Today's filming went good. Some build-up scenes and the vanilla sex deflowering scene, which my dick managed with some goddamn professionalism for a change despite about six hours of rolling around mostly naked with Julia. So there's no reason for me to be playing with the stereo the whole ride home, restlessly flipping stations in my rental car.
An inappropriate erection is the masturbation of the film world. Pretty much everybody gets them, nobody talks about it. Still, I schedule enough alone time in my dressing room these days that my hand is going to be asking for a contract defining the limits of our relationship soon. Which is fine, suffering for my art and all. Still, the last time Sophie got off work early and reached for me I had to send her over the edge alone and that's more suffering than I need to do for any art.
We haven't officially moved in together, but since we're both filming in L.A. for a couple months, we got a two bedroom rental house with a yard for my dog, Jackson. Otherwise, Sophie rationalized, we wouldn't see each other at all and unconscious time together is better than nothing.
Sophie's a brilliantly independent career woman, which means she will never admit she hates sleeping alone. Not if we're together for the next seventy years, she'll never admit it.
We got the two bedroom so that when one of us came home late, the other one could sleep undisturbed. I knew it was bullshit, but I played along. Besides, it's more fun to come home and crawl into the guest bed and count the minutes until Sophie's scratchy sleep voice calls my name. Sometimes, she's too worn out to speak, but even then she'll shuffle over and collapse into the guest bed with me.
Once, when Queen of Hearts was running consecutive night and day shoots with the logic of a sadistic schizophrenic, I made it in the door only to fall asleep on the hardwood of Sophie's foyer. We weren't "living together" then either. But I woke up in the morning with a hell of a sore back and an ex-ballerina curled on my chest like a stray kitten.
I'll probably never admit I hate sleeping without her, too. With any luck, I won't ever have to.
It is two hours past her bedtime, if she wants anything like eight hours before her morning run and four a.m. makeup and hair deadline. But I hear the shower running when I open the front door and it spreads a smile across my face again.
I barely stop to scratch Jackson's ears before I leave a trail of clothes between the front door and the shower.
Sophie's scrubbing her hair when I pull back the shower curtain and she shrieks and flinches. I laugh in satisfaction and catch her before she can slip on the wet tile. Her eyes are squinched shut against the soap that is now in all the wrong places.
Sophie curses me creatively as I guide her head under the water, rinsing her face and then rubbing her scalp as I rinse the shampoo out for her.
Her curses dwindle and cease. She relaxes against me, her forehead falling into my shoulder. When the shampoo is gone, I move my fingers down a bit, working the knots out of her neck where it always gets stiff from the weight of her hair. My massage therapist sister taught me a trick or two when she was still in school. I wonder if she would have done it if she knew how often it had gotten me laid.
I rest my cheek against the top of Sophie's head, feeling uncharacteristically protective. Most of the characters I play are all about guarding their women, but actors dating actresses don't get that luxury.
I'm caught by memories of Julia's nakedness today. All those hours in each other's arms wearing absurd scraps of flesh-colored thongs with dozens of strangers recording it so that thousands of strangers can be titillated by the final cut of our exertions.
My teeth grind against the thought of Sophie exposed like that, to crew members scratching their balls while they ogle her tits. To all the people who will get off to the DVD version. I'm glad as fuck that I took the role of Christian Grey, if only because it made her refuse the call to audition for Anastasia Steele.
Julia's doing a beautiful job. I know the final cut with her in it will actually be tasteful. Will be sensual and not dirty. Perversely, I'm still glad it's not Sophie.
Sophie doesn't do full frontal. I do so many sex scenes on the show that I always figured I'd be fine with it if she wanted to do a movie with nudity someday. Turns out I was wrong.
I leave her head propped into the curve of my neck and move both my hands to knead the sleek muscles of her back. She's exhausted, and so am I. I'll be lucky if my reflexes are still up to the task of catching her if she falls asleep on her feet.
I can still hear the sound of my hand slapping that vinyl cushion shielding Julia's ass from me, days ago. If anyone ever straps a vinyl cushion to Sophie's bare behind, I will rip their fucking eyeballs out.
Author's Note: Hope you are enjoying this new story- please leave a review and let me know what you think!