Part the Fifteenth

They had reached a point of no return.

Thom hadn't gone back to his bed that night. He stayed there, locked against Jonny, until he could sense that the boy had recovered; then he went to the bathroom and retrieved a damp flannel, using it to clean them off before they drew the covers up around themselves and Jonny, at least, slept, his head resting against Thom's chest and one arm thrown over his waist. Thom, however, couldn't switch off: every inch of his skin seemed over-sensitised, Jonny's body where it touched his was unbearably hot, and the realisation of how far they had come was only just now beginning to sink in.

He started to worry about Colin. It was only going to be a matter of time before he found out – he had known from the start that there was something between Thom and Jonny, as though he had some kind of sixth sense where his brother's romantic liaisons were concerned. He thought about Colin and Florian, and what Colin had said to Florian before the boy had left them; he had said something about 'doing as he was told', and had then dismissed him as though he meant nothing. He didn't know what Florian had done to deserve such treatment, but he was fairly certain that it was nothing to what Jonny had done in pursuit of Thom. Whatever Jonny had said about enjoying being disciplined, he didn't want it to happen on his account.

Morning saw them back on the coach, heading for Oxford, with two days to kill before the next gig. Jonny sat beside Thom, and Thom couldn't miss the challenging glances that passed between the Greenwoods, or the odd expression on Colin's face when Jonny slept with his head on Thom's shoulder; it was almost pained, jealousy and anger and something else all mingled together on those familiar features. Thom felt an unexpected stab of guilt. He didn't want to hurt Colin any more than he wanted to let Jonny go now that he had him; it occurred to him that Colin had been relentlessly selfless to Thom, showing him everything that he had been missing and never asking for a thing in return. It had seemed to him that someone in Colin's position – with a clear hold over his brother, over Thom, and over the boys Thom had met at the Club – would be content to take from everyone without a thought for giving; but Colin had done the exact opposite. Jonny said he'd asked Colin to hurt him, and Colin had done it, even though it must have been against his instincts as an older brother. He was afraid that he was going to lose Jonny to Thom... it gave Thom an odd thrill to think that he could even come close to rivalling Colin in Jonny's affections.

Still, he couldn't help feeling bad for Colin. If he wasn't already hopelessly addicted to Jonny's company, it might have been easier. Jonny had been quiet last night, he remembered; nothing like Nat, who had been the nearest Thom had come to Jonny until that point. Thom couldn't stop thinking about Jonny's soft exclamations as Thom's mouth and hands had roamed his body; the sharpness of bones that were normally hidden from view; the way his hair had stuck up at the back, clinging damply to Thom's fingers; and how extraordinarily vulnerable the other boy had looked in the few moments before and after he came. He was used to Jonny being easy to read, so the way he had closed up utterly after that initial emotional onslaught was completely unexpected; it was as though he was overcompensating for the utter loss of control at the peak of climax. And it just made Thom love him more.

As they turned off the M40 towards Oxford, the early afternoon shadows already lengthening as the sun crept towards the horizon, Jonny stirred against Thom's arm and looked up at him sleepily. “Are we nearly there yet?” he asked, like an impatient child in the back seat, and Thom grinned at him.

“Almost. Enjoy your beauty sleep?”

“I enjoyed the company,” Jonny murmured, rubbing his cheek against Thom's shoulder like a cat. Across the aisle, Colin gave Thom a significant look, which Thom did his best to ignore.

“Jon... I don't know if this is presumptuous or not... but, you know, you don't have to go home tonight,” Thom told him quietly, in a rush. “I mean... I've got plenty of space, there's a spare bedroom and... well... I've got a double bed...” He trailed off at Jonny's gentle smile. “What?”

“Just... you,” Jonny whispered. “The fact that you think it might be presumptuous should be enough to tell you that it is. I... I can't. Not now. Last night was... it was perfect, you know that? But this is too fast. I said we need to go slowly.”

Still, Thom's heart leapt at the thought that Jonny hadn't dismissed the notion out of hand. “That's OK, really. And... what are you going to tell Colin? He knows there's something happening, he isn't stupid. And you draping yourself all over me isn't going to help, not that I'm complaining.”

Jonny sat up straight then, carefully removing his head from Thom's shoulder with a small smile and folding his arms demurely across his chest. “I'll tell Colin something,” he promised. “I have to explain to him... well. You don't have anything to worry about, if that's what's concerning you. He'll just be pleased to know that we're happy.”

Thom couldn't help but feel – since Jonny was a shit liar – that Jonny wasn't telling the whole truth about that.

---

The next day was something of a blur. Ed called Thom at five in the morning to help with arranging an 'impromptu pre-emptive celebratory bash' at the Jericho Tavern for Jonny's birthday, since it would fall while they were away from home on tour; consequently, because no party arranged by Ed would ever be the same without a bit of gratuitous obscenity, Thom found himself press-ganged into trawling the bakeries and supermarkets of Oxford looking for a cake in the shape of a pair of oversized breasts.

He didn't have a chance to find out if Jonny had spoken to Colin – he hadn't seen the Greenwoods since they left the coach the previous afternoon, and Ed had apparently given Colin the task of keeping Jonny in the dark about the evening's festivities, which presumably meant that the two of them, wherever they were, were together. Thom tried to tamp down the overwhelming sensation of jealousy that swept through him at that thought, with little success; somewhere out there, Colin had Jonny's company, and Jonny had Colin's, and they were doing... what? He couldn't help the flood of mental images his brain willingly supplied him with. If Jonny had told Colin what he and Thom had done, would Colin see fit to discipline Jonny as he considered necessary? Would Jonny have begged for his brother's forgiveness, offered to make it up to him in any way Colin wished? Thom thought of the black chaise longue in the Red Room at the Club, and Jonny, slender white wrists caught in the heavy, crude-looking leather cuffs, bent over it, and Colin with the cane, tracing it over his brother's skin... and then he thought of the wooden cross, Jonny spreadeagled across it with the thick straps biting harshly into his flesh, and what Colin could have done with Jonny helpless to prevent him... and then his mind settled on the shackles suspended from the ceiling, and Jonny hanging in those, slim body twisting and arching as he struggled to get free while Colin...

He shook himself. He was never going to be able to face either of the Greenwoods ever again if he carried on with that train of thought.

Mid-afternoon, he arrived at Ed's house carrying a cake fashioned into the largest pair of comedy tits he'd ever seen, and found Ed in his kitchen talking to the very last person Thom wanted to run into right then. Wesley raised his can of Kronenbourg in a silent salute, wiping his top lip, and Ed grinned expectantly at Thom as he deposited the cake on the worktop. There was a distinct smell of freshly-smoked pot hanging in the air, and both Ed and Wesley looked a little too merry for three o'clock.

“Bugger me,” Ed said blankly, gaping at the fondant breasts spilling out of their chocolate brassiere. “Oh – Thom, this is Wesley Francis-Taylor, we met at the pub earlier. We've been catching up on old times – he was in A Midsummer Night's Dream when we did it at school, do you remember him? He's an old friend of Jonny's, apparently, I've invited him along for tonight, I hope that's OK...”

“We've met,” said Thom shortly. Wesley's gaze fixed on him felt a little too much like being stripped naked and plunging into a freezing lake. “Ed... are you really sure Jonny's going to appreciate this? He's not exactly the party type.”

Ed waved his hand vaguely, losing a few drops of Kronenbourg in the process. “Thom, they're tits. Of course he can appreciate tits. And it's not really a big party, anyway. It's just an excuse for a few drinks and Phil doing karaoke. Besides, Jonny's hilarious when he's pissed, you know how funny it is when he wakes up the next day and you can tell him how much he humiliated himself...” Ed trailed off on some rambling reminiscence, and Wesley gave Thom a sly sideways glance, eyebrows raised. Thom felt a shock, because in that simple look, Wesley had communicated more than enough: he knew about Jonny and Thom, but more importantly, he knew about Jonny and Colin. There was no other way he could have understood the significance of Ed's remark about humiliation.

Thom looked away, swallowing hard.

“... and they're tits,” Ed repeated, coming out of his reverie. “What's the matter, do you think he's allergic to them or something?”

Wesley snorted into his can of beer, and Thom forced a smile. “I'm sure he'll like them just fine,” he assured Ed. “Um... I'll leave you two to catch up, shall I? I need to get home, wrap Jonny's present and...”

Wesley linked an arm through his, his smile knowingly shark-like. “Aww, won't you stay?” he asked, pushing out his bottom lip in a pout that strongly (and, probably, intentionally) resembled Jonny's. Thom shivered at the casual touch – the memory of Wesley bending him over the piano in his sitting room was still too raw for him to bear – and carefully retrieved his arm from Wesley's grasp.

“No, I need to shower and stuff,” he protested, heading for the door. “I'll see you later, right?”

He couldn't shake the feeling of Wesley's chilling blue eyes on his back when he got home, turned on the shower as cold as he could stand it and stepped under the spray. His cock might have been interested at the pleasant scenarios his mind had conjured while he was buying the stupid cake, but he wasn't going to let it get the better of him, and the near-freezing water saw off that potential problem with a vengeance. He was determined to make an effort tonight: he was going to show Colin that he was good enough for Jonny, and he was going to show Wesley that one quick fuck didn't mean a thing to him. With that in mind, he picked out his favourite shirt – navy with vertical stripes, something Jonny had bought for him a while ago after complaining that Thom was always stealing his clothes – and his least scruffy jeans, forced his hair into something approaching tidiness, brushed his teeth three times, flossed, gave up on cutting his fingernails because they were too bitten for it to matter, flossed again, and by the time six thirty rolled around even he couldn't find anything to criticise about his appearance, which was probably a first.

The Jericho Tavern was where they'd played their first ever gig, and his recollections of the place were a mix of fondness and mortification. Over the years it had been dressed up a little – the downstairs ceiling no longer swayed when people walked across the bar area, and the general fug of stale cigarette smoke and vomit that had pervaded the very walls when they'd frequented it as kids was nothing but a distant memory. As he stepped inside, he wondered whether they even knew half of the people gathered in the main room; Jonny certainly wouldn't have, his address book was even thinner than Thom's. He half suspected Ed had just invited in random strangers from the street, but since he had volunteered to pick up the tab, Thom wasn't greatly concerned.

He found Jonny at the bar, dressed in a stupidly large knitted jumper, being plied with some foul-smelling blue concoction by Phil's girlfriend. He already seemed a little tipsy – Jonny hated drinking in large groups for precisely that reason – and his smile was open and uninhibited when he turned to Thom as Thom gently touched his elbow.

“Hey you,” Thom murmured, taking the glass of blue liquid and sniffing at it. “What the bloody hell is that?”

“Apparently it tastes like raspberries,” Jonny said, taking the glass back and pressing it to Thom's lips. His lisp was more pronounced than normal, which was always a warning sign. “Here.” He tilted it, and Thom opened his mouth; a trickle of wet stickiness slid down his chin as Jonny took the glass back, and he grimaced.

“Urgh. I'll stick to things I can identify... shit,” he exclaimed, as Jonny ducked his head and licked up the spilled alcohol from his jaw. Looking over Jonny's shoulder, he could see Colin on the other side of the bar, talking to Ed; the other man's gaze was locked on the pair of them, his eyes like chips of stone. “Jon. Jonny. Sit down.”

He grasped Jonny's shoulders and forced him into the nearest seat. Jonny blinked up at him innocently, running a tongue over his lips; when Thom's cock stirred at the picture this presented, he made his decision. It was time to get drunk. Very drunk, and hang making a good impression.

He lost track of how much he'd consumed by the time Phil brought out the cake Thom had bought, complete with a candle stabbed into each nipple, and the room burst into a loud, off-key and drunken chorus of 'Happy Birthday' with various, predictably pornographic additions. It took Jonny a couple of attempts to blow out the candles, but Thom hardly noticed; Jonny's lips pursed to extinguish the flames filled his head with the memory of what Jonny's mouth had looked like as he knelt at Thom's feet on the floor of a toilet cubicle in a service station somewhere on the M1. He needed to get more drunk. Around nine o'clock Wesley showed up and made a beeline for him, and his head was fuzzy enough that he couldn't quite remember why he should object to the other man's presence; between them, they watched Jonny blushing as Ed photographed him with the cake, and they watched Colin making predatory circuits around the room, and Wesley stole a few sloppy kisses when they both thought no one was looking, and Thom thought that he should be protesting though he wasn't sure why, so he pushed Wesley away and went to do karaoke with Phil. He could see Jonny laughing at him, and then Jonny sliding off his seat onto the floor and still laughing, and Wesley picking him up, and something sharp and hot and sour boiled in the depths of his stomach.

He realised precisely how drunk he was when he stepped down from the stage to raucous applause and someone pushed another drink into his hand. He might have been drunk enough that walking in a straight line was a challenge. He might have been drunk enough that even standing up straight was pushing his physical limits a bit. He might have been drunk enough that holding his glass steady enough to sip from it without spilling anything was nigh on impossible. But he wasn't drunk enough to miss the fact that, on the other side of the crowded room, Wesley was leaving the pub, and Jonny was leaving the pub, and they were leaving the pub together.