“I’ll leave you to it then.”
Kim rang off and sat staring out at the Mediterranean. Tony’s advice was good—that was what he should do. It was the professional path he needed to take. However, unbidden, the taste of Dídac’s mouth came back to him: coffee, cinnamon, and that particular taste of Dídac himself. Slightly acidic, like his sweat… And his smell… the acrid and salty tang of his body… its heat, his firm stomach muscles pushed up against his own… and that cock, fat and hard, straining against his thigh. Had he not pulled away, he would have started to rip the guy’s clothes off, and the other actors would have come across far more than just a smell of sweat in the air.
And Dídac had kept gazing into his eyes with a forcefulness and at the same time an innocence that took him quite off guard. He’d expected anger or a challenge, but Dídac simply seemed to open his soul up to Kim, asking him to take it. And Kim would have. He wanted nothing more than to grasp Dídac and hold him tightly, wrap his arms around the younger man and hug him until the air was forced out of his lungs; to sink his fingers into Dídac’s dense black curls, grasping the actor’s delicate scalp through that mass of hair, and pull him in for a deeper kiss.
But that was crazy! How would they ever maintain any sort of a professional relationship if they let themselves go like that. This production ofThe Swanand Kim’s career were far more important to him than one simple act of sex. He wasn’t prepared to sacrifice everything he’d worked for over the years just to have a smutty roll in the hay with some cute actor. Again, he put Dídac and that killer jawline, the sexy stubble, out of his mind again and picked up his notes. Tomorrow they were blocking the first major scene between Dídac’s character Anton, and his parents, played by Felipa and Domènec. All three wereveteran actors with many years’ experience treading the boards under their belts. Kim couldn’t afford to mess it up. Tomorrow would be the big day where he needed to prove his salt as a director before the production’s three most heavyweight actors. He needed concentration. Should he call Laia and get her to come to his hotel and work it through with him?
At the thought of Laia, his mind slipped back to Dídac and that sensational kiss, and he was back to square one. It had been a joy working with him in that physical improvisation as well. The guy was intuitive, fast, creative, and daring in what he did on stage. He was like a flame, a dark flame that flickered and flared in the most surprising configurations and spontaneous creations. Yet at the same time, he had the gravity and weight of a far older actor. He could pause and feel deep inside himself for an almost Buddhistic calm, knowing the balance to alternate between action and stillness.
Kim huffed and forced his thoughts back toward blocking the next day’s rehearsal. He couldn’t afford to arrive unprepared, or for Laia to see him distracted like this. Tomorrow he would see Dídac again, but he had to be prepared.
12
Dragon lay purring on Dídac’s stomach, where she got the best breeze from the fan. Apart from the cat, he was wearing nothing at all. He looked down at his body, matted black chest hair melding into Dragon’s black-and-tan tortoiseshell coat. She had been a rescue kitten, who had pretty much marched into Dídac’s life, hissing and spitting as a small lost waif, from the moment he had found her half-dead in the street.
The windows were slightly ajar but the curtains drawn in an attempt to keep the cooler air trapped inside the house and the hotter air outside, while at least allowing some circulation. Dídac also had plants hung at all the French doors and windows, creating curtains of vegetation that helped to cool the apartment down. He didn’t believe in air conditioning—the world was in a bad enough state from global heating without him adding to the damage. All his friends criticized him for it, as he easily had enough money to have heat pumps installed in every room, but this was his small stand in the name of a greener planet.
For that reason he also avoided traveling by plane within Europe if there was any sort of a rail connection. Sometimes it took him a bit longer to arrive if the company he was with were touring in Germany or Belgium, but he preferred the slowness of train travel. Carriages were more spacious, people keener to socialize, and traveling by train felt more contemplative, as if he were sliding back into an older, slower, more elegant world. His dream one day was to take the famous Orient Express across Europe, as he’d heard that a company had restarted the luxury long-distance train line that Agatha Christie made famous in one of her Inspector Poirot novels. Perhaps one day, with the right person….
A couple of days had gone by, and he was still trying to get his head around what had happened at rehearsal that Tuesday morning. Kim Delatour had kissed him. It had been a long, soulful, passionate kiss, including tongues. Thinking about it, his cock rose abruptly, and he was hard in seconds. Dragon did a double take and instantly sat up. Offended, she jumped off him and went stalking into the kitchen in search of water. She was such a prude about these things. Unthinking, Dídac took hold of his cock and began slowly to pull himself off. But what had happened? Kim Delatour, that reserved, arrogant Australian theater director, had forgotten himself. Under the circumstances, the kiss hadn’t been all that surprising. They had been “working” together pretty intensely. Their intimate physical play, the smell of each other’s sweat, the feel of their panting breath on each other’s skin, eye contact made spontaneously then held a little too long… it was if a switch had been flipped in both of their brains. Neither of them was made of stone, after all.
Kim’s natural authority, always slightly overbearing, did something to Dídac that he couldn’t quite explain. For the first time, he’d seenKim’s attraction to him—felt it anyway, pressing against his stomach. Or had he? It was hard to tell with that man. His physical and emotional selves seemed quite separate. The other day, when Kim had come in on him warming up early, Dídac had felt powerful energy radiating from Kim’s gaze, as focused as a laser beam. But the director had been gruff and quickly moved the situation on toward the business of rehearsal with the other actors. His only comment—“That… seemed… very heartfelt, sincere”—talk about understatement! The guy was so stuck up his own ass! How had he got that way? Seeing him perform inBoomeranghad been awe-inspiring, life-changing. Kim had shone up there on stage like a tall, burnished blond angel. That commanding stage presence had had the force of making Dídac change career and decide to become an actor. Of course, he never got to meet that young actor in person. The director he was now working for didn’t seem to contain much of that young star. Perhaps he was really an asshole even then.
Yet there was something. When Kim’s eyes were on him, he felt as if the older man were looking deeply into him, stripping away the layers. He remembered that kiss, the slightly metallic taste of Kim’s saliva, the heat of his body, his strong arms around him, and then his hands on his hips, the bulk and thrust of his cock, which was hard and straining against his stomach, as Dídac’s was sticking out diagonally, tenting his leotard. How would it feel to have that cock inside him? To feel Kim laying him back, lifting his legs onto his shoulders, spitting on his hand to lubricate his cock, using more of his spit to slick up Dídac’s ass, and then, gazing deep into his eyes in that arrogant, demanding way of his, claim entry, taking possession of Dídac like his own toy, pushing in, thrusting that hard meat hard into Dídac’s ass. Dídac’s hand was working up and down his shaft. He could barely believe what he wasdoing: masturbating while thinking about that arrogant asshole. But the truth was he found Kim hot. He wanted that kiss to have gone on. It seemed so unfair that the other actors had chosen that moment to arrive. But perhaps it was lucky for them both that they had. Otherwise, they might have found them with their clothes ripped off and fucking right there on the Rehearsal Room floor. Dídac’s hand was moving rapidly, and he was getting close to cumming. Did he want it? Did he want to climax to a fantasy of Kim Delatour, theater director, fucking him up the ass in his arrogant demanding way, wrecking Dídac’s hole as he pounded into him?
With a roar of frustration, Dídac pulled his hand off his cock. He was so close, almost at the point of no return. Impulsively he wrenched himself up off the sofa and began to stride around the room, thinking about anything and everything that could take his mind off that weird sexual fantasy. He was damned if he would give that arrogant asshole the pleasure, the emotional control over him. Kim Delatour was not going to enter Dídac’s repertoire of fantasy sexual images and that was an end of it. Following Dragon, Dídac stalked into the kitchen in search of a cool glass of water. Dragon was sitting just inside the door on the cool tiles. Dídac took a bottle of water from the fridge and drank deeply. Then he threw himself face down on the kitchen floor, naked, hoping the coolness of the tiles would bring his temperature—and his erection—down. Damn that Kim Delatour! How had the man got inside his head? He sat up and looked at the clock: approaching five. It would be cooling down outside. That was what he needed—a walk to shake off this stupid fantasy and then do his work on his part so he’d be ready for tomorrow’s rehearsal. But no more getting there too early. He would arrive with the other actors, warm up with them and be ready for rehearsal on time.
After checking that Dragon had both water and food, he went into his room, threw on some clothes, grabbed his keys and sunglasses, and headed out the door.
13
God it was hot! Kim sat straddling a deck chair on his terrace, dressed just in a pair of fire-engine red briefs—a gift from when Tony and he had first got together a few years ago. Though now slightly past their use-by date, they were still his favorites. His production notes were laid out before him on the sun-bleached canvas. Across the horizon, the Mediterranean appeared as a broad flat swath of color like a David Hockney painting, its intense blue tempting him to dive into its depths. The pitcher of iced tea on the low table beside him was blistered with condensation. A swim? Or was it too early for a walk? He’d learned that no one ventured outdoors before five p.m. here, or the heat would simply strike you down.
As soon as he finished planning for tomorrow, Friday, he’d go out for a walk. A few days ago, he’d never have thought they’d get here, but here they were, nearing the end of their second week of rehearsal, and he had to say the show couldn’t be going better. He’d kept up his practice of arriving an hour early to warm up, but mostly he worked out alone until the actors arrived as a group, Dídac among them. Amat remainedthoroughly professional, giving one hundred percent during rehearsal. But at no time were Kim and he ever alone after that early morning kiss. Dídac arrived and left with his colleagues, constantly shielded by them, laughing and sociable in their company. At times during work, his and Kim’s glances might cross, and there would be a delayed beat, when loaded feelings pulsed across the space like crackling laser beams, before one or the other broke their regard and turned away, to focus on the dropped line, the stumbled action, forcing their attention back onto the work.
So they had almost got through two weeks. Only three remained, and then he’d be off to Manchester to do it all again. They could do this. If they could keep things professional for a fortnight, they could make it till opening night. It was just a case of continuing what they’d been doing until then, keeping a firm rein on their feelings, and staying professional.
OK, he almost had everything he needed for tomorrow. He could leave it for now. Maybe a walk? That often helped him rally his disorganized thoughts. It was after four—still hot, but some of the heat had started to ease from the day. On a whim, he got up, stuffing his rehearsal notes into his leather satchel. He showered, dressed in a bright floral shirt, light linen suit, made sure he had his keys and wallet, and left his hotel room.
Stepping outside the elegant Modernista façade of his hotel, Kim was blasted again by the summer heat, far more intense at street level than it had been up on his seventh-floor terrace, which was washed by sea breezes. He turned left, heading uphill away from thetourist crowds around Park Güell, and let his steps carry him up and down the winding streets. His need to walk that obsession with his main actor out of his system made him choose the steepest climbing streets. Soon sweat was pouring off him, soaking his shirt as he relished the pain in his calf, thigh, and buttock muscles as a result of the unaccustomed effort. But, after wandering down into a narrow gully of densely packed houses, soon he was climbing back up a steep escarpment, on streets that wound up and then crossed back on themselves. When he paused, panting from the climb, looking back over the valley, he could see his hotel like a pink and white wedding cake on the opposite hill. The houses around him now were low workers’ cottages strung along a long straight street that gradually rose up the side of the escarpment.
At the top, an old defensive network of bunkers and gun emplacements crowned the ridge, left over from some war or other. World War Two? Spain hadn’t been a part of that one, had it? Though he wouldn’t swear to it. The truth was he knew next to nothing about Spanish history, except that not too long ago there had been a dictatorship and now they had a democracy and a king. He walked around the defensive works and then, where a number of locals and tourists had settled down, he did so too, finding a spot on the rocky escarpment, where he could gaze out at Barcelona.
The cliffs of the escarpment fell away at his feet, and beyond stretched the dense city like a prickly white blanket all the way to the sea. Almost directly in front poked up the grayish-brown spines of the Sagrada Familia temple, and a short way to their left down at the coast, the two fingers of the Hotel Arts and Torre Mapfre. In the far distance to the right was the long green knoll of Montjuïc, crowned by its flat-topped fort. He couldn’t recognize many other landmarks and wished he’d taken the time to do more research before arriving here. Tohis right over the hills, the sun was now dropping lower, sending out rays of reddish gold that turned the cliffs and air around him pinkish, while the distant sea was taking on an indigo hue.
People were sitting in small groups and drinking wine or beer they’d brought with them as they watched the sun slowly descend toward the horizon. He wished he’d had the forethought to have done the same, but neither was it necessary. While most of the sunset watchers were sitting in groups, there were one or two solitary souls like himself. What brought them to seek out this romantic setting alone? It was unlikely they’d simply chanced upon it as he had. Maybe they were tourists traveling alone, or locals who simply came up here often to watch the sun go down. Right at the farthest reach, where the cliff dropped off a gun emplacement to fall several yards straight down, a solitary figure was sitting, watching the sunset through a pair of sunglasses. That seemed a little odd as the sun was no longer so strong. Then with a jolt, Kim recognized him. What were the chances of finding his lead actor sitting up here in a place like this! It was bizarre.
Should he approach? His first impulse was to rush over. However, they hadn’t spoken privately since that stupid kiss on Tuesday, and Kim had been very clear about it being a professional error—for both of them. No doubt Dídac was feeling rebuffed, possibly insulted. But Tony was right. It was foolish for them to have engaged in anything, even innocent flirting, at least for the duration of the production. Not to mention, their ten-year age difference. Had they been thirty-five and forty-five, maybe, but twenty-five seemed just a little too young. He would have to be firm and keep the younger guy at arm’s length. Yet at the thought of hurting Dídac, even for the worthiest reasons, now that he had glimpsed the intense vulnerability that the younger man carried inside, Kim’s heart seemed to turn over with a sickening lurch. Andtreating him meanly, as he knew he should, would only make Dídac hate him even more than he did now. That thought was almost too much to bear. But what could he do? They had to do what was best for the show.
He got up to go, hoping to slip away before the actor spied him, but as he turned away there was a shout:
“Herr Director!”
He turned back. Dídac was looking at him, still wearing the sunnies. So Kim had no choice but to approach, and strangely he found himself smiling. His heart warmed as the actor returned his smile.
“Are you not staying to watch the sun go down?” Dídac asked.
“I was, but I still have tomorrow’s rehearsal to finish planning.”
