Saddled, Chapter 32 (Patreon)

John turned the key, but the engine just clicked. Fuck. He slapped his hands against the steering wheel. Hopefully his battery was dead and this wasn’t some problem with an alternator. He couldn’t afford to have a major mechanical problem right now. Considering he was making more money than he had in his life, that was ironic. 

It was also true. Logan talked big about his success, but California was stupidly impossible and he didn’t have endless funds to pay for their mother’s treatment—not that he would ever admit that. John sat in the car and watched the gray sky as he tried to corral his frustrations with the world in general. A tap at the window distracted him. The window would sometimes get stuck when he rolled it down, so he opened the door.

“Problem?” Clive asked. He had parked his Lexus halfway down the drive and left it running.

“My car is a piece of shit.” John sighed. “I should call a tow truck.”

“They’ll take forever to get out here. Come on. I’ll give you a ride to Boston.”

John didn’t know the public transportation system in Boston and he didn’t want to get stranded. On the other hand, Logan was in town. He could hit his brother up for a ride. The thought gave him heartburn. He hadn’t made up his mind before Clive caught him by the arm. “Come on. You know you don’t want to get stuck up here.”

“I should stay here and take care of this.” Despite his words, John got out and slammed his door. He didn’t bother locking it because he would prefer it if someone stole it at this point.

“I’ll have my secretary call a tow company,” Clive said as he guided John to his car.

John dug in his heels. “I don’t need your assistant to take care of my shit.”

Clive stopped and crossed his arms. “Sure. You can stand up here all day waiting for a tow truck that may or may not come. I don’t keep an extra car here because mechanics are so reliable about showing up when they say. My housekeeper doesn’t even show up when she says she will.” After a few seconds of silence, Clive threw his hands up. “Jesus Christ you’re stubborn. Just take the ride and smile.”

“Asshole,” John said. Clive was actually the opposite of an asshole, but John hated taking favors.

Instead of taking offense, Clive rolled his eyes. “Of course I am. Actually, if you talk to the actors and directors I work with, a fair number would call me an asshole. Luckily, the good ones also respect my ability to make the impossible happen and win awards. Come on, you stubborn bastard. So, how’s the shoulder?”

John started for the Lexus. “How’s your leg?”

“Hurts like hell,” Clive said cheerfully. The man was officially strange. John sank into the seat. It was more comfortable than John’s living room furniture. It smelled better, too. After years of working on fishing boats, everything John owned had a certain funk to it, but Clive’s car still smelled of new leather.

Clive hit the accelerator. He took the first turn fast enough to make John grab for the door handle. He wished he could drive, but he didn’t want to be responsible for an $80,000 or $90,000 car. The good news was that they were going to make the drive in far less time than the four hours it normally took. When they reached the I-95, the sky started to turn dark. Lines of white-gray clouds ran perpendicular to the highway, turning the sky into irregular lines of blue.

John hadn’t ridden in a car for years. It felt strange. And relying on Clive still rubbed him wrong. A hawk swooped low over the road and then vanished into the forest and John stared at the trees searching for more signs of life.

“Can we talk about our relationship?” Clive asked. His voice startled John out of his trance.

“What about it? You like to tie me up. I like to kick your ass while I’m tied up.” As much as John enjoyed their shared kink, he didn’t particularly want to have a long and meaningful discussion about it.

Clive chuckled. “You’re going to pay for that next time.”

Desire fluttered in John’s stomach when he thought about the sorts of revenge Clive might take, but he said in a casual voice, “Not if you can’t learn to tie a better knot.”

“I’ll work on that,” Clive said drily.

“Knowing you, you probably will. You’re a poor loser.” 

John was rewarded with a grin. “I’m a great loser, but I do it so rarely.” Arrogance colored Clive’s words, but he never stopped grinning.

John snorted. Funny, if he had this conversation with anyone else, he would have described it as a fight, but the words were comfortable.

“My attitude about losing doesn’t change the fact that we need to talk.” Clive’s voice grew more serious. “We’re so far off the call sheet that Elena would murder both of us if she knew.”

“She wouldn’t do more than lecture us,” John said, although firing was a possibility for John. She took the call sheets seriously, and any assistant who failed to take them just as seriously met a financially messy end. John had no idea how she had kept angry ex-employees from going to the police, but he had no intention of ever crossing her. Unfortunately, every time he shared Clive’s bed, he did exactly that.

“She would fire you and ban me from hiring any of her assistants,” Clive said flatly.

John hadn’t planned on being that honest. “Which is why I’m in favor of lying.”

Clive shrugged. “You’re the one who has to talk to her in person. I just email her euphemisms so vague we could be discussing the weather. The woman has paranoid down to an art. And maybe I’m being paranoid, but she seems like the sort who can smell a lie.”

John shifted in his seat. “What exactly do you want to do about it? Do you want to go back on the script?” John snapped. His head told him that was the best and safest solution, but his gut turned to stone at the thought. In the morning, he would watch Clive’s face. He had a softness when he slept that made John want to shield him. He carried so much stress with him through the day, and John hadn’t seen it until he’d watched Clive wake. He’d stretch and smile and his body was all curves and slow, languid movements. Then the real world would push in and his expression would turn harder. By the time he checked his texts, the brusque man John had first met returned full force.

“What? No. No, I don’t. I want...” Clive took a deep breath and blew it out before he continued. “I want this. Us. Talking. Doing something insanely normal like going to visit a sick relative together.”

John hadn’t known Clive planned to go with him to the hospital, but right now he had bigger concerns. “But?” he demanded.

“Part of me wants to cancel the damn contract so that when we try to kill each other in the stable it’s because we want to, not because there’s a damn contract between us.”

John wanted that, but it was a fairy tale. The client didn’t fall for the assistant, and if he did, there was something wrong with the client. Worse, John needed the money. He had every reason to want this contract. Despite that, he wanted to cancel it more. He wanted to know if what they had was real, and he didn’t want Clive to pay money if he didn’t want to. “I’ll call Elena.”

“What? Wait. I’m not finished.”

“You want this to be consentual and not financially coerced. I want the same.” It seemed like a fairly simple concept. “So let’s cancel the contract.”

“I want to change the contract, not cancel it.” Clive’s voice grew deeper and louder. He was such a fucking mother hen that he probably worried about John’s bills.

“I don’t need your contract. I was paying my bills before you, and I’ll get them paid after this contract ends.” John wasn’t sure how he’d pay them, but he’d always managed one way or another. He could always take up bank robbery.

“How? By jumping in someone else’s bed?”

John crossed his arms. “If I have to, yes.” He wasn’t about to let Clive’s jealousy rule his life.

Clive took several deep breaths, but he was strangling the steering wheel. He gripped so hard that his knuckles turned white. John wanted to say something, to make some empty promise. He wanted to slip back into that easy silence that existed between them when he was gagged, but he wouldn’t fucking back down. Clive could rent him, but John wouldn’t allow Clive to own him.

“I’m going to start this conversation over.” Clive’s voice had an artificial calm that annoyed John down to his core. “You know, this is why I prefer producing. I like editing a work more than trying to get the words right the first time.  I asked your brother to find a script I could send you and ask you to work as a technical advisor. I let him think you were a stubborn bastard who refused to take my money unless you were working for it.”

“What?” This conversation had taken such a strange turn that John wasn’t following it at all.

“Your brother has a weird sense of humor because he sent me a Romeo and Romeo gay romance set in a fishing village, and I’m convinced the fisherman who plays one of the Romeos doesn’t know how to actually fish.”

John frowned and studied Clive’s profile as he tried to figure out what sort of verbal detour they’d taken. “So trash it.”

“Here’s the thing. I don’t want to trash it. The pacing sucks, the ending is artificially dramatic and the setting is a Google-inspired disaster of hastily researched details that don’t fit. However, the characters are brilliant. Flawed. Sympathetic. Original. The kid who wrote this knows how to make me cheer for a character with all my heart, and that is the mark of potential greatness.” Clive held up an emphatic finger.

“What does this have to do with me? With us?”

Clive rolled his eyes. “I tried leading with that detail, and I’m pretty sure we just had our first fight, so I’m taking the long road. Since you started the fight, suck it up and follow along,” he said without an ounce of sympathy. “This twenty-two year old kid is pitching his story as a movie, but the pacing absolutely will not work. There are details that must be developed and side characters who come in and out so fast that they’re practically worthless. But they are so interesting on their own that cutting them is not going to work either. This is the first season for a television show.” Clive grew more animated—his hand gesturing as he talked faster. “If I take this from an overly long three hour movie and turn it into a 20 or 22 hour season of television, we can develop some of this side characters and put the pacing where it should be. I could produce the hell out of this.”

“Um, okay.”

Clive glanced over. “However, without you, I can’t take on the project.”

“Because the fishing details suck?” John guessed. That seemed like a reasonable assumption, but he still wasn’t following the conversation well, so he wasn’t sure.

“Oh, they go beyond sucking,” Clive said. “The only boats I’ve been on are yachts and I was eating little French finger foods and drinking Champaign and I still recognize that the nitty-gritty details are wrong. With the internet, anyone with real experience can publicly make fun of the show and turn it into a joke. I would need a technical advisor to actually keep this on track.”

“A technical advisor?” John had a sinking feeling he knew where this was going.

“Yes. I need someone with a lot of experience with blue-collar life on a fishing boat. I happen to know a blue collar fisherman. As a producer, I tend to notice when little details like that match up.” Now Clive sounded aggravated.

“You want me to work in television?” John had to be hearing that wrong. If John’s career change from commercial fisherman to whore was odd, Clive’s suggestion was flat-out insane.

“Before you agree, understand this. Writers are temperamental. They throw fits. They yell about how you’re destroying their creative process. They cry. They manipulate,” Clive warned. “You have to stand strong and tell them what they can and can’t do, and you have to do it without destroying their love of the story. So you have to spend just as much time telling them what you love as you do telling them that they’re so very wrong. You’ll spend a lot of time biting your tongue.”

“That sounds horrible.”

“It can be. That’s why technical advisors are paid well.”

“You don’t have an obligation to pay my bills,” John said. Clive’s caretaker instincts made him want to fix the world, but John’s life didn’t need fixing.

Clive ignored the comment and kept talking about the job. “Most make in the $70,000 to $80,000 range per year. I would pay more on this project simply because this is a very young and inexperienced writer and we’re both going to have to put a lot more effort into this than a typical project. So much that I’m thinking of asking him to relocate out here. We could get locations for less than they would cost in California and there’s a pool of talent in New York that equals Hollywood. I’m biased, but I actually think we have better actors up here. We might even want to use Toronto for our main set. We could take the leads up and hire local.” Clive drummed his fingers against the wheel.

John stared at Clive, not sure how to react. Clive sounded excited, but this seemed a little too pat. A little too convenient. 

“What?” Clive asked after several miles of silence.

“I don’t need you to take care of me,” John said again.

Clive rolled his eyes. “I don’t need you to be my technical advisor or to share my bed, but I would be much happier if you did both. In the end, I can’t do this project without a technical advisor I trust. With you fixing the technical details and me fixing the pacing, this could be a great show. I can see the awards season being very kind if we treat this show right. Of course, some of this will depend on the author and figuring out how flexible he will be when it comes to suggestions.” Clive chewed on his upper lip.

“And you trust me with this grand project of yours?” John had to admit that he liked the thought of Clive trusting him, but he had no experience with television, and he sucked at reassuring insecure people.

“Clearly, I do. I don’t trust just anyone in my bed. Actually, I haven’t trusted anyone in my bed since my wife died.” Clive frowned as if he had realized that only as he said it.

“No, do you trust me as a technical advisor? I could piss your writer off and sent him running to therapy.” John was fairly sure he would do exactly that. He didn’t have a good track record with relationships.

“First, you wouldn’t.”

John snorted. “You clearly don’t know me that well.”

“Oh, I can imagine you stripping the skin off an arrogant asshole fairly easily. But Elena trusts you to handle spoiled kids, and you talked about how worried you were about that girl who was learning to be a pony girl. I think you’ll do your best to shelter a fragile ego, and if this writer turns out to be an asshole, he’ll deserve what he gets.”

John was speechless. “You don’t know that. My siblings will be very happy to explain exactly how unreasonable I am.”

“I am the king of unreasonable. Hell, the second people on set figure out we’re sleeping together, they’re going to expect you to be an asshole, so they won’t even notice your less pleasant personality traits.”

John wanted this, but he didn’t trust it. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to work together.”

Clive sighed. “I get it. My wife and I… our relationship started to fail when we started to work together. The jealousy and resentment grew faster than our love. I’m not wearing rose colored glasses.”

“What we have works.”

“Yes.” Clive said the word slowly as if he didn’t quite trust it. “But is it real? If you had a career as a technical advisor, would you still be as comfortable with our sex life?”

John’s point of view shifted by seventy degrees. It was like the boat had gotten caught in an unexpected current, and the bow of his ship turned before John had time to prepare himself. Clive was afraid. He feared that John was still one of Elena’s assistants playing the part of a good partner to keep a client happy. John had years of being alone, but at least he’d never had to fear that the people who had come into his life wanted something.

“So what change do you want to make in the contract?”

Clive gave him a brilliant smile. “I’ll pay $90,000 for the first year… and I’ll throw in a company car. You guarantee that you will stick with this series until it reaches the end of its run or five years, whichever is shorter. Network television has a real lack of LGBTQI stories, so this could be big. You could be signing away five years of your life,” he warned.

John had already given Elena five years. “What if I piss off this brilliant writer you’ve found?”

“I’ll piss him off enough that he’ll probably not even notice that you’re a cranky bastard,” Clive said with a shrug. “But I’ll know more after I talk to him, and I need to talk to your brother too, which is why I planned to go to the hospital.”

“Why?” 

“Either your brother is brilliant and he recognized the potential in this piece or he’s an absolute asshole who sent me this script because he hoped to torture me with a poorly paced plot and impossibly flawed setting.”

“Either is possible,” John said. He realized he didn’t know Logan well enough to know which was more likely. “So, you really want to work together?”

“Yeah,” Clive said softly, “I really do. Do you?”

John thought about it. “I don’t want to give up the stable. I like kicking your ass.”

A donkey bray of laugher erupted from Clive. “Of course you do, but trust me, I will be investing in a book of knots. Next time, I’m not the one who’s going to get his ass kicked.”

“Dream on,” John said. He loved seeing Clive so excited, and if this story made him happy, John would do his best to make sure it didn’t suck. In fact, John found he was looking forward to the challenge. 

Chapter 33: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-21751005 

Chapter 34: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-21913468 

Chapter 35: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-22204867 

Chapter 36: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-22342250 

Chapter 37: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-22436580 

Chapter 38 (Epilogue): https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-epilogue-22779789