Coming Attractions — Chapter 01
The only sound in the nondescript hotel conference room was the rustling of paper and the low hum of air conditioning. A dozen people sat around the long, polished table in a silence as thick and heavy as the dust described on the final page of the Ultimus Spiritus script. No one moved. No one seemed to breathe.
Ben, who would be playing the disgraced Roman soldier Titus, was the first to break the spell. He carefully, deliberately, closed the script in front of him. The soft thud of the cardstock cover on the tabletop sounded like a gunshot. Across the table, Matt Anderson—playing Tariq, the Arab slave—flinched, his eyes snapping up from the page he’d been staring at.
The final moments still echoed in Ben’s mind: the roar of the crowd, the two lovers in the arena, the desperate, shared vow to die together rather than live apart. “Take my breath.” The words were a phantom pressure against his own lips.
Their gazes met for a fraction of a second—a flicker of raw, unguarded shock—before Matt looked away, focusing on the director, Marco Falco, who sat at the head of the table with a predatory, satisfied grin.
Marco let the silence hang a moment longer, savouring it. “Well?” he said, his voice cutting through the quiet. “What do we think?”
What the fuck was there to say? Ben’s mouth was dry. He could still feel the phantom press of a forehead against his own, the ghost of a desperate gasp. He risked another glance at Matt, who was now studiously examining his own fingernails, a faint blush creeping up his neck. The man was a goddamn movie star, the poster boy for American heroism, and he was blushing. Because of a few words on a page. Because of a story. Ben’s cock, traitorous and unprofessional, gave an interested twitch against his thigh. He shifted in his chair, the expensive fabric of his designer jeans suddenly feeling rough and abrasive.
“Bold,” a producer said, finally breaking the quiet. “It’s... very bold.”
Marco’s grin widened. “Bold is what makes history. And money. But I didn’t ask the money men. I asked my gladiators.” His eyes slid from Ben to Matt and back again. “Our Tariq and Titus. Gentlemen, what does it feel like to hold your own life in your hands? And his?”
Marco’s question hung in the air, loaded and obscene. It was the first of many provocations they’d face during filming. They both knew it.
Matt opened his mouth to say something—Ben watched it happen, watched the easy, practiced smile begin to assemble itself on that handsome, open face—and then Matt closed it again. Just like that. The smile didn’t land. Something behind his eyes flickered and went out.
“Feels like a lot,” Matt said. His voice was flat. “It feels like a lot to carry.”
Marco’s eyes glittered. He loved that answer. Ben could see it in the way the director’s chin lifted, the way his fingers laced together on the table. Marco had cast them both for a reason, and the reason was sitting right here in this silence, in the way Ben couldn’t stop noticing the exact shade of pink climbing up Matt’s throat.
Ben kept his own face still. He’d spent twenty years learning how. “It’s a heavy script,” he said, and his voice came out exactly the way he needed it to—measured, thoughtful, the kind of thing that sounded like craft talk in a trade magazine. “Thomas wrote something that doesn’t let you hide.”
“No,” Marco agreed. “He did not. Does that vulnerability—that exposure—scare you?”
“Fear is not in Titus’s vocabulary,” said Ben. “It isn’t in mine, either.”
Marco grinned at Ben mischievously. “Already getting into character, I see.” He turned his attention across the table to Matt. “And, you, Mr. Anderson? Are you finding connections with Tariq, as well?”
Matt chuckled. “On many levels.”
“Care to elaborate?”
Matt hesitated a moment, then ran his fingers through his goatee as he spoke. “Passion. Conviction. Stubbornness, you might say. It’s going to be a pleasure discovering exactly what makes Tariq tick.”
“Indeed it will,” said Marco, pushing against the table as he stood. “This cast and crew are about to embark on an incredible—and daunting—endeavour to breathe life into Ultimus Spiritus and bring our collective vision to a mass audience.” He paused dramatically, making eye contact with every person in the room. “I leave you today with our rally cry for this production, our call to arms: Ultimus spiritus nobis est! The last breath...is ours!”
The meeting dissolved after a rousing round of applause, which Marco seemed to enjoy more than he should have. Amidst the flurry of handshakes and production notes, Ben stood carefully, avoiding any direct eye contact. He gathered his script, tucked it under his arm and made for the door.
Matt was already there, holding it open with one broad shoulder. Their eyes met, briefly, and this time Ben saw something he hadn’t expected—a kind of startled recognition, like Matt was seeing his own reflection staring back at him from an unexpected angle.
“Good read,” Matt said.
“Likewise.” Ben’s voice was steady. He stepped through the door Matt was holding. He paused and waited for Matt so they could speak as they walked out together. “We should talk about the training schedule.”
Matt’s jaw tightened. “It’s going to be intense. Think we can get where we need to in six months?”
Ben gave Matt a once-over as they walked down the hotel corridor. This guy looks like he can step on set tomorrow, he thought to himself, eyeing the wonder boy, whose every muscle practically popped off the screen in his last two films. What is he worried about? “I think you have nothing to worry about. I’m the one who needs to catch up.”
Matt couldn’t help but laugh out loud at hearing the mighty Ben Desmond, star of countless action movies, and one of the industry’s leading heartthrobs, speak so disparagingly of a physique most men would give their mother for. “Please. You look like you can bench press a bus, man.”
They arrived at the elevators just as the doors opened, and Chloe stepped out.
“Perfect timing,” Matt said.
“Always,” Chloe replied, offering Ben her hand. “Chloe Barnes. I’m Matt’s assistant.”
Ben shook Chloe’s hand, and the contact was brief and professional, but he caught something in her eyes—a sharpness, an assessment happening behind the polite smile. She was reading him. He could feel it, as he did when a camera found its focus.
“Training starts Monday,” Ben said, turning to Matt. “Seven a.m. Don’t be late.”
Matt’s smile was back, or at least a version of it. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Ben nodded once, a clean punctuation mark on the conversation, and stepped into the waiting elevator car. The doors slid shut, and the fluorescent light hummed overhead, casting everything in that flat, merciless glow that made Ben’s blush look even worse than it felt. He pressed the lobby button and leaned against the back wall, letting his head tip back against the mirrored panel.
Out in the hallway, Chloe didn’t say anything for a moment. She just stood there with her arms crossed, hip cocked, studying Matt the way she studied everything—like she was already three steps ahead and just waiting for him to catch up.
“So,” she said. “How’d it go?”
Matt closed his eyes. The script was still in his hand, warm from his grip, and he could feel the paper clip marking the strangling scene pressing into his palm. He thought about the way Ben had looked at him across that table—not the practiced, camera-ready version of Ben Desmond, but something raw and startled behind the composure.
“It went,” Matt said.
Chloe waited. She was very good at waiting.
Matt opened his eyes and met her gaze. He could feel the flush of his cheeks, could feel the heat of it like a brand.
“It went,” he said again, slower this time, turning the words over in his mouth like he was tasting something dangerous. “You know that feeling when you read something and it just—” He stopped. Started again. “When you read something, and it gets under your skin before you even realize it’s happening?”
Chloe’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted behind her eyes. She knew him well enough to hear what he wasn’t saying.
“Marco’s going to eat us alive,” Matt said, and he almost laughed, but it came out wrong—too thin, too sharp at the edges. “He cast us for a reason, Chlo. He cast us because he knew exactly what would happen in that room.”
“What happened in that room?”
Matt looked down at the script in his hand. He couldn’t find any words.
“Fuck,” Chloe said, the elevator’s chime perfectly punctuating her expletive. “One table read, and you already got it this bad? You’re doomed.”
They rode the rest of the way down in silence.
Later that night, the rain outside came down in horizontal streaks, battering the concrete block of the public restroom. Ben waited in his car across the lot, the windshield wipers hopelessly flicking away the downpour. He knew the routine here well: the parks and rec police cruised by twice an hour, but tonight, nobody was going to bother. The fact that the city kept these fluorescent-lit, piss-smelling little bunkers open after sunset was a kind of tacit permission for what happened inside them. At least that’s what he told himself, flexing his fist against the steering wheel, watching the blue-white stutter of lightning spill across the sky.
He adjusted his ball cap lower over his face, pulled his hoodie up the cap and got out of the car. The rain soaked the fabric of his nondescript joggers clinging to his thighs as he darted towards the restroom building. The door opened without protest, the interior a gleaming tile hellscape under the naked light. Dim echoes of water plinking somewhere in the depths. Fucking nostalgic, in a way; the kind of place that, at sixteen, had been the only available outlet, the only haven where he dared to reveal who and what he was.
There was someone in the last stall. Ben could tell by the way the door wasn’t quite flush to the frame, the half-shadow of a sneaker visible beneath the partition. He took the urinal directly across, pulled the waistband of his joggers down and let his stream hit the porcelain with calculated indifference. The sound bounced, sharp and clean. He waited, counted the seconds, felt that familiar old hum under his skin. He’s watching, he’s waiting, he wants this.
Ben heard the lock slide open. The stall door didn’t swing, but paused, then eased out an inch or two. He clocked movement inside. A hand, pale and nervous, adjusting the waistband of athletic shorts. The man coughed, a dry, practiced warning. Ben tucked himself into his pants, turned without a word, and walked the row of sinks toward the back, his shoes leaving deliberate, heavy marks on the wet tile.
When he reached the stall, he paused. Lightning cracked, and the shudder of it travelled through the roof, making the man inside startle and mutter something under his breath. Ben waited, breath even, body on idle. The man finally looked up, the lines of his face cinched tight; older than Ben had expected, with a short beard, a wedding ring glinting on his left hand. Not a regular, not a profile he recognized. That was good. The anonymity was the whole fucking point.
The man said nothing, just shifted backward on the seat to allow access. Ben followed, stepping in, the two of them nearly chest to chest in the narrow stall. The air was thick with summer rain and disinfectant, a little tang of sweat and nervousness. Ben watched the man’s hands, saw how they trembled as they slid his shorts down to his ankles, freeing his swelling cock.
They didn’t need words. They both knew the drill. This wasn’t a courtship; it was a transaction. No need to negotiate. The man eased one foot out of his shorts and underwear, leaving him free to turn and face the toilet. He bent over, braced himself against the metal partition wall with one hand and the other on the wall above the toilet. Ben could see that this man had come to the toilets prepared, the crack of his ass already slick with pre-applied lube.
Ben slid his pants down to his knees, his cock already straining for release. This wasn’t time for finesse. He placed one hand on the small of the man’s back and used the other to grab hold of his throbbing member and guide it towards the stranger’s puckered asshole. Ben was about to push forward when the man reached back and tapped Ben’s thigh, waving his hand.
“Hang on,” the man said, fishing in his windbreaker pocket for a bottle of poppers. He quickly uncapped the bottle, held it up to his nostrils, and inhaled deeply twice. As he screwed the cap back on, Ben tapped his back and held out his hand, taking the bottle from him. The man resumed his position, and Ben proceeded to guide his dick into his waiting hole. The lube made it easy for Ben’s already hard cock to pry that ass open wide, and as he let the last inch slide in, he uncapped the poppers and took a hit.
Ben’s senses tunnelled to the heat of this stranger’s ass as the poppers flooded his senses with feel-good fumes. The man reached back with both hands and pulled his cheeks apart to get Ben’s cock even deeper into his chasm.
Ben started pounding, deliberate and slow at first, like he wanted to feel every constriction, every greedy suck of the man’s hole around his cock. The poppers turned his skull into a helium balloon, all colour and buzz, and every thrust felt like the only thing that mattered in the whole wet, echoing world. The man moaned, deep and low, and his ass went slack enough that Ben could fuck into him with real force, pelvis slapping against the meat of his ass, the noise ricocheting off the tile. It was loud, but the storm outside was louder—a rolling, thunderous symphony that made Ben feel as invisible as he’d ever been.
He handed the bottle back over the stranger’s shoulder without breaking rhythm, and the man snatched it, greedily sniffing while Ben’s cock punched in and out of him, balls tightening with every pulse of pressure. The man started getting loud, too, making these whimpers and hoarse fucks that sounded like they belonged in another decade, another life. Ben let it drive him, picked up the tempo, used both hands to haul the man’s hips back onto his every stroke.
He couldn’t see the stranger’s face, but the man’s cock was thick and twitching, sticking out over the toilet bowl, so hard it was leaking a glassy, endless string of precum onto the seat. Fuck, that was hot. Ben reached around, pressed two fingers against the slit, and smeared the translucent bead around the head before bringing his hand to his mouth. The taste was bitter and tinny and familiar, and he licked it clean, then reached again, gathering more, this time feeding it to the man himself, rubbing it into his open lips. The man sucked Ben’s fingers into his mouth like he’d been starving.
The poppers made everything easier, looser, louder. Ben savoured it with each ragged inhale, each time he bottomed out, the stranger’s hole spasming, milking his cock for all it was worth. The man kept meeting him in time, bracing with his arms, pushing back hard, taking the full length. As Ben felt his orgasm start to wind up—the burning in his thighs, the numb bright edge at the tip of his cock—the man started talking, almost pleading.
“Harder,” he said, voice shredded. “Breed me, you fucker. Give it to me. Fuck me—fuck me good.”
Ben’s brain went static. The words were nothing new; he’d heard them in every variation from every anonymous mouth and ass he’d ever encountered. They kept passing the poppers, the bottle trading hands without ceremony, the cap going on and off with frantic economy. He slammed into the man, hard enough that the partition rattled, and the man howled into his forearm, open and ugly and beautiful.
The man started slurring words as he fell deeper into the moment. “Fucking do it,” he repeated. Then, softer, he muttered, “Come on, John Connor, you know you want to.”
Ben’s brain stuttered as he heard the stranger call him by his most famous character’s name. Ben’s cock lurched, hips pistoning, and he shot his load deep inside the man’s loosened, twitching hole. The wave of pleasure was so strong it blacked out his vision for a moment; he sagged, head swimming, both hands locked on his hips.
The man wrapped his meaty palm around his dick, jerked once, twice, as his own cock spat a string of cum across the front of the toilet tank, the rest soaking his own hand. He made a strangled yelp and then another, like he was crying, or laughing, or both. He slid himself off Ben’s rapidly softening penis and turned to face him.
“Don’t worry,” the stranger whispered, holding up his left hand and pointing at his wedding ring. “I have a wife and four kids at home, and a congregation that would run me out of town if they ever found out. I’m not the kind to kiss and tell.”
He pulled his clothing back on, flicked the last string of semen off his hand into the toilet bowl, and left Ben standing in the toilet stall with a silent head nod. Ben stayed in the stall, listening to the stranger’s exit. He wiped himself with a wad of tissue, checked the mirror for anything that might stain him guilty, fixed his hat lower. His reflection was no comfort, so he didn’t linger.
The rain had let up, but the air outside was so thick with its humid, mossy aroma it felt like stepping into a greenhouse. He got into his car, hands shaking so hard he dropped his phone between the seats. He sat there with the engine running, breathing through his nose, letting the chemical aftertaste of the poppers ferment in his skull, feeling the ache in his thighs and the sticky root of his cock. He gripped the wheel and let his head fall against the headrest. This wasn’t the first time. It was just the clearest, the closest to being found out. One day he’d slip, and there’d be a photo, a TMZ headline, or worse.
He put the car into drive, letting the slow crawl out of the parking lot lull him back into his body. At the exit, he rolled down the window and let the evening air in, ugly and honest. He pulled into traffic, the city’s evening pulse starting up around him. These clandestine encounters filled a need but rarely left him satisfied or content.
This one was no different, but there was something out of the ordinary now gnawing intrusively at his thoughts. He didn’t care that he’d been recognized by the stranger, wasn’t worried about any repercussions from this anonymous rendezvous. Instead, he felt a sharp embarrassment, an adolescent disgust that he’d not experienced in ages. It felt like a betrayal, an apology, though he couldn’t say to whom, or why.