It was a Friday night, and Nick had slipped into his spot in the pub by a quarter to seven, lighting a cigarette and closing his eyes for the first time in what felt like, oh, twenty or thirty years. Way too young, he thought. I am way too young to be feeling this old.

Studying architecture at Oxford had been a scam, a way in, an angle like all the other angles he had worked before. A way to see Victoria on a regular basis, nothing more. That the classes had been fairly interesting had been just a bonus. But then things with Victoria had turned into the train wreck of ’84, and in the middle of getting sent down, getting the shit kicked out of him, and getting his (and Oxford’s) honor back, he had discovered that, what do you know, he was actually good at those classes. More than good at them. So good that when he finally left Oxford, it was with a full scholarship to the architecture school of the University of London. “Fucking shit,” he had breathed when he had opened the crisp scholarship letter, fingering the smooth letterhead. He had seen his life unfurl in front of him in that moment, and damn, it wasn’t a bad life for a small-time hustler and sometime parking attendant from Vegas. Not a bad life, at that.

“Guinness, please,” he called to Susan at the bar, who nodded pleasantly at him. It wasn’t the sort of place that welcomed Americans, but he had become their American, and a fixture, a regular. He stretched his aching legs out underneath the table and sighed. Being a grad student was a hell of a lot harder than Oxford had been, and the internship on top of the classes was just about killing him. These days, all he could manage on a Friday night was to crawl home to the flat he shared with Colin and collapse, and a Guinness at their usual pub was the extent of his night life. A day spent battling the tube and fighting traffic in the crowded city was enough to take it out of anyone.

Except, not crowded enough, evidently, because the next thing he knew, Gareth fucking Rycroft was sliding into the chair across from him. Colin’s chair. Which was a shame, actually, because when Colin showed up he was no doubt going to get the privilege of kicking Gareth’s ass, and Nick could really use the pick-me-up.

“Gareth,” he said. “What a pleasure this is.”

“Oh, the pleasure’s mine, Di Angelo.” He said the name like it was an insult in itself, and in Gareth’s world, it probably was. “You look quite at home here.”

“Okay, I think we’re just about done now,” Nick said. “I’ve had a hard week, and it would feel really good to smash a chair over your thick Neanderthal skull, so if I were you I’d run along home now.”

“Funny.” Gareth shook out a cigarette—one of Nick’s cigarettes—and lit it. “I was just about to say the same thing to you. You Yanks never do know when to go home.” He smirked. “How’s your best mate?”

“Get out of here, and put down my smokes.”

“In a minute, in a minute. I have something you need to know first. I’ve been looking for you.”

“Why am I not surprised? I always did say you didn’t seem the type to be into chicks.”

The smirk deepened. “That’s funny, Di Angelo, that’s really funny, especially considering what I’ve come to talk about.”

Susan landed the Guinness on the table with a thump, and he nodded his thanks. She didn’t spare a glance for Gareth, despite his obviously expensive suit and the crisp turn of his cuffs. They weren’t overfond of toffs in this pub, either. Colin always changed before they came here for drinks, which meant Colin always stole something out of his closet. Not that it made a bit of difference; Colin could have smeared himself in dog shit and still looked like what he was.

“You didn’t answer my question, you know. How’s Colin these days?”

“You can’t seriously expect I’m going to have a conversation with you, can you, Gareth? I mean, I knew you were stupid, but surely there are limits. You got into Oxford after all, right? Or was that something else Daddy got for you?”

“Shut up, you bloody Yank, or I will re-consider the favor I’m about to do you.”

Nick sipped his Guinness and glanced at the clock behind Susan. Colin was running late, which Colin never did. A shame it had to be tonight, of all nights. With any luck, they could have kicked Gareth’s ass together. “You’re doing me a favor.”

“That’s right. It’s for your own good. There’s something you ought to know about your best mate Colin. Don’t you want to hear it?”

“Believe me, there is absolutely nothing you could say about Colin that is of any interest to me. Do you know why that is? Because you are a fuckwit, in addition to being an asshole. So shut your mouth, get out of my face, and let me enjoy my beer in peace.”

“Suit yourself.” Gareth leaned back and smashed his cigarette out in the ashtray. His smirk had returned. “I can see I’m too late, then. Colin’s probably already fucking you up the arse three times a week. He probably even lets you suck his cock, if you’ve been good. Tell me, Di Angelo. Do you swallow?”

He was too taken aback even to spray the Guinness in Gareth’s face, or to smack his smug jaw. It was just too bizarre and pathetic, like a homeless vagrant spewing obscenities on the tube. “Jesus, Rycroft. You are sad.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tenner, slapping it on the table. “There you go. Now you can go buy yourself a lay, instead of just fantasizing about it. Go on, knock yourself out.”

Gareth chuckled. His smile was even nastier than before. “As I said, suit yourself, Di Angelo. Believe me or not. But I wouldn’t bend over in the shower, if I were you. Your flatmate plays for both sides, and one of these nights you’ll wake up and find it’s your arse he’s plowing. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Nick stood, weighing how quickly he could level Gareth, knowing how easy it would be. He caught Susan’s worried glance out of the corner of his eye. She needn’t have been concerned. It wasn’t like he would mess up her pub for trash like Gareth Rycroft. He picked up his jacket and tucked the tenner under the mug for Susan.

“Let me tell you what, Gareth. Colin could fuck warthogs, and he’d still be a better human being than you. Come to think of it, a warthog is a better human being than you.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and headed out the door, his appetite for drinking tonight soured. Besides, the way his luck was running, Lionel would show up next. Safer just to go home and collapse on the sofa. Maybe they could watch something on TV, as long as it wasn’t soccer. Anything that wasn’t soccer. He was fucking sick of soccer. Hockey, or football, or even God help him rugby, as long as it was something nice and violent.

________________

Nick tossed his jacket on the peg by the door – that had taken months of Colin yelling at him and only once of fishing his leather jacket out of the kitchen wastebin, before he learned – and vaulted into the comfy chair. Colin was stretched full-length on the sofa, a whisky perched on his chest, his arm flung over his eyes.

“Hmm? Oh, sorry. I was just on my way out the door to meet you when Victoria rang.”

“Victoria?”

“Yes. Apparently, every few months she intuits that I just might be on the verge of putting my life back together, and she feels compelled to ring me and share all the details of her most recent romantic adventure. So, I felt that liquor was appropriate, yes.”

“Ouch.”

“Yes. It would be nice to think she does it with malicious intent, but I think it honestly does not occur to her that I might find the story of her newest escapade at all painful.”

Nick snorted, kicking off his shoes. “I have an idea. Let’s get smashed and watch something incredibly violent and, you know, testosterone-affirming, on TV.”

“Sounds good. Especially the getting smashed part. Whisky’s on the counter there.” He flung his arm towards the kitchen.

“Ah.” Nick picked up the bottle of Glenmorangie and held it up to the light. “The expensive stuff. Don’t mind if I do.” He considered mentioning his encounter with Gareth, but decided against it. Colin looked pretty wrung out already. Hard to believe one conversation with Victoria would do this to him; as far as he knew, they talked on the phone every so often, and Colin never seemed to mind much one way or the other. But then again, it was hard to tell with Colin.

“Well, look at it this way. The week’s over. There’s nothing to stop us from pissing away our entire weekend. Hey, I know, let’s go over and hang out at Peter and Rona’s.”

“I doubt we’re drunk enough for that.”

“Yeah. ‘Cause when you’re dropping in on your newly-married friends uninvited, it’s always better to be drunk.”

Colin raised his head slightly. “You should be careful, Nick. You are beginning to display some very un-American wryness in your sense of humour.”

“Why is it,” Nick mused, knocking back the whisky, “that you people will spend two hundred pounds on a bottle of booze but won’t spend five quid to get your teeth fixed?”

Colin, whose teeth looked like they were chiseled out of marble, arched a brow. “Since when do you know what a quid is?”

“Since when do you drink whisky all by yourself?”

Colin had no answer for that one, apparently. He lowered his head back down and contemplated the ceiling.

________________

But then had come the Harvard-Oxford race, and Colin’s proposal that they row together. His brazen, unbelievable proposal, from Nick’s point of view – that he would row for the honor of a school that was sending him down, for absolutely no reason other than, well, honor. And he had done it, for what reason he would never know. Well, no, that wasn’t exactly true, either. It had stung him, that Colin would stand there and ask that of him, as though things like honor and pride had meaning, as though these were anything more than words that could be turned to possible advantage. As though he had expected Nick to live in the same skewed, twisted, fourteenth-century universe he did. Colin had appealed to a part of him no one, least of all Nick, had had any reason to suspect was there, and the first unselfish thing he had ever done had ended up being the most fun he had ever had. Of course, kicking Harvard’s ass had helped make it pretty fun, too.

That was when the toleration had begun. They would run into each other off and on, down at the boathouses, and they would even chat civilly. Occasionally they would row against each other, if no one else was around, and Nick relished that in particular. Rowing eights was fine, it was okay, but it was never the heroin-in-your-veins thrill that rowing alone was, especially rowing against an opponent as fast and as skilled as you were, and Nick had to admit that Colin was both. And once you got past the whole stick-up-his-ass thing, Colin was decent company, even if his ideas about the way the world worked were bizarre. Once, after a hard haul downriver, they had gone for a drink at the pub together, and Nick had found himself arguing political philosophy with Colin until two in the morning, and when the pub had thrown them out, they had gone back to Colin’s rooms, broken out the gin, and carried on till the sun rose.

So they had slipped into a friendship of sorts, and that was as far as it might have gone had it not been for the morning that turned out to be his last one at the boathouse. He remembered getting there early, just as the dawn was greying the water. He remembered reaching over to flick on the light-switch, and a gloved hand grabbing his wrist.

“What the—“ he had gotten out, and that was the last coherent thing he remembered before something heavy slammed into his gut, and then he was being pummeled, kicked and punched by what felt like thirty-nine guys but turned out to be just two, dark blurs in gloves and ski masks. It was after one of them had slammed his head against the side of a boat for the second time that he saw his opportunity, and his arm shot out and grabbed an oar and brought it back, slam! into his assailant’s groin.

If they hadn’t worked him over pretty good already, he would have had them then, but he was breathing heavily, and bleeding over his right eye so much he couldn’t judge depth very well. He had gotten in a couple of good jabs with the oar, but then they had wrenched it from him, and pinned him, and they were enraged by that time, eager to really make him hurt, and the thicker-set one had lifted the oar and brought its edge down, smash, right on his arm. Three times he had hammered his arm with that thing, and just when the pain rose like a red wall and started to suck him under, the other one grabbed the arm and yanked it backwards, pulling it clean out of its socket just as thug number one brought the oar down on the joint, and that was the last thing he knew other than his own screaming and the sound of a voice, Colin’s voice, shouting hoarsely, get the fuck off him, get off, you bastards.

Lying in the hospital, it had been clear to him that it had to have been Gareth and Lionel. Of course, their alibis were airtight, and no one would ever be able to prove it. But he knew. He had plenty of time to reflect on it, in the hospital, because it took three operations and seven weeks of therapy to repair the damage, and even then, he hadn’t needed the nice young doctor who eventually sat beside his bed and gently explained things to know the truth.

Almost he had known it from the first. Almost he could believe that that was the reason he had been sobbing in pain, writhing on the cold cement of the boathouse floor, his arm a bloody mangled pulp. Because he had known, known even then that it was all over. It was the memory he shied from the most, his own helpless cries, no no God make it stop oh please, Colin’s voice tight above him, the sound of Colin’s footsteps running for help. Tasting the salt of his own tears and the deeper tang of his own blood, hating them both.

Somewhere in all of that, between the operations and the therapies and the endless monotonous days of staring at the ceiling, the toleration became a friendship. Colin was his most regular visitor, after Geordie and Rona, but he didn’t jabber away nervously like Geordie, who didn’t know what to say, or stare at him stricken and silent, like Rona. Arguing with Colin – soccer versus football, democracy versus monarchy, Hume versus Nietzsche – kept him sane and anchored him to some sense of the Nick who had nothing to do with hospitals and operations, and he looked forward to those visits almost as much as he looked forward to his next dose of Percodan.

One morning Colin pushed open the door to Nick’s room to find him strained and silent, but he didn’t ask what was wrong; he tossed the American magazine on the bed and started in on the inanities of American popular culture, and waited. Nick kept his head turned to the window, and when he spoke, it was clear he hadn’t heard a word.

“Colin.”

“Yes?”

Nick turned to look at him. “No one here will tell me the truth. I’m not going to row again, am I?”

Colin wet his lips before answering, not flinching from Nick’s eyes in the pause. “No,” he said at last. “I’m afraid not.”

Nick closed his eyes and nodded. “Yeah,” he said softly. “That’s what I thought.” He frowned at the beige and aqua wallpaper on the wall opposite, and Colin didn’t try to fill the silence with chatter, or to ease the sting. “So tell me this. If the English are so damned culturally superior, how do you explain that wallpaper?”

________________

They released him three days before the end of Trinity term, and he was standing on the grey steps of the Radcliffe Infirmary thinking about calling a cab and wondering if he could hit one of the nurses up for some cash when Colin’s BMW had pulled up.

“Nice timing,” he had said, tossing his duffel in the back, masking the wince of pain the movement caused him.

“I was in the neighborhood,” was all Colin said.

He hadn’t just dumped him out of the car at Oriel, either. He had helped him get to his room, organized his meds on the windowledge, and even made him some tea. Nick was too tired to protest, and more than a little shocked at how weak he was. He watched Colin silently set his things to rights.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” he said.

Colin did look up at that, with the same look of concentrated thought that his face always wore. “I think there is a decent case to be made that it was, in fact,” he replied. “But if you think that’s why I’m making sure you don’t dehydrate or smother in your own dirty linen, you are mistaken.”

“Oh?”

“Drink.” He thrust the tea at him, and Nick sipped it gratefully. His head lolled back on the cushions before he finished it, and when he woke two hours later, he realized he had never even said thank you.

________________

But he was finding it hard to forget Gareth’s words, for all that he dismissed them. Does he let you suck his cock. Plays for both sides. And the words weren’t half as bad as the images. The images began to assault him at the worst times – sitting watching TV, or showering, or riding the train. Images of Colin doing things, things he would never allow Nick to see.

And it was ridiculous, of course, because Colin was straight. He’d never seen Colin so much as glance at another guy’s ass, or venture an appreciative comment about somebody’s shoes, or anything. He’d been engaged to marry Victoria, for Christ’s sake. True, he hadn’t dated anyone since Victoria, but then again, he himself hadn’t really dated anyone since Rona, and he was straight.

Except straight guys tended not to have the thoughts that Nick was now having. Really, not at all. It wasn’t so much images of Colin with a random guy – because that was not so much an appealing image – but images of Colin. Just Colin. It was just that he began to wonder, is all. Cool and collected Colin, unruffled Colin. Had he ever really let himself go? And what would he look like if he did? Would he look the way he did when he was rowing – his hair in his face, his pale skin sheened with sweat, his chest heaving, his mouth. . . see, this was going nowhere good.

And the images were nothing to the dreams. The images were random flashes that he could squash. The dreams, on the other hand, were long and sustained and hotter than just about anything he ever remembered having, even when he was fifteen and horny all the damn time.

It was when he woke up to wet sheets for the third time in a week that he knew he had a problem. The dreams were getting fiercer, and, he noted with dismay, more specific. Really damn specific. He had taken to avoiding Colin’s eyes at breakfast, making up reasons to go out by himself on weekends. Anything to cut down on the amount of time he spent with Colin. Anything to make the dreams go away. It wasn’t as if they were fantasies. They were torments.

The morning after the third wet dream, he cut out of the city early and headed over to Peter and Rona’s. With any luck, he would catch Rona alone, and if not, well, maybe he could take her out for a drink or something.

________________

“Talk about what?”

“Oh, spare me. And stop tossing those, they’re bad for the birds. They try to swallow them and choke. Now spill.”

Nick rolled his eyes and threw his pit on the table. “There’s nothing to spill. I just realized I hadn’t said hey in a while and thought I’d stop in. Just being friendly. How’s Peter?”

“You asked that already. He’s fine, I’m fine, we’re all fine. Oh! I had my first sonogram four days ago. I’ll torture you with the pictures if you want.”

“Cool. Does it look like Peter?”

“It looks like something the cat coughed up, actually. It’s a tiny white blob, but it’s our blob and we love it, and we won’t let the other little kids make fun of our blob. Nick.” She reached a hand over and stopped his knee from its nervous bounce. “Talk to me.”

He set his lemonade down. “Okay. Here’s the thing. I want to ask you a question, and I want you to be totally honest with me.”

“Okay,” she said warily.

“Completely, painfully honest. Can you do that?”

She nodded. “Shoot.”

“When we were together, did I seem. . . well, normal?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Nick, honey, you’re gonna have to give me more to go on than that.”

“What I mean is, things. . .” he gestured back and forth between them. “You know. Between us.” When she still looked mystified, he ran his hands through his hair. “Things of. . . an intimate nature.”

“Nick. . . are you asking me if the sex was good?”

“No! Well, a little. Yes. I mean. . . was it?”

She propped her feet on the opposite chair, laughing. “The sex was fine.”

“Just. . .fine?”

“Fine as in fantastic. Fine as in wonderful. Fine as in, the sex was the best part.”

“Oh. Okay. The best part?”

“That was really what you wanted to ask me?”

He sank his head in his hands, letting the weak sun warm the back of his neck. It had seemed like there was always sunlight in Oxford. Here, there was never any. That was what he missed about Vegas – the goddamn sun. Maybe he just needed a break. Maybe he just needed a month’s vacation to sit by a nasty concrete pool in Vegas and bake the brain fever out of himself.

“Nick?”

He raised his head. “What I really mean is, when we were together, did I seem sexually normal to you?”

To her credit, she didn’t laugh. But then again, she seemed to be giving it a little too much thought. “I would have to say. . . yes. On the whole.”

“On the whole?” He heard his voice break, and then she did laugh.

“I’m just messing with you. Nick, I’m trying really hard here, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. You didn’t wear women’s lingerie, you didn’t smack my ass and yell ‘tally-ho’ at orgasm, there were no stuffed animals involved. So I’d say, pretty normal, yeah.” She cocked her head at him. “What is this about?”

“Normal as in, boring?”

“Wow.”

“Wow what?”

“Wow, this must be exactly what Peter feels like when I ask him if I look fat. No offense, Nicholas, but you’re turning into kind of a chick here.”

He slumped in the uncomfortable wrought iron chair. “Thanks. That’s—that’s just great. Exactly what every guy having an identity crisis is looking to hear. Thank you very goddamn much. And by the way, you do look a little fat.”

“I’m pregnant, you swine. Oh come on, I was just teasing you. I’m sorry, okay? Now. Tell me about this identity crisis of yours.”

He fiddled with his aviator glasses on the table. “It’s probably nothing. All I’m curious about is, if you ever noticed anything unusual about me that might make you think. . I don’t know. Like if you suddenly found out, say, that I really did like to smack somebody’s ass and yell ‘tally-ho’ during orgasm, like if somebody told you hey, remember that Nick Di Angelo? Turns out he’s now one of those people that smacks people’s ass and yells ‘tally-ho.’ Would you say, ahh, that explains it, I always did think he acted a little bit like one of those tally-ho people? Or would you say, man, no, not Nick Di Angelo, I never saw that one coming?”

She finished off her lemonade and sighed, studying him from under her spiky bangs. Her newly cropped hair suited her, he thought, more than the long hair ever did. Made those too-intense eyes even more frightening. She caught him examining her and smiled. “No, Nick, I never thought you were gay.”

It took him a full half-minute to get his wind back and for the garden to stop spinning. “I—how did you—why—”

“Yes, I cracked your subtle code. Amazing. Put your jaw back on and let’s come inside.” She rose and brushed herself off, collecting the glasses and odds and ends. Of a sudden she stopped. “But that doesn’t mean—” She paused, biting her lip in a way that made her look fourteen.

“What? Doesn’t mean what?”

“That doesn’t mean,” she said carefully, “that just because someone isn’t gay, they won’t experience moments in their life – maybe even long moments – of really, powerful homosexual desire. Or that there’s anything abnormal in that.”

“Oh. Right. Sure, okay.”

“Oh, stop moping and come in and help me clear these things away before Peter gets home. I want everything to look nice tonight.”

“What for?”

“For the giant blow job I’m going to give him for not being you.” She ducked his well-aimed arm. “Hey, watch it! You can’t hit a pregnant lady!"

________________

So little by little he re-settled into his old patterns, and everything looked like it was going to be fine. Everything probably would have been fine, had it not been for Geordie’s party.

“Oh, fuck,” he said one evening, resting the phone back on his stomach as he watched TV. Colin was absorbed in his book and didn’t look up.

“What’s the matter?”

“That was Geordie.”

“I gathered.”

“He’s having a party.”

At that, Colin did look up. “Not another of those dreadful ones.”

“Well, he didn’t specifically say he was planning a dreadful one, but from the way he said ‘I can’t wait to see you both won’t it be splendid,’ I think that yeah, it’s another of those dreadful ones.”

“Christ.”

Nick grinned. Colin rarely swore, and it just made him grin for no reason when he did. “Oh, I don’t even want to hear it. Last one, you got to spend the entire evening sitting by the fire pontificating to Lady Prunelope Potchitt-Whose-it-heimer, while I never escaped from this broom closet by the bathroom where people kept pouring champagne bottles all over me and using my shoelaces to line their coke. I can’t wait to do it all again.”

“I hope Geordie won’t be too disappointed about my great-aunt’s funeral being on that exact day.”

“Worse luck. The party’s at night. Plenty of time to bury the old broad and get back in time.”

“The funeral’s in the Outer Hebrides.”

“Nice try, buddy. If I’m going, you’re going.”

In the event, it turned out to be one of Geordie’s not-so-dreadful ones. Not the insane press of people he usually had, for one thing. Marginally better liquor. He would have had an all right time, if it hadn’t been chock-a-block with rowers. Basically, it was a crew party. Not only had Geordie apparently invited everyone who’d ever rowed for Oriel, but there was a fair representation from Queen’s and Christ Church, even Jesus and Lincoln. And that in itself wouldn’t have been so bad except that, in order to get through it, he drank rather more than he usually did. He tried not to let it get to him, the endless stories about rowing, the anecdotes, the inside jokes, all the debris of a world he had shut himself off from.

It wasn’t that he had a problem being around rowers, at all. He just needed a fair amount of liquor to do it, because after a while the ache in his arm became an ache in his chest, and he would just want to smash something. Right on cue, someone started in telling stories about him, too. The great, the legendary Harvard-Oxford race of ’84. The mythical prowess of the greatest athlete ever to row for Oxford, Nick Di Angelo. And all the while he could feel his jaw growing tighter, could feel, too, Colin’s eye on him from across the room. He made his way out of there as soon as he possibly could, fighting through the crowd to the comparative serenity of the small terrace, to the cool dark. He leaned against the brick and shut his eyes, and didn’t have to open them to know the step that came through the glass doors after a few minutes.

They stood in companionable silence for a bit, and Nick was astonished to discover, from the particular axis of the terrace’s tilt, just how drunk he was.

“Are you all right?” Colin said at last.

“I’m great.” He shifted, cradling his arm as he always did when he was, in fact, not so great. He hardly noticed the constant dull ache of it, anymore. He continued to do his strength training every week, he took his meds when it got too bad, he was vigilant about the way he used and stretched the arm. “I just—” He broke off.

“What?”

“It’s just that it’s there all the damn time, you know,” he said softly. “I don’t need to come to a party and have—ah, hell. Sorry. I just had to get out of there before they launched into the—I just—” He stopped and scrubbed at his face. “Sorry. I’m a little drunk. I think.”

“Well. I for one don’t want to hear any of your self-pity, because my heart has been cleaved right in two. Prunelope, it turns out, did not manage to wait for me. She’s in your broom closet with the pudgy rower from Lincoln.”

“Fuck you say.”

“Indeed. Come on, let’s make one more pass through and then we can duck out graciously, I think. Geordie, alas, is indisposed under the coffee table with an astonishingly large-breasted young woman.”

So they stumbled out and into a cab together, and Nick enjoyed watching the dark slick of the streets unfurl and spin out from the cab window, and thought about Simon. He wondered if Simon had taken up smoking again. Simon had come to see him in the hospital once. After the Harvard-Oxford, Simon had begun to talk seriously to him about the Olympics, about the possibility of training for the games. Sure, they wouldn’t be for another four years, but he would be done with Oxford then. Nick knew for a fact he had talked to Colin about it, too. About rowing quads, or maybe eights. England’s last gold had been in 1912, and hell, if Oxford could avenge a twenty-five year grudge, then maybe there was hope for the rest of England, too. But then his arm had happened, and that had been the end of that talk. Or at least, the end of it when he was in the room.

“Easy there, Nick.” Colin was guiding him out of the cab, a steadying hand on his back, and he shrugged it off.

“’M fine. Just gotta go piss.”

Colin paid the driver while he fumbled with the lock, and the harsh yellow light in the bathroom sobered him up considerably. He splashed some water on his face and let it run into the sink, knowing Colin would probably be waiting to make sure he didn’t drown or something. Colin, who was never a messy drunk. He tossed the towel on the floor, just to spite him, and ran a hand through his wet hair.

Colin was in the kitchen, heating the ketttle for some tea. “You people,” Nick said, sinking heavily into the chair. “You think tea is the fucking answer to everything.”

“It’s not for you, it’s for me. I rather expected Peter and Rona, or should I say the Howards, to be there tonight. Is everything all right, do you suppose?”

“Yeah, fine. She’s just pretty tired these days, I think. Said she can’t stay awake past eight.”

“Mm.”

“Hey Colin.”

“Mm?”

“I’m thinking about going to Vegas. In a few months, when this term is over. I’ll have the summer, next internship won’t start until August. Whaddaya say?”

“What do I say to what?”

“Wanna come to Vegas?”

Colin looked up from his tea preparations at that. “Good God, no.”

“Oh, don’t be such a stiff. It’ll be good for you. You might even unbend a little. Who knows? You could win big at the tables. You might even get laid.”

Colin arched a skeptical brow as he poured the water. “Sounds lovely.”

“Be good for you,” Nick said again, and he didn’t protest when Colin pulled another cup from the shelf and poured him some tea, too. They sat in silence, but not an uncomfortable one. Silence was never uncomfortable, with Colin, mainly because he never seemed like he was paying attention, anyway. But of course, Nick had lived with him long enough now to know that he always was, even when he was studying the table, as he was now.

“Hey Colin.”

“Hm.”

“I never told you how I got into Oxford.”

Colin looked up from behind his tea, but didn’t say anything.

“I was just thinking about it, ‘cause you know. Vegas. Gambling.”

“You gambled your way into Oxford?”

Nick set his cup down on the saucer, still drunk enough to be careful with the movement, and ran a finger around the rim. He smiled thinly. “Partly. I—” he glanced up. “You don’t really want to hear this.”

“In fact, I do.”

“I’m just saying. This is the kind of thing people do when they’re drunk, tell stories they’ll regret the next day. I always hate that, when people get drunk and tell embarrassing stories like they’re somehow incredibly deep or meaningful, when the truth is they’re stupid and petty and just, you know. Sordid.”

“Yes. The confessional impulse. I suppose the drunk want to be reassured that they’re not as stupid and petty and sordid as they suspect they are.”

“Yeah. I need a smoke.” Nick lurched up and made his way to the cabinet where he stashed his cigarettes. “You want one?”

“Oh, why not. So tell me. How did you do it?”

He bent and lit off the stove, tossing the matches to Colin. “What, you don’t think I was smart enough?”

Colin just smiled and tilted back in his chair. “I suppose I was more curious about the money part.”

“Yeah. Well. Money was never a problem, in Vegas. Not for someone—” He stopped, and blinked at the floor, aware that this was not the sort of story you shared with anyone, ever, but wanting to tell it anyway. Maybe just to watch Colin recoil. So he could be angry with Colin, then. Angry with Colin, and not with Geordie and his stupid party, or Simon, or fucking Gareth and fucking Lionel, or his stupid fucking arm. “Forget it,” he said, sucking down the smoke. It had a metallic taste, like staples. He looked up and watched Colin smoke for a minute, as carefully and thoughtfully as he did everything.

“I hustled the money.”

Colin simply continued to smoke, and Nick frowned. “Hustled, as in—ah, forget it.”

“Yes, Nick, I know what ‘as in’ means.”

“So.”

“So?”

“So it doesn’t bother you, to be living here with a fucking—” even he could not quite get the word out. “I mean, look. I parked cars, all right? I was a fucking carboy. Little red vest, the whole thing. And I would park their cars, these. . . and sometimes they would tip me, when they picked their cars up. Really, really well. And sometimes, you know, they were looking for more than just. . .”

“A good parking job?”

Nick laughed. “Yeah.” He inhaled meditatively. “It was some good money.”

“Yes. I’ll wager it was.”

“This one woman.” Nick began, still staring at the ceiling. “Older, but man. Gorgeous. Hot. Sexy. I never stayed the whole night, you know. But this one—oh, man. And in the morning, there it was. A thousand dollars, right there in my lap. And I thought, what the hell. When am I ever gonna see a thousand dollars again? And so I took it to the tables.”

Colin sipped his tea. “And?”

“And six hours later I had fifteen thousand dollars.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah, ah. It was—” he couldn’t find what it was, and he couldn’t remember why he was telling this story that he did not, in fact, want to be telling. He had been thinking of the woman, the woman whose name for the life of him he couldn’t remember. And all the other women, some of whose names he did remember, and then there were the others, the ones who were not the women. Fuck. He lowered his head quickly, afraid those memories would show on his face. Memories of the others. What the hell had it mattered. Their money had been just as good. And they hadn’t insisted on the kissing, either. What the hell had it mattered.

“Nick. Are you quite all right?”

“Yeah,” he said, and his voice was hoarse. He was a two-bit fucking whore. He wasn’t a gambler, or even a hustler. Just a whore. He tossed his unfinished cigarette in the sink as Colin rose to put away the tea things. “Look,” he said. “Just—forget the whole stupid story.”

Colin was running the water in their teacups and didn’t answer immediately, but when he did turn to Nick, leaning on the counter beside him, his face was the same as it had ever been. “It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference, you know. What matters is what you did with it, not how you came by it.”

“Yeah. Well. That. . .” He meant to say something about how that was the kind of easy platitude someone with money might say, someone who had always had money, but Colin was standing right there, grey eyes intent on him, with that slightly crisp, burnt-toast-and-linen, Colin-y smell, and instead he put his hand on Colin’s arm and leaned in, inhaling deeply. Which might have been fine, easily explained away and all that, except then he brushed his lips against Colin’s jaw, and just as he aimed his mouth a little closer to Colin’s, Colin jerked away.

“Nick. What are you doing.”

It was the lack of question mark in Colin’s voice that made the bottom drop out of his stomach. Fuck oh fuck oh fuck. And then, “oh fuck,” he said aloud, and he jerked his hand off Colin’s arm. “Fuck. Sorry. Oh, man. I’m—” and then he caught Colin’s eyes, and the genuine puzzlement in them, and all he could think was, Gareth. I am going to fucking kill Gareth fucking Rycroft.

“Sorry,” he said again, completely, regrettably sober now. Colin didn’t respond, just continued tidying the table, putting things away, and then he was gone, out the door and through the sitting room to his bedroom, and Nick was still standing by the sink struggling for air. Fucking fucking fucking hell. So. It turned out Colin wasn’t the one who was a flaming homo, apparently.

________________

He rose early and spread his drafts out on the kitchen table, determined to at least get some work done. He was buried in his sketches, already dressed, when Colin finally rose and headed for the coffee. Coffee had been Nick’s one cultural victory; even Colin had to admit that there was nothing like coffee in the early morning for yanking you into consciousness, and his initial grudging acceptance of the coffeemaker on their kitchen counter had turned into grateful appreciation. He poured himself a cup and leaned over Nick’s shoulder, peering at the sketches.

“What are you working on?”

“You mean, what am I supposed to be working on, or what am I actually working on?”

“Both.”

“I’m supposed to be working on my term project for school, which is this completely uninspiring, I don’t know, multi-use office building or something. I don’t get very far with it because I slip into a coma every time I try to do anything with it.”

Colin leaned down and pushed the papers around, running his finger over a particularly elaborate sketch. Nick tried to ignore the proximity of his body leaning across the table, the looseness of his bathrobe.

“And this one?”

“That, is something I’m not even supposed to be working on. It’s a project my internship firm is working on. I’m not even assigned to the team working on it. I just—thought it was interesting.”

Colin picked up the sketch, frowning at it. “What is it?”

“It’s—ah, it’s stupid. For a re-design of an art gallery. I’m just playing around.” He snatched the drawing out of Colin’s hand and burrowed back into his large blank square of office building, pushing his glasses out of the way to scrub at his eyes. Colin stood and watched him for another minute, sipping his coffee, and Nick could see him cocking his head at the other sketch, considering it.

After a bit he shuffled out with his coffee. “It’s brilliant,” he said as he went out the door.

And life, pretty much as he had known it, carried on. Classes in the mornings, afternoons at his internship, weekends spent pub-crawling with Colin or Geordie or, less frequently, hanging out with Peter and Rona. London began to take the idea of spring more or less seriously, and the heavy grey of late winter thinned to the spare grey of early spring. There were even occasional patches of sunlight. He finished his dull-as-a-brick term project, half-assing it because it was stupid, and continued to play around with other sketches. He and Colin were okay, it seemed. Maybe he was a little more careful around Colin, a little less quick to assume they would be going out together every weekend. Colin had his Christ Church friends, his Eton friends. After all, they had their own lives.

What exactly Colin’s life consisted of, though, was still something of a mystery to him. He knew what he, Nick Di Angelo, was in London for: to get his degree, get a job at a top-flight firm, and make a shitload of money as fast as he could. But Colin, of course, had no need for money, and sure as hell no need for a job. He was supposed to be reading art history at the Cortauld, which was why they had taken this flat together in the first place – it was close to where they both needed to be. But what Colin was going to do with his degree, Nick had no idea. It was one of those impenetrable mysteries having to do with people who had grown up with money, he supposed. Himself, if he had been in Colin’s situation, he would never have gotten up off the sofa. Why bother, when you already had everything you could possibly want?

Rona was growing daily larger, and he was beginning to get nervous about her being out of doors by herself, lest she tip over, or spontaneously give birth, or something like that. He tried to drop in at least once a week, just to check on her, and when she took it into her head that she was going to give him a birthday party, he hadn’t objected. She had lots of strange ideas, lately. She had seized on the idea of a birthday party for him with all the coxswain’s tenacity he had once found so endearing, but now mainly made him want to bash her over the head with something.

“It’ll be fun!” she had exclaimed, and he had nodded quickly, with the same nervous smile that Peter wore all the time now.

“Just no balloons, all right?”

“Nick, please. Come on. I have a whole lifetime of balloon parties ahead of me. This is going to be a nice, civilized, grown-up party.”

“Oh, so you’re not inviting Geordie?”

But she was right, it was a fun gathering – a pleasant Friday evening spent curled up in Peter and Rona’s cozy drawing room, a fire to ward off the early-April chill, a bottle (or two) of really great Chateau Petrus, and some of Rona’s justly famous minestrone. There were even presents, though he suspected the tie Geordie gave him had been pulled from the back of his closet. But the theater tickets from Peter and Rona were a nice score.

“It’s to inspire you,” Rona said, grinning.

“Inspire me to do what?”

“To get a date, doofus. You remember dates? Like, with a girl?”

“Did you seriously just call me doofus? Jeez Rona, sometimes the Weehawken really shows through.” He dodged the sofa pillow she chucked at him, and was just opening his mouth to ask Peter about his latest business trip to Lyons (he suspected he knew where the Chateau Petrus came from), when Colin tossed something heavy and wrapped in newspapers into his lap.

“What’s this?”

“Birthday present,” he said, and got up to follow Rona into the kitchen, carrying dirty dishes.

Nick poked suspiciously at the parcel. “Hey, nice wrapping job,” he called into the kitchen. It felt like a crowbar, and when he pulled it out, at first that’s what he thought it was.

“What’ve you got there?” Geordie asked, and Nick frowned. It was a metal bar about the length of his forearm, but not steel. Something lighter, and sleeker. There were pivoting attachments on either end, with screws, and what looked like a handgrip in the middle. What the hell, he started to say, and looked up to see Colin in the doorframe, watching him.

“It’s an oarlock,” he said quietly. Nick looked down again at his lap, and it hit him, and he didn’t trust himself to look up again. Peter was reaching over to pick the thing up, hefting it.

“Oh, I see,” he was saying. “Very clever, that. So these screw things must go on the sweep grips, yeah? Look, Nick. There’s a one-handed grip right in the middle. Should be easy to row one-handed with this little device. Never seen something like this before. Never even thought of it, really, but it makes sense. Pretty lightweight, too. What is it made of? Graphite?”

“Titanium,” Colin said, but he wasn’t looking at Peter, he was looking at Nick, who still had said nothing. He ran a thumb across the cool slick bar, the carefully crafted grip, the rotating cuffs. The room was becoming very quiet.

“Nick,” Rona said. “Come on. Say something.” She cut her eyes anxiously at Colin, still standing in the doorway.

Nick lifted it, clenching and unclenching his left fist around it, testing the feel of it. “What—” he swallowed. “Where did you get this?”

Colin didn’t answer, but that was all right. He knew the answer already, and knew it wasn’t anything Colin would say aloud. Peter had never seen anything like this because there wasn’t anything like this. It had been custom-made, to custom specifications, and God only knew what it had cost. God only knew. He shook his head. What, or where—these weren’t the questions he wanted to ask. What he really wanted to ask was, why. Why, for the love of Christ, would Colin do something like this for him? He curled his fingers around it one more time, and felt in that grip what had just been handed back to him – the cool clean slice of scull into water, the smell of the river at sunrise, the ticking whoosh of the seat tracks, the way the oars feathered the dark water. He closed his eyes for just a moment, surprised at the unaccustomed sting behind them, and he opened them to see everyone still staring at him. He rose quickly, awkwardly, spilling the newspapers onto the floor.

“Be right back,” he muttered. “Gotta—just—” He didn’t trust himself with more, and pushed through the silent room to the bathroom. He shut the door and leaned against it for a while, and when he came back, Rona had brought out cake and sherry, and Geordie had put on some atrocious music that he must have brought with him – Bowie, or something— and the party was back to normal.

It wasn’t until later that night that he took the oarlock out again. He waited until they got home, and poured himself what was left of the whisky in the cabinet – yeah, it was Colin’s whisky, but after all he was the one who always bought the coffee, so it evened out in the end. He didn’t bother turning on the light. He just sat, sipping the whisky, looking at the sleek oarlock on the table, thinking, and didn’t even look up when Colin came in and stood beside him, looking at it, too.

“I’m sorry,” Colin said, his voice level. “It was presumptuous of me, I know.”

Nick frowned and turned. “You’re—I’m sorry, are you apologizing to me? You’re actually apologizing? To me? Oh, hell, Colin.” He scrubbed at his face. “I’m an asshole. I just—I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t. Thank you. Thank you for—hell, you know what you did. You know what this is to me. And it’s not presumptuous. Jesus. It’s—” He sighed. “I can see how my silence and total apparent ingratitude might be mistaken for, you know, total apparent ingratitude.”

He could hear Colin’s thin smile in the dark. “It’s quite all right. I didn’t do it to be thanked.”

“So why did you do it?”

“I did it because I’ve missed kicking your arse out there on a regular basis.”

“Kicking your ass. Ass. God. ‘Kicking your arse’ sounds pathetic. Why can’t you people ever get it right?”

“We were kicking the world’s arse, you know, back when you people were still wiping your asses with leaves and dirt.”

“See, it’s all about the imperialism with you people. The original Evil Empire.”

“Yes, I think resorting to Reagan is where you want to go with this argument.”

“Hey, man. Your country elected Margaret Thatcher, for God’s sake, so I would sit down and shut up if I were you.”

And just like that, they were back where they belonged. It was just that easy. He could feel his chest lighten and expand, and of a sudden he wanted to make everything right. “Listen, Colin,” he said, pushing up from his chair and stretching. “About the other night. After Geordie’s party. I’m really sorry.”

Even in the dark, he could see Colin’s face snap closed. “Sorry for what?”

“For, you know. What I did. I was just—”

“Drunk.” The hardness in Colin’s voice stopped him short. “You were just drunk, is what you were. Think nothing of it.”

“I wasn’t that drunk, Jesus, you make it sound like I have some kind of problem, could you be a little less judgmental, do you think?”

“Sure. Absolutely. No judgments applied. Now may we please not have this conversation, ever again?”

He didn’t need to flick on the lights to see that the tight line of Colin’s jaw matched his own. “Oh, yeah, Colin, you bet. We can just not talk about you looking at me like I was communicable, like I had a fucking disease. I think not talking about that is a great way to go, absolutely the best. Veddy veddy English, stiff upper, chin-chin old man.”

“What are you talking about? You’re the one who can’t even stand to be in the same room with me anymore! Looking at you like you were diseased—what the hell are you talking about? You were piss-drunk, Nick, drunk drunk drunk! What the hell was I supposed to—” He broke off, looking quickly at the corner of the room as though he had just caught sight of something, and frowned.

Nick measured and counted his breaths. Even in the dark, he could see the flush spatter Colin’s cheekbone. The hard tight knot that had resided in his stomach since his ill-fated conversation with Gareth all those weeks ago spread into his chest, shot to his arms, and tingled in his fingertips. He licked his lips, and watched Colin not looking at him.

“I’m not drunk now,” he said.

“Well, I’m beginning to wish I were,” Colin muttered, and Nick fought down a laugh. He took two steps in Colin’s direction—one, two. Just enough to put him in Colin’s space, and stood there.

“I’m not drunk now,” he said again.

“And again I would say, Nick, what are you doing?”

“I have no fucking clue,” he answered, and leaned his head in. He let his lips brush Colin’s jaw, scraping the end-of-day rasp. Surprising, that – the lack of smooth, the roughness of it. Different. Surprising, too, in what it did to him, the way it shot straight down him and curled up in a cold ball in his groin, and he felt the thrum-thrum begin in the pit of his balls. All this, and he hadn’t even kissed him. “Just so we’re clear,” he managed. “I seriously have no clue here.”

Colin’s voice was as hoarse as his. “And you think I do?”

“Colin,” he said, because suddenly he wanted to say the name, husk it against his jaw like that, and at the sound Colin turned his head, just a little bit, but enough for their lips to brush, to nudge, and the cold ball in Nick’s groin exploded. He dug his fingers into Colin’s waist – okay, another surprising thing, no curve for his hands to rest in, but that was okay, he could improvise – and brought their mouths firmly together.

This was the stage of a kiss, with a girl, where he would do a lot of resting of lips together, just gentle nudges and licks, sort of easing into it, finding his way, giving her space. But another surprising thing was that the arousal that he could normally control, that long years of practice had taught him how to control, spiraled away from him at this point, and he ate Colin’s mouth. Which must have been okay, because Colin’s fingers were digging into him, too, and Colin’s mouth was in his, and at the exact moment their tongues found each other, Nick knew there was no way he was getting his trousers off before he came. Knew it, because Colin’s ah God hard cock was rubbing right against his own, and while it would have been nice to think that he was moaning sexily in Colin’s ear, he knew he was grunting, simply grunting as he rubbed himself on Colin’s prick because he could not goddamn help himself, and in five seconds and the two steps between himself and Colin, everything he thought he knew – about sex, about himself, about the way the world was put together – was chucked out the window.

And now Colin’s mouth was at his ear, Colin’s arm was crooked around his neck, and maybe some of those grunts weren’t coming from him after all. “Holy fuck,” Colin said, and that was it, that was the point of no-return for him. He shoved off as hard as he could, which wasn’t, in the event, more than a weak half-stumble, and his arms still on Colin’s, he struggled for breath.

“Colin. Ah, Jesus. If coming—right here in the kitchen—is not—what you had in mind—”

“Shut up,” Colin growled, and slammed their mouths back together. Nick began an ineffectual fumble with Colin’s shirtfront, ineffectual because it meant stopping his hands from gliding up and down Colin’s body, from gripping and clutching everywhere he could get a handhold.

“Unnh,” he groaned, which was intended to be an actual articulate sentence, except just then Colin’s fingers found his ass and curled into it, pulling him closer, pulling their cocks in perfect alignment, bone against bone.

“Colin—fuck—”

They were scraping at each other, clawing, and then Nick had a flash of genius that maybe they should just unzip themselves, really, since undressing each other was clearly beyond them. He had his hand on his zip, freeing himself, but before he had his cock out, leaking into his hand and so hard it hurt, Colin had beat him to it, pulling them together again.

“Nick, Nick,” he was saying, and now oh fucking God now they really were cock to cock, and Colin’s cock was hot and smooth and hard and leaking all over him, no it wasn’t, it was coming, spurting thickly on him, and fuck fuck he was fucking Colin’s cock, riding him, spilling and spewing himself, and pushing them back into the counter, and he knew he had his head thrown back, his throat open on the kind of noise he would never allow himself to make with anyone else, not ever, only alone and biting the bedcovers, but oh fuck the hot light shot out of him like cannonfire, and he just couldn’t stop it.

He could actually feel the moment when his feet regained sensation and settled into the floor again, and had Colin’s fingers not been splayed against his back, he would have crumpled right there. They held each other up against the counter for long minutes, breathing into each other’s necks, and Colin was the first to find words.

“Well. That was predictable.”

Nick felt the laugh bubble up in his chest, and it was actually painful. How he had managed to strain his diaphragm for God’s sake, he had no idea, but apparently he had done it. “I think a shower might be in order here,” he husked. He began, shakily, to strip off come-spattered clothes and his sweat-soaked shirt, pushing everything off, and when he looked up he saw with a jolt that Colin was watching him, and he realized that here he was, naked. Naked in front of Colin. In front of Colin, whose limp still-purple prick was hanging out his fly, and whose eyes were most definitely watching him appreciatively.

“Maybe I should give you some help,” Nick murmured, and began to pull off the trousers, the underwear. He knelt to pull off shoes and socks, and rocked back on his heels, face to face (so to speak) with Colin’s come-sticky prick, and on impulse he leaned in and tried a tentative lick. Colin flinched and swatted at him.

“Good God, Di Angelo. Give me a minute, will you.”

“Oh?” He cocked a brow. “Need more time, huh? Must be a British thing, I guess.”

“Oh, do shut up.” He began to unbutton his shirt, shucking it off to reveal the pale muscled expanse of skin, and Nick’s throat was suddenly dry again.

“You know, for someone hoping to get laid, you say that quite a bit.”

“Do I,” he murmured, and once again beat him to the punch by pulling Nick in, but slower this time. The kiss lacked all urgency; it was sloppy and lazy and somehow more obscene for that, that without any sex in immediate view they would simply stand here, looping arms and necks about each other, exploring, tasting.

“Happy birthday, I think I forgot to say,” Colin smiled into his neck.

“Ah, you didn’t forget.”

________________

“Since when did you become such a devotee of regular washing?”

Nick smiled. “Since I’ve been having some. . . difficulties.”

“What sort of difficulties?”

Nick scooted closer, letting his hand plane the lines of Colin’s back stretched beside him. “Difficulties that involve lusting after my flatmate.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“As we used to say at Our Lady of Good Counsel catechism class, I’ve been having bad thoughts.”

“Now that I have trouble believing.”

“What, you don’t believe in my bad thoughts?”

“I don’t believe you were ever in catechism class.”

“But I was. Star of the class, actually. Knew my catechism backwards and forwards. Father Scarpetti’s pride and joy.”

“Mm.” Colin reached a lazy hand up to finger the medal that swung from Nick’s chest. “And what does the catechism have to say about this, I wonder?”

“Nothing good, man. Nothing good.”

“Mm. That’s nice.”

“Here?”

“Just there.”

“You know what I think?”

Colin’s face was cradled in his arms. “Mmm. What.”

“I think all those people who complain about how hard it is to be gay are just a bunch of slack-ass whiners. I mean here we are, we’ve been gay like what, four hours, and we’ve already mastered humping and hand jobs. Talk about your learning curve.”

Colin turned his head so he could see Nick. “Humping and hand jobs, hm? Whatever could be next?”

“Don’t know, man. Could be we’ll have to buy one of those magazines to find out, the ones behind the counter at the Pakistani market. We’ll get Geordie to run in and buy one.”

“Poor lad. I fear his testicles would never recover from the terror.”

“Nah, they haven’t dropped yet.” Thinking about Geordie opened up another, more perilous line of thought, like what the hell were they doing here, and was this the sort of thing he would ever need to have a conversation with Geordie about, and though he moved quickly to shut it down, he knew Colin caught it behind his eyes.

“Nick.”

“Yeah.”

“I was thinking we might go up to Waddesdon next week-end. Try out the new oarlock, if you wanted.”

“I bet you say that to all the guys.”

Colin’s eyes were grave. “I really wouldn’t know.”

“Really wouldn’t know what?”

“I’ve not exactly done this before, you know.”

“You’ve. . .” He blinked. “What do you mean.”

“I mean, this is not exactly familiar terrain for me.”

“Okay. Um. Define ‘this.’”

Colin turned over. “I suppose at the moment, I would define ‘this’ as ‘being in bed with another man.’”

Nick sat up, pushing back the covers. “Fuck,” he said.

“What?”

He scrubbed his hands through his still-damp hair and looked at Colin, who was frowning at him. “You’ve never done this before.”

Colin shook his head slowly. “No. Is that a problem?”

He flopped back. “Holy fucking shit. I thought—”

“You thought what?”

“Gareth said—”

“Gareth. What the hell are you talking about?”

“Oh, hell. A while back. Like a couple of months ago. I’m in the pub on Friday, it was, oh I forget, you were late or something—no, it was Victoria. Victoria called, and you didn’t make it to the pub. But Gareth did.”

Colin was propped on his elbow, brows sharply angled. “Gareth came into our pub.”

“Oh, yeah. Made a general ass out of himself, and I would like some credit for not beating the shit out of him right then and there, personally. Anyway, he was just—he—”

“He was just what?”

“He made some remarks about you.”

“About me.”

“Yeah.”

“What sort of remarks?”

“Remarks like—” He threw up a hand. “I don’t even remember. He implied—no, he said, that you ‘played for both teams.’ He said you were—I mean, he made it sound. . .”

Colin snorted. “I’m sure he did. Gareth is quite the closet case.”

Nick balled his fist and struck the sheets. “I knew it.”

“You know what Winston Churchill said about sodomy, don’t you? That is was impossible to get a jury to return a conviction on a sodomy case in England, because half of them didn’t believe it was physically posssible, and the other half were doing it.”

“Le vice anglais.”

“No, you cretin, that’s flogging.”

“Oh well.” Nick lay back and threw up his hands. “We should pace ourselves. We’ve got all weekend.”

Colin picked up his wrist and began absently stroking it. “Is that what we’ve got,” he said softly.

He watched Colin fiddle with his hand, taking the knuckle to his mouth and gently biting it. “I don’t know what the hell it is we’ve got here,” he answered, in the same voice.

“Then I suggest we spend some time finding out.” Colin inched closer and began a slow exploration of the side of Nick’s neck.

“Colin.”

“Mm.”

“Colin.”

He lifted his head. “You are destroying my suggestive segue. Do be quiet for a moment.”

“You’ve never done this before.”

“Are we on this again?”

“No. Just. . .” He closed his eyes and sank into the feel of Colin’s mouth nipping at his neck, Colin pressed up against his hip. “Listen. You should know,” he tried, before his throat closed on it. He swallowed. “What I was telling you before. About Vegas. About. . . how I made some money.”

Colin’s head was over him, his eyes large and intent. “Stop.”

“Hey, you take a whore to bed, there are some things you ought to know about.”

Colin’s eyes were grey flint, and the fingers pressing into his side were not gentle. “Don’t you ever do that again,” he said, in quite another voice. “You will not use that word in this bed, or this house, or in my presence, ever, full stop. Are we clear?”

Nick slanted his eyes. “I’m just saying. There are some things I did, and then there are some things I didn’t do. Just so you know.”

“All right,” he said softly. “So you’re saying, the educational magazines might not be such a bad idea?”

“I’m saying, we’re kind of in the same boat here.”

“The same boat,” he repeated, and Nick knew that Colin was thinking of the first time they were literally in the same boat, and of that race, and of the way their sculls had clicked and moved as one, that rhythm that was so hard to find and hold, that took a lifetime of discipline to maintain. How everything it had taken them three years to say and do to each other had somehow already been said and done in the three minutes of that race, and they were only now unraveling it.

Colin shifted so he was on top of him. “Too heavy?” he asked.

Nick shook his head. “Just right.”

________________

“Yes, lucky bastard, isn’t he?”

“Are you ever going to name him?” Nick asked Rona, who had this slightly drunk, blissed-out expression on her face.

“We have it narrowed down to two final contenders: Anthony and Walter.”

“Walter?”

“It’s my Dad’s name.”

He glanced over at Peter. “And is Anthony your Dad’s name?”

“It is.”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, I get the dispute here. But I just have one word to say to you, Rona: Wally. You name this kid Walter, he’s gonna be Wally, and he’s gonna get the shit kicked out of him on the playground.” The pink thing shifted and mewled. “I’m just looking out for you, little buddy,” Nick said softly, fingering the toe that emerged from the cocoon of blankets. “Your Uncle Nick has your best interests at heart.”

“Oh, whatever.”

Peter was launching into the story of how he got his name, and how his parents had fought for two weeks over which relative to name him after and on which side until one day his mother took delivery of a parcel from the new mailman whose name happened to be Peter, when Nick felt it. Just lightly, as he sat there on the sofa, with Colin standing behind him. Colin’s hand resting on his shoulder, a casual caress. Just a hand on his shoulder, and an absently circling thumb on the side of his neck.

Peter glanced over, blinked once, and there was only the slightest hitch in his story before he continued. Colin kept his hand there as they listened, a comfortable weight, and then after a minute or two removed it. And that was it. Nick didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until he felt the air rush back into his lungs, and it was then he realized that as well as being oxygen-deprived he was also hard. Hard, just from Colin’s hand on his shoulder. Hard, because all he could think of now was Colin’s mouth on him earlier this morning, of fucking Colin’s perfect mouth. He shifted and pulled the sofa cushion a little closer to his lap.

And that was the whole announcement, if it could be called that. That was the whole thing, and as much as they would ever need to say. They stuck around for a while after that, and when they were leaving, Nick bent and kissed Rona on the cheek, hugging her tightly. “Congratulations,” he said in her ear. “Really.”

“To you, too,” she whispered, squeezing his arm, and he hid his smile in her hair.

________________

It was the sort of event designed to give Colin a headache and put him in a foul mood for the rest of the weekend, but Nick felt that his presence might be a restraining influence, or at the very least, someone for him to talk to when Geordie was no longer intelligible company.

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” he had said.

“No, it really won’t.”

“Geordie likes you.”

“No, he really doesn’t.”

Nick planted himself between Colin’s knees as he tried, unsuccessfully, to read the paper. “Hmm. Whatever can I do to make it up to you, then?”

Colin peered around the edge of his newspaper. “Ah. I begin to see your point.”

So the three of them had headed out on a Saturday night, and along about the fourth pub Geordie became un-shut-up-ably talkative and manic, and Colin took to studying the middle distance as he drank his whisky, and by eleven, Nick had managed to negotiate Geordie down to just one more pub. He was eager to get home, anyway – it was the week before term exams, and he’d been aching for some decent sleep all week. Sharing a bed with Colin was not exactly conducive to rest. He would wake up to piss, or just to roll over, and there stretched next to him would be this fucking unbelievable being, blond hair silvered in the moonlight, sheets stretched tight over his midsection, and then Nick would have to crawl on top of him and start licking him, beginning with whatever was closest to hand. Or it would be six a.m., and he would be trying to eke out a few more minutes before the alarm, and all of a sudden there would be this warm weight moving down his body, and a mouth closing on his dawn-stiffened cock. Those were the times he had no control, as Colin well knew. Those were the times he grabbed Colin’s head and fucked that gorgeous mouth until he bled come. And then, like this morning, he would roll over and pull Colin with him, and Colin would climb on top of him and fuck him, hard and fast.

“Nick? I said, Nick? Are you listening at all?”

“Yeah, I’m listening. Tits like snow-covered Alps. I’m with ya, man.”

Colin’s eyes skated across the table and held his, just a moment, as if he knew exactly where Nick’s thoughts had been, and Nick had to look away because if he didn’t, if he made the mistake of holding Colin’s eyes in public for just a half-second too long, he would, inevitably, get hard. It was pathetic.

Geordie launched into another disjointed story about his latest conquest, or maybe it was somebody else’s, and Nick scanned the pub. At the table just opposite them a man had his arm around a woman, just resting lightly on her back, and he looked quickly away. He had to be careful, he found. He’d never been much of one for pawing at someone in public, but so often it seemed so natural to reach out and touch Colin – at the market, on the tube, just walking down the street – that he knew he was going to make a mistake someday. Which was all right, it was fine, they weren’t trying to be all closeted or anything, it was just a matter of making life easier. Of keeping private things private. And in a large, over-loud London pub on a Saturday night, it was also a matter of knowing where you could make such a mistake, because if you chose the wrong place, you would end up getting the shit beaten out of you.

“Listen, Geordie,” he said, leaning forward to be heard over the increasing din. “Why don’t you let me get the tab for this one, and let’s head outside for some fresh air.”

“Oh, brilliant! Hang on, I’ll just get another—”

Nick slipped out and to the bar before Geordie could bankrupt him anymore. No luck; the press of people was becoming insane. He headed to the back of the bar, where he thought he saw an opening, trusting that Colin would collect Geordie and get him out the door. He was just within a few feet of the barmaid when he saw it, and he wanted to laugh out loud.

Gareth. Gareth fucking Rycroft, huddled in the corner over what was definitely not his first beer, a crew of his tight-assed, snot-nosed mates around him, Lionel among them. Nick grinned. Oh, this was too good. Just too good. He slipped the barmaid a twenty and headed over to Gareth’s corner. No question Gareth had failed to notice them; the pub was big and crowded, and they were tucked away back here, anyway. Nick put on his most winning smile, the one that had always gotten him the big tips in Vegas, and sauntered up to the table. Gareth’s back was to him, and he didn’t turn until Nick slid an arm around his shoulders and leaned in.

“Gareth. How the hell are you, man?”

The table went dead quiet. Bunch of terrified little toffs, probably afraid he’d make a scene. Lionel was probably pissing himself. Nick’s grin widened.

“Ah, Gareth, man, you never called me. What’s up with that? I loved our night together. You’re an animal, baby.” And he leaned down to brush his lips against Gareth’s cheek, counting the revulsion of actually touching Gareth well worth the quiver of horror he felt in Gareth’s shoulder as he gripped it.

“Di Angelo,” he got out through gritted teeth. “What the hell are you—”

“Ah, no worries, man, no worries. I really just came over to answer your question.” Gareth shot a panicked glance at the rest of the table, and Nick gave a little laugh at their slack jaws and wide eyes. “You remember, the question you asked me?”

He could see the trickle of moisture start at Gareth’s hairline, and he lowered his voice to a sexy husk as he bent down to speak right in his ear. “You better believe I swallow. All the damn time. As much come as he can give me, and damn, it tastes so good. I suck his cock morning, noon, and night, and I can’t get enough of it. And then I fuck him. It’s so good, Gareth, so fucking good, and I have you to thank for it. It’s all you, man. So thanks.” And he landed a wet kiss right on Gareth’s cheek. “Too bad you’ll never know just how good it is.” He looked one more time around the table and clapped Gareth’s back. “You call me anytime you want, baby. I’ll be waiting.”

He laughed and slipped back into the press of people, not waiting for the shock and horror to wear off and maybe turn into something uglier. He slid quickly through the crowd and out onto the pavement, where Colin and Geordie were waiting. Colin looked up.

“Everything all right?”

Nick took a deep breath of the stale night air of the city and grinned. “Everything’s great. Couldn’t be better.”

Geordie had begun to wilt against the side of the pub, and he hoisted him up and onto his feet, ignoring his protests. “Come on, man, let’s get you home.” And as they walked, Geordie stumbling ahead, he slipped an arm around Colin, who shot him a startled but not displeased glance.

“Couldn’t be better,” he said again, and laughed.

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