Page 8 of Forged

It was impossible to tell.

“You’ve got fantastic lips,” the buxom make-up artist painting Nick’s face flirted with him as she had him captive in her chair.

“Thanks?” Nick said smiling a little, but mostly keeping his face neutral so the woman could work.

“I bet your sweetheart loves kissing lips like those,” the woman went on, leaning closer to him.

Bax knew a come-on when he saw it, but Nick, bless him, was clueless.

“I don’t have a sweetheart,” he told the woman.

“No! A catch like you?” She swayed even closer, breasts first.

“My wife was killed in a car crash twenty months ago,” Nick said, like he was pointing out the weather.

The make-up artist immediately pulled back, her face falling. “Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry,” she said, then proceeded to finish Nick’s face with utmost care…and no flirting.

Bax fought not to grin as his make-up was finished, too. It felt wrong to laugh at Raina’s expense, but Nick was just so beautifully oblivious that he couldn’t help but smile.

As they were moved along, out of the house and down to the field that had been set up like a medieval town square for the execution scene, Bax kept a sharp eye on Nick’s interactions with everyone from the production crew to the students.

“Isn’t this fun?” a young woman who evidently knew him asked as they were moved into positions for the scene.

Her eyes were full of stars and admiration for Nick, but Nick just answered, “Yeah. Who would’ve thought this was what we’d be doing today, eh?”

As they waited for further instructions and for the cameras to be put into place, Bax started to see the whole thing as a kind of game. Just because Nick didn’t flirt back with the two women who had smiled at him didn’t mean he didn’t like women.

He watched to see if Nick spent a little too long staring at the male star of the film, who was wrapped in a down coat, as he and a few of the other leads waited for the scene to start. When Nick didn’t show much interest, Bax tried following his line of sight to see who Nick was staring at. Mostly he was busy watching the cameras or gazing off in the direction of his forge.

“Filming is such hard work,” he said, deciding to try a different tactic and attempt to snag Nick’s attention himself.

Nick laughed and pivoted slightly to face him. “I’ve heard people say it’s mostly a lot of waiting around.”

“It definitely is,” Bax grinned. He inched slightly closer to Nick, then said, “We need to figure out something to do to pass the time.”

“Yeah, that would be helpful,” Nick said, glancing toward his forge again.

“I guess orgies are out,” Bax said.

His comment had exactly the effect he’d hoped for. Nick whipped to face him, and even with movie makeup, his face glowed red.

Bax laughed. “I imagine that they got up to all sorts of mischief in the Middle Ages,” he went on, backing off just slightly.

“I suppose so,” Nick mumbled.

“Right, then,” Bax said with a nod. “I’m imagining that my character is the town crier. By day, he goes around calling out announcements when people need to know things, and by nighthe cries out for other reasons as he partakes in subversive bacchanals.”

“Didn’t they burn people at the stake for being witches when they did that back then?” Nick asked.

It was just a question, but he inched closer to Bax, almost protectively, as he asked it.

“Nah,” Bax said, even though he wasn’t actually an expert on the history. “Burning at the stake was reserved mostly for heretics. And the witches that got into the most trouble were women who were guilty of the heinous crime of having a backbone and sticking up for themselves.”

“Wasn’t sodomy punishable by death, too, in the Middle Ages?” Nick asked.

Bax gave Nick a look like he was impressed. It could have just been a throw-away comment, or Nick could have been talking about him, since he was openly gay. Then again, maybe he was thinking about himself and how he would have been treated in the Middle Ages, too.

“It depended on where you were and who you pissed off,” he answered. “As with most of history, they didn’t have social media, so if you weren’t blatantly obvious about who you liked to get naked with, no one would really know.”

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