Note: Some portions of this story are NSFW. It's just text, but read with caution just to be safe.
Washed Right Out, Chapter Six. Prompts used: It’s all red and swollen, fax, lunch box, nail.
And so Riley Paolini spent the rest of Wednesday and the following Thursday morning worrying about what fiendish, terrible scheme Samantha and Karen had in store for him. Whatever it was, it was bound to be weird, possibly humiliating to his body, and involving something extremely nerdy.
Wednesday night, between episodes of "House of Cards", he’d called Karen and told her he'd spilled the beans to Samantha earlier that day. Luckily, Sam hadn't been too cut up about the whole thing, especially after Karen offered her own apology for keeping the details a secret—in fact, Riley had to keep Karen from pulling out the complete details of exactly how she made it up to her girlfriend.
The issue of the mysterious Friday didn't come up during their phone conversation. Every attempt Riley made to approach the subject was expertly skirted by Karen, queen of the evasion. Riley was forced to go to bed that night still perplexed as to what lay in store for his second weekend of being young and single.
Luckily for Riley, as soon as he stepped into the Belle Facce office building Thursday, all thoughts of kidnappings and post break-up shenanigans were swept away.
"You! Over here, now." A brown-skinned man with a flat nose and thin hair cut a path through the maze of cubicles and computers until he was right in Riley's face. "Here. Take this. You can use a Nikon, right?"
Riley blinked. He was now holding a DSLR in one hand and the strap for the enormous camera kit in the other. "Eren, I just got here. Do I get to check my email first?"
Eren clucked his tongue. "Nope. Your precious emails, instant messages, phone calls, and faxes must wait. We're much too busy. Remember the firehouse shoot? Some of the shots came out shit and I don't have time to reshoot them. Upstairs, third studio room. They're already set up and waiting."
"But—"
"You can take photos, Paolini. I've seen your CV." Eren stared. "Right?"
Riley's shoulders sagged. "Yeah, okay."
"Don't look too glum. I'll buy you breakfast when you're done. Ta!" He walked past Riley and out the door, leaving Riley holding camera equipment worth two months' of his pay, packed into what looked like an oversized thermal lunch box.
Upstairs, Riley's fellow Belle Facce staff members were waiting for him to arrive. The usually empty set had been transformed into the interior of a firehouse, complete with pole and fake fire engine. It seemed like a typical day at the firehouse, except for all the set lights, the stage it was on, and the fact t there were male models sitting around in nothing but helmets and boots.
One of the models, a young ginger he remembered from an earlier shoot, waved at him as he came in. "Hey, it's Riley!" He seemed to be more freckled than usual. The name came to him: Wye.
Riley was already in photoshoot mode, setting up his camera and equipment, checking the Nikon settings so they were to his liking. He saw Wye through the viewfinder, standing on set and playing with a fake axe. "No offense, Wye, but aren't you a little skinny to play firefighter?"
Wye pouted and flexed one of his arms, only showing off his lack of muscles. "Waifs can save the day, too!"
The other model on set—a bright-eyed zaftig honey-haired youngster—laughed. "I'd be pulling you out of the house, Wye. You'd never make it out the door in all that equipment!"
"I'll remember that when you need saving." Wye blew the other model a loud raspberry.
Riley smiled despite himself. "All right, folks. Layout goes out tonight. Let's get it start—okay, no." He stared at the other model, the one he didn't know the name of. "Um, you—"
"It's Ezra," the model offered.
"Ezra," Riley corrected himself. "Sorry. Ezra, are you aware that your, um, fire pole is a bit... red?"
"Red?" Ezra looked panicked.
"And swollen. Not in a good way." He sighed and called for the set medic, a nurse who was on Ezra's not-so-photo-ready member in a second with her med kit. "I'm trying not to be mean about this, but please, you know what your dick is supposed to look like. We're not a medical journal."
Wye stared as the medic treated Ezra. "Is he gonna be okay?"
She shrugged in her scrubs. "We'll see in a minute or so. A little cortisone will do him good."
"Sorry, dude..." Ezra's face flushed until it was the same color as Wye's hair.
There was a pain in his jaw that Riley realized was the grinding of his own teeth. This was why he stuck to layout. A surprise shoot and a dangerous-looking dick. What else could possibly go wrong?
As if on cue, one of the numerous stage hands cried out. "My foot!" He emerged from behind the set, hopping on one foot. "Shit, I think I stepped on a nail!"
"I had to tempt fate..." Riley muttered. He was the first one to reach the visibly sweating stage hand and caught the man right before he blacked out . From his uncomfortable crouching stance, Riley barked out orders for the medic (again) and a chair for the stage hand.
The next time someone envied Riley his job at an adult magazine, he’d have to add that Thursday morning to his growing stack of disaster work days. On the bright side, he didn't think about Jonathan or his inevitable kidnapping the entire time.
All that changed the moment he came home.
Here are the other bloggers who are flashing this week:
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