Part the Sixteenth

The sight cut through his drunken haze like a bullet. Jonny's face was turned towards Wesley's, tilted up as he listened to whatever the taller man was saying. One of Wesley's broad hands was resting in the small of Jonny's back, subtly steering him in the direction of the door; Jonny paused, leaning on Wesley as thought for support, and Wesley used his other hand to stroke a stray frond of dark hair away from Jonny's forehead. They smiled at each other, and Thom felt sick to his stomach. And then they were out of the door and into the night, and someone was tapping on Thom's shoulder. He looked round; it was Colin.

“Aren't you going to ride in like the proverbial knight in shining armour and rescue him?” he said acidly, plucking the glass from Thom's slack hand and setting it down on the bar. “After all, you've done a very good job of rescuing him from me.”

“I – wasn't -” Thom slurred. He didn't know how to explain to Colin that he and Jonny had just happened, or that Jonny had made it clear to him how important Colin was, or that Thom had no intention of breaking apart whatever strange thing it was that the two brothers shared. “What about you?”

Colin smiled, an oddly serene expression on his otherwise stormy face. “Thom, there are so many things you don't know about Jonny,” he said cryptically. “You think you're his best friend, you think you know him better than anyone else, but you don't have a clue. Perhaps you should ask him, one day, when the two of you get around to engaging your brains rather than your cocks. Ask him why he plays the innocent when he's anything but. He's not my responsibility, Thom, I can't control him. He's free to make his own mistakes; he knows what the repercussions of those mistakes will be.” Colin's eyes grew dark, and he glanced over at the door. “They'll be going to Jonny's house. They always do; Wesley cares too much about his own furniture. You should probably call a taxi, you won't get far in that state.”

Thom barely had time to process the significance of Colin's words before the other man had given him a gentle push towards the door and then gone back to his corner seat at the bar. He fumbled in his pocket and came up with a five-pound note, cast a look back at Colin, who merely stared coldly at him, and then he weaved the steadiest line he could across the room and out onto the pavement.

There was a light drizzle falling, the kind that got you soaked without you even realising it. Jonny and Wesley were already nowhere to be seen, and as Thom waited for the next passing cab, he pondered what Colin had meant. That Wesley and Jonny would be going to Jonny's house... they always did. And he thought about Wesley's sly, meaningful glance at him in Ed's kitchen, and what that had meant. And then he remembered Wesley's little story about the piano lessons, he and Jonny and the music room at school and the almost exact re-enactment of that scenario which had played out in Thom's front room over his own piano, and he started to wonder whether Wesley had been telling the truth after all. He'd told Thom what he needed to hear; Thom had needed to hear that the story was a lie, so Wesley had told him that it was.

A taxi approached, and he flagged it down and gave Jonny's address. Sitting back and trying to gather himself, he started to fit all the little pieces of the jigsaw together. If Wesley had been telling the truth... both he and Colin had said that Thom didn't know Jonny very well at all. Had that been what Colin meant – that Jonny was just easy like that? Wesley had implied that Jonny didn't even know how to say no (although he had done to Thom only the day before, so where did that leave him?) and that Jonny in sixth form had been little more than a slut who'd bend over for half the school. At the time Thom had dismissed the comments, especially when he'd thought Wesley was lying to get a rise out of him; now he was seeing them in a new light. Jonny had started sixth form just as Thom had gone away to university – in fact, just when he'd been left behind in Oxford utterly alone for the first time. If Colin was to be believed, he'd taken Jonny in hand the summer before that, and there had been Thom around to keep the younger boy in check, but it was hardly such a stretch of the imagination to think of Jonny going off the rails in light of what he must have seen as being abandoned by his older bandmates. Not now that he knew much of Jonny's apparent innocence was just a projection, a screen to hide the boy who sucked off his friend in a service station toilet, who went to rehearsal with a dildo up his arse, who... Thom swallowed. Who liked to be beaten. Who enjoyed being beaten.

He thought of the belt marks he'd seen on Jonny's skin, the scratches and bruises on Wesley's arms and face, and Wesley's hand lying proprietarily on Jonny's back. Once he'd learned of the relationship between Jonny and Colin, he'd thought the marks had been put there by Colin, but now... Wesley fucking him over the piano and asking him to say that he didn't want it... he wondered whether he'd made a mistake.

The taxi pulled to a stop outside Jonny's house, and Thom clambered out, shoving the money at the driver and not waiting to collect the change before he ran up the front path. It was raining properly now and the stone flags were slippery under his feet. There was a light on in the hall, another in the living room and one in an upstairs window which was Jonny's bedroom, and the porch light came on as he ascended the steps to the door, reflecting off the wet ground with almost dazzling brightness. He was just raising his hand to ring the doorbell, wiping his damp fringe out of his eyes, when there was a resounding crash from the front room. He could hear raised voices, someone yelling something at somebody else, although he couldn't make out distinct words; there was a heavy thud as though something heavy had been overturned, and then scuffling sounds, like a struggle was taking place.

He pounded hard on the door, but whoever was inside was making so much noise that they clearly couldn't hear him above the racket. Running around to the front of the house, he could see that the windows were all shut and locked – it was early November, after all – but the curtains were partly open, and as he pressed his face to the glass, he could see through into the room beyond.

He realised what Colin had meant when he said Wesley cared too much about his furniture for them to go to his house.

Jonny was sprawled across the glass-topped coffee table, shirt half off his shoulders and pulled up past his waist to reveal his stomach, with Wesley bent over him between his spread legs. Wesley's large hands were wrapped around those thin wrists, pinning them against the hard surface at Jonny's sides, and their mouths were crushed together savagely; Jonny was twisting and struggling for all he was worth, but even from Thom's vantage point he could see the delirious smile curving his friend's lips, the wild light in his eyes as Wesley used his full strength to hold him down. The room looked like a whirlwind had passed through it: a potted plant by the door had been knocked over, spilling soil across the carpet; the stack of music magazines Jonny kept next to the sofa was scattered all over the floor, and a box of records that usually stood next to the turntable on the side cabinet had been upended. The throw on the sofa was rumpled and the cushions were everywhere, as though someone had been throwing them, and here and there a photograph hung crooked on the wall.

Jonny had managed to work a knee between his and Wesley's bodies as Thom watched, and he shoved the other man backwards; Wesley landed hard against the arm of the sofa and slid to the floor, where Jonny pounced on him, straddling his waist and tangling his hands in the wavy blond hair. He had his back to Thom now, and where his shirt had ridden up Thom could see fresh scratches on the pale skin, running across the multicoloured bruising of Colin's handiwork and the older, fading belt stripes. He couldn't tear his eyes from the line of Jonny's slender waist and the ridge of his spine, the curves of his arse in his tight jeans and the way Wesley's fingernails dug into the skin above Jonny's hips as he flipped the pair of them over, using his knees to pinion Jonny's thighs under his weight. Jonny was screaming as Wesley started to unbuckle his belt, but laughing as well; Wesley had managed to work both their trousers half-off by the time Jonny squirmed out from beneath him and kneed him in the groin, and Thom wondered abstractly if Jonny even knew the meaning of the curse that slipped from Wesley's lips as he scrambled to his feet, Wesley tripped him with his legs, and they both tumbled over the back of the sofa.

All of a sudden, Thom knew where Wesley's bloodied nose and bruises had come from. His breath fogged the window, and he had to restrain himself from pounding on the glass as Wesley delivered a slap to Jonny's face hard enough to leave Jonny limp and half-senseless in his arms. Then he bent Jonny over the arm of the sofa, spat onto two of his fingers and reached down between Jonny's legs, using his forearm to pin Jonny's hips in place while he pushed the digits inside him.

Jonny's head snapped up, and he gasped something that Thom couldn't quite make out, turning towards Wesley. In an odd moment of tenderness, Wesley kissed his cheek where a bright red handprint was blossoming, and stroked the soft dark hair while his fingers worked frantically between them, the two of them whispering inaudibly to each other; then Jonny was pulling something from behind the cushion he was propped against, a familiar-looking tube, and handing it to Wesley, who uncapped it and squeezed a small amount of the gel into his palm before slicking himself, holding Jonny open and pressing inside him in one long thrust. As Jonny's neck arched back on a drawn-out moan, Wesley braced his hands on the younger man's shoulders, and as he did so his piercing gaze met Thom's startled one over Jonny's head; Thom froze, his breath catching in his throat, and Wesley fixed him with a knowing grin as his hips snapped back and he drove into the man beneath him so forcefully that all the breath must have been knocked from Jonny's body.

All of Thom's instincts were telling him to run. He didn't have to watch this – every second of it set his nerves on edge like nails scraping down a blackboard – but at the same time he couldn't pull away, his morbid fascination effectively pinning him there with Wesley's eyes boring into his. Wesley coaxed Jonny up into a kneeling position, their bodies moulded together, Jonny's fingers tightly clenching the arm of the sofa while one of Wesley's hands closed possessively around his cock and started to stroke it in counterpoint to his driving thrusts, and his other roamed over every last square inch of skin he could reach. When it seemed as though Jonny was coming close to the brink, Wesley slid his fingers around the base of his erection and squeezed hard, drawing an agonised cry from Jonny's throat that went straight to Thom's own cock; then he pulled out, rolled them over onto the floor with Jonny on his back, pressed Jonny's jean-clad legs to his chest and thrust in again. Jonny thrashed underneath him like a dying fish, Wesley's hands having abandoned his cock to hold his upper arms down in the carpet, and although it couldn't have been more than five minutes of struggling and screaming and cursing before Wesley pushed in as deep as he could go, holding himself there and shuddering from head to toe as he shot over the edge, to Thom it seemed like an eternity. Wesley stayed like that, thrusting slowly and shallowly until, with a naked, fractured moan, Jonny joined him, lips parting for Wesley to claim his mouth.

They sank into each other, Wesley still inside, and Thom turned away from the window, the damp stickiness into his trousers only punctuating the devastating sense of loss that swept over him.