Chapter Text
“I’ll be back late,” Arthur calls over his shoulder as he’s sorting out his jacket and keys.
John keeps himself carefully lax, laying on the couch with a leg slung over the armrest.
"How late?"
"Dunno, we're hauling a couple stallions upstate," Arthur shrugs on his jacket and John tracks the movement of the older man's hands as Arthur fixes his collar.
"You drivin' straight back?"
"God willin'," Arthur mutters and pauses behind the couch as he heads to the garage, "You need anythin'?"
"Nah," John stretches languidly, slumping back into the cushions, "... Drive safe."
Arthur snorts quietly and tips one of the cushions over so it smothers John's face.
By the time John wrangles the cushion off Arthur's already gone.
He licks his lips nervously and glances at the clock on the stove, then at the closed door to the garage.
Listening as Arthur's truck roars to life, the garage door opens, the truck pulls out and the door closes again.
It's half-past seven, and he has an hour to get ready.
If he went live earlier he could typically catch some international audience.
He has a little notebook in his dresser with too many negative numbers and a couple bundles of cash.
Arthur's too fast, or maybe just knows him too well, gets suspicious if John brings more than a hundred to the table, and doesn't disappear from the house for a suitably long amount of time coinciding with a 'job' that would warrant that kind of money.
His first few shows weren’t lucrative in the slightest, he’d see people passing through but no one said anything in the chat.
He, admittedly, didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, his laptop’s webcam balanced on his shins, aimed at his shaky hand stroking over his cock.
Nothing special, low effort, not niche enough.
‘You gotta draw ‘em in, John,’ Abigail had said with a sly grin after she’d been leaning over his shoulder and recognized an auto-fill in his search bar.
‘Be something memorable, interact, show ‘em you’re enjoyin’ yourself, or even better, that you’re enjoyin’ bein’ watched.’
So John changed his set up, moved his long dresser to the foot of his bed and figured out how to fit the whole bed in frame.
There’s a bit of mess in his room right now, but it’s mostly out of the way.
John leans against the door frame and surveys his room.
There are certain things he won’t fold on, when it comes to his regular viewers, highest tippers.
No, he won’t call you daddy.
No, he won’t take off the handkerchief.
No, you can’t see the rest of his scars.
And no fucking way will he even acknowledge your comment if you call him ‘bitch’, ‘babygirl’, ‘slut’ or anything of the like.
He’d had… An incident, early on in this venture, where one viewer was determined to degrade him through the little text bubbles with triple digits sitting pretty next to a dollar sign.
At first, it made him feel sick, had him physically hesitating, wondering if he was cut out for this.
And then he got angry, ended up cutting the stream short and sulking in the living room for the rest of the day.
His excuse when Arthur got home was that his job fell through and that hadn’t entirely been a lie.
He still felt a pinch of guilt when Arthur had given him a little hug, just a brief, comforting gesture, before the older man turned in that night.
John thumbs through his clothes to find the nicer options.
Slim-fitting boxer-briefs that he’d hardly worn when they fit better, and now took advantage of their snugness.
One of Arthur’s old band shirts.
He had multiple reasons why he chose to wear the old, oversized shirts.
Some of which he was more prepared to acknowledge than others.
The long hair, his scars, the black handkerchief covering his face, the scattering of tattoos on his arms and legs… Well, Abigail insisted it gave him a certain image.
In this circle at least, it screamed bad-boy, brat, punk who needed to be put in his place.
That was appealing, apparently.
The other, less readily admitted reason was that the shirts were comfortable.
Physically, obviously, well-worn for almost a decade by Arthur before they were handed down to him, loose and cool and easy to shove up his chest, bite down on and keep out of the way when he inevitably came all over himself.
But emotionally, they were comfortable, a little shroud of safety he could don, generic enough that they didn’t look out of place.
Shirt on, boxers slung low on his hips, he ties the bandana around his face, just below his eyes.
He can feel himself getting hard, swallows weakly.
Then goes to find his laptop ready to get it set up.
--
Nights like this are his favorite, where it feels like he could stay this high forever.
His patrons being civil… Hell, generous, tipping and tipping and egging him on, rewarding his sounds and teasing him to hell and back.
Fuck, he loves it.
‘That your boyfriend’s shirt? Bet he doesn’t know.’
John reads over the message a couple times, feeling his face flush, he can’t help but duck his head slightly, a feeble sound escaping him as he moves his hand down to choke the base of his cock.
“Shut up,” John groans weakly, biting his lip to keep his eyes from crinkling with a smile.
He admittedly has a few favorites of his regulars, a couple fellas that just know how to get him riled up.
‘Come on Rip you’re being coy today.’
“You keep on teasin’ me I’ll keep holdin’ off,” John says lowly.
‘Any plans for tonight?’ Someone else asks.
“Uh-huh,” John shifts on the bed and scoots down, yanking some of the pillows from behind him and shoving them under his hips.
He can’t read the chat as easily at this angle, but he starts to hear the chiming of tips coming in.
John yanks the shirt up and shoves his underwear off, grabbing the little bottle of lube that’d nestled in the bunched up comforter.
He gets his fingers slicked up, spreads his legs, almost smiles at the overlapping chiming that follows.
--
“You know I don’t have anythin’,” John says hoarsely, “That ain’t changed in a week.”
‘You should get one.’
The comment inspires a litany of ‘please’s and promises of bigger tips.
Even a couple of offers to send him toys.
He laughs shallowly then presses his lips together on a whine.
He’s so close, weakly propped up on one elbow, fingers pressed deep and crooked just right.
He can see words of praise popping up in the chat, a lot of ‘come on baby’s and ‘so close’s.
“Fuck,” John whimpers and drops his head back, closing his eyes, feeling his cock twitching and coming back down on his belly, smearing in the pool of precome.
“You still up? Who are you talkin’ to?”
John tenses, sitting up sharply and ripping his fingers out himself in a highly uncomfortable way.
Staring at the door.
“... Hello?” Arthur calls, “J-?”
“I’m up!” John says quickly, glancing between the chat and the closed door.
He can feel precome dripping down cock and has to shift carefully.
The door’s not locked, not even fully latched, fuck, oh fuck.
That’s their rule, if one of their doors is latched, baring emergency, the other won’t open it without permission.
But he didn’t latch his fucking door.
He glances at the clock in the corner of the screen, sees it’s already nearing two.
“Shit,” John whispers, watching messages roll through only to be quickly replaced by another and another.
All exclaiming shock and excitement, a couple of worried ‘was this planned’s passing by.
He barely gets the comforter over his cock before the door is nudged open, but it’s useless, with the way he looks, the bottle of lube open on the dresser, the bandana, the laptop.
Fuck.
Arthur’s tired face greets him, expression slowly morphing into confusion and then shock.
“Oh shit, sorry,” Arthur says and struggles for a second, mouth working like he wants to say something.
Then his eyes catch the laptop, register the setup.
His brows furrow and he slowly looks back to John.
"... What are you doin'?" Arthur asks quietly.
Not a nervous kind of quiet, not a confused kind of quiet.
A deadly angry kind of quiet that tells John that Arthur knows exactly what he's doing.
John glances at the chat as a few chimes sound out.
His eyebrows rising sharply at the dollar value attached to them.
"J-," Arthur cuts himself short and takes a few steps closer.
"I… Uh," John shifts onto his knees and quickly sifts the notifications to see who dropped the bigger tips.
He sees 'r/caughtandcontinued' pop up while he's looking and let's slip a short, hysterical laugh.
Arthur shifts in his peripheral and John refuses to look up.
"Don't pass the foot of the bed," John says hoarsely.
"Why?" Arthur asks lowly.
The tone sends a thrill of worry down his spine.
"Hold on," John pleads weakly.
He finds the biggers tips and reads the message over what feels like a dozen times.
Sitting back slowly.
There's a lot of chatter happening among the viewers, speculation on who just interrupted, whether this was planned or if 'Rip’ is safe.
"I'm fine, guys," John says quickly, "And no, I don't think he'll join."
"What the hell?" He hears Arthur mutter and tenses.
"I… I gotta go, sorry," John says hurriedly and quits the stream, going through the measures of making sure nothing is actually still recording, and then disconnecting the webcam.
He then closes the laptop and sits back again, not looking up.
"... How long you been doin' this?"
"Couple months."
Arthur sighs and rubs his hands over his face.
"I'm too tired for this," Arthur mutters and turns around, closing John's door harshly behind him.
John sits, mostly idle, as he listens to the shower cut on, and off, and the house fall silent.
"Fuck," John whispers and shoves off the bed, moving as quietly as possible as he cleans up.