AN: Hope the italics work O.o; anything with a bunch of dots/dashes and set a little way in from the rest of the story is meant to be in italics. Anyway, this is a weird story. I started with nothing but a short reflective piece, inspired by Cirque du Soleil’s new show, Zumanity, where there’s two guys dancing and kissing on stage XD I wanna watch T.T (there’s a clip at the site if you want to see it XD tell me and I’ll give you it if you can’t find it XD) anyway, that’s where the main idea came from.

Then it got complicated in that I suddenly wanted a depressed story, so half the reflections are very angsty… and then I kinda cheered up a lot, so it got really fluffy and not depressing at all. So don’t worry, it’s another cute fluffy one (le sigh XD)

But that’s also why it’s kinda rushed and stuff at the end, because the entire style changes and stuff.

And if I screwed up on the tenses again, I’m sorry T.T

Read, enjoy, and please review!!

Ja ne!

His heated flesh under the palms of my hands almost makes me forget our audience, almost makes me focus solely on him, but there are distant whispers in the audience, low mutterings at this part of the show – because two men making out on stage isn’t necessarily a socially accepted event, is it?

I’d be willing to bet that not one of the audience members will see the beauty that we can perform with sometimes, not one of them expected a gay act in the middle of a high class strip show like this.

We can make it beautiful though, if they’d just let themselves see…

    …my head drops back and I shudder as his lips trail hot kisses down my throat…

If they’d just listen to what we were showing them.

I didn’t agree to it the first time the stage manager told us what we’d have to do. Everyone knew I was gay at the time, and we all suspected he was bisexual… but it was either make out on stage, or find a new job, and there’re only so many places that give high pay to gay male… well, exhibitionist is the basic word of what we’re being paid to do.

I don’t remember if he agreed to it the first time he got asked. I doubt it. He has a girlfriend.

So why did I have to fall in love with him?

   …he grinds his hips against mine; his eyes just visibly open for me to see, pretending our eyes are closed as he pulls my head up again for a deep and overly passionate kiss…

I should have known better.

Hell, I did know better.

We’re friends off the stage. Not extremely close friends, but close enough so we have a few inside jokes about what happens on stage sometimes, that nobody else has caught onto yet… But I’ve also seen him exchange secretive smiles with his girlfriend, who is probably in the audience right now.

I was told that the only reason he agrees to do this with a man, with me, was because it turns her on, to see him making out, mostly naked, with another attractive young man. I stayed in my room for hours after that piece of news got out… I only eventually came out because I was cued to go on, and there’s no way in hell I’d back out of a chance to be touched by him.

Even if it never means anything to him, it gives me the luxury of pretending. I can think he has a very real lust for me, because his hands are everywhere when we’re on stage – and the minute we’re off, they’re off too.

I hate him sometimes. I can make myself hate him for, oh, maybe a few hours. I managed to hate him for an entire 32 hours once. That was when we had just left the stage, and were talking about random things, me hoping desperately that he wouldn’t notice the inner glow in me to associate it with something I should not be feeling…

And then his girlfriend came backstage, and he simply ignored me. Went off with her, no doubt to go have some sex, because that look on her face was all too eloquent for me… especially when I see it on myself every time I go back into my dressing room after a show or a rehearsal.

Every time he strips down to whatever the costume designer wants him to wear, I have to leave the room. My own skimpy clothes do absolutely nothing to hide my own reaction to simply the sight of him.

Not that he doesn’t feel it when we’re on stage anyway…

    …He smirks and leans forward under the pretense of biting my ear as I gasp and clutch at him reflexively when he rubs his thigh against my groin. “Getting hot?” he purrs, and I moan helplessly, for once forgetting the audience, forgetting his girlfriend in the audience and I do something that should never have happened…

Tangling my fingers in his hair, and fisting them there, I pull his head back away from me for a slight moment before crushing my lips against his, mouth open and desperately hungry, in a way that we’ve never kissed before.

Sure, we make it as hot as we can for the audience… But he’s always the instigator for a reason. Apparently he has control issues, and something happens when somebody else takes control… It’s why he has a girlfriend rather than a boyfriend, who might want to top him.

I don’t do that. I’m more comfortable being the submissive one, so he’d never have that problem with me… But once in a while…

I need to act out my feelings.

He tenses against me for a split second before trying to calmly pull back, still trying to put on a worthy show for the audience, to not let them know anything’s wrong…

I don’t let him back out. I follow him, because now kissing him is an addiction, and I’m falling faster than I thought, and he’s breathing fast through his nose, his mouth almost completely unresponsive under mine.

I open my eyes to find his wide and sightless, panicked, staring into mine. They’re begging me to stop, and I can’t deny the need to listen to him.

I pull back slowly, flicking my tongue along his bottom lip in a parting shot and try to ignore the sudden tears running down my face. “I’m sorry,” I whisper softly, too softly for the audience to hear, although they’re beginning to suspect something’s wrong. They can see my tears, even if I can’t feel them.

His eyes stare helplessly into mine, confused and bewildered and ever so slightly aroused.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I whisper to him, and eliminate all contact between us, making sure no skin is touching. Then I lean forward slowly and lightly kiss his cheek, and pull away again, shaking my head at the expression I see in his eyes. Even if he does like to be the more dominant one, he looks so adorable confused sometimes…

But I meant it. I can’t do it anymore. I turn and run off the stage, fleeing the surprised audience members who weren’t expecting that, dodging around backstage crew and other performers and ignoring the way somebody is following me.

I only stop once I’ve reached my dressing room and have slammed the door behind me, leaning back against it and trying to dig my nails into the thin wood as I pant for breath with sobs that make my whole body shake.

It’s an addiction. Addictions shouldn’t be fed. They should be cured, treated, stopped. Mine has been prolonged long enough. I don’t want to be touched by him anymore-

     -Liar-

Because it will never mean anything. That’s broken me down in more ways than I can explain.

It kills me to see him with her. I die every day to have him touch me and know that he doesn’t mean anything by it – that he’ll go back to his girlfriend the minute he’s finished.

I can pretend, yes… But sometimes pretences aren’t enough. And sometimes…

They rip the wound apart more, aggravate the hurt until it’s so all compulsive that I can barely see straight sometimes.

What good is a dream lover going to do me, when all I want, all I need and yearn for is… When he’s alive, and touches me like a lover daily and twice on Saturdays, when he’s good looking and my own personal fantasy… What good is any of that, when he’ll never belong to me, and he’ll never want to?

I’ve slid down the door unknowingly, my body moving now with more than sobs, with the simple pounding of the door pressed against my back. I can’t make out the words, but I know the voice is that of the stage manager, and I understand enough about his tone to realize that he’s severely pissed at me.

I weakly stand up, and turn to face the door, trying to school my expression into one that’ll give him enough of a shock that he’ll shut up.

Once I think I’ve got the expression under control, and it’s suitably ‘dead’ enough, I yank open the door and stare at him blankly.

Predictably, he falters and just blinks at me. “Nathan? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Unlike before, he sounds more concerned now…

I’ve never been that good of a face actor, so it must be really something that I’m presenting to them. And then I feel it falter, because he is standing behind the manager, and his face is confused and concerned and slightly understanding, and I choke something out and slam the door shut again, leaning forward to press my forehead against the wood, squeezing my eyes shut to try and lock the sight of him away to a place where it might not hurt so much anymore.

Soft voices speak on the other side, and I hear the stage manager walk off to apologise to the audience after the current act is finished.

And then his voice comes, muffled through the wood, although the door is thin enough to still hear every nuance of every tone his sentence takes on. “Nathan? Could you open the door please?”

I stay silent and obstinate.

“Nathan… please, let me in. I want to… know what you meant out there. Please open the door.”

I watch my hand creep traitorously to the door, listlessly wondering when it got so bad that I can’t even say no to him anymore.

I step back as the doorknob twists under my hand, and then reality kicks in again and I go lean against my make up table, which is really nothing more than an empty desk with a mirror surrounded by a few lights. I turn my face away as he hesitantly walks in, so he can’t really see my face, but he must notice the tense atmosphere, because he stops in the middle of the room, still staring a me.

“What did you mean?” he asks eventually.

I shrug. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

“That’s all I meant then. Nothing to worry yourself over, I can handle it.”

“If you can handle it, why won’t you look at me?”

I must have misjudged something. He sounds angry, and I take a quick check, just to be sure. He’s glaring at me all right, but his face softens when I look at him.

“Nathan, tell me what’s wrong?”

I obviously still look pretty bad. “Nothing that you need to concern yourself with,” I respond, trying to smile. It seems to upset him more, so I stop.

“Nathan,” he says slowly. I shove my heart back down into my chest where it’s supposed to go and tell it to stay there.

“Do you love me?”

I choke, and my heart defiantly disobeys me, leaping up into my throat again where it starts to pound. “No! Where did you get a silly idea like that?” I can’t keep my voice from cracking, and I look away as he starts staring at his feet.

“It’s all right,” I mumble after a long, awkward silence. “I know you’ve got a girlfriend already…”

“Yea,” he murmurs, still looking down. My heart just about breaks at the amount of relief that’s audible in his tone.

“Anyway,” I say, ignoring the way my eyes are tearing up again. “You’d better go tell her something to keep your relationship intact, huh?”

To my surprise and somewhat alarm, he shakes his head. “No. She’ll kill me if I broke your heart.”

I know he didn’t mean to hurt me, but how could a statement like that not? To know he’s not freaking out right now is good, but if his girlfriend put him up to this, and he did it for her, then he really doesn’t care…

“Go away,” I demand, trying to get some control over myself. “Go back to her. You haven’t broken my heart.”

    -Liar-

To my surprise, he copies the little voice in my head. “Liar. Look at you.”

I really don’t want to at the moment, thanks. “Nah,” I whisper, trying to sound less broken than I know I am.

He shakes his head with what might be a disgusted snort, and walks forward, stopping directly in front of me.

“Tell me honestly,” he says softly, “what you feel for me.”

I shake my head silently, the words battling sobs back in my throat, and me unable to release any of them.

“Nathan…”

With a soft sigh, he lifts a hand and trails his fingers along my jaw to my neck, sliding them around to hold the back of my neck.

It’s the beginning of our routine. Of course, on stage, we go with whatever feels natural to come next, it’s not exactly the kind of thing you can choreograph. That’s what makes it so sweet and falsely loving on some days and rough and wild on others… It all depends on our moods and how we’re feeling that day, and what feels right when we do it in those moods…

But they always start the same.

This was one of the loving times…

    …his hands caress my neck, as he gently places light kisses all over my face, tenderly licking my tears away. I shiver and helplessly lean into him, my hands clinging to his shoulders tightly as the pressure and speed of is lips increase, until he’s finally kissing my mouth and licking my lower lip, coaxing me to open, to let him in…

And I fall out of the daze in a rush as one of his hands slides teasingly down my back, making me shudder with a low whimper… and promptly remember where I am.

I pull away. “Don’t.”

“Don’t you want this then?” he blinks at me, his eyes dark with lust and arousal and concern and longing…

Yeah right.

“Not if you don’t mean it,” I mutter, and look away, not trusting to believe in what his eyes are telling me.

“I do mean it though,” he insists quietly, holding my chin in one hand to make me look at him. “I really do.”

“And your girlfriend? What does she think about all this?”

He shrugs, although there’s a hint of humor in his expression now. “She said she’d castrate me if I didn’t start dating you.”

“Is that why then?”

“No,” he shakes his head, flushing a little. “She told me I should get a move on and tell me to let myself feel whatever I needed to.”

I can’t help raising an eyebrow. “Does she always wear the pants in the relationship?”

At that, he looks up at me and smirks. “No,” he murmurs, and there’s a hidden heat in there that makes my heart speed up. “And it’s not a relationship anymore. And when I have a relationship with you, I’ll wear the pants. Right?”

I blink at him, slightly disconcerted, although my heart is pounding in my ears. Did he just say…?

“Okay?” I reply tentatively.

He grins and jerks me into his arms. “Glad we had this talk,” he whispers into my ear, nipping at my earlobe as he teases. “I like you. A lot.”

I obligingly drop my head back, half unable to believe it. “I like you a lot too… And the door’s still open…”

He begins kissing my neck roughly. “It works out well then.”

I could only agree.