Part the Fifth

Practice this time went much better than the last, to Thom's relief. He wasn't sure his frayed nerves could take any more after the previous night, and he kept Colin as much out of his line of view as possible, retreating to where Jonny sat at the keyboard or manoeuvring Ed between the pair of them. If the others had noticed anything, they were politely choosing to ignore it.

He found refuge in watching Jonny more and more. For someone who could still remember him as a shy twelve-year-old trailing in Colin's wake, following the band around and begging to be let in, it was a shock to realise just how far he had come; he had matured almost without Thom's noticing into the glue that held them together. Thom had a thousand memories locked up in his head which up until a week ago might have been innocent, but since last night – Nat, Jonathan, the boy who'd writhed beneath Thom's body, who'd kicked and screamed and then melted under Thom's ministrations – even the most benign recollection turned poisonous. Jonny at thirteen, sitting in the corner of the music room at school finishing his biology homework while the others played, biting the end of his pen, inexplicably became Jonny on his knees at Thom's feet, biting his lip as he struggled to... what? Jonny at fifteen, crouched by the edge of the stage, harmonica clutched in both hands as he held it to his mouth and blew... that was Jonny sucking Thom's cock to the back of his throat, cheeks hollowed out obscenely as he struggled to take its full length, and Thom just pushed him against the wall and shamelessly fucked the boy's mouth. His stomach flipped over at the thought and he had stepped away from the keyboard where Jonny's head was bent in concentration, and hid his erection behind his guitar. Jonny at sixteen, arm crooked just so as he played the viola and smiled at Thom with laughing dark eyes behind his fringe, became Nat, raising his arms to grip the bedstead as Thom pressed the boy's knees to his chest and fucked him hard enough to make them both scream.

His thoughts left him feeling naked. He was sure he was utterly transparent to Colin – had it been before or after the display with Nat that Colin had known? Colin had seen Thom watching him and Jonny in the car park outside the studio... Nat had been all the confirmation he needed.

Jonny at twenty-three, pushed up against the back door of his car as Colin's fingers wound into his hair and wrenched his head back, exposing that pale neck... only half-heartedly protesting as Colin kissed him hard enough to bruise... fucking hell.

He was glad when the rehearsal was over. Thom nipped to the bathroom and Colin said he was going out for a smoke, so that by the time Thom returned to the studio to start clearing away, he found himself alone with Jonny.

“You... you're sounding good,” he said into the silence. “Really good.”

Jonny jumped and turned to him; behind his too-long fringe (he should get that cut, Thom thought, it would get in the way of his playing... it was far too easy to imagine grabbing hold of the silky fronds and pulling... he gave himself a mental kick), he had blushed bright red. “It's no different from usual,” he said diffidently, tugging the sleeves of his shirt down over his hands.

“Well, maybe I should have told you before. I mean... Lucky, stuff like that. It's... it's the best stuff we've ever done.” Thom had never thought about how he looked up at Jonny these days. It hardly seemed any time at all since the other boy had barely come up to his shoulder, and now, as they stood a few feet apart, for the first time Thom felt small beside his youngest bandmate. Perhaps that was why all of these sudden fantasies seemed to involve Jonny on his knees, or on his back, submitting to him. “It's not long until the tour,” he observed redundantly. Jonny scratched at his head and leaned over the keyboard, doing something complicated with wires that Thom didn't understand.

“I know. We'll be in Leeds in two weeks, Colin was telling me.” Jonny's back arched as he stretched to gather up the cables into a bundle, and his shirt – at least three inches too short, as everything Jonny wore seemed to be – rode up over his waist, revealing the strip of skin above his hips that Thom had teased him about a thousand times. As his eyes fell on it, irresistibly drawn like a moth to a flame, he sucked in an audible breath. Just visible beneath the hem of the shirt was a bright red stripe marring the pale flesh, clearly delineated on both sides by the dusky purple-blue of new bruises: exactly the same mark as Thom had left repeatedly on Nat with the belt he was currently wearing, less than twenty-four hours before.

“Jonny. What the fuck?”

Startled, Jonny looked round; when he saw where Thom's gaze was resting, he straightened up quickly, pulling his shirt down and turning to face Thom. “Slipped on the stairs the other day,” he murmured. “It's nothing.”

Thom didn't pursue it, but Jonny was a shit liar. He always had been; it was Colin who had the natural skill of deception, who could wipe his expression clean at a moment's notice, whereas Jonny suffered from the same affliction as Thom in that he was incapable of keeping his feelings from showing on his face. And the brief, deer-in-the-headlights terror that had flashed across his features in the few seconds before he had lied to Thom told Thom everything he needed to know: there wasn't just one Greenwood keeping things from him.

He felt a twinge of satisfaction, and immediately hated himself for it.

He left Jonny fiddling with the wires, and went out the back of the studio, where scrubby weeds and sad-looking grass grew up between the cracks in the concrete and Colin lounged against an overfilled wheelie bin, cigarette held up between nicotine-stained fingers as he took a deep pull. “Want one?” he asked, holding the packet out to Thom; Thom shook his head.

“You know that stuff will ruin my voice.”

“So will screaming yourself hoarse, you didn't seem to have a problem with that.” Colin smirked meaningfully, his head wreathed in smoke, and seemed to come to some kind of a decision; he dropped the cigarette, stubbing it out under the heel of his boot, reached out and snagged Thom by the collar, reeling him in and crushing their mouths together roughly.

Thom was temporarily stunned into inaction. Then he grunted in protest. “Jonny.”

“Shut up, you need th- what?” Colin drew back, searching Thom's face with a frown.

“Jonny. Someone... someone hurt him. He had... on his back...”

Colin's eyes were cool, almost neutral. “Maybe he fell.”

Thom wiped a shaking hand across his mouth, and laughed nervously. He was too close to Colin for comfort, the other man's body pressed up against him, warm and solid but unresponsive to the heat of Thom's erect cock pushing into his thigh. “That's what he said. He can't tell a lie to save his life.” He drew in a shuddering breath as one of Colin's hands found its way to his trouser fly, fingers spreading out and massaging gently; and a sudden, awful thought occurred to him. “Coz... that wasn't... I mean, it wasn't you... was it?”

He thought as soon as he said it that it was a devastatingly stupid fear to voice, but Colin only laughed throatily and dropped a soft kiss on Thom's cheekbone. “Thom, if you really think I get off on doing that to my baby brother...” He was drawing the zip down tooth by painstaking tooth; Thom shivered and arched into the touch.

“I know you saw me. Watching the two of you.” Thom let out a squeak as hot fingers wrapped around the base of his cock, and he moaned into Colin's neck. He tried to move his hands to the front of Colin's own trousers; Colin hissed in protest and flipped them round to pin the smaller man up against the wall.

“No, Thom.” Colin's hand started to move in swift, short, businesslike strokes, and Thom's hips bucked of their own accord even as he tried to clamp down on his reaction. “I don't know what you think you saw. But it wasn't that.” He increased his pace, crashing their lips together again to swallow Thom's cries and effectively shutting him up. When Thom came only a couple of minutes later, sagging limply between Colin's body and the wall, Colin withdrew his hand and sucked his fingers clean – not as though he enjoyed it, Thom thought, but as though it was a mere necessity. A business arrangement. The party of the first part agrees to render up his soul to the party of the second part, now and forever more.

Thom put his clothes straight, Colin studying him with the satisfaction of one who has just seen another come completely undone. He didn't seem to have expected anything in return, which, Thom mused, was rather odd; for all that Colin spoke of control, Thom had been on the receiving end both times, and he'd not given a thing back... not that he was aware of. Was Colin one day going to call back his debts?

But all these thoughts were wiped clean from his mind as they turned to leave, and came face-to-face with Jonny standing in the open doorway, looking from Colin to Thom as though his world had just come tumbling down.