April smiled at her guest. “Thanks, Alex, but Marcus already offered to talk to someone for me. I told him I didn’t want to cheat.”
So far, she’d refused to show Marcus her sketches or her costume-in-progress, saying she wanted to surprise him when it was done. Secretly, he hoped the outfit was tight. Very tight. But he hadn’t said so, because she would look gorgeous either way, and he wasn’t a complete jackass.
He turned to Mel. “We’re going to grab dinner soon. Do you want to join us?”
By now, she and Pablo had visited the apartment several times for sewing purposes, and Marcus had met the rest of April’s closest colleagues at least once, after joining them for lunch at a restaurant near their office. To their credit, they’d treated him pretty much as he’d have expected them to treat any boyfriend of April’s, despite the occasional cell photos taken of them by other customers as they ate.
He liked her coworkers, and he liked the way April seemed comfortable in their presence, still herself in every essential way. Plainspoken. Practical. Confident. A couple of weeks ago, she’d even stopped looking surprised every time they texted her about socializing outside of the office.
In her colleagues’ company, he hadn’t said much, to be honest. Mostly, he’d eaten his lettuce wraps and listened. But every word he had uttered had been his and his alone, rather than lines from a character he’d scripted long ago.
It was a self-administered, low-stakes test of sorts. One measuring his nerve, his willingness to grow and change.
He wanted to be a man she could respect, not just privately but in public too.
More importantly, he wanted to be himself whenever cameras weren’t rolling.
It would take time. Effort. But so had everything else he’d achieved over almost four decades, and no matter what he’d been told as a child, he wasn’t and had never been lazy. Just unsure, or not quite brave enough to do what was necessary.
“Thanks for the invitation. I wish I could say yes.” Mel wrapped one of her many, many scarves more securely around her neck. “Saturdays are my date nights with Heidi, though. Another time?”
The assumption: he wasn’t going anywhere, so they would have plenty of occasions to eat dinner together in the future.
He smiled at her, pleased. “Of course.”
Once they’d all said their goodbyes to Mel and she’d disappeared into the dusk, April headed toward the master bedroom to gather her purse and a sweater while Marcus finger-combed his hair in the entryway mirror above the console.
“Should have played Narcissus instead of Aeneas,” Alex muttered.
Marcus raised a middle finger in his direction.
When April reappeared in the living room, Alex beamed at her and proffered his elbow with a courtly flourish. “To your chariot, my lady?”
“Uh . . .” Her cheeks turned rosy, and she made a weird choking noise as she accepted his arm. “Okay. Thanks.”
Marcus glared at his best friend, who merely raised a cocky brow in return.
“Tell me, April,” Alex was saying as they exited her apartment. “Would you say that Cupid is a bottom? Because I’m very intrigued by the fanfic community’s interpretation of the character, especially his proclivity for being pegged.”
And there it was. She was giggling again, even as she blushed harder. Giggling, and the back of Alex’s stupid head should have caught fire from the force of Marcus’s scowl.
“Oh, he’s definitely a bottom. A bratty one, I’d say.” She sounded breathless but thoughtful. “Or maybe a switch?”
Then, after a squeeze of Alex’s arm, she let go of him and held out her hand for Marcus instead. He interlaced their fingers immediately and swept past his friend, allowing a surge of triumph to puff his chest just a tad as he stared meaningfully at Alex.
“Bratty is about right, April,” he said, and pretended not to see his friend’s own raised middle finger in response. “You have him pegged. So to speak.”
Rating: Explicit
Fandoms: Gods of the Gates – E. Wade, Gods of the Gates (TV)
Relationships: Cupid/Original Character
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe – Modern, Porn without Plot, Smuttity Smut Smut, Half-Human Disaster Cupid, Bottoms Up, The Peg That Was Promised, Actor!Cupid
Stats: Words: 3027 Chapters: 1/1 Comments: 137 Kudos: 429 Bookmarks: 40
Taking Him Down a Peg
CupidUnleashed
Summary:
Cupid has a hard day on set. Off set, things get equally hard. By “things,” I mean his penis.
Notes:
Thanks to AeneasLovesLavinia for the beta. You’re the best, dude. Also, any resemblance to current worldwide television hits is entirely unintentional.
No, wait. The opposite of that last one.
* * *
Robin’s hands on his bare chest were small but hot and so very soft. “What happened today? You seem . . . tense.”
She was straddling him now, her solid, welcome weight keeping him in place. Maybe he could move if he tried, but he didn’t. No, he wanted that sense of helplessness right now, that sense of safety. More than that. He wanted to forget, to drown in pleasure until he couldn’t think.
“The usual,” he sighed. “As I’ve said before, the showrunners were incompetent from the very beginning. The only things that saved them were the talented crew, my fellow actors, and the books. But now that we’re past the books, everything’s gone wrong.”
She was frowning down at him, concentrating. Concerned. “How can I help?”
“Take me,” he said, and she got up on her knees and began to move over him, only to halt at his next words. “No. Take me.”
She bit her lip, even as her cheeks bloomed with heat. “Are you sure?”
“You bet your ass I’m sure.” He grinned up at her. “Or, more accurately, my ass.”
When they laughed together, he was certain of two things.
First: she was going to peg his brains out that night.
Second: by the time she was done, he would no longer care that his character’s entire arc had been torpedoed in the final season for no damn reason.
20
“WHAT DO YOU THINK?” APRIL GAZED UP AT MARCUS FROM her couch the next evening, nose crinkled in concern. “Is it terrible? I’ve only begun tackling book canon recently, and I’m not sure my writing voice is particularly suited to it.”
After Alex had left for the airport and April had disappeared into the bathroom for a shower, Marcus had retreated to her little office. He’d sat at her desk for a good half hour, listening as his text-to-speech app read the draft of her most recent fic aloud to him, once and then a second time. For those few minutes, he’d allowed himself to become Book!AeneasWouldNever again, beta-reading his friend Ulsie’s writing to check for character consistency and plot holes and any other tarnished spots he could help her buff to a gleam. As always, he’d jotted a few nearly indecipherable notes to himself as he listened.
The familiar routine had settled around him like the fur-lined cloak he’d worn in Gates’s wintry first season. Warm. Comforting. So heavy his shoulders hurt.
In one sense, her request was helping them reclaim parts of their relationship she’d never know they’d lost. But even in that welcome moment of reclamation, he couldn’t entirely be honest with her. If he gave her exactly the same feedback as his fanfic alter ego would have, in exactly the same way, she might grow suspicious. She might recognize him as her longtime friend and writing partner.