by Amy Lane
Malcolm stopped for a moment, his mouth dry.
“I’m, uhm . . .”
The boy’s hand was on Malcolm’s chest, and suddenly, Malcolm was starved for contact. The vodka had made him sluggish, perhaps, or it had opened his blood vessels up to where the touching was a thing he craved, but that hand, it traveled slow and hard across his pecs, from his right nipple to his left, and then up to his throat.
“Oh, yes,” the boy said, and for a moment Malcolm was glad that the boy was short too. He was short, Malcolm could overpower him, and that would be that. “I bet you’re a right good hand with a crop, yeah?”
Malcolm swallowed. “No,” he said, his throat dry. “I actually bottom.”
He sidled past the surprised boy, past the whole wall of bodies for sale, and out the other side. His flesh cringed at the thought of those empty blue eyes, that knowing touch when he hadn’t wanted it. He hadn’t wanted it. He didn’t want it.
The room spun as he wove his way in and out, and not even the cold air, slapping his face like an enraged Dom, could clear the miasma of liquor and revulsion from his head.
This was not his place anymore. He was ashamed it ever had been.
Owen didn’t realize he’d left his phone on the table until Oliver walked it to him as he was getting trounced at table tennis by Emmaline. Her husband watched them play, knitting on his wife’s project because, as he said as he sat down, it made sense to share the load since she was giving the sweater to his mother for Christmas.
Owen had no way to tell them that they were fucking adorable without sounding foolish or condescending or just really really young, so he satisfied himself with grinning and trying not to gloat over how hard Ping-Pong was not going to be.
It turned out these people played this game every damned day. They lived it. They discussed politics over it (or at least they had when Owen was waiting to play next), and they talked about their day. Owen found out that Ollie was in love with an older woman (twenty-two!) while Ollie played with his mum, and that George was up for a promotion, but that Emmaline’s hours were so long now that he didn’t want to spend any more time apart.
He learned that George’s firm had pitched in for part of his salary so that the co-op, with all of their nonprofit businesses, might finally have some decent tech.
He learned that Ollie’s older sister, Debbie, was visiting her boyfriend’s mum for the first time, and that she texted her own mum every day, asking for advice.
He learned that these people were nice as hell, and he still found himself longing for that shitty little pub where Malcolm had found him. He wanted to tell Mal about the table tennis, and challenge his irritable Brit to a game. Malcolm would probably cream his ass too, and not in the sexy way, but that was Malcolm, who never let up, who probably could have the whole world on a platter, dancing to the impatient tapping of his shiny Italian loafer.
Malcolm who, for all his failings, for all the hubris that had led him to try to get Owen to change a job he’d only had for a month, still had Owen’s best interests at heart.
Hell.
“Owen,” Emmaline protested. “You let that one go right past you.”
Owen grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, Emmy. How about if George takes over? I seem to have had too much beer.”
“You’ve only had two,” George said laughingly, but he stood anyway and put Emmaline’s knitting carefully back in its bag.
“Yes, us Americans, we’re all lightweights,” Owen joked, and George smiled condescendingly.
“Well, it’s your culture, boy. You can’t help it.”
Owen kept his face completely neutral and blinked soberly, almost relieved that the man was sort of a dick about this. The family had felt too perfect. Malcolm hated everyone—maybe Owen had a touch of that in him too.
“Nonsense,” Emmaline said, knocking back a swallow of her own beer. She was on her third, and she seemed a wee bit tipsy. Owen smiled at her as she served the ball to George before he was quite ready. “You’re young, Owen. It’s not the beer, it’s your young man you’re thinking about. Ollie’s had his heart broken often enough—mums know.”
Owen raised his eyebrows. “Mine did,” he said. He pulled Emmaline’s knitting out and played with the bright pink wool thoughtfully. “She said we were heading for relationship Armageddon—week six, you know?”
“You mean the adjustment period?” Emmaline nodded her head like his mom’s cracked philosophy made perfect sense. “Yes, yes, you two were just getting past the honeymoon stage. Maybe it was more intense since you moved in off the bat, but there’s no denying it. When you get to that point where you notice a person’s faults, you’ve got to decide if you can live with them or can’t live without them.”
Owen laughed appreciatively. “Well put,” he murmured, and had a sudden, shocking thought that maybe it was Malcolm’s cock he couldn’t live without. Wholly inappropriate, yes, but something he could have murmured in Malcolm’s ear and then watched as that surprising embarrassment traveled across Malcolm’s blunt features. Owen looked at the pink yarn in bemusement. He liked it here, he did, but he wasn’t ready to go back and live with his mum again, was he?
“Oh, Emmy, you did it again,” George exclaimed. “Dammit, can’t you at least wait until I’m set up?”
“No,” Emmaline said. “You have no compunction about shooting that thing at me hard enough to bruise. You want me to play fair, you need to play nice.”
George pulled up short then, Owen could tell. He’d already shown he could be a condescending dick, and Owen watched as he visibly mastered himself. “You’re right, of course, Emmaline. I promise to play nice if you will just give me a little warning, right?”
Emmaline smiled at him charmingly, the third beer giving her lips an extra softness. “Excellent, now are you ready? Because I’m going to trounce you either way.”
George prepared himself, and his return volley was very civilized indeed.
And he still lost. Condescending dicks did, sometimes, didn’t they?
And the irony wasn’t lost on Owen, either. Emmaline was a sweetheart and George was a condescending dick—and yet they did seem to get along. George had the money job, Emmy was the altruist . . . the similarities were slapping Owen on the face like a fish. All of that, and they were making it work. You could make it work, right? Owen and Malcolm weren’t necessarily doomed because of their differences, right?
Owen played civilized when it was his turn as well, and Emmaline—who had stopped drinking by this time—simply outplayed him. Each shot was perfectly and precisely placed, just like the table settings had been when they’d sat down to eat what should have been an informal dinner of bacon cheeseburgers. And much like the dinner in terms of fat and carb counts, each of her ping-pong volleys was set on kill.
And there he was, about ready to be trounced one more time, as Emmaline put it, when her son came in. “Sorry, Owen. I was in the kitchen when it went off. I answered it and some guy was on the line. Bit of a dick, really. He hung up.”
Owen’s eyes widened in horror. Oh God. Malcolm was such a jealous prick on a regular day. “What did you say?”
“I told him you were getting beaten in table tennis by my dad,” Ollie said, shrugging. “Because that’s who you were playing then. Why, is that bad?”
Owen tried to school the grimace off his face. “Well, knowing Mal, he probably thinks that’s a euphemism for shagging.” Oh hell. “When did he call?”
“About an hour ago.”
Oh damn. Owen turned the phone on and grimaced at the time. “Oh fuck—begging your pardon, Emmy, but is it really that late?”
Almost twelve o’ clock? After a fight? Oh Jesus. Malcolm was going to be insufferable.
About that point, the phone buzzed, Malcolm’s ringtone of “Sharp-Dressed Man” by ZZ Top. It startled Owen so badly he almost dropped it.
“Mal?”
“Fucking hell.” Malcolm’s voice sounded blurry and intoxicated, and Owen groaned. Excellent. Pit
y drunk. Wonderful. Even sober, Mal was more than a handful. “Is that you? Jesus.”
“Jesus isn’t here, Mal—you’ll have to deal with me.”
“Fuck,” Malcolm muttered. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck . . . I’d rather deal with Jesus. He didn’t believe in hell.”
“I didn’t mean to put you through hell—”
“Where the fuck are you? You didn’t take your passport.”
Owen swallowed, and felt like piss. “I wasn’t leaving you, asshole. I was talking to a friend—”
“He’s trying to shag you,” Malcolm said seriously. “Or she is. Don’t do it.”
“Neither of them are.” Owen pushed back a smile. “They’re perfectly nice people—”
“Excellent! They’re salt of the earth. Where the fuck are they—I need to take you home.”
“Oh God . . . yeah. Fine. We need to talk—”
“Give me the fucking address, dammit!” Malcolm snapped, sounding more himself than he had since he called.
“Yeah, fine.” Owen looked around at Emmaline and George, who were looking back at him with amusement. “Emmy, what’s the address?”
“Peckham,” Emmy said, and Owen relayed that into the phone.
“What in the fuck?” Malcolm asked. “What are you doing there?”
“Friends, Mal. Some of us have them.”
“What’s the num—”
Beep beep beep. And then nothing. Oh hell. Owen looked at his phone and saw the battery had died, and died hard, in the course of the day. Damn those power-hungry smartphones. God, Owen was a computer guy—you think he could remember to charge his own damned phone.
Shit. Shit shit shit shit.
“Emmaline?” Owen said, cursing himself and Mal and phones and stupid git boyfriends who called you drunk sounding pathetic. “If I decided to wait out front for him, your neighbors wouldn’t call the cops, would they?”
“Not at all. Here. It’s a wee bit chilly, let me get you a blanket.”
He should probably just have gone home to Malcolm’s, but there was no doubt Mal was on the way, drunk and quite possibly angry once the exasperation had worn off. So Owen accepted the blanket gratefully, and headed outside. He took position about twenty feet from the door on the street corner where the smaller road met a much larger road. Maybe he should wait near Peckham Rye station, but that wasn’t where Malcolm would be looking for him.
Emmaline brought him a large mug of hot tea and smiled at him before she left. That was such a British thing, allowing people to keep face by politely lingering in the background, pretending nothing embarrassing was going on. Not that Malcolm had any of that.
About half an hour went by, with Owen’s heart jumping every time any car drove past at all.
There, finally, a taxi moving slowly, as if looking for something, though the yellow sign was switched off, which meant it was occupied. Owen tentatively raised his hand and waved.
And, thank God, it slowed more and then stopped at the corner. The front light switched on, and Owen could make out Malcolm, he thought, by a reflection on his glasses.
The car door opened, and Malcolm stepped out, wobbly, but he managed to steady himself on the car roof.
He was pale and looked so frantic that the irritation from the cold blew away.
“Holy hell, the shit that’s going on,” Malcolm cursed. “Peckham? Well at least it’s not fucking Croydon.”
“You are a bit of a postcode fascist,” Owen said mildly.
“These details matter,” Malcolm insisted. He rubbed over his mouth and chin with both hands. “Can we go home? I’m feeling like a complete arsehole and I don’t want all of fucking Peckham to know.”
Owen folded the blanket and walked back to Emmaline, who’d been standing in her door, keeping watch. He handed her the mug. “Thanks. Tomorrow morning, I’m . . . going to do my best to explain what actually happened here.”
“Don’t worry about it, luv,” she said. “Just don’t let him boss you around, you know?”
“Sometimes that’s fun, though,” he joked and winked.
He turned back to Malcolm, who stood right next to the cab as if making sure the driver couldn’t get away. It was that admission, the I’m feeling like a complete arsehole, that made him follow Malcolm and get in the cab.
The driver pulled away from the curb, and silence descended.
“My phone ran out of charge in between.”
“I thought. Your battery sucks worse than mine. Fucking timing.”
“Yep.” Owen drew a tense breath and noticed that Malcolm glanced at the driver. “I had a vision of you running along the street shouting my name. So I waited outside . . .”
Malcolm’s jaw set in a grim line. “I’d have done that, too. If you make me raise hell, I will.” He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “Especially after what I said. But shit, you know I’m short-tempered. If I blow my fuse, that’s bound to be horrible. I’ve been on this hair-trigger for ages and it’s just fucking difficult to deal with it all, okay?”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
Malcolm’s eyes narrowed, but a reluctant smile pulled at the corner of his lean mouth. “Charming,” he muttered. “So we’re going to be sarcastic today?”
Owen took a deep breath and remembered that Mal was right. Sarcasm usually escalated fights, and that wasn’t who he was.
“I can’t believe you looked for my passport,” is what he said. “Did you think I’d just . . . just take off, after one lousy fight?”
“Yes,” Malcolm said simply, his voice devoid of tone, and even of hope. “I’ve had it coming. We both know it.”
All of Owen’s irritation, his indignation, and even his righteous anger ceased their chatter in his head. “Well, when you’ve known me longer, you’ll know I don’t work like that,” he said after a moment.
Malcolm kept his face carefully averted. Owen couldn’t see his eyes, or even the quirk of his mouth in the shifting lights that filtered through the cab’s window. He could see Malcolm swallow though, and he felt the rather awkward pat on his knee.
“That’s good to know,” Malcolm said. “It’s important to know.”
Owen reached over and touched Malcolm’s knee. He probably really didn’t get Malcolm. What drove him, what fired that anger and that fear of being deserted. Though the man worked all day almost every day, and had for a while, so maybe that had something to do with it. Away from his trading desk, Malcolm just did a piss-poor job of coping with the real world.
“Well, now you know,” Owen said, and Malcolm turned to him suddenly, his face tightening into recrimination.
“I just . . . I was trying to get you a better place in the world,” he said, and Owen looked past the defensiveness and into the meaning of the words.
“And I’m just trying to tell you that I like my place where it is. Including with you.”
Malcolm squeezed his fingers. “That’s what you say now. What about the next time I’m an overbearing wanker?”
Owen grunted. “I just played table tennis with an overbearing wanker. His lovely wife adored him just fine.”
“Wonderful. Salt of the earth, and I’m just some greedy fucking arsehole who—”
“Shhh.” Owen wanted this part of the making up to be over. God, Malcolm looked like the loneliest person on the planet right now. Owen wanted that to stop. “I just . . . I just really need to know why,” he said after a moment. “I might not fly off the handle if I knew why you were trying to make me into a self-obsessed banker in a fancy suit.”
“Financials are always going to spend money on talent. The companies can afford to look for and retain the best of staff. IT? Damn, a bank without IT is a bunch of bored guys sitting at desks drinking too much coffee. IT is even more crucial for stuff they can’t outsource to Bangalore.” Malcolm blew out a breath. “The job . . . that’s a living fucking wage, Owen. You wouldn’t depend on me. You’d have security. Access to the bank’s pension scheme right away. Priva
te health care. You don’t have to change a thing . . . but it’s okay if you don’t want it. I just wanted to get you started well. And does it really matter whether you’re fixing a trader’s Bloomberg access or one of those pieces of shit in that co-op?” Not accusatory, curious.
“Yes.” Owen kept his voice level. “It matters to me. And I get what you’re saying about security, but that was never important to me. What I want to know is why it’s so damned important to you. I wasn’t financially dependent on you when I arrived, and I can make my own way in the world. Why’s it so fucking important that I do it in style? What is it about you, Malcolm, that needs the sharp suit and the shiny shoes and people to look at you in fear—”
“Fear? Nonsense. It’s not like I’m running around with a samurai sword and jackboots.” Malcolm blew out a breath. “I work for a bank. I have to look the part. You’ve seen me in jeans.”
Jeans that cost a week’s wage a pair.
“God, Mal, for someone who isn’t afraid to cut a guy with his tongue, you have an awfully hard time getting to the point. Why do you need to be rich? Dammit, answer that question or we really don’t have anything to talk about.”
“Well,” Malcolm snapped, “it’s not like being poor is as glamorous as you make it out to be. Living without decent food, clean clothes, it’s not martyrdom, it’s what happens when you don’t pay fucking attention to your life, that’s what.”
“I’ve been poor,” Owen said, swallowing. “When I was ten years old, my mom moved us out of our last shitty apartment and into a duplex. You’d hate it—it’s in a so-so part of town, and the owners aren’t great about fixing the paint. But it had a yard, and I had toys. That’s what I got for Christmas that year—a used bicycle. It was like . . . like a thousand Nintendos all rolled into one. You know what my mom got?”
Malcolm shook his head, wisely staying silent.
“Well, I made her a candle in school. But she was still feeding me the line about Santa, and I was pretending to buy. So she bought herself four of those dime-store romances, the ones with the really lurid red covers—she used to raid the used bookstores for them like mad. She bought four new ones, though, and wrapped them up, and put them under the tree from Santa, and you know what? That was it. Merry Christmas to mom. And to this day—to this day—she maintains that they were the best present ever, because I got to ride a bike. Security I can live without. The fancy apartment I can live without. But I need to know why you can’t, because if I’m not taking my passport, at this point that means I don’t want to live without you. And that’s important. And you owe me.”