Blue Steel Chain (Trowchester Blues Book 3)

by Alex Beecroft

  It would be a relief to know. Whatever this was that was causing the doubt between them, it would be good to get it out in the open, known and dealt with. But really, James already knew he wasn’t going anywhere unless he was told to, so from a theoretical point of view, it didn’t actually matter.

  Comforted by that reflection, he re-dressed in his clothes from yesterday and went downstairs to see if he could find a large pot of tea. There was a Monday-morning bustle about the kitchen. Molly, in her waitress uniform, was buttering toast. Carol frying eggs, bacon, and mushrooms in an industrial-sized frying pan. Zara, tucking the last fringes of her hijab in at the back with practised fingers, was reading a case file laid on top of her smart black briefcase. They all looked at him and smiled, but he felt self-conscious, knowing that he was the subject of some shared secret. Knowing that they’d obviously all been talking about him.

  “So what’s this we hear about you being thrown out?” Carol set a plate of fried breakfast down in front of him, with the practised motions of a woman who made her living providing food.

  “Do you all tell each other everything?” he asked, disconcerted. They gave him a look back that he wasn’t sure he was interpreting properly but that probably meant Whyever not?

  Carol raised her eyebrows at him, to suggest he answer the question and stop stalling.

  James knew when he was beaten. “My partner Dave and I have been having problems for the past five years. I found out recently that he was cheating on me, and then I fell in love with Aidan. Dave—he’s a musician, you know—”

  “We’ve heard of him.” Molly put down toast in front of him, started in on her own breakfast with gusto.

  James sighed. “Of course you have. Well, I, um, I suppose I hadn’t been clear enough with him that we were over. I thought he’d have the decency to know better than to continue to treat my house as his home, but he came back from being on tour yesterday. He brought his groupies and his drug pushers and his . . . lover. He let himself in. I hadn’t changed the locks, you see. They had a party, they trashed my house, broke my things.” God, he didn’t know how he was going to tell Aidan about the bull-leaper, how badly he had kept the one present Aidan had given him—the present Aidan had made for him even though he knew he might be killed for it.

  “That was the final straw. I told him to take his sycophants and get out of my house.” James gave an awkward shrug. “Now I don’t want to have anything more to do with him, except through a lawyer.”

  How harsh that sounded. It gave him an unexpected thrill. So he didn’t keep giving way forever? There was a line that even he would not allow a partner to cross? That was nice to know.

  “And then he and his sycophants . . .?” Carol prompted.

  “Picked me up and threw me out instead.”

  Zara gave a huff of laughter, leaning on the back two legs of her chair, her court-shoed foot braced against the table. “Is your name on the deed?”

  “Yes. I inherited the house from my parents.”

  “Well then, there are many legal avenues you could take for redress—”

  He interrupted. “It’s okay, I have a plan. I mean to deal with it this morning.”

  A soft, amused sigh in the doorway drew his attention to the fact that Aidan was standing there, looking at him like a rescued princess looks at her hero. Normally, James would have said he was no hero, but after last night, after they took down the monster together, he was ready to clean up this city. After Piers, he was absolutely certain he could deal with Dave. He was almost eager for the confrontation before his victory-induced state of confidence ran out.

  Seeing James turn to look at him, Aidan’s smile grew warmer, self-reflective, and intimate. His hair was growing longer, into a mop of shaggy pale-brown curls highlighted with blond. The mess of it softened his face, and the lack of pain, the lack of fear, made him look younger, oddly dazzled and disbelieving.

  “You said you loved me,” he said, walking into the room as if buoyed by helium. Whatever the secret was that he had to tell, James couldn’t imagine it putting a dent in the way James felt about him right now—like he was the only person in the world, like James was privileged just to be able to reach out and touch the ends of his curls.

  Aidan drew him into a firm hug, pressing his forehead to James’s shoulder, as if to keep his mouth out of the way of any kisses. James had a qualm then, still conscious that something was wrong, still unable to add up what it was, but ultimately sure it didn’t matter. “I do. I love you, Aidan.”

  Aidan lifted his head and caught his eye. “I love you too.”

  Months of uncertainty, like weights on James’s shoulders, unlocked and fell away. Joy came rising up through him like a superpower—he could almost leap tall buildings and stop time with his thoughts. “You do?”

  Landing a little kiss on the end of his nose, Aidan grinned. “Yes. Yes, of course I do.”

  “Then move in. Move in with me . . . At least, when I get my house back. Come and live with me and be my love.”

  “Ahem.”

  There were other people in the room. He had forgotten that, and from Aidan’s startle it seemed Aidan had forgotten it too. James slid to Aidan’s side without taking his arm from around Aidan’s trim waist, so that they could face the rest of the household shoulder to shoulder.

  “That was not the important thing you had to discuss.” Zara looked at Molly.

  Molly rolled her eyes. “This is why we thought you needed us involved. Admit it, you were going to get swept away in the romance of the moment and ‘forget’ to talk about the important issue.”

  James was irritated enough at having his moment spoiled to cut to the point. “What important issue? Come on, then, tell me.”

  By James’s side, Aidan hunched up. His head came down and his shoulders rose as if to protect himself from a blow. His face was angled away so James could hardly see his expression, but the body was saying scared. He was silent for a long time.

  “Come on,” James coaxed at last. “It can’t be that bad, whatever it is. Unless . . .” He flailed for explanations, could only come up with scenarios he’d seen on the TV. “You’re not my long-lost brother, are you?”

  Aidan snorted and unwound a little. “You’ve got a long-lost brother?”

  “Well, I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake,” Carol cut in, putting a plate on the table for Aidan, starting to collect everyone else’s and dump them in the sink. “He’s asexual, that’s all. Let’s just have it out there and deal with it.”

  “He’s what?” James’s mind immediately went to protozoa. He had to assume that they were not saying that Aidan reproduced by splitting into two identical copies. “What does that mean?”

  He turned to Aidan for an explanation, but Aidan was once more curled in his defensive crouch. Confused as James was, he didn’t like to see it. He rubbed his hand up Aidan’s biceps to his shoulder, squeezed it reassuringly, felt a tiny shift of relaxation in answer, perhaps because the word was out and James hadn’t run yet.

  But then he didn’t know why he ought to yet.

  “The clue is in the name.” Zara drained her tea and got up to put the mug in the sink. “It’s formed like all the other orientations. ‘Homo’ sexuals are those people who want to have sex with people who are the same gender as themselves. ‘Hetero’ sexuals are people who want to have sex with people who are the opposite gender than themselves. So on the same principle of formation, ‘a’ sexuals are people who don’t want to have sex with other people at all.”

  “You’re saying . . .” James tried to wrap his head around this.

  “Zara, you used too many big words.” Molly was obviously mocking him, which he felt was a little unfair while he was in the process of grappling with unintuitive concepts he’d never encountered before. “She’s saying that Aidan loves you, but he doesn’t want to have sex with you. And not because he’s broken, but because he’s part of a set of people who jus
t don’t do sex.”

  Aidan scrunched himself down a little farther under James’s arm, and a wave of heat came off him where he must be blushing. His face was fully hidden now and his voice silenced. James’s instinct was to pull him close, reassure him that it was fine, he understood, he was perfectly all right with it.

  But he hadn’t quite got there yet.

  “Is that even a real thing?”

  Zara gave a sharp sigh as if she’d had it with people questioning her competence. “Look it up on the internet, why don’t you. Of course it’s a real thing. About one percent of people in the world are asexual, which means there are five or six in any concert hall, and millions, in total, all over the world.”

  Under his arm, Aidan gave a little jerk as if startled. Evidently the thought of there being millions of people like him was news to him too. He raised his head slightly, perhaps fortified by the knowledge that he wasn’t a lone freak. James knew how that felt, remembered the relief it had been to put a name to himself, to know there were other people like him out there, to not be alone.

  So apparently this was legitimate? His eyes wandered over the room as he thought, catching on Aidan’s breakfast, lying untouched in front of an empty chair. He flashed back to how often they had eaten together and how that had felt like a sacrament, how proud he’d been to be the one who got Aidan to eat again.

  He gave Aidan a little shove towards the table. “Your breakfast’s getting cold. Go on, eat something while I think.”

  It seemed to be the sign for the convocation to break up. Zara slid her papers into her briefcase and kissed Molly good-bye before struggling into her long coat. Carol applied a layer of powder and lipstick, picked up the cooler by the fridge, and left. Molly tugged at Aidan’s arm and between them, she and James managed to get him to sit and listlessly poke at the bacon with a fork.

  “I’ll wait for you in the hall,” she told Aidan. “We’ll walk into work together. Ten minutes, all right, tops. And it’s your turn to do the washing up.”

  Meanwhile James’s mind had ground slowly into gear. Suppose, for argument’s sake, that this was a real thing he simply had never heard of before. That was not so impossible—there were many things he had never heard of. So suppose it was true . . . Then much was explained.

  This explained why Aidan acted like he loved James but baulked when James brought up sex. He did love him, he just didn’t want to . . . How could that even work?

  “Do you hate me?” Aidan whispered, his gaze on his plate, as if he was afraid to even look at James for fear of what he’d see.

  Without thinking about it, James dropped into the nearest chair and took Aidan’s hands in his own. “Of course not. I love you. I told you that. That doesn’t change. I’m just. I’m just a bit. I don’t know what to think.”

  Oddly enough he was thinking of Dave—Dave fucking his way through every groupie who managed to force their way into his room. He didn’t love them. He and Steve had not loved James when they tried to use sex to make him shut up. So if sex could exist without love, it surely stood to reason that love could exist without sex. Different things.

  He looked at Aidan’s miserable hunched posture, the forkful of bacon he had speared and obviously didn’t intend to eat, and his heart ached. “You know,” he said, almost without thinking, “I’ve come to the conclusion recently that Dave was always a little oversexed. It’ll be a relief not to have to deal with that anymore.”

  The decision gained tributaries and speed as it went on, gathering up the thoughts of the past few months with increasing ferocity. He’d thought he had to give Aidan up so that Aidan could find someone he genuinely desired, but if Aidan wasn’t capable of desire, then that changed everything.

  James stood as the thought stiffened his spine, made him want to dance. It changed everything. If he gave Aidan up, Aidan wouldn’t find anyone better, wouldn’t find anyone he wanted more—which meant that James was not selfish in wanting him for himself. James was it for Aidan. He actually loved James as much as he was capable of loving anyone.

  “Really?” Aidan too had uncurled slightly, sitting up, searching James’s face with wide, hopeful eyes, as if this was very far from the way he had imagined the conversation going. “A relief?”

  James tried to imagine a future in which he did not make love to Aidan, but in which they nevertheless shared the same house and slumbered innocently in the same bed and woke up every morning with that same bone-deep contentment he had felt this morning. Then he imagined a future that had no Aidan in it at all. It was no choice, no contest.

  “I won’t deny that I think you’re incredibly sexy,” he said, just the thought of it enough to make his mouth go dry and all the blood rush south. He indulged it enough to reach out and slide his fingers into Aidan’s hair at the nape of his neck, but that was a bad idea. With James standing over him, Aidan’s mouth was about groin level and that put ideas in James’s head that he could tell from Aidan’s increasingly puzzled look had never crossed Aidan’s mind. Clearly there was going to be a lot of masturbation in James’s future, but after three years of Dave on tour, that was nothing new.

  Actually this asexuality concept made sense of so much—not least how a man kept as a fuck toy all his life could remain so oddly untouched. Piers had been trying to enslave a part of Aidan that he didn’t truly have.

  James’s lips curled with a slow smile as he moved past uncertainty and into conviction, and he dropped a tender kiss on the crown of Aidan’s head. “But sex isn’t everything. I love you because you’re beautiful and caring and an incredibly strong person to go through so much and to come out of it still so generous and loving. I’m not losing that, not for anything.”

  A moment’s horror brought tears to his eyes. What if Aidan was the same kind of self-sacrificial fool that he was? What if he refused to be part of James’s life for James’s own sake? Desperation shook his voice, made him urge Aidan out of his chair so they could lock themselves together once more in the hug that was becoming their thing. “Say you’ll still be mine? Move in with me, please?”

  Aidan’s embrace tightened around him until he could hardly breathe. He felt Aidan’s sob of laughter in the cave of his own lungs, as though he was the one devastated by unlooked-for happiness.

  “Aidan?” Molly’s voice echoed from the hall. “Time to go.”

  Aidan drew back, his face radiant despite the puffy eyes and inflamed nose. He sniffed hard and laughed again, grinning. “Yes. Anytime. If you’ve still got a house to move into.”

  James found himself sniffling too, equally watery, equally glad. “Well, now that I have a good reason to exert myself, that can be my quest for the day. I shall go forth and win you a kingdom while I’m still feeling like a hero.”

  “You don’t need to do anything to prove yourself to me,” Aidan said quietly. “You’ve been my hero from the start, when you couldn’t find your glasses, but you still smiled at me. That’s when I knew.”

  It had been so long, rubbing along with Dave barely noticing him—he’d forgotten what it was like to have someone look at him as if he was the beginning and end of the world. He’d forgotten how incredibly, unbelievably lucky that felt. A long moment passed in awe, and then they both looked away, embarrassed.

  “Good luck,” Aidan said, as they parted at the door.

  James said, “Thanks,” automatically, but today he knew he didn’t need it. Today he was unstoppable.

  “I wondered if you would be back.” Peggy opened James’s front door to him and stood in it with her hip braced against the jamb. She wore a silver band T-shirt with black roses all over it in echo of her tattoos, and ripped skinny jeans, but she managed to carry the look off with authority, even at nine thirty in the morning.

  James powered on, wanting to get it done. “I thought it would be you I had to deal with if I came at this time in the morning. I imagine everyone else is still in a stupor, aren’t they?”

  She quirked a smile. “Well, you mi
ght be right about that.”

  “I want you to have a look at this.” James had been to the bank already this morning. “This is a photocopy of the deeds to this house. The original is in my safety-deposit box in Barclays in the High Street. As you can clearly see, this house is mine. Dave owns no part of it and has no right to be in it unless I give him permission.”

  There was no doubting it. She was most definitely entertained. She read the copy through carefully and then handed it back to him. “Okay, I see what you’re saying.”

  “He no longer has my permission to be here.” James laid it out coldly, surprised to find how much he liked knowing he had power, using it to stand up for himself. “So I’m offering you two choices. Either you can persuade him and his little toadies to leave now, peaceably, with no fuss, or I can call the police and have them all publicly thrown out.”

  Peggy folded her arms over her chest and grinned. “Well, that would be quite some publicity. Can you imagine how much the fans would hate you then? You ready for the death threats?”

  Perhaps a week ago that would have given him pause, but there was no death threat quite like a murderer coming for him with a knife, and if he’d coped with that, words were nothing.

  “Are you quite sure none of the groupies in there have lied about their age?” he countered. “Even if they haven’t, do you really want the police dragging sixteen year olds out of Dave’s bed, with photographers taking snaps of the whole debacle? I bet that would do wonders for his public image.”

  Her scarlet-painted mouth twisted, and then she shrugged and stepped back, gesturing for him to come inside. “The whole group are all a bunch of little shits,” she agreed. “This business has a tendency to do that to people. You going to wait while I arrange hotels and transport or are you going to just dump them in the garden to sleep it off?”