The Scoop

"Philip wouldn't have survived in prison. I knew I could. I couldn't let Philip go to prison. Also, I starred in action movies. The studio thought it best to withhold all indication that I was engaged in sex with another man, even if it were assault. All of my movies, past and present—one way or the other, there didn't appear to be a future—would tank at the bank. Philip could survive that suspicion better than my career could—my career. That's all gone now anyway."

"You love Philip?"

"Loved. Past tense, I think. Philip isn't here now. He didn't wait for me while I was in prison. You can fall out of love. I learned that the hard way."

Nick, in fact, knew this of Philip—that he didn't wait for Kyle. But this wasn't the time or place to bring that up.

"So, do you want to leave now?" Kyle asked.

"I don't want to, but I'll have to," Nick said. "I'm losing my digs and I'll have to go out to find someplace else to live tomorrow—something a garbage man can afford."

"I wish you didn't have to leave," Kyle said.

"People can't have everything they wish," Nick answered.

The silence was brief. Kyle was smitten, and he was so relieved to have unburdened himself with someone. And he was so grateful and aroused that that someone melded with his sexual interest. "I have four bedrooms here," he said. "You could move in with me."

Nick didn't mull this any longer that Kyle had. "Then I wouldn't have to go apartment hunting tomorrow," he said.

"That's right. You wouldn't have to leave now. We could . . . again . . ."

And so, they did.

* * * *

Nick, just wearing athletic shorts on a hot New York City night in small apartment with only one inadequate window fan, was drawn to the door between the bedroom and the living room by the boisterous noise resonating in the stairwell as two men walked up to this floor shortly before midnight. He recognized the voice of one of the men, Philip Painter, a couple of years younger than Nick, and wasn't surprised Philip was coming home at this hour on a Thursday. But he was somewhat surprised that he was bringing another man home at this hour. He guessed he wasn't surprised Philip would bring someone else back to their apartment thinking Nick wouldn't be there—but he was surprised Philip would do it after being on stage for performances. Philip's Broadway play had had two performances today. Philip's role was a taxing one. By rights, he should be exhausted after a two-performance day. It wasn't normally a time when someone would bring someone back to his apartment to fuck while thinking his boyfriend was out of town.

But Philip wasn't exhausted. The curtain calls must have been good and the guy he was dragging home must be a real honey, because Philip was definitely in celebration mode.

He opened the door into the apartment, saw Nick standing in the bedroom doorway, did a double-take, and pulled back into the stairwell and shut the door. Nick barely had a chance to see the other man, but he was older than either Philip or Nick, was good-looking, and one of his hands was palming Philip's butt. There was a bit of muffled discussion in the stairwell and then Philip entered the apartment again, alone.

"You're home," he said to Nick. "You finished the assignment you were working on? Here, I need a beer. You want one too?" He was looking embarrassed. Not a word about the man he was bringing home to the New York City apartment that he and Nick Granger shared when Nick was in the city. Nick hadn't been in the city for a month. He'd been on Fire Island. The last three weeks he'd been living with the former movie star and prison inmate, Kyle Kane, at Kane's Fire Island house on New York Avenue.

"Yes, a beer would be nice, and then we should talk," Nick said. "I guess your performances went great today."

"Yes, great. You didn't let me know you were coming back from your assignment today."

And if I had, you wouldn't have brought a man back tonight, Nick thought of saying. But he didn't. They were beyond that. "I decided I needed to report in on my assignment. I won't be here long."

"Got more work to do? Going right back to wherever you are doing your research? Here's your beer. Come on over to the sofa. Let's have a proper 'welcome home.'"

He was pulling Nick over to the sofa, and he was sexing Nick up, which kept Nick from responding to Philip's first couple of questions beyond saying, "I've finished with the research." And he had, in fact, finished doing the research he needed. It had started with a bit of suspicion on where Philip fit in the Kyle Kane murder case, his hooking up with Philip and linking Philip to the case even before Nick had taken the assignment he was on. Having heard Kane's side of it now, which supported the suspicions he'd formed about Philip after a year of living with him, is what brought him back to New York and to this apartment tonight—if only briefly.

Philip didn't let him get any further into that for a while, though. Philip was a sexy little thing and he knew exactly how to distract and to bend a man to his will. Once they were on the sofa, he was all over Nick, and Nick wasn't able to resist, although he was determined this would be one last time. After some embracing and kissing and wrestling, Philip went down on his knees between Nick's spread thighs and serviced the man's cock with his mouth. They finished with Nick sitting on the sofa and Philip on his lap, facing him, his knees encasing Nick's thighs, and his ass rising and falling on Nick's cock to a mutual ejaculation.

Afterward, he bounced off Nick's lap and headed for the bathroom, through the bedroom. At the bedroom door, he was caught up short.

"You're packing. You're packing up all of your stuff."

"Yes, yes, I am," Nick answered from the sofa. "It's time for me to move on. I'm not leaving to complete my assignment. I just leaving."

"Is it because I brought Shawn home tonight? But, no, you were packing before that."

"It's partly because of the Shawns and the Teds and the Jacks," Nick answered in a tired voice. "But it's more because of the rest of who you are and that you let Kyle Kane take the rap for you."

"Kyle Kane? What the hell are you talking about? Is that what your assignment was? Is that what you've been researching? Kyle Kane's murder case?" Philip said, his face going pale.

"Yes, but at the beginning I didn't realize what an integral part of this case you are."

The night went downhill from there.

* * * *

"These expenses are something else—maybe worth a feature themselves—but if they got the story, they were worth it." Nick Granger was sitting in the New York City office of Darrell Jamison, the managing editor of the celebrity exposé magazine The Scoop that Nick often wrote freelance features for. "Did renting a garage and a tow truck and hiring two men get you where no reporter's been able to get with Kyle Kane since he got out of prison?" Jamison asked.

"Yes, it did," Nick answered. He took several selfie photos he'd done with both Kane and Philip Painter to establish that he had, in fact, gotten to both for the feature The Scoop had commissioned on the Kyle Kane murder case. He passed them across the desk for Jamison to see. These should be enough to establish that the expenses were legitimate. "I got into his house posing as a garbage man whose truck broke down in front of his place." He didn't have to cover how he'd hooked up with Philip Painter. That he was hooked up with Philip Painter had been the basis upon which he'd sold the story idea to Jamison in the first place.

"And this place is . . .?"

"It doesn't matter. It had a 'for sale' sign in front of it when I was there. He may have moved on by now. You know how hard it's been for anyone to track him down and to get an interview." Nick didn't want to either lie or reveal the truth. His words here had to walk a very narrow line.

"But you tracked him down," Jamison said.

"Yes."

"And you got an interview. Juicy stuff. Something worth a juicy article on the man, where he's been, whether he's going to confess now that he's done the time, where he goes from here? You discovered some kinks he has? There had been rumors even before the shooting."

"Yes, I got the interview and I wrung him dry," Nick said. "But there's nothing there. He's just a broken man now. No public interest that I can see."

"You ran up these expenses and you're telling me there isn't a story there?"

"That was the deal, Mr. Jamison. Since I was close to Philip Painter, I'd try to get close to Kyle Kane too and check out if there was a story there. That's all anyone else was trying to do. I did what others couldn't do. I got to them both without them knowing I was researching for The Scoop and I got them to open up to me. I found the case was as it was presented and that, yes, both guys are gay, but there isn't anything more of interest in the story. Kane's career is over now anyway. People figured out there was a gay angle to it. There's no shock value left in that story, I don't think."

"Shit," Jamison said.

"Yes, but you've told me that in this business there are five 'there's not enough for a story' in the celebrities' lives to one fresh, new gold mine of scandal."

"Yeah, I've told you that. I had this feeling about the Kane case, though, that there was more in it than met the eye and there were those rumors about maybe he liked to do the drag queen thing."

"We can't win them all," Nick said, looking away from the editor, afraid that if their eyes met, Jamison would see that Nick was holding back. To distract from this possibility, Nick launched into another story idea. "On my way back from seeing Kane I took a few days to check out Fire Island. It's always been a good hunting ground for scandals on gays. And guess who I saw being chummy on the beach? Sid Hollaway and young Jeff Blake."

"The movie producer and that child star who is nineteen but playing younger parts?"

"The same, and they were in quite a lip lock. Maybe someone . . . or I . . . could—"

"You want to see what you can run down on that?" Jamison asked.

"I could, yes, if you like."

When Nick left Jamison's office, it was with authorization to do some research on this story, including checking out where the producer and young star might be staying—or had stayed—on Fire Island. There was no reason for Jamison to know that Nick had a good reason to spend much more time than that on Fire Island now—in a house facing the ocean on New York Avenue. Kyle Kane had already convinced him that he should try something more cerebral than hoisting garbage cans with the city streets his office—not that that had ever been a serious gig for Nick anyway—and Nick had allowed how he had always been interested in writing and he might try that. Kane thought that was a great idea and was quite willing to finance the change and to give Nick room and board in exchange for special favors.

On Nick's part, he thought this would be a happy ending.