Boys of the Fast Lane

by Zack

  Gil said nothing in response, but thought it cute of Mike to use “us” when all Nathan wanted was Mike. Gil still wasn’t sure what Mike wanted.

  They drove down the sea front with its quaint trams, past the weird tower and then inland a mile or so to East Park Drive and the De Vere. During the short journey Gil thought Mike seemed unusually quiet. It was a battle to get anywhere near the Nathan Cliffe apartments, what with security goons, lighting riggers rushing about with plans in hand, roadies, and the inevitable courtiers and attendants of a rock star on the road. Ironically, it was the thug-minder who recognized Mike and let them through the cordon around Nathan’s suite.

  “I don’t like those two being around him,” Mike spat out when he spotted Lewis the Drive pat the distant figure of the star on the shoulder familiarly. Gil saw Nathan nod as though thanking the man. As he straightened up and turned to cross the crowded room to where they stood just inside the door, Lewis sneered at Mike.

  “You made it, then.”

  Mike reached out and gripped the chauffeur’s lower arm. “If you’ve given him anything—”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Lewis pulled his arm free.

  Mike leaned in close. “Yes you do, and if you have …”

  “You’ll what? You’re all mouth and no trousers.” He eyed Gil with a renewed curled-lip sneer. “You’d do better keeping your little boyfriend happy, that’s of course if you actually have anything in your pants capable of that.”

  Gil thought Mike was about to lash out and quickly restrained him. Lewis pushed his way out to the hallway.

  Nathan was overjoyed to see Mike, although he kept his greeting low-key in front of so many people. “Pam, my hair stylist, is going over to the venue in a few minutes and she can get you in. I’ve a ticket over there for you.” He smiled up at Gil. “And for the Yank as well.”

  Gil bridled inwardly, although Nathan’s quick squeeze on his hand was intended to take any sting from the words. As they followed hair stylist Pam out and back down to the lobby, Mike whispered in Gil’s ear. “That fuckin bastard driver has given him something. I can tell by his eyes.”

  “Perhaps he needs something to give him a lift. After all, Nathan hasn’t been in front of a live audience for some time.”

  “Until Mundy got his claws in him, the kid had never touched any drugs. Nothing hard, anyway.”

  “I know you’re supposed to keep an eye on him for your director, but there’s only so much you can do.”

  Mike nodded curtly but continued to look unhappy as they followed Pam’s car to the Winter Gardens. Once there, she sorted their admission tickets and then led them backstage as the entourage began arriving like a rampaging horde. Nathan referred to them as “lemmings” because they all wanted to fall over the Cliff.

  Gil had plenty of time to ponder on us and them, him and me and what Mike really wanted while he kept himself well away from the frantic last-minute preparations for Nathan to go on stage before the sell-out audience. Gil could easily hear the premature ejaculations of screaming girls even as far from the stage entry area as the complex of dressing rooms were. Across from him two dressers and a bevy of make-up girls and boys were doing intimate things with the popster to ready him for the ninety-minute set. His outstretched hands were firmly gripped on Mike’s broad shoulders. Mike seemed to be trying to calm him down. Gil suspected he’d already dropped some life-enhancing substance. The other members of the band were filing out toward the stage when Mike patted Nathan’s shoulder and signed to Gil that it was time to get to their seats.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Ups and Downs

  “Feeding time in the ape house at Regent’s Park Zoo would be quieter,” Gil thought he heard Mike shout in his ear. The shrill screams of the packed auditorium made his head hurt. Burly security guards had already removed three young women, girls, babies, whatever, who had clearly passed out. Gil wondered whether one hadn’t actually passed away. And when the house lights abruptly dimmed and the repetitive thumping of a drum track through the massed speakers around the Winter Gardens’ Ballroom cut out, the din only increased in ear-splitting volume.

  The black stage suddenly sprang to violent life in a long row of dramatic downlights in stark white, which showed up like thin columns in the drift of a smoke machine. Amazingly, and for seconds only, the crowd quieted, and then Nathan leapt from the dark through the bars of light to land, legs akimbo, hips thrust forward provocatively, arms whirling as he went into the opening bars of Fame.

  The screams hurtled forth with renewed energy.

  Baby look at me

  And tell me what you see

  You ain’t seen the best of me yet

  Give me time I’ll make you forget the rest.

  Gil was so pleased to be seated high up and at the rear of the auditorium. He wondered what the noise did to those on the stage. The band members gradually emerged through the lights like escaped convicts sliding between the bars of their cells. As the five-piece formed up behind Nathan the lights began to go into violent gyrations and color changes.

  I got more in me

  And you can set it free

  I can catch the moon in my hands

  Don’t you know who I am?

  Hands all in waving unison, the congregation of worshippers greeted the words like a massed rally of Kim Il-Sung supporters.

  Remember my name …

  “Fame!” the audience yelled at the top of the collective voice.

  It was the only cover number of the show. From then on Nathan went into his routine of songs which had shot him to number one and kept him there for three years. Whether he played guitar or simply held a microphone to his mouth, the cleverly designed pants he wore both clung to his lean hips and flopped just enough at the crotch to leave little to the fevered feminine imagination. Gil spotted in the dark auditorium a number of young men every bit as entranced by their idol on stage as any girl. There was no denying the fantastic power the teenager generated in his performance, and even Gil found himself being drawn inexorably into the boy’s aura—at once somehow innocent, yet undeniably erotic. The nice boy next door offering his hot body to … that girl there, no that one next to her, the one in the row behind. Gil had no doubt—because he felt it himself—that every individual knew Nathan wanted her/him above everyone else in the huge hall.

  Mike flicked his head at yet another overcome teenage girl getting a stretcher out of the show she had probably saved up for over months. In the moment their crossed-gaze met, Gil saw the concern in his lover’s eyes, and saw it etched by the stage lighting in the set of his mouth when he turned back to a frenetically whirling Nathan. As the numbers went by, Gil became aware of Mike keeping an eye on his wristwatch, and then a bit before the concert was due to conclude, Mike nudged Gil.

  “Let’s get backstage before the crush.”

  It was a blessing to get away from the screams and amplified music to the relative quiet of the dressing rooms. Roadies and gear shifters lounged about, smoking and knocking back bottled beers. Gil spotted Lewis the Drive and Nathan’s studio minder before Mike and nudged his elbow.

  “That’s what I was afraid of, that the snakes would be lying in wait to feed him even more stuff.”

  As it turned out, the reptiles never got anywhere near Nathan when he came in, supported on the arms of two of his band. He looked drained, exhausted, wet and limp, but his eyes burned darkly, almost feverishly. Mike immediately gathered the boy in his arms, and Nathan managed a weak glassy-eyed smile as the lead guitarist and bass player relinquished their damp burden. As the chauffeur closed in, Gil moved to block his way. It seemed more important to him suddenly to do what he could to help Mike than to bear Nathan any ill will for trying to get in between their love.

  “Get the fuck out the way,” Lewis snarled.

  Gil turned on him. “Or what?” But he saw Greg the minder plowing through the crowd of courtiers toward them.

  “Nathan’s my responsibility you
—”

  As Gil heard Mike urgently asking Nathan where his stuff was and did it matter if it were left behind, he stamped down hard on the instep of the chauffeur’s left foot. Lewis yelped in pain, recovered, and drew back his fist. His elbow slammed hard into Greg’s face, who grunted in unison with Lewis’s shout of agony as pain lanced through his funny bone.

  Gil didn’t wait. Grabbing Mike’s arm, he pulled his lover toward the exit, and propelled Nathan along from behind. Nathan seemed to recover some of his wits and stumbled to the door and out.

  “Nathan?” Pam’s voice went lost on the general raised hubbub, but she inadvertently blocked the doorway behind Gil as the three ran down the echoing hallway toward the rear stage door and the last thing he saw over his shoulder was Greg trying to throw Pam to the floor. And then he slammed through the heavy exit fire doors behind Mike and Nathan. Minutes later they were all piled in Horny and hurtling recklessly around the confusing one-way system until Mike heeled the Alfa around a tight turn onto the Promenade. Gil peered through the rear window and watched the skeletal flanks of the Tower disappearing behind. He saw no car obviously following.

  Mike sat on the edge of one of the two hotel beds with Nathan, still in his stage finery, beside him and watched Gil pacing up and down the oddly shaped, gaunt Portcullis room.

  “I’m going to put all that in my next film script,” Gil announced with a bright laugh. Then he turned serious. He went and laid a hand on Nathan’s shoulder.

  Mike could feel the nervous energy pouring off the kid and surmised half was the exhilarating effects of a successful gig and half the effect of whatever that bastard Lewis had fed him before the concert started.

  Gil squeezed briefly. “I guess we’re safe here,” he said more to Nathan than Mike. “They won’t find us, will they?” The last he addressed to Mike.

  Mike looked up with a faint smile. “I never told him where we were staying, so you’re probably right. Besides …”—he widened the smile—“I’ve no idea how I found our room again so how would he ever find us in this labyrinth?”

  Nathan gave a violent shudder and muttered something under his breath.

  “Hey …”

  The boy turned his head slowly to look at Mike, but also raised a hand to cover Gil’s on his shoulder. “I nearly fucked up big time back there. That stuff, whatever it was … Lewis, fuck him. I dunno. They jus want me under their thumb …”

  “Who, Mundy?”

  Nathan hung his head again and began to croon quietly. “Mundy, Mundy, so good to me … Mundy morning, it was all I hoped it would be. Oh Mundy morning couldn’t guarantee …”

  Mike looked up and caught Gil’s look of alarm.

  “… that Mundy evening, you’d still be here with me.”

  And with that, Nathan keeled over on his side on the bed, out cold.

  Gil woke to the strains of Nathan humming in the bathroom the Mamas and Papas’ Monday Monday to himself. He sounded a shit-load better than Gil felt. He reached out across the double bed and encountered Mike’s warm flesh. Mike stirred at the touch. As if by a force of magnetism, they slid across the sheets and pressed together cozily, filling the gap where they had stretched out Nathan between them. He had shivered uncontrollably before falling asleep at some ungodly hour.

  After a minute the bed creaked as Mike half sat up. He arched his eyebrows at Gil, who shrugged at an increased volume of humming as Nathan broke into voice melodiously with Dream a Little Dream of Me. “Must be his mama and papa he’s missing,” Gil said.

  And then the words segued into a different pace and delivery.

  “There ain’t no ball

  And there ain’t no chain …

  To hold me back, cos

  I live in the fast lane.”

  A flurry of water sloshing in the basin broke the rhythm for a moment.

  “There’s no holding me back

  and I’ll bend you to my will.

  Jump to the fast lane, cos

  The guy beside me is my Gil!

  “Hey, guys!”

  Nathan’s bright face positively glowed in a ray of sunlight coming through the grimy side window as he stuck his head around the door of the bathroom and grinned at them. He stood there naked except for a bath towel wrapped around his waist and flicked a mane of wet hair from his eyes.

  Mike groaned. “How come you’re so bright and cheery?”

  Nathan nibbled his lower lip for a second. “Cos I’m fit and young, and you’re old and decrepit.”

  He ducked as the pillow struck the doorframe. His boyish laughs filled the echoing space and then Gil heard him say, “Guys, I need to get some new clothes. Everything else is still at the De Vere, and I can’t hardly go back there … or can I?”

  Mike slipped out of the bed and stretched. Gil admired the play of light on his lover’s naked torso, the jut of semi-hard cock balanced on those big balls seen in profile around the curve of his upper thigh. He leaned across the width of the bed and stroked a hand down Mike’s flank and a shiver of happy possession passed across his stomach muslces.

  Nathan stuck his head around the bathroom door and gave a low whistle. He stared at Mike from under lowered brows. “Not so old.” A second later the boy ripped away the towel and flung himself lengthways on the bed. To Gil’s surprise, he was Nathan’s first target, but as he grappled Gil’s naked midriff, he grabbed Mike’s hand and pulled him back down on the bed so the three of them ended in a tangle of limbs and sheets on the protesting mattress. Gil was aware of Nathan’s hardness pressed against his thigh and shower-damp hair tickling his chest.

  From under a press of flesh Mike said, “No, I’m not letting you go anywhere near those two goons. I’ll have words with Wolfgang and get things changed around. Mmnph!”

  Giggling, Nathan shut Mike up by falling over him and smothering his face with his right breast. He pressed his outthrust nipple between Mike’s pursed lips, and since by this movement Gil was presented with the boy’s stiffening dick, he sighed, dipped his head the necessary distance, and engulfed it with his mouth. The ensuing three-way sex went fast and furious with the urgency of a new day and the sense of things to do. But first …

  It seemed neither Gil nor Mike were past it after all. Mike wrestled Nathan onto his knees and, using the boy’s arms as levers, forced his head down until his forehead was pressed into the sheets. Over Nathan’s imprisoned torso, Mike’s wolfish grin told Gil what to do, and he wasted no time in ducking down and jabbing his tongue firmly into Nathan’s crack. The boy’s moans went muffled in the coils of the rucked sheets and grew in a musical crescendo when Gil found his asshole and started tongue fucking him. Meanwhile Mike ensured Nathan couldn’t move, beyond a continuous wriggling.

  “Screw him,” Mike gasped, struggling to hold Nathan steady.

  Gil quickly knelt up, spat on the end of his cock, and shuffled up between Nathan’s spread butt cheeks. Across the knobbed line of bent spine, Gil smiled at Mike and they closed, heads together in a long kiss as Gil slipped his cock into Nathan, who gave vent to a long but unsteady gasp. The force of the exhaled breath blown back between Nathan’s knees tickled the fine hairs on Gil’s taut thighs.

  Gil gave Nathan several hard thrusts and then—in that unspoken communion he had with Mike— helped Mike pull the boy upright. At the same time, he leaned back to accommodate Nathan’s weight against his chest. He had a view now over Nathan’s left shoulder of the boy’s heaving intercostal muscles and jumping stomach down to his jutting hard-on. But only for a second. Mike fell down on it and the boy’s cock slipped into Mike’s mouth.

  “Oh, jeez guys … oh …”

  Gil grinned savagely in his excitement and caught a flash of white from Nathan’s rolling eyes when he half turned his head. Gil thought of a startled horse, but the analogy collapsed the second Nathan fastened his lips on Gil’s.

  “I’m coming,” he breathed into Gil’s mouth

  “So’m I …”

  Nathan’s violent b
ody shudders preceded an explosion down Mike’s throat while Gil fucked the boy hard into his lover’s mouth. The sound of Mike’s gulping as Nathan fed him his cream took Gil to the edge. The climax wracked his whole body as he unloaded, aided by Nathan’s rectal muscle spasms, in a series of stabbing ejaculations.

  He’d barely finished, when Mike rolled onto his back, wiping his cum-slicked lips with one hand and furiously jerking himself with the other. Still inserted deeply in Nathan, Gil almost had to follow the boy’s sudden movement as he bent over to take Mike in his mouth at the very second Mike gasped and fountained. Gil laid his head on Nathan’s damp back and listened to the pop godling guzzling his lover’s cum.

  For several minutes the three lay entangled in each other’s limbs, Mike and Gil nose to nose, eyes taking in the other’s gaze. Nathan was first to break the panting quiet. His tone held a note of wonderment.

  “You guys really are in love, aren’t you?”

  “Mmmm,” was all Mike managed.

  Gil licked the tip of Mike’s nose.

  Nathan stirred, stroked a hand down each flank, and then got off the bed. “Okay. There’s no need to get all sloppy. Haven’t we things to do?”

  After a round of showers and a quick pack-up, they set off on the trek to find breakfast.

  “This place is spooky,” Nathan said after the third staircase and second elevator trip. Over a plate of greasy eggs, bacon, sausage, fried bread, baked beans, rubbery mushrooms, black pudding, hash browns—“They’re not real hash browns,” Gil complained—and toast, Nathan repeated his plea to go buy some clothes. They had agreed he couldn’t continue wearing his stage get up; it would make him even easier to recognize. But dressed partially in borrowed underwear—“Whose shall I wear to feel sexiest?”—jeans, and a shirt, he looked uncomfortable.

  Gil and Mike had found a corner table and seated Nathan so they blocked others in the hotel’s restaurant feasting on the buffet from seeing him easily. But Gil wasn’t happy with the notion of going shopping where Nathan would be exposed to potentially hundreds of fans.