Happily Ever After - Chapter Three
Gay Erotica, +18, Open Relationship, No Cheating
“— and I’m not gonna lie, guys, I’m a little emotional right now.”
Ethan was sitting on the edge of the bed in nothing but his black briefs, phone held at the angle he’d spent years perfecting — slightly above, tilted just enough to catch the jawline while letting the frame drop past his collarbones to mid-chest, that precise calibration between “heartfelt gratitude video” and “I am shirtless and would like you to notice.” Daniel estimated this was his fourth Instagram story since they’d walked through the front door. He had stopped counting somewhere between the shower and the second round of thank-yous, around the time Ethan had said “one more, habibi, I swear, last one” and he meant it every time he said it, and he was wrong every time he meant it.
“Two million of you. Two million.“ Ethan held up two fingers to the camera, his face doing that thing it did when he was being genuinely vulnerable in a space where he knew the vulnerability would perform well. “I remember when it was two hundred, bro. I remember eating tuna out of a can and pretending I liked it for the camera. I remember — hold on.”
“Okay. Take two. Two million of you...“
Daniel sat propped against the headboard, legs stretched out in front of him on the duvet, and worked a quarter-sized amount of moisturizer into his left thigh with slow strokes. The cream was Ethan’s. Everything in the bathroom was Ethan’s, technically, except for the toothbrush, the comb, and the single bottle of cologne that was Daniel’s one territorial claim on the counter, a claim Ethan violated regularly and without remorse, because Ethan maintained that Daniel’s cologne smelled better than any of his own. The moisturizing was also Ethan’s fault, a campaign that had begun four years ago when Ethan had watched Daniel step out of the shower, stared at his legs with an expression that bordered on medical concern, and said, as if he were personally delivering a terminal diagnosis, “Babe. Your skin is so dry.”
Daniel had pointed out that his skin was fine. Ethan had pointed out that “fine” was not a word that should ever be applied to the body of someone in a relationship with Ethan Mansour. Daniel had pointed out that not everyone needed twelve steps between waking up and facing the world. Ethan had squeezed an unreasonable amount of shea butter into his palms, knelt on the bathroom floor, and started rubbing it into Daniel’s calves without permission, narrating the process like a QVC host selling salvation. “You feel that? That’s hydration, habibi. That’s your skin saying thank you, king, for finally giving a shit about me.“
Daniel had stood there, naked and moisturized from the knees down by a man who was speaking to his shins like they were neglected rescue animals, and understood that this was his life now.
Now he moisturized his own legs without being asked. He did like Ethan had shown him, upward strokes, firm pressure, working the product in until the skin went from matte to a quiet shine. He did it without thinking about it, which was perhaps the most telling part. It had migrated from Ethan’s routine into his own through some process of domestic osmosis that Daniel had never consciously agreed to and could not have pinpointed the exact date of even if his publisher had demanded it.
“— two million of you. Two million.“ Ethan held up two fingers to the camera once again. “I remember when it was two hundred, bro. I remember eating tuna out of a can and pretending I liked it for the camera. I remember posting a gym video that got eleven likes and eight of them were my mom’s burner accounts.”
A grin broke through the performance, one the camera was lucky to catch.
“Nah, I’m playing. My mom doesn’t have burner accounts. My mom doesn’t have my number. That’s a different story. We’re not doing that tonight.”
He paused. Repositioned. Scratched the bridge of his nose with his ring finger, the one with the white gold band that caught the lamplight, and Daniel noticed that the scratch was unnecessary. Ethan wanted the ring in frame. He always wanted the ring in frame.
“But for real, though. Every single one of you — you changed my life. You gave me a career. You gave me a reason to get up at five a.m. and do this shit again, and again, and again, even when I was tired, even when I was broke, even when I didn’t know if anybody was gonna give a damn.” His voice dropped half a register, settling into the lower range he used when he meant something and wanted the audience to feel it in their chests. “So thank you. From the bottom of my heart. I love y’all. I’m not going anywhere. And if you’ve been here since day one — day one — you already know. The best is coming. I promise you that.”
He held the frame for a beat. Two. Let the silence land. Then he tapped the screen and immediately broke character, rolling his shoulders, cracking his neck, his thumb scrubbing frame by frame, because Ethan knew exactly how many milliseconds of silence to leave before a cut.
“Habib, was that too much? The mom thing. Too much?”
“Mm,” Daniel said.
“The ‘I love y’all’ at the end. Genuine or trying too hard?”
“Mm.”
“Danny.”
“Genuine,” Daniel said, because it was, and because the answer required the least number of words.
Ethan studied him for a moment, seemed satisfied, and turned back to his phone to watch the playback, studying his own jawline the way other men studied stock tickers. Daniel moved the moisturizer to his right thigh. Same quarter-sized amount. Same slow, upward strokes. His hands knew the routine by now and his hands were welcome to it, because the rest of him was somewhere else entirely.
He was staring at the far wall of the bedroom, the one with the framed photograph from their wedding, the two of them barefoot on sand, Ethan’s arm slung around his shoulders, both of them laughing at something Barret had said from behind the camera that Daniel could no longer remember, but he wasn’t seeing it. His eyes had gone to that unfocused middle distance that Ethan, if he’d been paying attention instead of scrutinizing his own jawline in playback, would have recognized as Daniel’s writing face. The face that meant he was somewhere inside his own head, constructing sentences, rearranging scenes, building worlds that didn’t exist yet.
But Daniel wasn’t writing. That was the thing. The writer brain was doing something it almost never did. It was replaying, just playing back the footage, unedited, without commentary or narrative frame, like a projector running in a dark room with no one at the controls.
Emerald eyes. Heavy-lidded. Watching him from across a crowded room, absolutely certain that the look would be returned.
Please tell me you’re as bored as I am.