The Breaking Point: M/M Mpreg Alpha Male Romance Read online

  Vinny doesn’t want to go home at all, not yet, and so Lance gets a cab for himself, takes the bags, and tells Vinny to have fun on his own.

  “I’ll unpack and clean up, when you come home bring food, and don’t stay out more than an hour past sundown or I’ll be sure you’re murdered, okay? Paulie, okay?”

  Vinny was nodding but walking in the opposite direction already. Lance lets him go, figures he hasn’t been as many places as Lance, it’s right to be spun and undone at all this stuff, but Vinny doesn’t run down in the next few weeks, he only amps up.

  They both have to be taught to play to a camera instead of a face, an audience, and though Lance assumed he would be better at that (he can imagine an audience, that’s always been a strength of his), Vinny takes to it well too; whatever he sees when he looks into a camera lens, he’s selling it, and whenever he’s told to avoid looking directly into the lens, he feels where it moves and he’s coy to, seductive even, whereas Lance can either engage or ignore, he can’t dance with the damn thing like Vinny can.

  That isn’t the only aspect that separates them as the filming goes on and the show gets seen. They’re bit players in a big cast, but they’re new to the team and arriving together, and Vinny is clearly the favorite. He’s liked by men and women, rich and poor, he’s a sexy rags to riches story, whereas Lance is just a trained monkey: he comes from circus people and remains a sideshow to most people. Kids love him and fellow Jews love him, but he doesn’t get half the fawning attention that Vinny soaks up, and yet still the attention he gets isn’t enough.

  “I think I should get into the movies, don’t you? The comedy thing, that works really well for you, but people keep telling me I could play much more serious roles, that I’d shine up real nice as a leading man, what do you think? I’d need my nose fixed, but if I got on a big enough picture, I bet they’d do that for me the same way they’d hire an ad company for promotion, it’s all about creating an image.”

  Lance lets him talk and talk, and lets him listen and listen to all the vomiting torrents of praise and love, from men who want to be him or who think Vinny reminds them of their younger selves, and women who say if they weren’t married they’d be in trouble, and then of course the women who aren’t married…well, they are trouble.

  Because not only does Vinny not want to tell the world that he and his partner are lovers, he doesn’t want to tell people he’s into boys at all.

  “Let them see what they want to see, baby,” he says, in their small apartment that at least has a big soft bed, big enough for the both of them, and silky sheets that Vinny splurged on so he could believe his own rich dreams. “Sweetheart, the audience is kind of stupid, aren’t they? Like they just want to be entertained; they don’t want to think, they don’t want to know, and so why tell them anything? If girls hang on me, let them hang on me, it makes them feel good! If you’re worried about me straying…I know you’re not because, baby, I can’t even get hard around bosoms, it’d be like wanting to fuck a beautiful panther—I just don’t want to! They’re sleek and gorgeous these ladies, like expensive cars, as pretty as a ballroom, but that doesn’t mean I want to be with them like I am with you.” He sticks his tongue into Lance’s ear when he says stuff like this, or grasps Lance’s cock or cups an ass cheek, and Lance knows he’s telling the truth, but he does sometimes wish Vinny would tell the truth to more than just him. Maybe less people would like him, but the people who did like him would love him, and love him for who he really is, not just how he seems. Vinny needs that more than he wants to admit.

  Because successful as they are, that shimmering warmth of attention and fame isn’t enough for Vinny. He’s talking to people who know people in the movie business, he’s singing to people who know people in the music industry, he’s even taking head shots and considering modeling or endorsements should his star even climb so high that such a deal really clicks, but…there’s still something in him that isn’t happy.

  Vinny lines up a meeting with an agent, and the second he hangs up the phone he reaches for a bottle of gin, a big bottle, kept in the freezer and not under the ice (too big to fit). He pours a big helping of it into a tall cup and mixes a martini by shaking the ingredients together with the bottom of a coffee cup capped on the top of the drinking cup, and he licks the coffee cup’s bottom clean before setting it down in the sink.

  After one big gulp, he says to Lance (while staring out the window at the neighboring building’s fire escape), “Is it okay that you’re not invited?”

  “Pally, you know I don’t care about that. If I wanted to be in the movies I’d do all the work networking that you do, wouldn’t I? You earned this, I’m not jealous.”

  “You know I’ll take you with me, right?” he asks, crawling onto their bed in nothing but his tight white briefs, which stand out against that smooth Mediterranean skin like a glowing light. He brings his drink with him and offers a sip to Lance (refused), and then crosses his legs over the covers while Lance stays stretched out underneath.

  “I go to Hollywood, you come for the ride. I get leading man, you’re getting a character part. I get a big mansion with all my fame money, you own the guest house.”

  “I’m not invited to the big house?” Lance teases. He knows Vinny wants to stay private, but he still doesn’t agree; Vinny wants to hide because he doesn’t realize how great he really is. He doesn’t believe anyone would really love Paulie the Nobody, they want Vinny the Star only.

  “Good luck trying to get out of my house, I think I’ll be jealous. You don’t mind that girls and guys hang all over me, because you’re a pure heart but, baby, if I see you talking to any pool boy or pretty boy I might lock you in the goddamn basement. Do they have basements in California? If not, the attic. Or if not attics, I’ll build a cell, or a wine cellar, that’s what I’ll tell people it is, and I’ll keep you down there and only let you come out to tan.”

  “I won’t ever tan, I burn or I freckle.”

  “My prisoner you stay, then!” He leans close after this proclamation and kisses Lance, but he moves too fast, and drinks too much and eats too little these days, and he almost throws up on their crisp, clean sheets. Lance hears the hurl starting and picks the drink out of Vinny’s hand so he can scramble to the bathroom to blow chunks. Now Lance takes a sip of this large martini, and it’s more gin than anything else, it burns.

  “Are you okay?” Lance asks in between sips, trying to drink some more so Vinny will have less as he finishes the glass, but it’s still useless (he could just mix up another drink). Lance’s cheeks flush with the booze hitting him as Vinny comes back to bed lying, saying, “Must be nerves!” It may well be nerves, but he’s not living well. Living rich but not well, and Vinny may never know the difference.

  Vinny wants to try to kiss again, but rather than taste the sour upchuck of his drink, Lance turns the other cheek, and lets Vinny kiss down his neck and then go searching for his drink. Lance is about to say something when either the faint whiff of a puke or the overconfident gulps of the martini start making him feel sick too, and he flops out of bed to go barf into the toilet too. While flushing, he wonders if they aren’t sharing some bug—food poisoning or just a nasty bit of oncoming flu? Vinny has his own theory.

  “You know what, can olives get rancid? I bet it was the olive juice from that old jar in the fridge I poured in here, that’s what’s making us sick.” It doesn’t stop him from finishing the drink though, that theory. Maybe he just believes that the Italian Stallion has an iron stomach and can handle his booze.

  Lance takes Vinny’s empty glass from him when he downs the end of it, removes it to the kitchen, then kills the lights and crawls into bed. Vinny didn’t want to stop his little party, but Lance would rather refocus it on something real.

  “What kind of movies do you want, pally? Romantic comedy? You’d be the perfect fit for that. Or western, or action, or thriller? Want to be a detective, or maybe the killer? The sneaky he-was-there-all-along killer—tha
t would go so well with your eyebrows.” Lance kisses his eyebrows, one at a time, so dark and sleek and expressive. “Or do you want some serious dramatic role that gets you all the awards?”

  “I want…everything. I want all of that, if I can have it. I’ll have to figure out how to live long enough to be seven different stars.”

  He passes out pretty quickly after that. He snuggles in before he conks out, and something quite promising about the core of sweet Paulie? In the depth of the most knocked out sleep, he still reaches for Lance, and snuggles with him, and wraps around him like a protector. Vinny wants, he reaches, that’s almost all he does in everything: seeking and searching for all that he wants, the thing that will make him whole. It’s sweet but it’s dangerous, and Lance knows that and wonders why he stays, why he feeds into Vinny’s need. It’s not for the work, because Lance almost never minds where he works, so long as he’s making more money than he eats up, so what is it? Lance must be a bleeding heart, a sucker for a fixer upper, a Florence Nightingale Syndrome-kind of guy, quick to fall in love with his patient, his experiment. Florence Frankenstein maybe…that would make a pretty good bit.

  Lance leans out towards the bedside table to write down the Florence Frankenstein, love the monster note for later development. Vinny has a pad and pen on his side of the bed too, on the windowsill, though he doesn’t use his as much as Lance does. He doesn’t dream as much as Lance does, nor does he fall asleep slowly, with his thoughts sifting down to settle like fall leaves, because he usually puts himself to bed with booze. Lance comes back to the center of the mattress, and though his brain is turned off, Vinny’s body still reacts to him, hugs him and nestles him. That’s what Lance trusts more than anything else.

  Vinny’s older than him by nearly ten years, but still Lance feels like Vinny needs to be given a loose leash, allowed to sow his wild oats and burn his candles on both ends and exhaust his excesses naturally. Lance doesn’t really believe in rules, he wasn’t raised with them, he was raised to adapt to himself and then to adapt his self to the world around him, and he assumes that method of parenting will work on Vinny too, and never mind that Vinny is his lover and not his child, never mind that at all. Maybe when they grow enough together they’ll have their own children, and this theory will come perfectly into play.

  The idea of children one day piling into bed with them to snuggle their papas makes Lance smile, hold Vinny closer, and fall asleep in true, sweetly dreaming peace.

  7. The Breaking Point

  Vinny’s spent his whole life being ready for fame, and by readying for fame, of course, he meant being ready for excess.

  Famous but not rich is the wrong kind of fame, murderers get that kind of fame, and idiots. Their first few weeks in New York City, Vinny wants to do it all and see it all. Is this the backroom where all the shady deals go down? Where’s the seedy underbelly of the city, is it over here? Vinny wants to find it. He wants to be in the know, he wants to shake hands and be nodded through thick curtains to the smoky rooms full of people with power, the power of money, drugs, looks, knowledge, connections. He knows it’s a destructive impulse, but it still drives him.

  A few weeks into his new life in NYC, Vinny is running a little bit on fumes. He’s lucky being wan, tired, and wrung out doesn’t show much through his Mediterranean skin, or so Lance says. Lance puts up with his behavior like it doesn’t bother him at all. It must, right? Wouldn’t it bother anyone to be boyfriends and roommates with someone on the first real tear of his life, learning to hold his liquor the hard way (by throwing up half the time), and doing nothing but celebrating, sleeping, and sobering up just enough to hit his mark at the show so he can get back at it. He’s having fun, but he doesn’t want to spend more than a year doing this show, he wants to know the people that can set him up for better and better and better.

  All Lance says about it is, “Paulie wants a crack whore?” Like he’s talking to a parrot in a pirate movie. “Paulie want a Martooni? Paulie waddles drunky all day.” Gentle teasing like that, no matter what state Vinny returns to their apartment in. Vinny knows he’s being a bit of a wreck, and certainly Lance would know it better than anyone since he’s the one who cleans him up and gets his shoes off whenever he arrives, gets him into bed so they can still cuddle together. Vinny’s never once stayed out all night, and he wonders if that would make the difference to Lance, a night where Vinny never came back home. Vinny doesn’t want to find out any more than Lance does about that. He’ll pin a fifty dollar bill with his address written on it to the flesh of the palm of his hand and hail a cab like that if he has to. Keep the change, buddy, just put me here first.

  The only time Lance was ever serious about it was the first night Vinny went out after the show and tried cocaine, and came home perfectly keyed up and jazzed and dazzled, and put himself to bed after doing the dishes from the dinner he missed, he had all the energy in the world…until he crashed to the pillow and woke up stuck to it. Blood had started pouring out of his nose at some point in the night. It was dried to tackiness by the time Vinny woke up, and spotted a new pillow still in plastic next to him on the bed, and Lance sitting at their kitchen table, watching him come to.

  “How many days do you want to wake up like this, Vinny?” he asked, but that was all he ever said about it. Vinny didn’t answer him then and still couldn’t do it now, in fact. How many days isn’t the only question, it’s how many nights before he’s willing to miss out on it too, for the sake of waking up to the chirrup of an alarm and squeezing his own fresh juice and doing yoga to greet the sunrise? He could do that shit in Steubenville if he wanted to. In fact he often thinks that if he ever burns the candle too hot at both ends, and winds up with some kind of cancer or liver failure or something, and only has a year left to live, he’ll go back to Steubenville and sober up for it, because then every day would feel like a fucking eternity.

  Vinny does wonder why Lance doesn’t ever join him, doesn’t even seem to want to. At first he assumed that the only reason someone wouldn’t partake of drugs and alcohol would be because of religion (which isn’t Lance’s problem, he’s Jewish), or because they had some horror story of a bad high or an addicted family member who scared them away from it, or maybe some medical condition that simply can’t be mixed with any chemical fun? But Lance has no discernable reason for not accepting every drink or favor offered him, except that he says he doesn’t want it.

  “Have you ever tried this stuff?” Vinny asks at first, with cocaine and with a hit of ecstasy that he himself didn’t like enough to deal with the after-effect, the depleted serotonin in his brain that had to be built back up before he could feel regular happiness again, no thank you.

  Lance answered that question with a joke, something about how he once tried everything in a dream, or maybe he meant it somehow, the kid’s got some weird brain chemistry to begin with for all the fast-talking and make-believe he’s always doing. The guy who sold him some acid said if there’s any family history of schizophrenia, don’t do it, LSD can kick open the doors of perception and the doors to a mental snap if he’s susceptible. Then the guy asked about his friend, Lance who’d gotten up to go the bathroom at their weekly little cast party, drinking nothing but fruity beers when everyone else around him is slamming shots. The guy asked because he wanted to know if he was selling Vinny one hit or two, would he share? Vinny didn’t even bother asking about this one. He took one hit for himself to enjoy some Sunday in Central Park, and wouldn’t have offered one to Lance even if the kid begged him for it; Lance always seems to toe the line of schizophrenia, there’s no way Vinny wants to risk that funny brain of his.

  So Lance isn’t partaking in any drugs at all that Vinny can see, but still after a couple months he starts acting like he’s got a hangover in the mornings too. Is he doing something shady on the sly? Are these secret, junkie heroin pukes, or is he somehow gaining sympathetic hangovers because he’s that in tune with Vinny. At first, of course, Vinny thinks it’s a cold or somethin
g. When it lasts more than two weeks, he assumes super-flu, something only New York City can breed because it’s a big, dirty, international petri dish, and of course it’s also winter by the time Lance takes ill, and so no one is feeling up to their best, not even the healthiest among them. But Lance keeps looking sour after a whole month goes by, and no amount of tea or vitamins or sleep (and he starts sleeping a lot) seems to change that.

  Vinny sobers up a bit after that, and when he does drink, he now does it at home with Lance, so he can be there to clean Lance up and put him to bed, a complete role reversal. He wants Lance to go to a doctor, but the kid won’t do it.

  “It doesn’t feel like it needs a doctor,” he says. “It feels like I just need to take care of myself.”

  “You’re only saying that because you grew up poor, no insurance, right? Only go to the doctor if you’re on death’s door? Lance, baby, come on, you know you’re sick, right, so why not find out why? You might get better quicker if you’re prescribed some meds.”

  “Oh, you and drugs, take a long walk off a short pier with that,” Lance tells him, smiling, joking. Vinny lets it go. Sure, he’s halfway convinced that Lance has some kind of wasting cancer or something, but he just can’t fight the kid, he’s not going to drag him anywhere, and he wouldn’t betray his trust by sneaking someone into the apartment to look at him either, he wouldn’t risk making Lance mad at him like that. He does what he’s told when it comes to Lance; if Lance says a doctor won’t help, fine. If Lance wants something specific to eat, Vinny gets it for him. If Lance wants Vinny to drink coffee instead of gin in the morning, he does that too, at least until his baby either gets better or worse, Vinny agrees to that.

  What Lance starts doing is getting plump, with all the eating and sleeping he’s doing, but he starts feeling better too, good enough to start getting fucked again, which is a true sign of health if Vinny ever knew one—sick and dying people don’t have the energy to want to bang, that’s the biggest tragedy about dying, you don’t have the energy for what makes being alive so worth it! Your last days and you can’t even enjoy them? That’s a shit deal no one would take if they had the choice. Lance doesn’t have that deal.