Uh Huh, Honey

starve my heart of touch and time

Hah—aah, ah, mmm—”

“Cut,” the director sighs, and Giyuu immediately closes his mouth against the stream of moans he’s been forcing from his throat. “Let’s take five. Go ahead and pull out, Murata.”

Giyuu’s partner—Murata—nods and does just that, slow and careful in an attempt to lessen his discomfort. Though Giyuu appreciates the consideration, it doesn’t stop him from wincing, lips pulled back.

Murata sits back on his heels, then scoots away to let Giyuu fold his legs together and push himself up. The leather seat of the couch sticks to his skin unpleasantly, tacky with sweat.

The director doesn’t need to tell him what the issue is. Giyuu drops a hand into his lap to wrap around his dick, resting half-hard against his thigh and waning by the second. Fighting to keep his expression neutral, Giyuu tightens his grip and starts to stroke.

This marks the third time they’ve had to cut today. Only a few minutes into penetration, with the bulk of the scene still looming ahead.

For an amateur actor, this might slide. For someone like Giyuu, it’s unacceptable. Considering how much he’s getting paid to be here, even a total of three cuts to restore a flagging erection is a little excessive.

Giyuu would apologize, but he’s starting to grow sick of hearing his own feeble voice.

“Tomioka-san.” Murata speaks up from a generous distance away, startling Giyuu into letting go of himself. “Pardon me—is there anything I can do to help? I have a feeling you aren’t into this at all.”

Self-conscious of his physical state, Giyuu shifts his knees closer to himself. It hides absolutely nothing, but it’s the best Giyuu can do without outright holding a hand over his dick.

He shakes his head. “No, it’s not… You’re fine. I’m just—”

“It’s alright! We all have our off days.”

True. Even in the prime of Giyuu’s career, there were days he just couldn’t seem to perform ideally, but he had a knack for keeping those incidents to a minimum. In the rare instances that he did fall short, it was never the end of the world. Just a bit of a hassle, a tick of annoyance, and Giyuu would carry on with his life.

But this is more than just an off day. Giyuu’s been off his game for weeks, closing in on an entire month of failing to meet expectations, feeling sorry for himself, and edging towards impotence with every shoot. If Giyuu doesn’t fix it soon, he’s going to be out of a job. The only things holding him up right now are his reputation, which deteriorates day by day, and Shinobu. But even she can only do so much.

It’s gotten to the point where Giyuu can’t afford to turn away any work that comes his way. He’s even willing to take the trip over to studios like these, twice the distance he normally travels.

The director glances at the clock hanging on the wall to their left, then sighs again.

Giyuu bites his lip, embarrassment settling hot in his cheeks, and focuses on working himself back to full hardness. One of the crew steps up to wipe the couch behind him and hand a half-empty bottle to Murata with the direction to re-lube.

“Alright, let’s get back to it.”

Instead of resuming his previous position, Giyuu is instructed to kneel up on the couch, facing the back of it with his arms planted over the top. He isn’t told why, but with all the experience he’s got under his belt, Giyuu can make a reasonable inference: to keep his dick, hard or soft, out of view. It’s a last resort, an effort to film most of the action before the moment of climax. He can always fake a few moans, but it’s a lot harder to control what happens below the waist. No pun intended.