by C F White
“What can I say, lovie.” Damian waved his hand in the air. “You need to fuck a few frogs before you get your Tom Hardy.”
“Tom Hardy?” Mark scanned through a few shirts on hangers just to make it look like he was getting into all this shopping malarkey.
“Oh, yes.” Damian cocked his head at Mark. “Sorry, is he too British for you now? Are you solely into Australian expats?”
“I’m not into Australian expats. I’m doing this purely as a friend,” Mark lied, keeping his eyes firmly on a shirt he knew would make him look like a lampshade.
“Of course you are, dahhhlllling,” Damian replied, elongating the extra h’s and trilling the l’s with his tongue flapping against the root of his mouth. Ripping the awful shirt from Mark’s hands, he tutted then shoved it forcefully back on the rail. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Shopping.”
“Oh, dear Lord God, and every divine being of the universe.” Damian slammed his palms dramatically on his hips. Damian did everything dramatically. So use of the word meant it was really rather overly dramatic. Like his acting. “You must really have it bad. You haven’t even asked for tea first.”
“Ah.” Mark angled his head. “Let’s go get a tea, then.”
“Good, I need a decent Capu to get me in the zone for kitting you out.” Damian waved his hand over Mark’s frame and screwed his nose up at the plain jeans and long-sleeve woollen jumper Mark had rushed on at home. “Funny how you’ve never let me dress you before.” Damian waggled his eyebrows. “Undress, maybe. But dress—”
“Tea?” Mark stormed off toward the department store cafe.
Filled with mostly old dears, the café served tea in one of those little silver pots that supposedly keeps it hot. It didn’t much. But it did redeem itself by holding enough for about three cups of the stuff. After locating a table for two at the back, Mark settled down to his brew—something he would always have an avid opinion on, anyhow.
“So.” Damian hefted down into the seat opposite and added a few sachets of sugar to his frothy cappuccino. The swirl of a heart on top told Mark that Damian had worked his charm on the lad serving behind the counter. Just yet another one of those bash-over-the-head moments reminding Mark why it had never worked out between the two of them. Sometimes Mark needed those aide memoires of why he was choosing—yes, choosing—to remain single even though there was a perfectly good bloke opposite him who would gladly take Mark to bed. He just wouldn’t stay there. Not like in some Misery-kidnap chained-to-the-posts sort of way. Just in a “I’m popping out and will accidentally shove my dick in someone else’s gob whilst I’m there” sort of way.
Mark sighed.
“I want to hear all about this Australian hunk who you’re venturing back into the big smoke for.” Slurping from his mug, Damian over-dramatised the shivers. “He’d have to be quite something to get you going back there, amirite?”
“He’s Macy’s cousin.” Mark left that there.
“Gay?”
“Yes. I believe so.”
“Mmm-hmm, I don’t doubt you’d be going through all this rigmarole for a straight man. Or even a switch hitter.”
Mark pinched the bridge of his nose. Metaphorically. Physically, he drank tea.
“I’m simply going because he asked me to. He hasn’t got many friends here yet and I’m too polite to say no.”
“That last one is most definitely correct. But.” Damian took a sip of cappuccino and swallowed it down, leaving the froth on his top lip. “I don’t believe the other two are just simple statements.”
Mark dabbed a finger on his own lips, indicating that Damian might wish to do the same. Damian stared at him, then glanced around. Settling back on Mark, Damian shrugged and gulped down another load of froth that piled up on his lip. The lad from the counter shimmied over and Damian took that chance to swipe his tongue over the lot and swallow it down with a flutter of his eyelashes. The lad smiled, handing over a napkin. As Damian unfolded it, he grinned at the number written on with blotted marker pen. Mark rolled his eyes to the point he could see his skull.
“Anyway.” Damian slapped the table between them. “Don’t change the subject.”
“I wasn’t aware that I did.”
“How did Mr Australia manage to coerce our Marky Mark, our poor old bachelor forever-for-reasons-undivulged, out to the male-of-the-night haunt?”
“That sounds ominously like I’m a gigolo. Or that he is.”
“You say potato.”
“Huh?”
“Stripping is just the front gig.” Damian lowered his head, peering over nonexistent spectacles. “It’s what goes on behind that earns the money.”
Mark’s cup handle slipped from his fingers, but he managed to prevent the whole thing from falling to the table, just lose a little of its contents that sloshed onto the surface. That hadn’t been something he’d thought about. Of course, it made sense. And Damon would know. Not because he’d stripped in his lifetime, but he roamed in circles that occasionally did that sort of thing.
“Hang on.” Mark wiped up the spillage with the napkin that bore the server’s number. Damian didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t all actors get tarnished with that same old brush? Wouldn’t it be prudent to assume all strippers are also prostitutes?”
Damon shrugged. “I’d sell my body for a lead in Les Mis.”
“That’s you, though, Damo. You’d sell your body for walk-on part in Doctors.”
Damon gasped, then clapped. “I so would. I could be the dashing young stranger, back from an elite SAS mission and suffering from PTSD and all I need is the right probe to whip me out of depression.”
“A walk-on part, Damo. No speaking. Just blend into the background.”
“I could never blend into the background.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Everyone needs a backstory, my friend. Even the extras.” Damon finished his cappuccino, settled back in the chair and rubbed his chin. “So what is Mr Australia’s backstory? Why come to England? To Marsby, for that matter?” He scrunched up his face. “And why strip? Apart from the obvious, ‘I got the body, I get to flaunt it’? And why—” Damian leaned forward, those invisible specs getting another slide down his nose. “—has he chosen you as his prey?”
“I’m hardly his prey.” Mark brushed off the memory of Bradley’s bulk squashing him, then using the opportune moment to kiss him. He still found it hard to believe it had happened at all. And it also led onto all those questions that Damian had just pointed out. Why would the hunk of all that is male be interested in Mark—friendship or otherwise?
“Tell me why you think this is all nonsense,” Damian said. “I do so love to hear your downtrodden, self-loathing speeches. It gives me a sense of enormous well-being.”
Mark stuck his finger up. “One. He’s too young.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-one.”
Damon gasped, palm slapped to his chest, and all the old dears stopped chomping on their carrot cakes to glance over. “That’s like jailbait.” He pointed at Mark and elevated his ‘drama’ voice. “Arrest him, officer! Now!”
“Shhh!”
Damian laughed. “Oh, no, wait. He’s not jailbait. He’s an adult. Legal. Next one.”
“He’s Macy’s cousin.”
Damian gasped yet again. “Incest! I can’t stand to look at you any longer.” He covered his eyes, then peeked through his fingers. “Oh, wait, it’s not.”
“Fine.” Mark hoped this next one might bring some clout as to why Bradley Summers and Mark Johnson were not to be shipped—that is what it’s called, right? Meaning shipped away on some desert island together, where Bradley would use all his Bear Grylls skills. Huh, I could write poetry… “He’s devilishly handsome. Fit, toned, athletic, adventurous, sexy, charismatic…” Okay, that’s more a shopping list.
Damian propped his elbow on the table, rested his head into his hand and fluttered his long eyelashes. “Sounds posi
tively dreamy.”
“Oh, bugger off.” Mark glared for all of a millisecond before chuckling at Damian’s wistful expression.
Damian slapped his hand down on the tabletop, the china cups and tin tea pot jumping into the air and landing with a clang and a tinkle.
“Mark Johnson,” Damian bellowed in his best Brian Blessed impersonation. Which was rather odd coming from the svelte and effeminate character in front of Mark. “Have you never heard of opposites attract? Isn’t that why we didn’t work out?”
“I’m not just talking about being the same way, Damian.” Mark replied in a hushed voice. “It’s more like what the hell would an Adonis like Bradley Summers want with a man like me? I offer nothing. I am an old has-been, or rather never was, content on putting on my fluffy slippers of a night-time to watch Gogglebox rather than scale mountains and do acrobatics.” Mark shrugged. “I am greying, apparently. I am skinny. I am wrinkly. This whole thing is absurd. I am a pity invite as Macy told him I needed to get out. So get out, I will. But I will not be anyone’s pity shag, either.”
“A shag’s a shag, darling.” Damian folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in the chair. After a moment of glaring, he waved a flippant hand. “You offer him experience.” Damian’s playfulness dissipated into an unorthodox seriousness.
“I can assure you, Bradley has experience,” Mark replied, slurping his tea. “I doubt I can offer anything new.”
“Whatever.” Damian shot him a pitying glance. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
“How do you mean?”
“You thought you were old the day you turned twenty-five.”
“You didn’t know me at twenty-five. I still lived in London.”
“That’s just statistics.”
Mark furrowed his brow and opened his mouth to correct the statement, but Damian cut him off with a violent prod of his finger over the table.
“You need to realise you are not old. You are not even middle-aged…yet. And, anyway, silver foxes are so on-trend at the moment. It’s living in that death town that’s made you think that way. Everything moves at a snail’s pace, and so do you. You, Mark, are one sexy beast. No, you are not all rippling muscles under that God-awful jumper that I will enjoy ripping off you later, but it’s not what you got, it’s what you do with it that counts. And, well, no complaints here on that front.”
“Um, Damo?” Mark interrupted. “You never let me put it near you. In my book, that’s a pretty damning complaint.”
“Well, yes, I suppose so, but that’s not to do with you,” Damian replied. “Just, y’know, I’m saving that for Tom Hardy.”
“What’s to say that Bradley isn’t waiting for a Tom Hardy, too?” Mark said, slumping back in his seat. He tucked his hand into his trouser pocket and tugged out his phone, twisting it in his hands.
“He didn’t invite Tom Hardy,” Damian replied. “He invited you. Mark Johnson. Urg, even your name is bland.”
“Thanks. And Tom Hardy probably isn’t on his speed dial.”
Damian leered forward. “If Mark Johnson is on Australian Adonis’s speed dial, then I would say that’s a firm contender that he might be hoping that you put it in him. At the gay bar…at the g-a-y bar!”
“Oh, for goodness sake, please shut up.”
Damian bellowed a laugh and slapped Mark’s arm on the table. Mark shook him off and was just about to say something else to quell any idea that Bradley’s invitation to watch him get mauled by women was anything other than an attempt to show Mark how fantastic he was and how completely inept Mark was, when his phone buzzed in his hand. The vibrations shocked him enough to drop the thing on the table top and Damian grabbed it. Mark tried to protest but knew there was no point. It would only be a text message reminding him of his upcoming appointment for a health check. Or his mother reminding him of the same.
“Well, well, well,” Damian’s eyebrows waggled amusedly.
“What?”
“‘Mark, can’t wait for you to cum in my back passage.’” Damian bit his bottom lip and widened his eyes. “I’d say that’s an in. An easy, delightful slide of an in.”
Mark snatched the phone from Damian and read the incoming message. He huffed, flopping the phone into his lap.
“It says to use the back entrance to the club,” Mark stated. “Bastard.”
Damian chuckled, waving a nonchalant hand. “I paraphrased. The little emoji at the end there says to read between the lines.”
“What’s an emoji?”
“Mark, dahhhling,” Damian tutted. “Get with the programme. If you’re going to have a teenage boyfriend, you need to get with the emoticons. Words are of no use to those not out of nappies yet.”
“Could we just go get me some clothes, please?”
“Oh, finally!” Damian scrabbled out of his seat, swished his oversized scarf around his neck and clicked his fingers.
I’m going to regret this.
* * * *
It took well over the hour that Mark had set aside for Damian to convince him to buy the really expensive pair of jeans from the designer side of the store, along with a nice slim-fitted black shirt that had shimmering silver stars dotted over it, and a pair of dark brown boots. Nothing too out there, and nothing too obviously purchased that day. He must remember to take the tags off when changing into them at the train station loos.
It was the short leather jacket, sans collar, where the argument really got started. Mark hadn’t ever gone for leathers. In or out of the bedroom. He felt like he would be trying too hard if ever he purchased a leather jacket. And his mother always pertained that the very ownership of one would be advertising his sexuality to the holidaymakers. Which Mark never understood. Leather, to him, belonged on the regular weekend Harley riders that zoomed across the seafront blaring out Born to be Bad. Most of them worked in accounts and finance during the week, and there were a couple of teachers, and one chemist. So they weren’t really bad to the core. More weekend bothersome.
Damian bought the thing with his own money, declaring it was a gift and that Mark could not turn up to his date with Bradley in an old golfing Barbour jacket that still had the tear on it from when he got caught in the barbed wire that time. Huh, that’ll be why it isn’t now waterproof. That was yet another anecdote that Damian was forbidden from ever recounting. To anyone. And he threatened to, so Mark accepted the gift graciously and hoped he wouldn’t be mauled by feral animals in the street. Or mugged.
Now he stood in the station loo cubicle, hopping on one foot to pull his clothes off in an area that wasn’t big enough to swing a cat let alone change an entire outfit. He’d bought new boxer shorts too. He had no idea why. They were on sale, and whilst he didn’t envisage anyone ever seeing them, they had looked rather good on the male model on the cover. Perhaps after this contortion efforts, he’d have miraculously gained a few pounds in muscle bulk and formed a six-pack. Thankfully, there was no mirror on this inside of the door. He’d only be disappointed.
Vacating the stall, he met Damian perching on the row of sinks, biting his thumbnail. He stared at Mark, expression blank and apathetic.
“Oh, forget it!” Mark threw his hands in the air and twisted back to the cubicle.
Damian grabbed his shoulders and spun him around. He wolf-whistled. “Look at you.” He shoved him forward, putting Mark firmly in front of the thing he avoided most days—his reflection.
Mark ruffled a hand through his hair, swishing it about to give it more, or less, bounce, then ran the hand over his stubble that he still refused to shave. “I look like I’ve tried too hard.”
“Nonsense!” Damian dropped his hands on Mark’s shoulders from behind, adding a grounding weight, and peered over to meet his gaze through the glass. “You look divine.” His husky voice dripped into Mark’s ear and made him shiver. It had just been too long since anyone had been that up close and personal with him.
“This isn’t me.”
“No.” Damian nodded in agreement.
“It’s better.”
“Fancy just coming home to watch Gogglebox with me? I can blow off this stupid idea.” Mark widened hopeful eyes at the mirror.
Damian kissed Mark’s cheek. “No can do, my friend. This one here has a hot date too, you know.”
“You never said.” Mark spun to face him. “Who with?”
“Well, I say hot, but more tepid. Remember Pete?”
“Oh, God, Damo. Why are you going there again?”
“Because I have needs.” Grabbing Mark’s face, he yanked him forward and slapped a kiss onto his lips. “Not all of us get hunky Australian men raining down on us.” Damian backed away and grinned. “You are going to get truly bored of It’s Raining Men tonight.”
Mark hung his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Oh, dear, God.”
“I’m almost tempted to come along and watch you. It’ll be better than watching Pete trying to seduce me with his silk scarf again.”
“If you don’t like him, why do you say yes to every date?”
Damian shrugged. “If you don’t like Adonis, why have you said yes to watching him get his kit off?”
“Totally different.”
Damian tapped Mark’s cheek. “Sure it is, sweetheart.”
Mark shook his head then handed over his bag of old clothes. “Can you take these? I’ll come pick them up after. Last train to Canterbury is half-eleven. So I’ll get that and come straight to you. Leave the key out. I won’t knock on your bedroom door if you’ve got Placid Pete staying.”
“Keep them.” Damian shoved them back with a wry smile. “You can use them in the morning when you get up from a hotel bed next to one hunky specimen.”
“Damo,” Mark urged, ruffling the plastic bag that had cost him an extra five bloody pence to purchase even after the three hundred pounds he had forked out for one sodding outfit.
Damian snatched the bag. “Fine.” He prodded Mark’s nose. “It’s better for you to do the walk of shame anyway.”
“Never gonna happen.”
