Part the Thirteenth

On the coach to Leeds, Thom found himself lodged into a seat opposite Jonny, who wouldn't meet his eyes once as they were embarking. He'd brought a stack of those stupid Sherlock Holmes audiobooks he was so into, shoved one into his Walkman and clapped his enormous headphones over his ears, slouching down in his chair with his knees wedged under the edge of the table and staring out of the window. The weather was utterly miserable; the early hours of November were making themselves heard with a vengeance, and the glass was a solid mass of shimmering grey as the rain hurled itself against the panes almost angrily.

Thom half expected Colin to slide into one of the unoccupied seats beside him and Jonny, but the other man took a place at the back of the bus, which Thom realised placed them directly in each other's line of sight. He and Jonny were joined by Ed, which pretty much prevented anyone sitting in the seat next to Jonny. Perhaps Ed was more perceptive than he looked – or perhaps Phil had said something to him – but he didn't attempt to engage the others in conversation, given the more than obvious tension between them, for which Thom was endlessly grateful.

By mid-morning, Thom was reminded of why he hated travelling long distances. The M1 was an unbroken string of traffic and relentlessly dull, grey service stations. Every time he glanced up, Colin seemed to be staring at him; and opposite him, Jonny appeared to have fallen asleep, which was just not fair. His head was tilted back against the rest, eyes closed so that his long lashes fanned out across his high cheekbones, lips parted slightly, and Thom couldn't stop staring.

It wasn't that he hadn't ever realised that Jonny was beautiful. He'd already known it when the other boy was an awkward, painfully shy twelve-year-old and those big eyes would seek him out during band practice, even though at the time Thom had been fifteen or sixteen and the only thing on his mind was girls, and how to attract them. Later, when Jonny had been a gawky teenager still learning to fit into his own skin, Thom might even have told him he was beautiful; Jonny had hated growing up, had hated being taller than Colin and Phil and Thom, but in that glorious year they'd had when it was just Thom and Jonny while the others were away at university, he'd come to terms with getting older because it meant that Thom paid more attention to him. Thom should have seen it coming. He knew, deep down, that he'd noticed Jonny in that way a long time before Colin had forced him to face up to his true nature. Somewhere in that year between making the decision to stay at home for another year and finally choosing to go away to university, his subconscious had started to regard Jonny as more than just a regular male friend, even if his conscious mind had taken a while to catch up.

There had been something odd about the other boy when Thom came back to Oxford after his first term in Exeter. The chaste yet intimate closeness they'd shared while the rest of the band members were away had evaporated; he was reticent, elusive, and seemed to have regressed to the wide-eyed child he'd once been. In fact, he had clung to Colin with almost infantile dependence, and now Thom knew why. He should have felt ill at the thought, he told himself; it wasn't right, it wasn't natural. But he found that all he could think of was small fingers tightening in dark hair, the contrast of black leather and plastic and red welts on alabaster skin, and large dark-circled eyes filled with tears of pain and desire. It seemed absurd to believe that the same boy who would go out of the room while Ed was describing his exploits with his latest girlfriend also liked, in private, to wear women's clothing, let his brother tie him up and cane him.

At first, he didn't notice when the foot crept into his lap. It was only when a toe stroked over the seam of his jeans that he jumped, glancing down, and saw below the hem of black trousers a slender ankle and foot, encased in sheer, shiny dark nylon, pressed up against his groin. He almost choked, and his head shot up; Jonny was watching him through slitted eyes, and as Thom looked to his left to check that Ed was still asleep, the foot pushed upwards very slowly and deliberately, creating a delicious friction between Thom's already hard anatomy, his underwear, and the stiff ridge of denim between his legs. He chanced a glance at Colin, hoping that the heat he could feel rising in his cheeks hadn't manifested itself visibly; Colin's gaze had not wavered, and Thom looked away, trying not to moan out loud as Jonny's foot rubbed up and down at the same painstakingly languid, tortuous pace. His knee bashed the underside of the table as Jonny's heel found the head of his cock and started to move in long, achingly gentle circles, his entire body jerking at the unexpected sensation, and he leaned forwards, planting his elbows on the table and concentrating hard on the surface of their Formica-topped island as Jonny made clear his intent to pull Thom apart piece by piece.

He almost cried with a mix of frustration and relief when Phil leaned over the back of his seat and told them that they'd be stopping for a rest break at the next services. He reached down and grasped Jonny's ankle, stilling his movement; when the younger man looked up at him with dark, hot eyes, he knew they'd come to an unspoken agreement.

He was glad for the cover of his anorak as one by one they dashed from the bus across a freezing, wet and windswept car park and through the glass doors of the service station. He was still achingly erect and it preserved his modesty a little. While the others were occupied with the fast food restaurant and Colin and Ed made a beeline for the coffee shop, he watched Jonny slip into the men's toilets, casting a meaningful glance back at Thom before the door swung shut. Thom waited a few moments, pretending to be interested in a rack of leaflets about the local tourist attractions, before following him.

He was dragged into the end cubicle almost before he knew what was happening. He'd barely managed to get the door shut behind him before Jonny's mouth found his and his back hit the wall. His first thought, as their tongues vied with each other in a battle for dominance, was that Jonny tasted nothing like his brother: Colin was all alcohol and cigarette smoke, a dangerous metallic tang like fresh blood, whereas Jonny was tea with lemon, and... Polo mints, that was it, he realised, and a bubble of laughter welled up inside him. Something sweet and fresh; he felt like he was being cleansed, rather than corrupted. Gripping Jonny's wrists, he flipped them around and pushed his knee between Jonny's legs, earning a desperate whine from the boy's throat as he bit down hard on the plush lip caught between his teeth.

He wasn't wearing underwear, Thom discovered, as he yanked the other boy's trousers down around his knees and pressed his still-clothed body up against the half-dressed one pinned between himself and the wall. The lacy tops of the black stay-ups Jonny had been wearing underneath clung to smooth, slim thighs, and Thom ran his hands over these as Jonny fumbled frantically with his belt.

“Whose idea was this?” Thom murmured, tracing fingers over hairless skin while Jonny wrested the jeans from his hips.

“Colin's,” Jonny replied, sinking to his knees in front of Thom and tugging his trousers and boxers to his ankles. “He – he did it for me – said I was spoiling the effect of the stockings -”

“Jesus,” Thom gasped at the mental image that conjured, and then, as Jonny licked a trail up the underside of his cock: “Oh, fuck.”

Jonny looked up at him with a knowing smile through a curtain of hair and eyelashes, twisting his hands behind his back as though they had been bound there before capturing the tip of Thom's cock in his mouth and sucking it lightly. Thom's legs almost gave way, and would have done if he hadn't braced himself against the wall behind him. Jonny's tongue stroked gently over the sensitive spot just below the head, before he tipped his neck back, opened his mouth wide and swallowed Thom's cock right to the base.

If it was possible for one's brain to short-circuit, Thom thought his just had.

Jonny pulled back at the hastily stifled groan torn from Thom's mouth, licking his lips. “Sorry,” he said, sounding utterly unrepentant; his lisp was more pronounced than ever. “Do you want me to go slower?”

It was all Thom could do not to imitate Colin and grab hold of Jonny's hair to pull his mouth back to where it was most wanted. He nodded. “Just... don't... fucking... stop,” he grated out.

Jonny grinned, pouting a little, and dipped his head forward, swirling his tongue around Thom's shaft. Then, inch by inch, he worked his way down again, the wet heat and tightness of his hollowed mouth an exquisite torture as he paid lavish attention to every last patch of agonisingly sensitive skin. When the head of his cock hit the back of Jonny's throat, Thom almost came at the feeling of muscles fluttering around him, struggling to accommodate him; Jonny let him slip out a short way, sucking in a deep breath that chilled the dampness of Thom's erection, before swallowing him again until his nose was pressed to the base of Thom's abdomen, hot breath tickling his groin. He stayed like that for an almost impossibly long time, the flat of his tongue laving the thick vein that travelled the length of Thom's cock, until eventually he had to come up for air, fixing Thom with a beseeching, pleading stare as, lips stretched almost obscenely, he slid his mouth back down.

Thom found himself almost more fascinated by Jonny's appearance than by the sensations the boy was wringing from him. The lean muscles and tendons of his shoulders and upper arms strained with effort as though he was struggling against invisible bonds; the rapid tic of a racing pulse was clearly visible beneath the pale skin of his neck; and each time he hit bottom, his eyes slid shut of their own accord. He was hard, too, cock laid almost flat up against his stomach, but he made no move to touch himself; he seemed solely devoted to Thom's own pleasure. Bit by bit, Thom was coming apart at the seams, and when that coiling familiar pressure started to build at the base of his spine the tenuous hold he had on his self-control snapped: he pushed both of his hands into Jonny's hair, shoved him back hard against the cubicle wall, and thrust into his mouth until he came down the younger man's throat, Jonny coughing and choking and struggling for breath as he drank it all down. Only then did Thom let him up; but Jonny stayed there at his feet, trousers around his knees and hands locked behind his back, while Thom tucked himself back in and zipped up. As though he was waiting for orders.

“You... you can touch yourself,” Thom said shakily.

With a strange light in his eyes, Jonny brought one of his hands forward to wrap around his cock, and let out a small shuddering sigh as his thumb skated over the head, gathering the precome that had collected there and using it to ease the motion of his palm as it slid up and down. Jonny seemed to prefer it faster and harder than Thom would have liked done to himself, as though it was not the means that mattered to him and simply achieving the end that was important. It was barely a minute before, with a small, devastated cry, he came over his clenched fist and flat stomach, trembling thighs and the tiled floor; and he paused, his breathing shallow and rapid, those easy tears welling at the corners of his eyes as he gazed at Thom. He started to reach for a paper towel with his clean hand, but Thom stopped him.

“No... with your mouth.”

And Jonny smiled as he brought his fingers to his lips and used his tongue to lick them clean.

They joined the others shortly afterwards, acting as though nothing had happened between them. It was only Jonny's satisfied grin when he sat down opposite Thom on the bus that gave anything away, and an inexplicable warm glow filled Thom's chest at the thought of what they had just shared. But he didn't miss the expression on Colin's face as they settled down again, that cold, hard stare that pinned him like a butterfly on display, and he realised with growing dread that Colin had known exactly what was happening all along.