The Line of Succession

by Harry F Rey

  Roger grinned. “No idea, boss. But you gotta hear this.” Bill leaned forward as Roger put a phone on the desk and pressed a button. A recording of a voicemail played a voice they both recognized as Andrew Hodes, but in great distress.

  “James, James, please! Just listen to me. We can fix this. I promise you we can. You don’t need to marry her, I love you. I always will and always have. I can’t live without you. James please, please call me. Just talk to me. I’m here, I’m at the flat. Please James, I love you. I need you back. We can figure it out together. I love you, that’s all.”

  Bill picked up his phone and dialed. “Greg … son, I’m so sorry. Something’s come up.”

  • • •

  Andrew finished another glass of whisky, laying spread out on the couch in the dark, wearing only the boxers he’d started the day in. The dregs of the glass felt like the dregs of his life. Nursing it just meant delving deeper into despair. His eyes started to feel heavy, and he reached over to put the glass on the coffee table, worried it would fall and smash should God be good and grant him some sleep.

  There will always be one last everything with someone, Andrew realized. One last word together, one last graze of cheek against cheek, skin against skin … there will be the last time you watch them get dressed as you lie in bed, and one last time they come over and kiss you on the forehead. There will be one last time you rub soap over their chest in the shower, one last time you hand them the toothpaste. You’ll share one last laugh, one last glass of wine, one last drive home, and one last sweaty embrace. Your eyes will open to their softly breathing body one morning, and you’ll never know it is to be for the very last time.

  Andrew thought he heard a knock and held his breath, alert, but thinking it could have been the glass connecting with the table. He unclenched his muscles, convinced no one could be out there. Then it came again … a knock at the door.

  He stumbled over, not wanting to even hope that it might be him, nor knowing what he would do if it was. Andrew clasped the handle, suddenly frozen in terror at what fate might rush to greet him should the door open. Would there be one more time? He took a slow and shallow breath that failed entirely to steady his pounding chest.

  “James. You came.” The sudden face of the man he was used to seeing every single day hit him like a London bus. The hood from James’ jumper slung over a baseball cap, covering his features. Yet, to Andrew, he still looked like a prince … one that was rushing through the night in disguise. This truly was a fucked-up Disney romance.

  Every fiber of Andrew wanted nothing more in the world than to embrace him. Every sinew wanted to be wrapped up in James’ arms, to kiss his neck, to stroke his hair and to fall back into their love. On that blackest midnight when James’ father had died and their love story began, Andrew had held him till the pain ebbed away and James could imagine that a dawn would come again. In those hours, something had occurred. Their spirits became entwined, their paths forged in the fire of an agony no child should endure. And in that pain, they’d created a protective bubble for themselves against the world … a bubble that now felt on the verge of bursting. The road they walked together all these years had suddenly reached its end, crumbling over the edge of a cliff. Fear held Andrew back.

  “You’ve been drinking,” James said, as he stepped inside.

  Andrew locked the door with a heavy bolt that echoed in the empty flat. The silence flooded in like an oppressive gas, the stale air smelling of Andrew’s tears and sadness. James walked right past him, eschewing the usual hug and brush of cheek against cheek. He leaned against the breakfast bar, arms folded, looking less angry than he had been a few hours earlier, but it didn’t make Andrew feel any better. The few feet between them dropped into an insurmountable abyss, with craggy edges and no fathomable way to build a bridge. Even his voice sounded distant, like James was calling to him across a windy moor, his body lost in the scratchy green thickets, disappearing in the rain. You’ve been drinking. Like this was the time to bring up a glass or two of whisky.

  Andrew despised the way James could so casually shed his part in the crisis. The subtle arrogance of his character, a snobbish vein of superiority that James could never acknowledge, spilled out across the hardwood floor. Andrew felt the fear-tinged wind and rain wash away as a thundering anger began to pound through his head. A fire rose up in his chest, burning his throat like he’d just drained a glass of whisky. It was so easy for James to drop those vicious words, as he had back at the theater. To smash a bottle of blame at Andrew’s feet and expect him to crawl on his hands and knees, picking up the pieces…

  “Yeah, I’ve been drinking. What did you expect after today?” Andrew responded, padding back over to the coffee table to pick up the empty glass. Pouring another drink would burn these wounds James claimed to have, and that was all Andrew wanted right now. Let him feel hurt, let him understand for one moment in his life what fifteen years of hiding one’s true self did to a man. Andrew shifted his weight between each leg, lifting himself onto the balls of his feet like he was preparing for a bout at the gym.

  “I expect you to have a clearer fucking head so we can figure a way out of this mess!” James roared, stopping Andrew in his tracks. His face cracked open like a mountainside. The blame in James’ eyes melted away, and the contours of his cheek bones suddenly flushed back with love. “This mess you created,” he whispered, broken.

  Andrew’s eyes welled up. He couldn’t walk another step … couldn’t stand atop the usual barricades firing off the slings and arrows of their misfortune as in any other fight. The stakes were too high. The abyss had come to swallow them both this time. There was no fight between them. Andrew threw the glass back onto the coffee table with careless abandon and bounded over to James, grabbing him in a hug, smelling the cold of the outside on his jumper.

  “Oh, James, I’m so sorry,” he sobbed. The tears rushed from the depths of pain, the night and day of loving this man. This complicated, messed up person who had no constitutional right to decide his own fate. This man who carried the heaviest weight of expectation on his shoulders, not just from his family, but from his country … from the world…. Rightfully, it would have crushed any other human. Andrew breathed in the smell of James’ skin and rubbed his face against his neck, now damp with tears. James was not just a man; he was a colossus.

  “That’s enough now.” James rubbed Andrew’s back, holding him close. “We need to figure this out, and we need to do it together.” His arms might have been cast in bronze for the power they transferred. Their strength and comfort calmed the raging storm. The sea’s fell flat, the clouds parted to reveal the hidden sun, and the wind slowed to a whisper in a lover’s ear.

  “I know. We will, love. We will.”

  For a few moments they held each other, enjoying the silent relief from the weight of their problems. They’d always had each other. In the stillness of each night, at the close of funerals and the end of weddings, when the marching bands ceased to play … the bowties could be undone and the shoes slipped off. In those peaceful moments when the world thought they were alone, they had each other.

  “I have an idea,” James said, giving him a smile that made Andrew melt. “Let’s put the hood on.”

  Andrew looked at him quizzically. “Now? You’re sure?” The pendulum of emotions swung to the opposite of fear to the love of lust that bound them together at the most base, masculine level. To have and be had was one thing; to watch and be watched was quite another. Over the years and countless cities, they’d perfected the routine. Any reservations were steadfastly ignored as the blood flowed to Andrew’s cock and he embraced the promised haze of ecstasy, as James had so clearly done already.

  “Are you joking? With what I’ve been through today? Mum, granny, the sister, and now a fucking girlfriend to add to those three witches?” That smile Andrew could never forget cracked across his face. A look of mischievousness reserved only for the powerful, for those who did not believe in consequenc
es. “Andrew, I’ve never wanted it more.” Andrew grinned back and they kissed. “And you stink of whisky. You know I hate it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Andrew said, but he couldn’t help smiling. “You go get ready, and I’ll find someone.” If there was to be one last time for everything with someone, let it be this. Let it be now. Let them disband their worries and ignore their problems in one last bacchanalian thrill.

  “Okay,” James responded, starting to undress as he headed to the bathroom. “But afterward, you’re going to get us a pizza … and some chips. I’m starving!”

  As well rehearsed as making coffee, Andrew grabbed his phone and opened an app from a secret folder. James shut the bathroom door and he heard the shower come on while their profile dinged into life. Dozens of messages had flooded in since the last time they’d opened it up. Andrew checked the date. Wow … nearly a month.

  He ignored the received messages and went into their profile. Their picture featured two anonymous-looking toned torsos, one in a pair of red Speedos, the other in blue. Looking for a threesome right now! Andrew wrote in their profile header, then started to flick through other profiles marked as online at this time of night.

  A profile with no picture that only said “age 19” and “top” was online and only a few hundred feet away.

  Hey. Can host now. Want to come over? Andrew wrote.

  A second later, the phone buzzed with a response.

  Sure. Two of you?

  Yeah, I’m top and boyfriend is bottom. You and me will share him. Andrew paused briefly on the word boyfriend. It suddenly occurred to him that for all the countless times he’d written it in messages, it had never been said out loud. Not by him, and certainly not to him…

  Sounds hot.

  The blank profile sent a picture. A cute young twink-ish face with curly brown hair. The guy had a cheeky smile and had taken a selfie, fully clothed with an anorak on, in a public bathroom.

  Andrew sent him the address and code to access the building as he stepped over to the bathroom, wondering if he should share his revelation with James. As he entered, a wall of steam hit him. James rubbed the mist from the glass door and smiled. He looked excited, almost happy, despite everything. Lizzie’s words boomed through his mind: When are you going to wake up and realize James doesn’t give a shit about you. He never has. He never will. He knew in his heart she was wrong. That had been her jealousy speaking, or her ever-present dislike of James. But why did it feel right in his head? Why did the logic click so well into place? Andrew swallowed away a pang of existential anxiety and returned a casual grin.

  “He’s nineteen,” Andrew said, drying off the mirror with a towel and inspecting his reflection. “And super cute. He’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  “Great,” came the reply from the shower. “You’ll show me his picture after.” After. Andrew felt suddenly more than a little stung by the word and James’ full-throated embrace of it. After was the cause of their problems. The normal flush of lustful excitement punctured with the thoughts of after.

  Andrew realized he had been wrong earlier. Sometimes there is a moment with someone that you know will be the last. The last time you see each other as two single people before a wedding … the last time you would be in such a house before moving, or share a certain bed … the last time you drove a car before trading it in, or the last time you looked in the eyes of a dying dog before saying goodbye at the vet. The beginnings and endings of life … the lasts that made a life together. None of these lasts would Andrew have with James. That would never be their life. But Andrew knew this would be the last time they would give themselves over to a night of no consequence. It was the last time not thinking about tomorrow … the last time James could truly say after.

  • • •

  Alexandra climbed into bed beside her husband. He was sitting up, lamp on, scrolling through the next day’s newspapers on his tablet. She snuggled up to him, hoping to achieve the impossible and prod out the inner thoughts of a man ready for sleep.

  “You always look sexy with your glasses on,” she said. “I wish you’d wear them more.”

  He turned away from the tablet and lifted his glasses up onto his head. “But then you couldn’t keep your hands off me.” She giggled as he kissed her neck.

  “Happy with how it went?” Faisal asked her, switching off the tablet.

  “I suppose,” Alexandra responded, laying back into her pillow. “I’m thinking about Andrew.”

  “Oh?” Faisal said, propping up his head with his arm. “Why?”

  “Well, he’s got nothing to lose. He’s not family, he doesn’t have a title. What if he figures it all out, or blows everything up?” The second-guessing of herself was a hard habit to kick. Unlike her brother, she’d never once touched a drug or smoked a cigarette. She barely even drank. Her vice was the gaping hole where her confidence should be.

  “Darling, you’re forgetting something important.”

  “Oh, what’s that?”

  “He loves your brother more than anything in the world, for some unfathomable reason,” Faisal said. Alexandra thought about it for a moment and realized Faisal was right. She had only every seen Andrew look at James adoringly. It had been Faisal who’d pointed it out to her, many years ago. James and Andrew had sat tuxedoed together at a banquet, as they often did, across the long, heavily laden table, seemingly lost together in their own giggly world. Don’t you think there’s something going on? he’d whispered in her ear. As she watched them that night, eating off each other’s plates and sharing playfully telling nudges, she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t seen it before, after all those years. That astuteness Faisal showed, that forceful reminder that he was not just a husband, but a confidant — an advisor, a person who saw things she could not — had made her all the more determined to love him, no matter the cost.

  “You need to get him on your side. Show him how this new way would be better for him, for them. They don’t want this. They can’t go on pretending to be good friends who spend every waking minute together forever.”

  Alexandra smiled, as her hand played with the thick black hair on his chest. “You’re right, my love. I know you are. Why don’t you talk to him. You know … old boys’ network and all that. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, we weren’t particularly friendly with each other at school. Plus, I think he’ll listen to you over me.”

  Alexandra sensed something unsaid from her husband. There was a story there for sure, but one she didn’t have the energy to draw out now. “All right, I will. I’ll bring him in. He’s dangerous, you know,” she said, turning away and pulling the covers over her. “He knows more about our family than we do.”

  “Goodnight, dear,” Faisal said, flicking off the lamp.

  • • •

  “You can leave your clothes on the couch,” Andrew said, sipping another whisky as the young man started to take off his clothes. “Want a drink?”

  “No, thanks, I’m fine. Got college tomorrow,” he said, pulling off his sweatshirt and T-shirt together to reveal a beautifully flat stomach and thin frame with not a single hair on his chest.

  “You look good,” Andrew said, leaning against the couch and watching the young man undress. The soft lamplight from the bedroom pointed the way forward, but Andrew knew James loved the anticipation. “What’s your name?”

  “Greg,” he said, kicking his trainers off and pulling his jeans and underwear off together. His cock already stood straight out, at least seven inches from the base of untamed, light brown hair. The tip glistened.

  “Well, Greg, it’s very nice to meet you.” Andrew grinned and slinked to his knees, running his hand up the back of Greg’s leg, squeezing his smooth ass and pushing his dick straight into his open mouth. Andrew gorged on it, delighting in the taste of someone new, as Greg moaned and held onto the back of Andrew’s head.


  Andrew stood back up and kissed him on the mouth. It felt wet and sloppy … too much tongue. This kid is a newbie. Andrew ran his hands all over Greg, enjoying the sensation of a fresh body; a foreign taste to be discovered and a stranger’s touch to be explored.

  “Come,” Andrew whispered, as he took his hand and led him into the bedroom. The sight of James on all fours on the bed, naked except for the leather hood, made Andrew instantly hard. Harder still, to see it through someone else's eyes…

  “Fucking nice ass,” Greg said, moving straight towards it, cock in hand. All of a sudden, Andrew noticed their framed photograph on the bedside table. He’d forgotten to turn it around as he usually did, although Greg didn’t seem to notice. Plus, he seemed far too young to recognize what James looked like nearly a decade ago from a casual glance at a not very large picture.

  Andrew relaxed and took up his familiar position, laying propped up next to James, his cock beside James’ hooded head, should he want to unzip the mouth and suck it. They must have done this hundreds of times over the years, often on their first night in a new city or late after an official function. Andrew couldn’t remember how it had all started, but the thought of a stranger, or two, or three, or four, coming over to fuck James while Andrew watched, sucked, and then finished off inside him at the very end had gotten them through even the longest of days.

  “Yeah, man,” Greg said, already sliding in and out of James’ pre-lubed hole. Andrew moved underneath James, sucking him for a while before moving further down and licking Greg’s balls while he moaned and grunted inside James.

  Greg was relentless. At least fifteen minutes passed, and Greg showed no sign of slowing down. From the tone of James’ grunts, Andrew knew he had started to get a little impatient. Andrew got up from the bed and stood next to Greg, his hand on his ass cheek, moving with the rhythm. Greg lifted one leg onto the bed, pulled James in closer, and went in harder.