by Anna Martin
Before he had chance to discreetly back away, Alex looked up and grinned when he saw Doug and George standing together.
“Hi,” he said, rising and moving to make room for George. “Did you have fun?”
“It was very educational,” George said drily, making Alex laugh.
“I bet. Doug?”
“Twenty-one,” he said cryptically. “See you later, princess.”
Alex laughed. “Later.”
George watched Doug leave, his hips swinging in his tight designer jeans. “Twenty-one?” he asked when Doug was out of earshot. “What does that mean? Is it like a score?”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “I’m sorry. It’s a stupid thing we do in clubs. An out-of-ten scale is too easy for people to interpret, so we work on an out-of-twenty-five.”
“And I scored twenty-one?”
“Yeah. That’s the highest anyone’s got in quite a while, you know. You should be honoured.”
“I’m ecstatic,” George deadpanned.
Alex pulled a face and poked him in the side. “He was teasing. He likes you. He already texted me to say so.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Hey, can I take you somewhere?” George asked.
Alex hummed. “Sure.”
“It’s not fancy or anything,” George said, backpedalling, trying to lower expectations.
“I don’t mind,” Alex said with a laugh.
“Okay. It’s not far from here.”
“Okay.”
The day was milder than they’d had in some time now, no rain, still cold enough to wear a scarf but it likely would be until April. George walked quickly, but that was fine, Alex did too. Their strides seemed to match, and for some reason that made Alex happy.
“How was your afternoon?” Alex asked. He didn’t make any move to take George’s hand. It was still too new, for one, and George wouldn’t let him, for another. Not yet, anyway.
“Good,” George mumbled. “Revelatory.”
Alex barked a laugh. “I’m sure.”
“He took me to a… to a bathhouse.”
“I know.”
“Oh.”
“Doug told me his plans, probably to make sure I didn’t object too strongly before he followed through with them.”
“Did you? Object, I mean.”
“I gave him strict instructions,” Alex said, deciding it was cold after all and pulling his coat more securely around himself. “No sex.”
“Well, yeah,” George said, like that was a foregone conclusion.
“Are we exclusive?” Alex asked. The words came out quickly, apropos of nothing, and he almost immediately regretted them.
George stopped. Then stepped out of the way of some tourist with a camera, closer to the café and away from the road.
“Do you want to be?”
“I don’t know. I’m just wondering.”
“I’m not ready to put a label on it.”
“‘Dating’ works just fine for me.”
“Me too.”
“I’m not dating anyone else,” Alex said. Another bunch of people came up toward them, and Alex put his hand on George’s arm to draw him even closer to the wall. “I don’t have any intention of sleeping with anyone else.”
“Okay,” George said. “Then, me too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
George gave him a funny sort of smile and resumed his striding off down the road. For the first few steps, Alex had to jog to catch up with him.
“We’re almost halfway home,” Alex joked as they crossed onto South Bridge.
“Yeah. It’s right by the university. You’re hungry, right? I’m taking you for dinner.”
“I could eat,” Alex said lightly.
“Good. I’m starving.”
They crossed the road, and George stopped at a corner restaurant Alex had seen a few times before but never gone into.
“The Mosque Kitchen,” he read. “I’ve heard of this place.”
“It’s so good,” George enthused. “You have to get over any expectations right off the bat, but the food is definitely worth it.”
“Indian food, right?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
George held open the door, and Alex stepped inside. Immediately, he was hit with a wall of delicious smells.
“It’s not curry like you know it,” George continued as he led them up to the counter. “You pick from a handful of different options and they serve it on disposable plates, with disposable knives and forks. It’s cheap as chips, but the food is amazing.”
“It smells amazing,” Alex said.
He read down the menu as they waited in line. The restaurant was set up cafeteria style, with communal tables and the disposable plates and napkins George had described, and bins for people to clean up after themselves.
The options consisted of lamb, chicken, or vegetable curry, with no more details about what went into the dishes than that. There was a whole bunch of sides to go with it too: naan bread, poppadums, saag aloo, bajis, samosas. The most expensive thing on the menu was the lamb curry, which cost six pounds, including rice.
Cheap as chips was right.
“What do you recommend?” Alex asked.
“Honestly? It’s all good. I’ll get a bunch of sides so we can just share.”
“Sounds good to me,” he said.
After another moment’s deliberation while waiting in the queue, Alex decided on the chicken curry, and he’d share whatever George came up with. The men serving all wore elegantly twisted turbans, and one had a net covering his beard, making him look like a trussed-up Father Christmas. Sort of.
All of the curries were resting in the stainless steel vats that characterised school dinners back when he was at boarding school, bringing on a wave of nostalgia. Alex got that boarding school wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it had worked for him. He wanted anonymity, to be just another face in the crowd, and Harrow gave him that. No one cared who his family were. That only started to matter once he transferred to Eton, for secondary school.
George ordered first, opting for a plain naan rather than one with garlic butter, which Alex appreciated. He paid too, waving away Alex’s offer of splitting it.
“It’s a date,” he said in a low voice, with a shy smile.
They carried the food—and for costing less than twenty pounds in total, it was a lot of food—over to a table by the window, where they could watch people going by.
“This place is popular with students,” George said as a big group of them got up from the table behind him.
“I can see that. Because it’s so cheap?”
“I guess so. They used to operate out of the student union, just over on Potter Row? Then they opened this place a few years back.”
Alex nodded and dug his plastic fork into the pile of delicately soft, saffron yellow rice.
It was incredible.
“Oh my God,” he mumbled through a mouthful of food.
“Right?”
“This is… really good.”
Alex reached for his Coke and swigged it. The curry was delicately spiced, not too hot, but rich and creamy and delicious. He was fairly adventurous when it came to ordering Indian food at a restaurant, though this was a different experience entirely.
“How did you find this place?” Alex asked.
“Someone from the rugby team brought a bunch of us here, well, when it was at the student union. They do really cheap beer at the union too,” he said with a grin. “So none of us really minded that much. They do takeaway now too.”
“We’re coming back here,” Alex said emphatically, mopping up some of the curry sauce with the edge of his naan bread. “Regularly.”
“I’m so okay with that.”
Even with George’s appetite, they couldn’t quite manage to work their way through all the side dishes, and Alex gave up trying before George did. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his stomach, aware that he
was going to have to work hard to burn all this off.
“Okay, I have a question,” Alex asked, stretching his arms over his head and enjoying the resulting pop in his back.
“Go for it.”
“What is it you actually do? I know you said you’re a design engineer, but you could be making toothbrushes or nuclear submarines for all I know.”
George grinned. “It’s really boring.”
“So bore me.”
“I design sports helmets.”
“For the big head or the little one?”
“Ha-ha.” George stacked the almost empty plates up and pushed them to one side. “The big one. I’ve been working mostly in the winter sports area for the past few years, but I’ve just signed on to a project to work on American football helmets.”
“That’s really cool.”
“Thanks. I actually designed some of the helmets they used in the winter Olympics.”
“No way!”
“Yeah. I have a very specific style that I use. Some athletes love it, some hate it.” He shrugged. “It’s fine. I’d prefer to divide opinions rather than be someone who no one has an opinion on.”
“So you’re, like, famous?”
“Absolutely not.” George shook his head. “No. I’m… notorious, maybe.”
“Renowned?”
“Not even that.”
“Do you have a patent name or anything?”
“Well, I work for a company. They own all the patents and stuff. But my particular style is known as a Maguire fit.”
“Are you serious?” Alex laughed, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table.
“Okay, before you start thinking that I’m the biggest wanker in the world, I didn’t start it. A couple of years ago people started asking for the style that I was responsible for, and since the only thing that distinguished it as one of mine was my name on it, that sort of stuck.”
“That’s hilarious,” Alex said.
“Thanks.”
“What do you want to do tonight?” Alex asked.
“Doug said something about you having plans?”
Alex laughed. “I just wanted to come meet you. Mostly to make sure Doug hadn’t scared you off completely.”
“No. No, he didn’t do that.”
“Good,” Alex said softly. “If you want to go out with your friends, just say. I don’t mind.”
George smiled at him across the table. The youthful chubbiness to his cheeks was so endearing.
“I don’t have plans. Can we go back to yours?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
Chapter Seven
By the time they got back to Alex’s flat, neither of them felt like doing anything remotely sexual. Instead Alex had instigated his House Nudity rule and they’d both stripped off jeans that felt too tight around the waist after their enormous dinner. George had on his T-shirt and a pair of socks, along with his overly-baggy boxers. It was far more comfortable like this. He was sprawled out on the sofa, one of his legs thrown over the back, balls practically hanging out of the side of his boxers. Alex wished the look didn’t turn him on so much.
“Hey,” he said easily. “Whatcha doing?”
“Reading,” George said. He was frowning in his own adorable little way, the unique expression that made him look like he was about to slaughter a bunny rabbit.
They’d watched a film on TV, then Alex had excused himself to clean up the kitchen and left George with his laptop, hoping George wasn’t the sort of guy to go through his browser history to find out his preferred type of porn.
“Whatcha reading?” Alex asked, squishing himself in between those obscenely spread legs.
“Gay history.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Doug said something to me—”
“Ah, Doug,” Alex sighed dramatically.
“And I didn’t know loads of this stuff.”
“Well, they don’t make you take a test before you come out, George. The only way you would know this stuff is by going to look for it.”
“They should teach it somewhere,” he grumbled.
“They do,” Alex said, amused. “There’s a lot of universities—here and in America—that have gay history courses.”
“Well, I didn’t know anything about them. Did you know gay sex was illegal here until 1980? That’s only thirty-five years ago.”
“Mhmm.” Alex stroked a finger down George’s thick thigh, tracing the line between the muscles.
“And it wasn’t until ninety-nine that they made the age of consent the same for gay people as straight people.”
“My my, you’re learning a lot today. Angry yet?”
“Yes!” George exclaimed. “Ninety-nine, Alex!”
“I know.”
George snapped the laptop shut, his cheeks flushed with indignant anger. Alex leaned in and kissed one.
“This is ridiculous,” George muttered.
“Yeah. And we’re getting there. But there’s still a lot we need to do. We’ve made a lot of progress for people like us in Europe, but there’s plenty of countries around the world where they still hang gay men, or stone them to death, or decide it’s more humane to just imprison them for life.”
“When the Allies liberated Auschwitz, everyone was free to go except the gay men. They were sent to other prisons to serve the rest of their sentence.”
Alex nodded.
“It makes me feel sick.”
“My mum….”
“What?”
“She’s been pushing me to do charity work. For a LGBT charity.”
“You said no?”
“I say no to everything,” Alex said with a wry smile.
“You were at that event,” George said. “The fundraiser. At the museum.”
“I was,” Alex said. He took the laptop away and set it on the coffee table, then stretched out on George’s broad chest. “I’m quite pleased I agreed to that one, to be honest.”
George ran his hand down the expanse of Alex’s back and squeezed Alex’s ass. It felt too intimate, this lazy, sexy, lounging about together. It felt too soon. Alex didn’t give a flying fuck.
“You should think about it,” George said.
“Okay. I will.”
George squeezed his ass again, then rolled over to dump Alex on the sofa and got up, pulling his jeans on from where they’d been abandoned on the floor.
“Where are you going?” Alex asked.
“Home,” George said with a grin as he pulled his jeans on. “This has been great, but I have a game tomorrow.”
“A rugby game?”
“Yeah. Wanna come?”
Alex sat up, startled. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I mean, you don’t have to. But if you want to, you’re welcome.”
“Okay. I’d like that.”
George pulled on his shirt and leaned over to kiss Alex on the lips. “Don’t forget to put some clothes on before you leave, though.”
“Ha ha,” Alex deadpanned, then stretched his neck for another kiss. “Text me the address of wherever it is you play?”
“Will do,” George said, kissed him again, winked, and let himself out of the flat.
Rugby boys on a Sunday afternoon.
Alex grinned, stretched, and let his fingers drift down to his cock. The thought alone was enough to make him hard.
One of the first things George had done after he’d moved to Edinburgh was find a rugby team to join. Actually, he’d researched it some before he’d even decided to take the job. He was a football fan before he was a rugby fan; his dad had been taking George and Maggie to watch Manchester United play since they were little kids.
George was crap at football, though. Probably unsurprisingly, his kicking game when he played rugby was pretty poor too. He played defensive line, taking the hits, making the big tackles. He was light on his feet—for a bigger guy—and speedy with it.
Rugby wasn’t a passion, not like football was. It provided
much needed entertainment, a decent workout, and more often than not a fair degree of stress relief. George had started playing seriously when he was in school, first for the school team, then for a local side. Nothing serious, just weekly training and a match on the weekend.
Over the summer, when they stopped playing, he was forced to revert to running to stay in shape, which was nowhere near as entertaining. He remembered the frustration to get back on the pitch that started to niggle as the start of the season approached, that need to do something that challenged him, both physically and mentally.
So the thought of coming out to the team, and possibly losing his place on it, was making him nervous.
The match lined up for that afternoon was one everyone was certain they were going to win. It was against another seconds team who were mostly made up of teenagers—they’d had conversations at training on Thursday how they were going to handle tackling them. George had seen the team play once before and he was fairly sure he was twice the size of some of them.
He knew he couldn’t wait until after the game to do it. Things got mad, especially after a win, and everyone was going in and out of showers, then dispersing to the pub. They had a couple of minutes of “team talk” before going out and….
“I’ve got something,” he said when Darren asked if anyone had any questions. George hadn’t listened to his captain’s motivational speech at all.
George clenched his fists and his jaw. The rest of the team looked at him. Some of them were frowning.
“Get on with it, then,” Darren said. He sounded annoyed.
“I wanted to tell you all… I mean, I wanted you to know… I’m gay.” George spat the words out and looked at the floor, not daring to meet any of his teammates’ eyes. “I’m gay. I was gay last week, I’m gay now, and I still want… I still want to be on the team. But if any of you have a problem with that, then let me know and I’ll leave.”
Silence.
More silence.
Someone coughed.
Someone else shuffled their feet, the sounds of studded football boots on the rough concrete floor suddenly very loud.
“Are you fucking serious?” Darren asked.
