Part the Eighth

He wasn't sure how he made it to the rehearsal. Presumably by getting in his car, turning on the ignition and driving there, but he couldn't recall a single moment of his journey. He was too busy thinking about the fantasy that Wesley had placed in his head.

Neither Jonny nor Colin acted as though anything was out of the ordinary. They kept their heads down and concentrated on getting Lucky note-perfect, and when Thom snapped and kicked things around as they attempted Big Boots, they simply exchanged the same weary, knowing glances as they always did, and waited for it to blow over. Thom, for his part, tried to keep his eyes off Jonny, and failed miserably. The other boy was wearing an almost skin-tight white shirt that Thom hadn't seen before; if he didn't think better of it, he'd have believed Jonny had bought it and worn it specifically to torment him. When he thrashed at his guitar Thom could see the bunching of slender muscles beneath the fabric, the twisting line of his spine, the sharp jut of his shoulderblades, and had to look down and think vile thoughts in order to hold on to the thin thread of control he was hanging by.

He didn't miss the fact that Jonny was moving stiffly, and that he winced when he adjusted his guitar strap; nor that when Ed clapped him on the back in congratulation after they'd nailed Lucky, he had flinched and gone deathly pale, although he didn't make a sound and just smiled at Ed in reply. Thom wondered whether that was what Jonny meant to talk to him about; both he and Colin had been far too defensive for Jonny's excuse to be genuine.

The other fact he didn't miss was that Jonny was flirting with him.

He wouldn't have noticed it, if it wasn't for what Wesley had said earlier about him hiding behind his hair. Every time Thom looked over at him, Jonny seemed to be watching him from behind his fringe, eyes dark and burning under the protective curtain of hair. When Thom spoke to him, he would suddenly push his hair back from his face and fix Thom with an unnervingly direct gaze, making him forget what he'd been saying. Before then, he would have thought that was just Jonny being Jonny; he'd always stared a fraction longer than was really considered polite, but Thom thought that was because there was just too much to see. Now he wasn't so sure. It appeared that, far from having been disgusted at finding Thom and Colin in flagrante, the encounter had triggered some sort of irrepressible fascination; several times, Thom tripped over the lead of Jonny's guitar because the other man was standing closer to him than normal, and Jonny's fingers had brushed very deliberately over Thom's own when Thom had asked him to hand him a pick. Ed might not have noticed the change in the dynamic between their singer and lead guitarist – he'd brought in with him a faint whiff of weed that meant his mind was probably elsewhere – but Thom could tell that Phil had, even thought the drummer was too polite to let on; every now and then he would raise a quizzical eyebrow at Thom after he'd stuttered over something he was saying to Jonny.

And Colin had definitely noticed; Thom could feel him shooting daggers at his back from the other side of the room.

It was completely dark outside by the time they packed it in, and somehow, Thom found himself alone with Jonny again as he put away his guitar.

“I got your message earlier,” he said, chancing a glance at the younger man, who was sitting on the stool in front of the keyboard scribbling something on a page of musical notation. Jonny looked up – through his fringe – and smiled, in that unselfconscious way that he only ever did around the other band members.

“I just wanted to make sure you were all right,” he murmured, blushing faintly and looking down again. “You know. Because of...” He made a vague gesture with his hand, before dropping it to his lap, and sighing.

“You said we needed to talk.” Thom thought now was as good a time as any to take the plunge. “Jon... I don't know what you thought you saw, with Colin and me...”

Jonny shrugged. “Colin already told me, Thom. About... the Club, and all of that. I knew already. It's nothing. I... I just wanted to make sure that you didn't think there was any more to it than there is.”

Thom swallowed. “What... what do you mean?”

Jonny's expression was sad as he regarded Thom. “I know Colin's your oldest friend... but you're never going to know him as well as I do, you must realise that. Just the fact that he invited you to the Club at all... he's not serious about anything he does there, I don't think. It's just a distraction for him. If he was serious about the two of you, he wouldn't have tried to get to you through there. And... you don't really believe there's anything lasting about this, do you? Because one of you would have said something to the rest of us, if you did.”

Something sharp and painful was twisting in Thom's gut. In a way, he'd known it all along; Jonny was right, even if what Colin had shown him had been intense and had changed his life, Colin had only ever touched him with the intention of getting him off quickly, and had never shared personally in Thom's experiences. “Wesley said something similar,” he mumbled, flushing when he thought of what he and Wesley had done on his sofa earlier. Even if everything Wesley had said was pure fabrication, it was hard to look Jonny in the eyes and not think of him bent over the piano in the music room at school.

Jonny's eyes widened a little. “Wesley...?”

“Francis-Taylor,” Thom said with a nod. “He said you were at school together. He's at the Club a lot.”

Jonny laughed shortly. “Wesley? I didn't think he was the type; Colin never mentioned that he hung out there. He... well, he never really struck me as the kind of person who would need to, if you see what I mean.”

“He gave you piano lessons.”

Jonny's head whipped round sharply. “What – oh, yes. I didn't really know him very well, aside from that. We didn't talk much. I was just that desperate to be good for the band, I suppose. He came to some of our early gigs and wanted to help out, so he did it for free.” His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Did he tell you that? I didn't think he would even remember.”

“Actually, he came and checked up on me this morning...” Thom was half-tempted to tell Jonny what had happened, to see if that would get a reaction out of him, but he bit his tongue. “We, er, had a bit of a rough night last night. I did, I mean. He seemed fine, the bastard. Apparently he even went to the trouble of phoning Coz and getting my address from him.”

“How thoughtful.” And because Jonny was a shit liar, Thom could clearly hear the thinly-veiled sarcasm in his tone. “Well. I just wanted you to know that whatever you and Colin get up to in your spare time, it's nothing to do with me.” He bent down to retrieve a broken string from the floor near his feet, and a flash of vivid pain crossed his face.

“Er... OK, then.” Thom shuffled from one foot to the other awkwardly. “Er... Jon? You know, when I saw those marks on your back...”

Jonny straightened up, string in hand, and avoided Thom's gaze as he searched in his bag for another one. “Yes?”

“I asked Colin about them.”

“And?”

“He said what you said. That maybe you fell.”

Jonny came up with another packet of strings, frowning. “He's very perceptive, Thom. I was rearranging some of my records – you know how it is, you're always teasing me about how many I have – and I left one of the boxes at the top of the stairs. It was a bit embarrassing, really... I didn't exactly want to make anything of it, you know what the others are like. They wouldn't stop teasing me.”

“Of course they wouldn't,” Thom said with a fond chuckle, trying to imagine Ed or Colin passing up on an opportunity like that. “I just... I dunno, I thought Colin might at least be concerned about it.”

Jonny tutted at him. “Thom, I know you all still see me as the baby of the group, for some reason – I'm only two years and a bit younger than Colin, for heaven's sake – but Cozzie's hardly my keeper. I do have a life that doesn't revolve around him and the band, you know.”

Thom gave up. It was obvious that he wasn't going to get anything more out of Jonny on this without forcing it from him, and that was the last thing he intended to do. “OK,” he said, holding his hands up. “If that's your story... fine. I just... Jon, I want you to know that if you need to talk about stuff, you can come to me any time, right?”

Jonny stared at him. His fringe had fallen back from his forehead a little, and the clearness of his gaze was breathtaking. After a moment, however, his expression softened, and he ducked his head, hair falling forwards again. “Thanks, Thom,” he said quietly. “I'll try to remember that. But don't worry yourself on my account. I'm OK, really – I promise.”

Thom left him there; there was nothing else he had to say, and he didn't like the way his eyes were continually drawn to the keyboard and his mind to thoughts of what Jonny would have looked like sprawled across it in his Abingdon uniform, fucked halfway into unconsciousness. There was always a slight chance that Jonny was telling the truth, after all – a very slight one, but it wasn't as though his skills of deception had improved at all since the day before.

He was unlocking the driver's side door of his car when a shadow in the nearby bushes coalesced into a slender dark-haired form in a stripy black-and-white sweater. “Did Wesley find you all right?” Colin asked, pulling deeply on the cigarette between his fingers and crossing his arms over his chest.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Coz, don't do that,” Thom snapped, turning and squinting in the dim light that spilled from the studio windows. “Yeah, he did, anyway. Thanks. For giving him my address. Just as well he's not a serial killer, isn't it?”

“You think everyone is a serial killer,” Colin snorted derisively. “And... what was all of that about?” He motioned to the windows; Thom realised that the blinds hadn't been drawn, and his and Jonny's conversation must have been plainly visible from the driveway, if thankfully not audible.

“We were talking about Wesley, among other things,” Thom said. “I didn't know Jonny knew about what happened at the Club.”

Colin smiled, wreathed in cigarette smoke. “I wish I hadn't told him. He was so curious about it. Now he tries to avoid the subject altogether.” He gave a brief laugh. “If you believe you've got a hope in hell of seducing my little brother, you've got another think coming, by the way.”

Thom did a double-take. “What?” He couldn't be sure that Colin wasn't joking: the other man's expression hadn't changed a bit; he was still smiling, although Thom had started to learn that a smile from Colin could be a danger sign. “I wasn't...”

“Thom, you must think I'm stupid.” Colin took another pull on the cigarette, and the end glowed brightly in the dark. “I can recognise flirting when I see it, and the pair of you were at it like mad. Stay. Away. From. Him. I don't know if you think you've shot your chances with me – if you thought you had any at all – but if you're going to fall back on him, you're sorely mistaken.”

Thom stared at him, open-mouthed. “I... I wasn't... how is it anything to do with you? And what can you do about it, anyway?”

Colin blew out a lungful of smoke, clouding the air between them, and dropped the cigarette to the ground. “I can tell him what you and Wesley have been up to behind my back.”