Boys in Season (Boys In... Book 2) (11 page)

“Maybe you can include a
little
glitter in our greetings,” he murmured, not entirely sure why he said it. It may have been the glimmer in Caleb’s hair; the sparkle on his left shoulder blade. These things were tantalising in an odd kind of way. Or it may have been the temporary insanity that always seemed to accompany the glorious adventure of fucking with Caleb.

Caleb chuckled in reply, and his warm breath nudged Owen’s balls to one side. The room was hot, the air thick with desire and delight.

In the kitchen, the can of speciality soup nudged at a bag of frozen peas, forgotten and defrosting slowly on the floor.

Everything there was cool and silent, resting underneath a light frosting of late Christmas card glitter.

The young, dark-haired man sat alone at the bar, leaning forward over the counter, resting on his folded arms. He was completely still; his head hung down. Earlier in the evening, the bar had been busy and boisterous, its location well-placed near the station. There’d been a background of laughter and loud voices, and the door had creaked open many times—but he’d never raised his head once, never turned to see who might be joining him there.

As if he knew no one would.

The clock over the bar clicked dully, the hand sliding past another hour. It was very late now, and he’d been alone all night. It wasn’t that he was unattractive. He was smartly dressed, his hair carefully cut, his body fit and athletic—a handsome, affluent young man who looked a little out of place in this seedy bar. In fact, more than a couple of the other customers had looked his way during the evening, maybe thinking of approaching him for a pick-up. But there was something in his gaze whenever he looked up to catch the barman’s eye that dissuaded anyone from offering him company, man or woman.

By now, he was the only customer left. The bar had gradually cleared of noise and smoke and the tang of spilled beer, and the air was cool and quiet. The night would soon merge into the small hours of the next morning. This bar was one of the few places still open at this hour.

The barman stood behind the counter, a couple of feet away, polishing a glass for the third time. There weren’t any regular jobs left for him to do tonight, but he felt he ought to be doing something busy in front of a customer—not that this one was taking any notice. He should have closed up the bar a long time ago, but something had made him pause before throwing this guy out. Hell, he only lived above the place, so it wasn’t as if he had to rush home himself.

He stared over, but the guy never responded. Hadn’t drunk much, either—wasn’t so much a case of drowning his sorrows, as paddling in ’em. The barman amused himself with his own jokes. But he also recognised genuine misery when he saw it. It was there in the sag of the young man’s shoulders, in the way he kept his eyes hidden most of the evening, in the way his hand was clenched on the tabletop beside his half-full glass.

The barman shifted along the counter quietly, putting the glass back on the shelf, wondering which one to choose next. There was a discarded slice of lemon caught up behind a couple of bottles and he carefully picked it out. He dropped it into the waste bin with a sigh.

This evening was obviously sour enough already.

***

In silhouette at the mouth of the poorly lit alley behind the rental store, a tall young man staggered about, muttering a selection of imaginative curses. He stumbled against the wall, then ran his hand back through his hair, loose and curling down to his shoulders. He cursed again, rather louder this time.

The king in exile sat quietly in the far dark corner beside the dumpster, but he glanced up at hearing the noise. There weren’t many visitors to his kingdom, as he was well fortified with old pizza boxes and the pungent smell of drinkers’ piss, and his reputation as a warrior and a loner was well known in the city. The young man at the entrance to his domain didn’t seem to be drunk, or under the influence of an enemy’s magic pills—he was just having some problems with a takeaway sandwich that had dripped its contents all over the clothing the young men of this world called jeans, and also his shoes and... well, it had also become messily tangled in his hair.

The king looked at his visitor even more curiously. He had rarely seen anyone with such long, unruly hair, and unbraided, too. It would be monstrously awkward in battle, and would risk interference with all of the usual weapons. The king began to doubt this man was a warrior after all. He wondered if the man’s curses were some kind of ancient lore or magic spell, and he may have been sent as a messenger.

“Fuck,” muttered the man at the mouth of the alley. “Dammit. Oh, hell, no—wait—catch that—!” He wasn’t talking to anyone in particular except himself. He’d presumably put too much dressing on the sandwich and it was far too wet for the flimsy packaging. The paper had split, the bread had started to slip through his fingers, and now it was all over him. Then his hair had fallen over his face and he’d tried to push it back, and now the ends of his hair were also covered in all of the sticky stuff.

“Perfect end to a perfect day, right?” He muttered and grimaced. “Could say the same for the last few weeks, in all honesty. Nothing’s going right—nothing’s getting any clearer. Everything’s gone to shit.” He let the remainder of the sandwich drop to the ground with a damp splat, and leaned back against the wall. He sighed deeply, with far more misery than was merited by a lost, unappetising junk supper.

At the back of the alley, the king stared at the young man’s profile, dark against the dim light of the street beyond. The visitor was in distress, no doubt about it, though the king had no idea who the man was railing against or to. Much as the king disliked being interrupted in his royal chambers, he knew he would sometimes be called upon to dispense wisdom and justice in the unlikeliest of places.

He rose slowly from his bed of cardboard and rags and raised a hand to attract the young man’s attention.

***

“Hey, kid.” The barman kept his voice low, but it was still a sharp stab of noise in the silence of the deserted bar. “You need to be getting home now.”

The voice cut through Matty’s thoughts, but it was all wrong—it wasn’t the one he expected to hear. Was gentler, too. That wasn’t what he remembered. Wasn’t what he’d been torturing himself with, all night. All week. For longer than that, even.

Matty raised his head and felt the joint at the base of his neck crack. How long had he been sitting here? He peered at the barman opposite him. Ah yes. He remembered where he was, now. He shifted on the stool, wincing as his thigh cramped up from inactivity, and his elbow knocked his glass, rattling it on the counter. There was still some beer in the bottom of it, but the thought of drinking it made him feel nauseous. “What time is it?”

The barman shrugged. “Three a.m. I’ve cleared the whole damned place, made a snack, listened to some music. But I reckon I could have knocked down a wall or fought off a whirling dervish and it wouldn’t’ve made any difference to you, right? You’re in some other world, all your own.”

“Going to move out,” Matty said. His voice sounded thick, as if he’d been asleep, or had forgotten how to use it.

“Yeah.” The barman nodded. “It’s for the best. I really must lock up now.”

“No,” said Matty, over-carefully. “Not from here. From the flat. No point keeping it on just for myself, right?”

“Right,” said the barman. “Whatever. Sorry, but I can’t say I haven’t heard this conversation a few thousand times in my career.”

“He hasn’t been back. Jake hasn’t been back.” Matty looked at the glass. It was cloudy and he could see his fingerprints on the outside, as if he’d gripped it too tightly. It wasn’t a particularly interesting glass, but it was pretty fascinating just at this moment. “I thought he just needed time to cool off. Thought he’d be back the next day. Or in a day or so. That he’d need something in the flat, or come to pick up his mail or something, and then I’d be waiting and we’d talk about it and it’d all be sorted out. We’d laugh about it all some day.”

I thought he’d need me
, he thought.
Just like I need him
. He felt sick in the pit of his stomach, and this time it wasn’t the thought of the stale beer. “He hasn’t been back,” he repeated. The barman was moving through the bar, dodging around him, picking up a last few discarded coasters. Matty wasn’t really talking to him, but saying it all aloud seemed kind of comforting. “It was my fault. I was being a prick. That’s what he called me, and he was right.”

The barman gave a discreet cough. Matty moved his arm and the man scooped up his glass. “It was probably six and two threes, you know?”

Matty stared at him.

The barman shrugged. “Takes two to argue. Six of one, half dozen of another. Two to tango. Whatever you like. Why don’t you get on home and sleep on it? It’ll all seem better in the morning.”

Matty swallowed heavily. He ran a hand back through his hair, tousling even further the neat style it had at the beginning of the evening. “It won’t. Haven’t slept for days, not properly. The daytime’s not so bad, with work to distract me, and keeping busy. But the night... you know?”

The barman sighed like he knew, all right, but expected to be told all over again.

“I wake in the middle of the night,” Matty said. He spoke slowly and clearly, as if he were explaining symptoms to a doctor. “Every night. He’s not there. It hurts—like a physical pain. That’s the worst thing of all.”

“Time’s the great healer. Plenty more fish in the sea.” The barman was perhaps running out of platitudes. He stood by the door back out to the street, waiting rather obviously for Matty to leave.

“No,” Matty said. He grimaced, feeling he’d just discovered a great truth, which maybe it was, for him. “There’s no one else like him, not like that. Not for me. Never will be.”

The barman stepped slowly away from the door. He sighed. “Look, mate. I’ve seen plenty of ’em, you know? Plenty of drinkers and weepers and shouters and fighters. Plenty of idiots, plenty of bullies, plenty of victims. Morons who’ve pissed off a boy or girlfriend, I’ve seen the lot, there’s no discrimination at the bottom of a pint glass.”

He walked back to the bar and pulled up the stool beside Matty. “Let’s have another drink,” he said. “A decent one. Then tell me about him.”

***

Jake supposed it wasn’t so bad, living in an alley. Well, if you didn’t mind the damp and the smell and the small furry feet darting across your boots every now and then. Let’s face it, he was hardly the most sweet-smelling bloom in the bouquet himself tonight, with pickle and mustard and all the other stuff from his takeaway all down his front. He moved a bundle of sodden papers to one side and stretched his long legs out a bit further.

“You must stay still,” warned the older man sitting beside him. His voice was hoarse but surprisingly imperious. “They have spies everywhere nowadays, since the war, and you mustn’t draw attention to my headquarters.”

Jake stared back. The guy—a king, apparently—had only just introduced himself. Well, actually, he’d lurched suddenly out from the shadows, scaring the shit out of Jake, but Jake had let that incivility pass. He’d let a lot of things pass, recently.

“Do you bring a message from the settlements?” the king asked.

He sounded younger than he looked, or maybe Jake was misled by his long ratty beard. He smelled only slightly less obnoxious than the alley itself, but his eyes were bright and he certainly spoke as if he were someone important. Jake wasn’t in any position nowadays to criticise anyone’s provocative behaviour.

“Nah,” he said, slowly. “Just passing through. Just looking for somewhere to be, you know?”

The king nodded. “I understand the life of a wanderer. Maybe you should be a minstrel. You seem unsuited for the life of a true soldier, but you have the melodic voice of a performer.”

Jake leaned back against the wall and sighed. Maybe he should just stay here. Keep him and his big stupid mouth out of the way. “It’s starting to get tricky, you see. The guys—well, you won’t know them of course, but there’s a group of us, been friends since college, they’ve been there for me, I can’t complain. And at first they were happy to let me stay at their place, although they didn’t want to get involved with... well, Matty and me, the falling out, right?” He nodded to himself and continued, not really expecting a reply. “I can’t blame them. They’re friends to us both. It’s all kind of tricky. Did I say that already? And now I think it’s pissing them off. I’m getting under their feet.” He sighed, and turned to the other guy. Funny how it felt like he’d known him for years. “I don’t sleep, you see. Can’t seem to. First couple of days, I sat up late, thinking he might call around to find me. Then I sat up even later, thinking I’d call him, and just clear the air. Sort it all out. We’d laugh about it all one day.” He started to smile, but couldn’t seem to follow it through. “Then it got really difficult. Couldn’t think of what to say to him. Me, eh, can you imagine that?”

The old guy opened his mouth as if to reply, then went back to examining a shadow over behind the dumpster. He muttered something about a wizard’s familiar.

Personally, Jake thought it was an urban fox on the prowl, but he supposed the other guy would know better. “I was a real prick,” he murmured. There was a trail of green slime down the brickwork beside him, dribbling into a fetid pool at his feet.
Looks like I feel
, he thought. “I never learn. Just piss him off, time and again. Then when he snaps, I’m out of there like a frightened rabbit.”

Something rustled behind the dumpster and he shivered. The king tensed up beside him. “It may be an attack,” he muttered in Jake’s ear. Jake turned his head away from the stench of his breath. “Be ready to defend me.”

Jake nodded. It was easier that way. When a rat nosed its way out from under a pile of discarded magazines, Jake threw a well-aimed apple core at it and watched it turn tail.

The old guy was embarrassingly grateful. “You prove to be a warrior indeed!” he said. “Your partner will reward you for your courage.”