He slouched in the seat, biting his lip at the bleak future he could already envision. How much would a fucked up face cut his prospects by? Confidence was one thing, but there was only so much you could get away with when the face didn’t match up.
The Grindr notification went off again, taunting him.
“What the fuck is this sound?” Hammer asked, slowing to a less erratic pace.
Dex didn’t speak, because he’d sob the moment his mouth opened, but tears streaked down his face, aggravating the wound with their saltiness. He’d be done in the dating world. If not forever, then for months to come.
Fat tears dripped from his chin, leaving him so ashamed he just hung his head. The world was a pit of disappointment, and he’d jumped into it because of his own stupidity. He should have known Hammer wasn’t up for a quick blowjob from hisjailor, but he’d still walked in there, too horny to use his brain.
“Wait… are you crying?” Hammer asked with a little slap to Dex’s thigh.
“N-no!” Dex choked out with a sob.
Hammer squinted at him. “You’re definitely crying.”
Dex took a deep, helpless breath. “Fine! I’m fucking crying! I could get gangrene and half my fucking face could rot off, so excuse me for feeling sorry for myself! I have the fucking Grand Canyon of a cut on my cheek, and it’s not getting sewn up. Who’s gonna want to fuck me when it is all disgusting for months? And if Idoend up losing my cheek, I might never be able to give head again, in which case, just fucking shoot me. And all because I got a boner for a guy who isn’t even gay! Why am I so fucking stupid?” he whined and hit the side of his head against the window.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not gonna lose your cheek because of a cut. There might be a little scar, but how is that a problem? You’re a guy.”
“You don’t know the gay dating world. It’s fucking vicious out there. And that notification, by the way, is the sound of my hopes and dreams dying. I was supposed to meet this guy, and now he thinks I ghosted him. Not that he’d want to see me inthisstate!”
Hammer scowled. “Are you for real? Yeah, guys can be shallow, but come the fuck on! Who cares about a little scar? Hell, have you seen mine? It’s big, and deep, because I never tried to do any treatments for it, but you still had such hots for me that your frontal cortex malfunctioned.”
Dex sighed. He’d love to teleport back to that wonderful moment in time when he still thought he was about to suck Hammer’s dick. “Yeah, because you’re like this… sexy barbarian with that sledgehammer and all that. You can get away with anything. I, on the other hand, will get gangrene and die.”
Hammer shut his eyes for a moment, and the muscles of his jaw twitched. “You won’t get gangrene. That bleeding is flushing out most of the bacteria. And there’s always antibiotics. We’ll clean it in due time.”
Dex shook his head. “You just don’t get it because you have all those club girls gagging for your dick every day. Some people have to work for it.”
“Is getting laid the only thing you care about?”
Of course Hammer would look down on him for it. He’d never get it. “It’s just a big need for me, okay? I can’t explain it. Sometimes you really want, say, pizza, and you get tunnel vision about it, and you find yourself driving to get some at 2 a.m., but it turns out the shop is closed. But you’ve already invested so much that you’ll drive to the next town over, because all you can think about is the delicious, crunchy pepperoni, and how it will feel on your tongue. And in that moment, it seems like the most important thing in the world. And if you arrive, and the pizza says, ‘yeah, I like this mouth, eat me, eat all of me’, you feel like, okay, I know where I stand on the food chain. And then you think to yourself, ‘wow, I’m really something if the pizza wanted to be in my mouth’...” He drifted off, unsure if his analogy made sense. “Doesn’t mean all I want to do in my life is eat pizza, but it’s important, okay?”
Hammer kept quiet for an unnervingly long time before speaking. “So it’s like a sex addiction?”
“What? No! Maybe my needs are just bigger than other people’s. Don’t you ever get hung up on someone enough to lose your mind a little?” Dex only realized how curious he was about the answer once the question left his mouth. He knew so painfully little about Hammer. All he’d heard was that the guy was dangerous and violent. The executioner of the Demon Brethren MC. A man of few words and a massive sledgehammer. Since seeing him wield that tool, Dex might have developed a little fanboy crush and had been dying to meet him.
“I don’t want anything enough to build my self-worth on it.”
Thathurt more than Dex’s bleeding cheek. Maybe because it cut too close to home. “You sure you’re not compensating with that massive sledgehammer?” he snapped back, because his patience had reached the gutter.
“You’ve seen for yourself that I don’t need to compensate,” Hammer said with the same infuriating calm as before. What the fuck was up with this guy and why did Dex still find him so hot? The saddest part was that if Hammer pushed Dex’s head down to his crotch right now, bleeding face and all, Dex would happily open up his throat. If he were to go back in time, he’d probably fall for Hammer’s lies all over again just because he wished for them to be true.
He glanced at Hammer. “You definitely don’t. Are we back to flirting?”
Hammer glared at him, and his dimples deepened as he grimaced. “Will you shut up if I take you to a doctor?”
Dex’s heart skipped a beat and he nodded without a single word.
Chapter 5 – Hammer
Hammer’sdayhadsofar gone as smoothly as a slog through a flooded sewer, but with the pictures of Ryker’s doom zipped into his inner jacket pocket, he was able to relax a little bit. Despite his general dislike of Ryker’s entitled behavior and laziness, finding out the disgusting truth about him did not bring Hammer any joy. But the physical proof of those transgressions might just be his key back to normal life, and he had Dex to thank for it.
His gaze darted to the boy’s shoulders as the two of them climbed the staircase of the modern apartment building with a facade covered with wooden planks that would go gray and ugly within a few years’ time. Dex was still a kid, and he sure acted like one, spurred on by whatever impulse was strongest at any given moment, but he had proven himself useful, was a good sport about being abducted, and while Hammer didn’t want to show weakness by thanking him for the polaroid pictures, he knew he should have.
“The lady who lives here will do us a favor so play nice,” he said as they reached the third floor and walked down the hallway, toward door number fifteen.
It would be nice to have Dex calm down about the stupid cut, but Hammer was here to kill two birds with one stone. A doctor did in fact live here, but so did her sister, Stefani. It wasn’t as though Hammer was obsessed with her or in love, but it had been hard enough to establish an ongoing thing, and losing it felt like yet another nuisance. He didn’t want a bitter ex spreading rumors about him either, because those could spiral out of control and scare off potential hook-ups.