUB Eric Disclaimer: This story is entirely fictitious and bears no resemblance to anyone dead or alive. Any similarity to any real people is strictly coincidental. If you like this story, check out my website http://clik.to/there for more stories. Eric Johann Johnson slammed the door of his truck shut. He paused to look at his reflection in the rear mirror, and tried to keep his expression to a more pleasant and friendly alternative to the dark scowl he had as he drove all the way here. Happy Thanksgiving - what a fucking joke! His father wasn't close to him when Eric's mother was alive, and now whatever fragile bond they had seemed to be severed altogether with his mother's passing. No matter, he thought defiantly as he stood there by his truck waiting for Tom Welling. Tommy and he had been dating - okay, living together - for some time now, but this was the first time they went their different paths. It was Tommy's idea that Eric tried to make up with his father anyway. Fuck, why hadn't he told Tommy no? Because it was tell Tommy no, Eric concluded. All Tommy had to smile at him and Eric would feel like the luckiest man alive to have that man even looking at him that way. He saw the door opened and Tommy laughing as he walked out. Following him were his parents, also laughing. Tommy's father hugged the young man, and the mother followed, and Eric had to tamper the irrational burst of poisonous jealousy that exploded in him. "Hello, Eric, come on in," Tommy called. "Mom made some pie you just have to try." "Yeah, come on in Eric," called Mr Welling. "Let me have a look at you." "Be nice," his wife audibly whispered in a playful note that told Eric more than anything of the bond still strong between those two. Eric's own father didn't even care when Eric left this morning. And here, the family of a man he was sleeping with was asking him to come in and eat with them. Tommy wasn't his type. Eric didn't usually go for too-pretty boys, preferring more down-to-earth looking boys-next-door; men like what he saw himself as. It was a rather disappointing cliche, he had more than once thought laughingly to himself, that he wasn't above lusting after men who looked too pretty for their own good. Or at least, men like Tommy. He knew Tommy had told his parents that they met over a blind date set up by friends. Eric was okay with that. He didn't know how to tell people that he and Tommy met while working out at a gym and they ended up with he leaning against the wall of the shower room, dazed, moaning incoherently as Tommy sucked him off like a pro in giving head. Hell, Tommy was a pro. His tight ass could do magic around Eric's cock, especially with that way Tommy could tightened his ass to clamp on Eric or the way he ground his ass at Eric in that indescribably pleasurable way... Fuck, he had to stop thinking of Tommy this way or he would be embarrassed before the parents of his best fuck ever. He paused at that thought. Yeah, he decided, Tommy was his best fuck. Eric had his share of guys in his twenty-eight years of living, not many but enough to make an educated comparison, he guessed, and yeah, Tommy was the best he'd ever had. "Eric, you coming?" Mrs Welling called. Tommy smiled, an assuring gesture, at Eric. His eyes were playful, and even from this distance, his beautiful brown eyes seemed to tease Eric - "Are you coming?" they seemed to ask. And when Tommy asked, Eric answered. It seemed to be how the world should be, at least where Tommy, dear Tommy was concerned. Eric smiled hesitantly, and made sure he had locked his truck. "You have lovely feet," Tommy whispered, kissing a toe. "I love the shape of your toes. Not perfect, not smooth, rough and callused - just perfect." "You're contradicting yourself," Eric said with a chuckle. Tom was taller, prettier, and in every way a more dazzling man than Eric could ever be. Next to Tommy, people could easily forget Eric's quiet demeanor, his ordinary blond handsome looks, and the usually intimidating gravity and distancing act he exuded so often that he did that by instinct now. Tommy also had a family that accepted his sexuality and a life which, compared to Eric's, was perfect in every way. Eric would have hated Tommy bitterly were Tommy not who he was: a good fuck and maybe - hell - Eric couldn't deny it: Tommy made him smile, laugh, and feel okay even when they were arguing over their clashes in personality. They had had a most energetic romp on the bed, despite Eric's uneasiness at fucking the son of the very people who had given him the best meal he'd had in a long time. It was Eric's suspicion that Tommy's parents had no idea how sexually depraved Tommy could be. Tommy, here, was a perfectly obedient, well-behaved son. With Eric and fuck knew how many others before Eric, however, Tommy was a sexual profligate who wanted to try everything: a well-hung cock up his ass, in his mouth, or above his face coming in great copious spurts in a sinful rain of pleasure. Eric threw off whatever jealousy he was beginning to feel about the men in Tommy's past as he took Tommy's hand - the one where the knuckles were bleeding slightly. He had bitten into Tommy's hand when Tommy fed it to him to muffle his loud lusty groans so as to not to wake the parents as he fucked Tommy. He kissed the torn flesh gently, tasting blood, and moved his lips down to the wrist, raining light and slow kisses along the way. "I'm not," Tommy whispered, watching through lowered eyelids at Eric. Those beautiful eyes, Eric thought absently. "I've never met a man like you." Eric could use some ego-stoking. He had little praises in his life. "Really?" he asked with a sensual grin. "You're not my type, although I'm sure I'm not yours either." Tommy played with the necklace Eric wore - his gift to Eric on Eric's birthday one week after they met - absently, thinking. "You're rough, uncouth, rather unpolished - " "And you've been reading the thesaurus too hard," Eric cut in with a laugh. "No, I mean it. I love this rough side of yours. It's real. You are the real deal, Eric. I can trust you." "Yes you can," Eric told him. He sighed as Tommy rested his chin on Eric's chest and played with Tommy's hair in slow, absent strokes. "So you really like me, huh?" "Yeah." "That's good. I missed you, Tommy." "So did I, Eric." "Fuck! I mean - sorry," Eric mumbled sheepishly as he quickly pulled on his shirt. It was good thing he had put on his pants before he left Tommy's room to make his way to his own room, and it was definitely a good thing he had cleaned himself. If he smelled as if he had just left Tommy's bed - not that Mrs Welling who bumped into Eric here would believe anything else, surely - Eric would be beaten out of this place. Not that he was a stranger to being chased out of one's life. Sometimes his ex-boyfriends woke up one day to realize that they could do better than a high school dropout who couldn't be anything more than a courier delivery guy, and then Eric would find himself pushed out the door. But the thought of a warm and accepting family like the Welling clan here pushing him away made him feel anguish more keenly than he expected. "Jesus, you scared me," Mrs Welling just said with a laugh. "I'm so sorry I - " Eric began to stammer, but she shushed him. "I know my son is a grown-up and I definitely know the two of you won't be happy with separate bedrooms," she told him. "I saw how you looked at him during dinner, and it reminds me of how my husband looks at me," she muses wistfully. "Oh be off with you, young man. But don't let my husband catch you. He's not that understanding, even if he noticed how Tom looked at you during dinner." Eric grinned, but his grin faded as Mrs Welling's last words sank in. How Tommy looked at him...? "Mrs Welling?" Eric called quietly, mindful not to wake the husband, but she had already left. What did she mean by that? Eric thought it odd that Tommy was happier in New York than back at his family's place in that farm. If he had a family like Tommy's, he doubted he would ever want to leave. Tommy's telling him about wanting to live far away from a lifetime of suffocating parents made little sense to Eric. He told Tommy earlier that he liked Tommy's parents, even if he didn't know their first names. Tommy had laughed as if that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "Marion and Charlie," he told Eric. Marion and Charlie Welling. Eric repeated the names to himself quietly. He wished he had a family like that. He wished he was somebody else too, but then again, he learned early that wishes rarely came true. How darkly amusing that the one thing he never wished for - Tommy - just showed up day to make Eric feel as if maybe, this time he had really been unbelievably lucky in his life. Tommy was here, wasn't he? He watched as Tommy slept that night, two nights after they had returned to this city to resume their lives, and contemplated the night outside this private world of theirs. Even if they didn't fuck every night in this bedroom, they still talked and laughed and argued here. This bedroom had seen so many quiet moments between he and Tommy, he sometimes wished he could keep them both here forever. In this world, he didn't have to face his bosses who didn't respect him, worry about how he would pay next month's rent, and he didn't always have to be so strong and try so hard to take care of himself because there was no one else to do it. In this world, he felt at peace with himself for the first time. But he was also aware of how Tommy needed to be free. Tommy came alive, sophisticated and an ingenue all at once, as he flaunted and laughed and danced through life with his equally good-looking sophisticated friends as he cut a swathe through the fashion industry, walking the catwalk and being immortalized in stylish ads for designer labels. Eric was too aware of how inadequate he was compared to, say, Drew Riker, Tommy's close friend, therefore he wouldn't stand in Tommy's way when Tommy would want to walk away like everyone else in Eric's life. No, Eric would stand aside and watched until Tommy was gone before returning to his own life. Or maybe he would blow his brain out. He didn't really know what he would do, he was only aware of the fact that he might not be able to survive losing Tommy. But he would deal with that only when he came to that point in his life. He had always been alone, no doubt that he would be that way, after Tommy, maybe ever after. Thomas Isaiah Welling eyed the book thoughtfully. Making It Work: Improving Communication in a Marriage. He hesitated, but he finally caved in and pulled the book down from the shelf. "You're in deep shit when you start seeing your fling as a marriage," Drew's bemused voice interrupted his thoughts. Tommy gave his friend a nasty look. "May I remind you that I didn't laugh when you ditched me to face an angry mob in Paris to get married to that guy of yours. You're lucky they are still willing to take you back," Tom pointed out. "I'm quitting the modeling business," Drew cheerfully told him. "Haven't you heard? I'm going to be writing stupid articles for Vanity Fair and work with Michael Biehn. That guy could use some of my advice in his designs." "So you are getting domesticated finally. You have the cheek to laugh at me," Tommy said. A small burn started in his heart. No, that was not some mild envy he felt at Drew's life or the way it turned out. He wasn't that crazy. So what if Drew seemed less cynical and more openly good-natured since he and that intense-eyed Ken Stafford hooked up once again? Should Tommy envy his friend for finding some peace that way? Tommy thought Drew and Ken were over for good, but hey, if they worked out their differences at last, that was good for them. He put the book back. What was he thinking, to even consider buying the book? "Come on, I'm just playing," Drew said. Drew had around seven years on Tommy, but they never had any problems getting along as good friends and friendly rivals all these years. "You have problems with Eric?" he asked. "I always find him rather intense and broody when he has the face of a man who should be laughing and fucking his way through life. How did a broody loner found himself with the looks of a Dionysian acolyte?" "He was never close with his father, whom I guessed through his often vague hints browbeat him until all confidence and self-esteem is beaten out of him," Tommy said. Anyone who always thought him a vapid pretty boy would be surprised at his confident eloquent speech now. But Tommy had always been a chameleon, and like Drew, his looks had often backfired on him, making people assume him to be a dumb pretty face. He wasn't a genius, but he wasn't dumb either. "He is also dyslexic and he dropped out of high school - guess why. It must be tough on him to believe that he's good for something." "Or good enough for you," Drew guessed accurately. He shook his head. "If only he knows what a retarded ass you can be." "Oh, he knows," Tommy said cheerfully, picking up the book again. "Remember when I got dropped from the fucking idiot Reynaldo's campaign? He saw me scream and throw things and kick the wall, but he took me to a field and taught me baseball." "Baseball?" "Yeah. He said that baseball always calmed him, and he thought me to swing the bat." Tommy caught himself running his fingers along the spine of the book in fond remembrance of that night. "He's right. It calmed me down. He calmed me down, actually. I wept like a moron in his arms that night, and he just held me and told me that it was okay if I wasn't pretty enough for Reynaldo, because to him, I was the prettiest man alive. I believed him, Drew." "You're really in deep waters, Tommy," Drew told him. "You're going down." "I believe so. But he doesn't share anything of himself with me," Tom complained. "He is always so afraid of telling me anything, as if I'll get spooked and run away. It's exasperating. How can I feel comfortable if this is such a lop-sided relationship? I don't want to feel indebted to him, I want to lo- fuck, what did I almost say?" Drew just picked one book out of the shelf and put it over the book in Tommy's arms. Falling in Love in Ten Easy Steps. Oh, fuck. Eric, I'm going to be at a photo shoot (you remember me telling you how they wanted me to pose for the cover of some silly teen romance novel?). It will probably finish late so I will just sleep over at Drew's old place for the night. I may as well take this opportunity to tell you that I think I want us to last for a long time. Longer than long, if that is possible. It probably sounds corny (it sure does to me) but I think I'm fucking nuts in love with you. That's horrible, right? I mean, I bet you are even now counting the minutes until I leave you. Is that what you always believe? That I will leave you one day when I'm bored with you. If that is so, Eric, fuck you. Fuck you to hell for daring to presume that you know me. Remember when I said, oh, eight thousand times before how I think you are the most real person I've met? Believe it, buddy. I met so many people who are just plain insincere or fucking insipid, and then I met you: a solid, honest man who sees me for me. Okay, so we met under dubious circumstances, your hips around my neck as I blew your big dick while the shower is on, but we did good after that, yes? We had dinner, we talked nonsense, and we fucked some more, after which I decided to move in and you let me. I moved in because I like you. You say the things you really mean and when you say you will be there for me, so far you mean it and that's good enough for me. I'm also in awe of you. So you're dyslexic. But you can find your way around those confusing words, and then you have all those books in your place that you slowly read because you love to read. I don't like reading, I just like to write long rambling sentences, but Eric, you're cool. I only wish I can be as strong as you. Living with your parents and having to tackle your issues alone like that - I only wish I have half your courage and independence. I'm a Momma's boy and I love my father, and I'm a spoiled kid, but I'm learning from you. I hope you understand that I don't think you are in any way inferior to me. If you are intimidated by my looks or career like Drew suggested that you may be, I am intimidated by your strength as well. So, how about it? You think about this, and if you agree that you and me should try make this relationship of ours something more intimate, you know where to call or find me. If no, well, I guess this is it then. I don't want to keep sleeping with you when you don't want me as much as I want you. I'm not that fucked up. I really hope you'll give me a call. XXX Tommy. P.S. You're a good fuck too. That's cool. Tommy opened the door. There was Eric, like he hoped would be, looking bewildered, confused, and scared. There was Eric, who carefully took out a familiar piece of paper he had carefully folded in his pocket and kissed it almost reverently before passing it to Tommy. Tommy took it, never taking his eyes off Eric. "I suggest we frame this up," Eric said in a somewhat shaky voice. "Twenty years from now, when we have pissed each other off so much and I sometimes question why I love you, I want to read this letter again and remember." "Is that a yes?" Tommy asked. "Was that a proposal?" Eric asked back. "Do you love me?" Tommy asked. "Yes I do," Eric answered without hesitation. He reached out and took Tommy in his arms before kissing the man hard. "I love you, Tommy. I'm the luckiest fucker because you love me back." Tommy laughed in relief and lightness and rumpled the other man's hair. "Oh, you silly fool. Now shut the door and prove to me how much you really love me." Eric shut the door and did just that.