Part the Sixth

In Thom's head, a number of things could have happened next.

Jonny strode across the small courtyard, pushed the pair of them apart and shoved Thom up against the wall as he claimed Thom's mouth in a bruising kiss. This was curiously unsatisfying as far as fantasies go. Or... Jonny had instead dropped to his knees before Thom, peering shyly up through his fringe as he sucked Thom off like a pro and Colin just stood there and watched. That was a little better. Perhaps Thom had thrust Colin aside, grabbed Jonny's arm and hauled him back into the studio, bent him over the keyboard and pushed down his trousers and fucked him roughly, scraping his fingernails over the welts on Jonny's back... he groaned, it wasn't enough... while Colin stood, stricken, behind the glass of the locked sound booth, unable to rescue his brother, dark eyes burning a hole in Thom's soul...

That did it, and in the isolation of his own bedroom, he came over his fingers and stomach and lay panting in the dark, a sick sense of dread creeping through him.

In reality, Jonny had just stood there, eyes wide, until Thom had started to say something, and Colin had started to say something at the same time, and Jonny had stuttered out an apology in a small, broken voice, turned and fled, Colin running after him. Thom stayed only long enough to catch his breath; when he passed the rehearsal room the door was shut, but no sound came from inside.

He thought that would be the end of it. If Jonny knew what Thom and Colin had been getting up to during those evenings at the Club – and Jonny wasn't stupid, it was easy enough for him to put two and two together – he didn't expect that Colin would persist; Colin might be Thom's oldest friend, but he'd made it clear that his loyalties would always lie with his brother before anyone else. It was enough to have broken the band up as well as ending their friendship.

He hadn't counted on how much his life had narrowed down to that one room, decorated in green, at the Club. It was impossible to sleep that night; he tossed and turned under the sheets, plagued by thoughts of what he'd been forced to let go, until eventually he gave in, clambering out of bed, finding the spare suit in his wardrobe and dragging it on. He called a taxi and within fifteen minutes he was walking up the staircase to the Club.

It was the first time he had been there without expecting Colin, and he realised just how out of place he felt. He didn't know the name of the bartender, barely recognised the other patrons (aside from the ghostlike pale-haired form of Florian, drifting between the tables), hadn't a clue of who to talk to for procuring a room or how to approach the boys who plied their trade. He wasn't even sure what he wanted from the place except that he needed somewhere to be that would distract him. Trying to look as though he wasn't lost at sea, he ordered a shot of vodka and sat down at the bar, pushing a fingernail through the grimy lamina of spilled drinks and dust on the shiny surface of the counter.

When he and Colin were younger, bored and broke, they'd used to play a game to while away a lazy afternoon. Choosing a place for people-watching – the steps outside the Bodleian Library, the bus-stop opposite the covered market, the bench near the entrance to the Westgate shopping centre – they'd make up stories about the passers-by, growing steadily more outrageous and crude until it devolved into a competition to see who could make the other one crack up first. Colin almost always won: he had a more vivid imagination, wider experience, a better vocabulary and far superior control over his laughter. Thom found himself playing the same game now. The man with the bristly ginger sideburns, standing by the fire... he used to smuggle packets of cocaine through Customs hidden in his luxuriant beard, until he'd developed stress alopecia during a strenuous divorce settlement and had to find an alternative career as a male masseuse. He smiled to himself; he felt a little better already. The weedy bloke at the other end of the bar, nursing a glass of something blue-green and toxic-looking... a serial killer on the run, who strangled his homosexual lovers with a pair of ladies' stockings and was seeking his next victim. The pink-faced guy examining one of the photographs on the wall near the door...

“Fancy seeing you here,” said a sinuous voice in his ear.

Thom jumped, violently, and almost spilled his drink. Wesley was standing behind him, looking a little worse for wear. The lovebite on his neck had faded a little, although the bruised knuckles appeared every bit as painful as they had done before; where his sleeves were rolled up in the warmth of the room, Thom could see bright scratches left by fingernails on the soft underside of his right forearm.

“I – I'm sorry,” Thom muttered apologetically. “I'm not really in the mood... I'd rather be left alone.”

Wesley cocked his head to one side and regarded Thom critically. “That is an obvious lie. If you wanted to be alone, you wouldn't have come here.” He hopped up onto the next seat, and eyed Thom's glass. “Vodka? Good choice.” He snapped his fingers at the bartender. “I'll have the same as my good friend here,” he said with a sunny smile, gesturing to Thom.

Thom drained his glass with a grimace and let his head drop to his folded forearms resting on the bar. “I'm not your good friend,” he mumbled petulantly. “I hardly know you.”

Wesley had large hands, he noticed, casting them a sideways glance from the corner of his eye. They were wide and solid, with long fingers and broad thumbs, lightly tanned in the way of someone who spends time out of doors in all weathers, dusted with a smattering of freckles and fine gold hair. Dependable hands, Thom thought. The kind that could chastise severely or gently reassure, as befitted the situation.

“I teach piano in my spare time,” Wesley said, when he saw where Thom was looking. “I could give you a lesson, if you want.”

If it was supposed to be a seduction, it was the most rubbish chat-up line Thom had ever heard, so he decided to take it at face value. “I can play the piano, thank you very much,” he said stiffly.

Wesley's drink arrived; Thom tried to ignore the way the alcohol moistened those plush pink lips, and how Wesley's tongue darted out to catch the spilled drops and made his chest ache with desire. He didn't want Wesley, he reminded himself. He was just desperate for someone to touch him. “Oh – yes, of course, I forgot,” Wesley said airily, waving a hand. He set his glass down, and grinned. “I taught Jonny, you know. Back in school.”

“You – what?”

“I used to give lessons to some of the other boys, when I had the time,” Wesley explained. “It paid quite well. He was doing all this other stuff, he was always in the practice rooms with God knows what... there was the viola, yeah, he played that in the orchestra, but some of my friends used to joke that he was working his way through the music department until he had to look somewhere else. He couldn't afford the lessons, though, so I used to give them to him for free. Monday evening, after prep.”

Thom was barely capable of acknowledging this; his cock had grown painfully hard at the thought of Wesley and Jonny in one of the small practice rooms at Abingdon, in the darkened corridors of the music building. Jonny sitting on the stool at the piano, perhaps with blazer off and tie loosened as a concession to out-of-hours, fringe falling forwards to hide his face as his fingers skated over the keys. His posture at the piano was always atrocious – he'd hunch over, shoulders pressed up to his ears as though he was trying to hide, and Thom always teased him about it. Now he couldn't get it out of his head. And there would be Wesley, hovering in the background, every now and then leaning over to correct something, or to point out something on the sheets of notation in front of the boy he was tutoring. One hand resting between the wing-like sweep of Jonny's shoulderblades while the other traced over the paper... perhaps he would bend down, until they were cheek-to-cheek, those strong fingers on Jonny's wrists as he adjusted the boy's position.

“It was because of you guys that I did it, actually,” Wesley continued, shaking Thom out of his reverie. “He was meant to be playing keyboards in your band and he was afraid that he wouldn't be good enough. That you'd kick him out or relegate him to harmonica again. And... he was too good for that.”

Thom raised his head and blinked at Wesley. “I was a complete dick to him, you know.”

Wesley gave a short laugh. “Yes, I'd heard that, too.”

“And now he hates me.”

Wesley fixed him with a quizzical stare. “Why on earth should he hate you? You might have been a twat to him... but that's all water under the bridge, yes?”

Thom looked down at his glass, and blushed. “Er... he caught me and Colin. Outside the studio. Colin was... um... he'd...” He gestured vaguely to his groin and hoped that Wesley got the idea. “And I don't know why I'm telling you this.”

Wesley, to his credit, didn't seem to be fazed by Thom's admission. “You mean to say that Jonny didn't know about you and Coz?” he asked, dipping the tip of his little finger into the half-empty glass of vodka and bringing it to his mouth.

Thom shrugged helplessly. “I didn't think there was anything to know. I mean... everyone knows about Colin, he's never made any secret of being completely and utterly bent. And I didn't think... I didn't think there was anything going on between us. Not really.” He was lying through his teeth now, he knew, but he wasn't able to let on to Wesley. “Like he said... I just watch. Well, until Colin decided to jerk me off where his little brother could find us.”

Wesley gave a curious smile, and repeated the action with his finger, this time running it gently over his lower lip before sucking the tip inside. Thom followed the motion, fascinated by the languid eroticism in such a simple gesture. “What did he do when he saw you?”

“Said sorry and ran away.” Thom felt a surge of overwhelming guilt as he remembered the hurt in Jonny's voice. “He looked like someone had broken all the toys in his toybox. You know. That kicked-puppy expression. He's really good at it.”

“And you went after him? To explain?”

Thom shook his head. “No, that was Colin.” Then, viciously: “I don't know, he probably had to tell Jonny what wanking is. I don't think I've ever met anyone who was so clueless about sex.” But even that wasn't strictly true, was it? He'd seen the marks on Jonny's back, and unless he really was as clumsy as he professed to be – which Thom knew he wasn't, Jonny was one of the most graceful and controlled people he'd ever seen – then there was only one way that they could really have been put there.

Wesley hadn't responded to that, and Thom looked up at him; he seemed surprised, but quickly rearranged his expression into one of amusement. “Ah, well. That's what older brothers are for, isn't it?” His voice turned sly. “So... you and Colin... you are, aren't you?”

Thom picked at a hangnail, tearing it until it bled. “No. I don't think he'll want anything to do with me.”

“Don't do that, you're hurting yourself,” Wesley snapped, batting his hands apart. “Look... Thom... I know this is going to sound strange, but don't sleep with Colin, all right? You'll regret it. I promise.” He sounded very strange all of a sudden, as though there was something stuck in his throat.

“What... how do you...?”

“I've done it,” Wesley said shortly. “It was his first night here, so I thought I'd be helpful and show him the ropes. Well, turns out he knows the ropes. Back to front and inside out. Upside down too, probably, although we didn't try that – might have got round to it one day, if he didn't act so bloody weird.” He coughed, a flush of colour spreading across his cheeks, and distracted himself with his glass again. “I've fucked a lot of guys,” he said frankly. “And it's not often I let them fuck me. Colin was different. I don't think there would have been a hope of getting him under me. At the end, I could barely see straight, let alone walk straight, but... he hadn't even gotten off. I could have been offended. But it didn't feel like he was looking for that, if you see what I mean. It was... well, it was like he didn't want an emotional engagement. More like he just wanted to be in control.”

And, as Wesley called for another drink, Thom stared into the depths of his glass and thought that Wesley's assessment was probably right.