by Sam Hall
A heavy thud on the door jerked both our eyes away, something I think Mark was glad for. “You’ve got a lotta blokes sniffing around you. Pick one of them. Now, unless you’ve decided you don’t want Hartley, I’m letting him in before he smashes this door in.”
I just nodded as my head felt hollow and too large on my neck. His words were like body blows, slamming into me, and I’d invited him to hit me with them. I didn’t get a chance to dwell or consider that as he opened the door and Johnno stumbled in.
He looked at Mark, then me, stopping where he was. He turned around to Mark and said, “Any chance you can keep an eye on us from the other side of the door?”
“That OK with you, miss?” Mark asked.
So formal, so polite. I nodded, not wanting him near me anymore. He was a thumb stuck into a bruise, and I was done with that pain.
“I’ll just be outside. Call if you need me.”
Johnno waited for the sound of the door closing before turning back to me. He swallowed hard, shaking his head, then moved in closer. He stopped the minute I stiffened, his fingers going to the strap of a familiar bag. He lifted it off of his shoulder carefully and then placed it on the desk in a series of slow movements.
“I thought you’d want it,” he said, then took a seat.
I hadn’t thought about my camera since… Since I shot him coming all over his stomach. My eyes flicked to the band shirt with the sleeves ripped out that he wore, his well-developed biceps on display and awarding me tantalising glimpses of that lean chest seen through the arm holes. I opened it, and fished the camera out, thankful I’d had the peace of mind to turn it off so as to not drain the batteries. I turned it on and then scrolled through the first few images.
There he was—caught in some kind of state of raw ecstasy and glowing with an amber light in the dark room, his bandmates clustered close like he was a fire to warm themselves on. My eyes flicked up, the real man and the image juxtaposed against each other, the similarities enough to send a warm flush through me. But there was a crucial difference. He held up his phone with the camera aimed at me, and I was jolted by the appearance of that tiny little lens.
“What are you…?”
“When’s the last time you truly ached for something?”
They were the exact words I’d asked his brother. He didn’t throw them back at me, instead delivering them in a gentle tone, but the tables were well and truly being turned, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“Kira…? We don’t have to—” he said, his hand dropping down, but I shook my head.
People hadn’t really asked me many questions since I’d transitioned. It was like there was this whole train of actions and responses that came into place when someone made that change, but checking in with the person who had just joined the host wasn’t a part of it. Everyone seemed too excited about my body or the powers I had seen absolutely no evidence of so far, both things I felt no connection to. I straightened up, put my camera on the desk, and then shrugged. Just like it had been when I was on the other side of the camera, the question seemed to pull something out that had laid in wait until now.
“Last time I ached?” I said. “Today, just now, when Marlow walked out. I don’t know what it is, but ever since I transitioned… Before, I thought he was just some hot guy, but now…” I clawed at my skin. “Watching him walk out that door made something ache inside me. I wanted to wrench him back, damn all the very smart, very careful words he was saying about not being my preceptor, and just say fuck it. That I’d kick Rutherglen in the balls if he tried to get between us. But he left, because you were hammering on the door, forcing him out of here. So you made me ache.”
He nodded at that, the phone dipping for a second, but he looked back at me and asked, “Is that the only time?”
I just stared at him, wanting to see what was going on in that head of his, but the camera provided a barrier between him and me. I’d been worried about not wearing my mask, but now realised how effective the camera was in the same way. His focus was on the parallax view of me, through the mediating force of the lens. That made what I was about to say harder, because I couldn’t gauge his reaction, and also easier, because I didn’t have to say the words to him.
I stared into the camera, just looking into that cool impersonal lens, and said, “Today, when I transitioned, and every day before, but you already know that. The transition hurt so fucking much, and Marlow was too scared to help me through it due to the stupid fucking court politics, so I was left to experience the worst pain of my life largely alone. Having to dress up like this and parade down the aisle like a cow at market day. Having the attention of Dave fucking Rutherglen when I never asked for it. Every day that my father looked at me in disappointment when I had another attack, which were somehow more painful than feeling like my head was being split open. Having to measure out my life in tiny little blocks of sleep, taking medication, doing my exercises, making sure my neck muscles weren’t too tight. The endless hamster wheel of regimented self-care. Fucking leaving that all behind when my body came into its own, being free of all of that, but not. Your brother treating me like I’m a thing he purchased. Watching the lot of you at play…”
I ran my eyes over the body that held the camera up.
“You were so fucking savage and puerile and beautiful all at the same time. The way you looked at me as she licked your dick…” I shook my head. “But there’s a lie of omission in that question. You don’t want to know about all of that, you want to know about you, about how you made me ache.”
I just stared at the camera for a moment as I felt it rise. I hadn’t had a chance to deal with much of anything of the previous night as I was shepherded into this bloody preceptor bullshit. It was as if no one could leave me alone until I was assigned. But Johnno didn’t push or argue, he just sat there with the camera running, a quiet, watchful presence that drew everything up and out, like a boil bursting.
“The thing that made me ache the most is when you said those fucking words to me. Apart from Jen and my work, those dreams were the only things in my life that gave it meaning. I thought it was just some elaborate fantasy in my head, that I would never in a million years even see you across the heads of a crowd at a gig, let alone in the flesh. My dreams were this secret little place where I could relax, let go, and just be held…”
I shook my head.
“By Liam, you, all of you? I don’t know. The sex was amazing. Of course it was, it was dream sex. You all made me ache so fucking much for the feel of you that I’d wake up with my cunt clutching on a horrible nothing and wanting you so desperately to be there, in my room and in me. But it wasn’t just getting off. You could have left it at that, just made it sensual and fun. It would have made it so much easier when I finally found out what you’d done. That it’d actually been all of you that were touching my dreams.”
I felt the tears prick at my eyes, unbidden.
“You made me feel something no one else has. I was noticed and desired. I felt sexy and then connected to you, whoever was doing the driving in those visions.” I shook my head. “And then you did the worst thing—you made me feel loved. When you repeated the words you said in that dream yesterday, you stabbed me clear through the heart. Carelessly, without a fucking thought, while the Greek chorus cackled in the background. That’s what made me ache the most, why I stumbled out of the room to get away, as if I could outrun the fucking betrayal of it all. The guys laughing as it all came out, the ridiculous fucking pipedream finally revealed.” I blinked, feeling empty now, but somehow freer. “You made me ache the most, Johnno, all of you.”
Was that what I looked like when I put the camera down? Johnno lowered the phone, stunned, like the weight of my words was so heavy, he could barely breathe. I watched him blink, force the air in and out of his lungs, while his phone fell from his limp fingers and landed on the chair between his legs. When he finally looked back at me, his breath came in long shuddering breaths.
“We need to reshoot my interview.”
“What?” I said, expecting anything but that. A sharp stab of pain tore through my chest, that this was his response to all I said. I’d confessed everything… But I was their photographer and this was my job, and as it appeared, I’d gone from one lot of paternalistic bullshit to another. I flicked on my camera and didn’t bother to check the settings, just switched it to video mode and pointed it at him. If it was overexposed or the sound was shit, someone could fix it in post.
“Well?” I said.
“Ask the question.”
I sighed and said, “When’s the last time you truly ache—?”
“That wasn’t the question you asked me, Kira.”
“Fine. When have you felt the most naked?”
He settled in his chair, his arm slung over the back and his hips thrust forward as he slouched down.
“Not on stage, oddly enough. Like, you’ve got the gaze of thousands upon you, watching your every move, seeing every triumph and every fuck up, so you’d think that’d be it. And not when I’ve been actually naked. You worked us out pretty quick. Getting your cock out in front of one or many doesn’t really make me feel that vulnerable either. There’s plenty of self-doubt and comparisons. Sometimes you just don’t feel like performing in an orgy of twenty people, but we’ve always done everything together, the band, so one in, all in. Sometimes you worry about your partners. They get elf-struck real quick, our groupies. It lets their inhibitions down and gives them the opportunity to do all the shit their little minds want, without having to think too much about it. But then you’re worried, are you hurting them? Are they hurting themselves? What’s this going to do to them long term? But the band runs like a machine, with very few vulnerabilities. We can’t afford to. Others want to take what’s ours, Dave is looking for ways to break us up and use us in the bigger mechanisms of his court. If we’re not united, we’re fucked. But even then, I don’t feel especially naked. We grew up in fae courts, saw the way shit was going down before we transitioned. I feel for people like you, coming into this cesspool, but we never knew anything else.”
“So then the answer is never?” I said, the irritation plain in my voice.
“No.” He shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t say that.” He leant forward, elbows going to his knees. “I couldn’t say it on the day. I still don’t know if I can.” He paused, his eyes losing focus for a moment, seeing something I couldn’t before jerking back to me. “We have everything. Money, women, men, drugs, platinum albums, adoring fans. Anything a man could want, we have, or could have with a crook of our fingers. You’re not the only latent we visited the dreams of. We’re a small court, looking for new people, and Billy… Let’s just say his abilities make it easy for us to find people like you. But that’s not it. I didn’t act like that with them, and we don’t treat them like we did you. Mostly, we just let their subconscious dictate what they want.”
He stopped, so all I could hear was the sound of his breath.
“No, it’s you, Kira. You tear everything we built down. Those fucking dreams… They were some of the sweetest moments of my life. I’d come back to the bus, wiped from performing, on stage and then in the parties afterwards, and there you were. Soft, sweet, so fucking receptive. I used to feel like I was sinking into this perfect little cocoon, away from the court bullshit and the tour bullshit and the band bullshit…”
He looked away finally, and my camera hung limply in my hands. I don’t know if I’d caught any of that, if we’d even be able to use it, but I turned the camera off, anyway.
“I’m sorry we hurt you. Maybe we should have introduced you to things beforehand…” He shook his head. “That’s what the guys wanted. To bring you in, start acclimating you to the life. That’s what this tour was supposed to be. For you to meet us, get to know us, and choose us. But I held them off. I wanted to hold on to what we had for as long as possible, as if I could do that forever. I needed you so fucking much.”
He got to his feet, pacing around the room.
“It’s you. You that gets under my defences and tears them in two. You that strips it all back until I’m just there, bleeding. You, up here where my heart beats. I’m nothing but raw and bleeding skin when I’m around you. I have no defences.
“Which is what you’ve got to start seeing. They’re manoeuvring you around, but you don’t have to go along with it. You have power. So much fucking power. They all want you—your favour, your power, your body, or to just be by your side. Stop letting this shit push you around, and reach out and take what you want. If that’s Marlow, take him from Rutherglen. You don’t need to kneel to fucking anyone. Make them kneel to you.”
It’s a funny thing, to see clearly what people think of you. If it meshes with the idea that most people have of you, it seems plausible. If he’d judged me super harshly, that would have been more believable than the version of me he presented right now. I got to my feet, feeling the itch in my soles that told me to run again, but for a whole other reason. Something Johnno seemed to sense.
“What do you want, Kira? If you could have anything in the world, what would it be?”
He paced around the room, keeping track with me and mirroring my actions. I considered his words. Until I stopped.
What if what he said was true? What if I did have power here? What if I could reorder the elements—the courts, a preceptor, faerie, alliances? What if I was the one calling the shots?
My eyes instantly narrowed down on him, cataloguing all that he was into neat little compartments. I drifted closer. No, that was coy. I wandered over, slow as I liked, wanting to see him react, wanting to have that reaction.
He forced himself to stay still, but I noted the tension in his body as I got closer, his scent, sandalwood and wild thyme, hitting me as I got close enough to touch, something that just deepened as I drew in. I stood there, in the shadow of his body as he looked down at me, and said something I’d never even dared consider. “I want it all.”
His pupils blew out as my words sunk in. He went to take an involuntary step towards me, but I liked it when he stopped himself. Seeing someone restrain themselves, not because they had to or because someone told them to, but to get in my good graces made me happy. Which is perhaps what emboldened me.
“I want time to finally work out what the fuck is going on with Marlow.”
“And what else?”
“I want to keep taking photos and doing those interviews. I want to go on tour with the best band in the world, and I want to find the story, the many stories in that weird little world of yours. I want to find out if I’m any good, or if all of this is just an elaborate attempt by Dave or your band to get into my pants.
“I want freedom, Johnathon. There’s nothing sexier to me right now than feeling like the noose is off my neck. I want to be able to—” He watched me reach out, my hand hovering in the air as I went to touch him and stopped. “I want to feel like it won’t be the fall of Western civilisation if I do something simple like lay my hand on you.”
He pulled his shirt off in a quick jerk, revealing that same golden chest. It didn’t look real, and the not so slow lift and fall as he breathed was the only thing that hammered home that this was a real person, not one of my photographs.
He was warm, his skin smooth and slightly tacky, as if he’d raised a sweat talking to me. I dug my nails in a little as I dragged my hand down, leaving a red trail in my wake, something that had his mouth dropping open and his breath coming in a faster rasp.
“Kira…”
My name was part prayer, part plea, but I just shook my head.
“Don’t. Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. If you want me to stop, say so. If this feels bad or uncomfortable, I’ll stop the moment you say the word.”
“And if I don’t?”
A challenge flared inside those golden eyes, something that reminded me of a whole other Hartley.
“Then we’ll keep going until I stop.”
; My other hand joined the first, smoothing over those muscular shoulders, my fingers curling into the hollows above his collarbones. His head tilted back as my hands went around the column of his neck so I could feel the pulse fluttering there, like a moth in a jar. I brushed the corner of his mouth with my thumb, frowning as his tongue flicked out, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. I thrust my hand into the tangle of his hair, feeling the silken strands against my palm. His eyes closed down to slits as my fingers scored his scalp, and his mouth dropped open wider. He looked like a sleepy predator when I pulled back.
“God, this is making me harder than I’ve ever been. I fucking ache,” he said, broaching the intense silence, but somehow, now that was OK. My eyes darted down, looking at the evidence, and I saw a solid lump in his jeans. His brows creased, like he was worried he’d said the wrong thing, but my fingers went to the button, moving the same as his hand had yesterday, and the fabric parted eagerly. I helped it peel backwards and saw the thick column of him tucked to one side. I brushed the back of my hand in the brown hair above it, letting one teasing fingertip graze the skin beneath and feeling the thick wall of muscle. He groaned as my fingers slid under the denim that held him trapped, pushed the fabric back, and freed that long, thick erection he’d made another girl suck when he couldn’t or wouldn’t touch me.
