The Bruise_Black Sky

by John Wiltshire

  Nikolas closed his eyes and prayed to a god that had been punishing him since he was ten. Nope, he was apparently still angry. The three-hundred-pound man’s seat was in the middle of the row of three. Next to Nikolas. He had the grace to give Nikolas a slightly embarrassed smile as he tried to lift his cabin bag up into the overhead locker. He was sweating badly. He managed to squeeze in only by the expedient of lifting the armrests on either side of his seat. Fortunately for Nikolas, the man could occupy the empty seat in the aisle as well—until the man’s wife arrived. She needed all her seat. That was fairly obvious.

  Nikolas twisted away, his back forced against the opposite armrest, and everything eased in his direction and filled the spaces, rolling and settling. None of them could get their trays down, not that Nikolas intended to eat anyway. It would have been difficult with his knees under his chin. It didn’t put his companions off their meals, however.

  Although Nikolas didn’t intend to eat or sleep, even he occasionally had to piss. He never made a big deal about it, and Ben once accused him of not having bodily functions at all, but he did. Five hours into the flight, and they were beginning to sit up and demand attention. Six hours, and he was contemplating having to literally climb over the seats. The husband and wife physically could not get up to let him pass, so what else could he do? Seven hours, and he did, apologising to the startled family in front, but going forward over their seatbacks, swinging past their children and out into the aisle.

  He had just determined to spend the rest of the flight walking around when they hit turbulence, the seatbelt signs came on, service was suspended…and everyone had to return to their seats.

  On the flight from Changi, however, he missed his previous companions.

  At first, he’d welcomed the mother and young daughter who’d sat next to him. He was in the aisle this time at the end of a middle row of seven. When no one was passing, he got to stick his enormously long legs out into the blessed space. The mother gave him a very swift assessment, saw he’d probably need reanimating before he could molest her daughter, so she allowed the tiny scrap to sit between them, thus giving them both some much needed additional room. The girl was about six, he reckoned, and a delightful companion (silent, watching movies)—until they’d hit some turbulence.

  Nikolas was pretty good about vomit. He’d seen a lot of it in his time, often from Ben, and it never put him off Ben for long. However, he’d never had to live through the scene from The Exorcist that followed the rough air and a severe dropping of the plane. The girl tried to warn her mother, who was asleep, and then, in the absence of finding anything better to catch her sick, used Nikolas. She turned and spewed a vast stomach full into his lap.

  When they arrived in Christchurch, the snowplough was broken.

  They diverted to Auckland. Everyone missed onward connections. Nikolas had to wait six hours until he could get a flight to Dunedin.

  Dunedin had been too foggy to approach, so they’d had to turn back and land at Christchurch, which was now clear of snow.

  They had to wait another seven hours for Dunedin to clear.

  They were offered free tickets to the Antarctic centre, which was only a short walk across the car park. Would he like one? (Why was everyone standing so far away from him?) He took a look outside the window at the snowstorm and assumed they were joking, so declined.

  He finally arrived at Dunedin International Airport, carrying his duffle across a blizzard-swept runway.

  A man was holding a sign that said: Bronislavic. It was close enough. He got in the bus, and within ten minutes had been asked where he came from, what he did and how much land he had.

  He pretended he didn’t speak English.

  They’d driven then into Dunedin to pick up the other men who’d managed to arrive before the fog had hit and who had, consequently, been holed up in a hotel, waiting for this final straggler.

  For one moment, as they’d crested the hill with the favela-like panorama of Dunedin ahead of them, Nikolas thought they’d gone a little over the top with the post-apocalyptic set. Then he remembered with a frown that they didn’t film After the Wars in Dunedin. That was in Louisiana.

  He assumed there was another dystopian movie being shot.

  They collected the other three bodyguards, who Nikolas was relieved to discover he had not last seen unconscious on a floor in LA. They were all ex-army. Another good sign.

  Five hours later, their driver informed them they were entering Paradise.

  Nikolas definitely was because he could see Ben Rider-Mikkelsen, a head taller than everyone else around him, too beautiful to be real.

  And alive.

  That was the most important thing.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  By lunchtime on the third day of his arrival on set, when he was fully recovered, washed, shaved, and immaculate as usual, Nikolas put them in lockdown. Which wasn’t as dramatic as it sounded, as there was only one road into Paradise and it ended there. Beyond Paradise was the Antarctic, with some exceptionally cold ocean in between. Anyone who came to this tiny settlement had to come in on the one road. Now, no one came through without ID, even the residents. They didn’t seem to mind, because Nikolas was using them to beef up his force and was paying them well.

  They all had guns and vicious-looking pig dogs.

  He’d achieved his aim of getting onto the set and into the crew without his relationship with Ben being known or suspected. To do that, he’d had to keep to his assumed identity of a slightly down-at-heel ex-soldier who needed the job.

  Now, however, he was freer to use his own resources on the side to bump up the level of security the company was apparently willing to provide.

  After lunch that day, he told Ben he would be away for the afternoon.

  Ben, naturally, wanted to know where he was going, and Nikolas admitted that he was taking a helicopter across to the mountains on the other side of the lake—that he wanted to find the place the photographer had lain watching Ben and see what he could discover.

  Ben pondered this for a moment.

  Nikolas saw the cogs slowly turning, could almost read Ben’s thoughts. He could stay there and be tweaked and prodded and stand around in the snow pretending to be someone else, or he could go on a helicopter flight into the mountains.

  Nikolas had a passenger on his trip. He’d hoped he might.

  They didn’t tell anyone except Ben’s assistant, so there wouldn’t be outright panic when Ben was discovered missing. They had no intention of him being refused permission to go. As Ben pointed out, the safest place for him to be was with his bodyguard.

  Nikolas felt Ben’s tension, his distraction, and suspected he had plans they get a little closer than bodyguarding entailed. It had been over two weeks, after all.

  They were picked up on the beach just outside Paradise and flown straight across the lake to the far shore.

  It occurred to Nikolas, as he watched the chopper skimming away over the unnaturally clear water, that if it didn’t come back for them, they were entirely stuffed. They had no survival gear with them and were effectively now out of reach of civilization, although they could see Paradise just across the lake. It was a sobering thought. He checked his phone. No signal. There was a surprise. There was no reception in Paradise either. Nikolas had brought a sniper scope with him and the pictures of Ben taken from this side of the lake, and together they made their way up from the pebbled beach to a small plateau above them.

  “I checked with the helicopter company and no one rented a chopper for private use the day these were taken, but apparently many station owners have helicopters and microlights.”

  “It’s possible he was dropped off by boat.”

  “Did you see a boat?”

  “No, and I would have, but he could have been dropped off, the boat could have gone back down the lake and then returned for him.”

  “Possible,” was Nikolas’s only sceptical comment.

  When they reached the plateau
they knew they’d found the spot where the pictures had been taken. Through the scope it was eerily easy to see the shore where Ben had stood that first day.

  “I thought I was hearing the mountains calling to me.”

  Nikolas made a circle with his fingers, peering through it. “Whilst all the time you were sensing a telephoto lens on you.”

  They swept away some of the snow and sat side by side, enjoying the body heat. “It’s possible the threat and the photographer here are not directly linked, Ben. It’s a theory I’ve got Kate working on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It occurred to me that someone could have photographed you and put the pictures up somewhere on a photo-sharing site. Whoever sent the threat saw them and used them. It’s possible seeing them triggered the need to repeat what he’d been doing with Oliver.”

  “Someone just happened to be over here on this inaccessible mountain range with a camera with a telephoto lens?”

  “No. They were stalking you in a different way. Peter Cameron’s assistant told me it happened a great deal when they shot a film here before—locals selling photographs of the stars. One of the men I have guarding the road says he and his uncle regularly hunt across these mountains—they aren’t inaccessible at all. You simply have to know the trails.”

  “Why would someone make a death threat, anyway? I can understand someone getting obsessed with a celebrity, but how can that turn into this? I just don’t understand it.”

  “I have an obsession with the unattainable. I have to eliminate what I cannot attain.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s what a killer once said. He stalked and shot an actress. He claimed to love her, but when he saw her in bed in a scene from a show she was in, he went to her apartment and shot her. Because he couldn’t have her.”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “I would say the unattainable just about sums you up nicely, Ben.”

  “Except to you.”

  “Hmm?”

  Ben sighed. “Nikolas…”

  Nikolas turned from his deep study of the lake and the distances and the possible threats to Ben, and saw Ben’s expression. He smiled and took him down into the icy whiteness. It wasn’t the first time they’d made love in the snow, but at the end of two weeks’ abstinence, it was like a first time in many ways.

  Nikolas wouldn’t like to admit to anyone that Ben’s new celebrity status added something to the pleasure of fucking him, because he got a great deal of enjoyment out of that already. But it was there, nonetheless—that frisson of excitement that he did get to have the unattainable. That millions of people might come to worship Ben, follow him, want him, but only he got to slowly part Ben and enter him, only he got to see Ben’s face screwed up with concentration as he was about to come, only he got to see Ben’s warm semen shooting out and melting the snow. And only he got to have Ben inside his body. The unattainable was all his. It was enough to kill for. He understood such divergent passion very well.

  When they’d both had their turns, they took a break, entwined, lying on Ben’s clothes and with Nikolas’s over them, not much, but just enough. Nikolas was working his way slowly down his conveniently attainable one, kissing into places no one else was allowed. When he reached Ben’s waist, he paused. “You are too thin.”

  Ben nodded absentmindedly, staring up into the vastness of the New Zealand sky. “Don’t stop.”

  “There’s also the other kind of stalker psychology…” Nikolas heard Ben curse in frustration and carried on his slow progress to where they both wanted his mouth to be, at the same time as murmuring, “Kill a celebrity because you are in love with another who threatens them in some way.”

  “That can’t apply here. Everyone loved Ollie, and I’m not threatening anyone. Keep going.”

  “Don’t be so naive. For each one of these people who succeeds there are hundreds left by the wayside who didn’t get roles.”

  “You think someone else was to play Yoshi in the Wars, but Oliver took his role? And they don’t want me doing this because they now want to play him? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, not much.” Nikolas had to be silent then for Ben was not small and taking him in took application. He wanted to focus on the taste and feel of Ben’s cock in his mouth anyway. No one else got to do this either, so he enjoyed imagining the envy and fury he would provoke. Especially when Ben hardened, swelling as he licked and played, arched and moaned for him, and then came, fast release shooting in the crystal-clear air, Ben groaning and pulling his hair, and the snow melting around them under the dome of blue.

  Nikolas sat up and regarded Ben, trying to see him as others might. He trailed his finger through the mess on Ben’s stomach, making the snowmelt and semen glisten in the valleys of his ridged abs.

  Ben rose up suddenly and seized him in a fierce, possessive hug. “I only left you because I love you. I’m so fucking dumb.”

  Nikolas hugged him back, breathing in the warm scent of his skin in the sharp, cold air. “And I don’t tell you things because I love you, and then I don’t tell you I love you either. So I’m even more—fucking dumb—as you so eloquently say.”

  Any reply Ben might have made was lost as the distinctive buzz of the light helicopter came over the lake towards them. They dressed hurriedly.

  Before he could begin to descend off the little ridge they’d nested in, Ben caught Nikolas’s sleeve. “Thank you, by the way. I haven’t said that yet. I was jealous that I couldn’t dance with you in public—have everyone see what we were. I was, I don’t know, thinking about some kind of proposal, I guess. That’s why Kristina hit me so hard. She just came out of nowhere and claimed that relationship with you when it meant nothing, and I couldn’t when it meant everything. But I’m such an idiot—I forgot. I genuinely forgot that I don’t need that kind of shit from you. I have this.” At Nikolas’s puzzled frown, he clarified, “I have the fact that you nearly killed yourself to get to me. You stepped off that bus without a single mask in place, and I think I saw the real you for the first time.”

  Nikolas was still mulling over this when they landed back in Paradise. He’d been unshaven, exhausted, starving, and wearing vomit-soaked clothes he’d rinsed out in an airplane basin and then been sitting in wet for sixteen hours.

  He could only agree with Ben, therefore—Ben was an idiot.

  §§§

  Although they were unable to admit to their more intimate acquaintance, they were still forced to constantly be in each other’s company. This gave Ben the unexpected but very welcome opportunity to see Nikolas through other people’s eyes for once. It wasn’t something he often got to do. Their friends didn’t discuss Nik with him much, as Nikolas was their boss, and they knew how Ben felt about him. Because Yuri Bronislav was Ben’s bodyguard, Ben became the recipient of much gossip and speculation about the Russian. Ben’s makeup assistant had tried to chat him up. She was very, very pretty and vivacious. She said she’d been left feeling as if she’d tried to seduce an alien wearing human skin. The alien had been…curious…interest piqued, but she’d felt no emotional connection at all. Her disaster hadn’t put her off, however. She wanted him even more now. It was a challenge. She was changing strategy, she said…did Ben have any ideas…seeing as he was around the guy a lot? Ben didn’t, as he’d never had to seduce Nikolas. Usually he was recovering from Nikolas’s endless craving for him.

  This led to an interesting development for Ben. Both he and Nik were well aware that they came at this relationship slightly differently. Nikolas was the one who had the constant sharp edge of lust for Ben and would seize him at random moments of the day, needing sex to relieve the stimulation of just watching him, being around him. Ben’s desire for Nikolas was more softened by romantic yearning…love. His passion for Nikolas was constant, but he was almost as happy to curl on the sofa with him, or have him in the kitchen while he cooked, as he was to tumble into bed with him…almost. This is the way they had been from the very beginnin
g when they’d met in hotel rooms for sex, Ben always wanting more—even before he’d actually put these confused thoughts into words.

  But now, seeing Nikolas through these other eyes added a stab of hunger for Nikolas’s body that wouldn’t wait for romantic moments to be assuaged. Perhaps because he was missing his day-to-day life with Nikolas, he returned to his more carnal need for the man. It didn’t help that the makeup assistant enlisted her friends to help with her campaign, and they discussed strategy around Ben as he was in the chair or on set when they hovered around him, tweaking and plucking. The object of this intense scrutiny was always there, of course, just off to one side, monitoring him, so he had the opportunity to observe Nikolas whilst the women dissected him and his strange fervency. It was fascinating for Ben. Why was all of Nikolas’s focus on him and not on them? Why? Ben began to see and appreciate the true depths of Nikolas’s feelings for him. Because, of course, Nikolas could have had any of these women anytime he wanted—but rather than all of the beautiful, clever, successful people in the world he could have, Nikolas only wanted him.

  For the first time in a long time, Ben seized Nikolas at odd, inappropriate moments, desperate because they were never alone for more than a few minutes. But occasionally, Ben would wander into an empty makeup trailer or catering tent, and Nikolas would be with him, and Ben would grab him and kiss him fiercely, all his hunger and longing rising until they could hardly breathe and had to break apart to pant before seizing one another again and exploring hard and fast with tongue and lips, until they heard someone approaching and separated, readjusting clothing, not making eye contact.