Soho Dreams: a Soho Nights Story

Episode 18

Ocean was really happy with the team he'd put together. He'd taken on a couple of new part-time bartenders, who both seemed competent and eager to work. He was trialling a few new drag queens and putting them on rotation, rather than having one resident and his DJ, Neil was part of the fixtures and fittings. Then of course there were his dancers, Kai, Brett and Johnny. He took pride in having the best dancers, as that had been what he'd previously done.

Kai was as popular as ever and people still went into the bar to see him dance. Brett and Johnny were doing great too. He'd had his doubts about having dancers with no experience, but he was more than happy with them now. They both brought crowds in of their own.

He was starting to feel more comfortable in the job with every day he spent doing it. The only person who ever thought he couldn't do it was himself. He'd felt like such a fake in the first few weeks. He was just a dancer. He didn't feel like he had any right to be running the place. But his confidence had grown with time and was now in a place where he felt good about it.

Brett was also feeling good about his job. He'd always enjoyed dancing there, but now Johnny was part of the team he felt even better. He had so much fun at work now. He and Johnny in such a short time had built such an amazing friendship. They went to the old wasteland and smoked weed together after each of their weekend shifts.

It had helped him get over getting his broken heart. He'd put so much into his relationship with Joe and Josh, that he'd neglected his other friendships. He only really had Lou and she'd drop him in a second to hook up with a girl. It felt good to have a close male friend who he could talk, chill and have a laugh with.

He'd had made friends before but he'd ended up sleeping with them and then things were never the same between them again. He was convinced that wasn't going to happen with Johnny. He valued their friendship way too much and didn't want anything to ruin it. But the more time they spent together, the more he liked him. He told himself it was just a platonic kind of like. Nothing had ever happened between them and he planned to keep it that way.

He was probably just getting things mixed up. They were friends and he liked spending time with him. But he also spent a couple of nights a week working with Johnny too. Every shift they worked together, Brett would see Johnny dancing half-naked. He was hot as fuck, there was no denying that. Plus Brett didn't do relationships. The only one he'd been in before was with Josh and Joe. That had worked well for him as it had offered him a level of freedom too. But as for delving fully into being with one person, he wasn't sure he could do that. He certainly wasn't willing to risk what he had with Johnny for just a one-off.

He still didn't know that falling in love with him would be pointless anyway. He had no idea that Johnny was straight.

❤🧡💛💚💙💜

Max had gone straight to sleep after getting in from his date with Luke. He slept until his alarm had gone off to wake him for college. As always when he woke, he grabbed his phone from his bedside table. He had like a million notifications across his different social media platforms and numerous missed calls from different people.

What the fuck?! he thought. He was just about to start looking when his phone started ringing again. It was Milo. Why was he calling him at this time in the morning?

'Thank God you've answered,' said Milo, skipping the niceties of hello and how are you?

'What's wrong?' asked Max.

'Have you been online?'

'No, not yet. I was just about to when you called.'

'Did you know about it? I mean, did you know he was going to post it?'

'Who? Post what?'

The line went silent for a moment.

'The movie you made with Luke?'

Max's heart sunk?

'How do you know about that?' Max asked.

'Max...Luke's uploaded the video online. He's put it on a porn site. He's posted the link on social media and sent the link round via email.'

'He...he wouldn't do that.'

'I'm sorry, but I had it sent to me last night. I didn't know what it was when I first got it. I was about to delete it, thinking it was spam, but it had your name on it, so I figured it must be important.'

'Hang on, I'm putting you on speaker.'

He checked his emails first to see he'd also received the email. He looked at all the other names it had been sent to. It looked like it must have been everyone in his address book. He looked at his social media and there it was. A link to the movie that he'd made with Luke in its entirety. It had over a hundred comments, mostly asking if they'd meant to post it. A few people said how hot the movie was. They weren't wrong, but they weren't meant to see it. His inbox was full of DMs asking why the video had been posted.

He clicked on the link, which directed him to the porn site it had been uploaded to. It already had thousands of views.

'Are you still there?' said Milo.

'I've got to go,' said Max.'I need to speak to Luke.'

'Call me if you need to talk.'

Max knew that Luke would never have done this. He must have had his phone hacked. He tried calling him, but he didn't answer.

❤🧡💛💚💙💜

Luke was at work. He'd got a lot to get through, so had gone in a little early to catch up. It felt strange being without his phone, as that was his link to the world. What made it worse was that he was going away with the rugby club, so didn't have time to sort out a new one until he got back.

All social media was blocked on work computers. He'd packed his laptop, so planned on Skyping Max using the hotel wifi when he got there.

He'd been the first to arrive in the office, but as it got closer to a more normal start time, he saw more people starting to arrive. He said good morning to people as they passed him, but felt like they were all giving him strange looks. He figured he was just imagining it, so carried on with what he was doing. But then his boss Brian arrived.

'Can I see you in my office please, Luke?' he said.

'Sure.' Luke locked his computer and followed his boss into his office. He felt like everyone was watching him as he walked past, like they all already knew what it was about.

'Close the door, Luke.'

Oh God! This was serious.

'Is everything okay?' Luke asked.

'I wanted to talk to you about the email you sent around.'

Luke tried to think about which emails he'd sent, assuming it was a work-related one.

'Which email?' Luke asked.

'Surely you must know what I'm talking about,' said Brian.

'I really don't.'

'The one from your personal email address.'

Luke shook his head, totally confused.

Brian turned his laptop around to show Luke what the meant. Luke couldn't believe what he was seeing. He was in his boss's office, looking at a video of himself fucking his boyfriend.

'Oh my God! Where did you get that?'

'You sent it to everyone in your address book.'

''I didn't, really I...'

Then he remembered. It was on the phone that he'd lost. He thought that he'd deleted it before anyone could see it.

'I didn't post this,' he objected again.

Author's Note

Who saw this one coming? Poor Luke and Max.

If you enjoyed this chapter, please consider giving me a like it a comment. It really does make me smile.

Stay safe x