Dirty Games

by Barbara Elsborg

  “We’ll be respectful,” Rich said.

  “You better be.” Andy gave him a playful cuff around the head.

  “I’ve never been to a gay bar before let alone a gay club,” one called Mick said.

  “Nor me,” added James. “We going to get hit on?”

  “You’re too ugly.” Stan ducked as James launched a fist in his direction.

  “Will they think I’m gay?” Mick asked.

  Not wearing those clothes.

  Stan laughed. “Yeah. Keep your back to the wall.”

  “Wanker.” Mick rolled his eyes.

  “Most gay men can tell within a couple of seconds whether someone’s gay or not.” Stan glanced at Thorne.

  Twat.

  “Though not always.” Stan winked at him.

  Fucking twat.

  The line moved forward and they were allowed in.

  Thorne had mixed feelings about gay clubs being frequented by battalions of curious women and straight men. He was definitely aggravated when they were invaded by drunken hen parties with the women acting as though it was okay to put their hands all over the guys in there as if it meant nothing. We’re pieces of meat, are we?

  He got that some straight men liked gay guys to flirt with them, pay them attention, compliment their clothes, their dancing, their bodies. But too many straight men in a club could be disruptive, particularly if they got drunk. What at one moment could seem funny, being ogled by a gay guy, suddenly offended and things could quickly deteriorate. Gay bars and clubs were supposed to be places where you could express your personality and your desires in safety, and opening the doors to everyone put that in jeopardy.

  The dancefloor was heaving and Thorne went straight to the middle of it. He loved dancing. Josh joined him. A moment later, a rigid cock pressed against Thorne’s butt and arms slid under his T-shirt and up his chest. Fucking Stan. That was one thing Thorne wasn’t going to do. Fuck or be fucked by Stan. Thorne caught Josh’s eye, then twisted out of Stan’s hold. When Stan tried to pull him back, Josh slid between them.

  “Hands off. He’s mine,” Josh said.

  “You’re not into guys,” Stan snapped.

  “I am this one.” Josh moved Thorne to a different part of the dancefloor. “I thought you were going to hit him.”

  “I wouldn’t cheat on you, baby.”

  Josh laughed and Thorne cheered up.

  But an hour or so later, when Josh had gone home, Thorne was still dancing, and Stan emerged again, his face glistening with sweat. He reminded Thorne of a grub coming out of the woodwork. Didn’t the guy listen to no? Thorne let Stan tug him to the side of the club, buy him a drink, tell him how much he fancied him while Thorne said nothing.

  Stan went on and on. “You’re so fucking gorgeous. I get hard just looking at you.”

  “Whereas looking at you keeps my cock soft.” Thorne saw the confusion in Stan’s face.

  “Want to come to my place?”

  Had he not listened? “You want a piece of me and you’re not having it. I’m not interested. Want me to spell it out?”

  Stan scowled. “Why aren’t you interested?”

  “For fuck’s… Because you’re a cunt who doesn’t listen to no. Why would you think I’d be interested in you? What do you have to offer me that no one else does? A bigger cock? Bigger balls?”

  “You’ll never know, will you?” Stan strode away and Thorne sighed.

  But the guy didn’t leave the club, Thorne could see him still watching him. The next guy that walked past, Thorne grabbed and tugged onto the dance floor. He gradually manoeuvred him until they were right in front of Stan and Thorne did everything but pull his trousers down and let the guy he was dancing with fuck his arse. When Stan stamped off, Thorne slid out of the guy’s arms and on the pretence of going to get water, exited the club and got a cab home.

  This was all Linton’s fault.

  Chapter Nine

  It was a long drive to Yorkshire with an edgy, bad-tempered passenger at Linton’s side. Not hard to guess why Dirk was so moody and irritable. But at least he wasn’t begging Linton to stop for cigarettes or asking him to turn round and take him back to London. Instead, Dirk chewed his nails until they bled, tuned the radio into one station after another, constantly complained about Linton’s driving and generally snapped at everything Linton said.

  “I don’t see why you can’t buy me a phone,” Dirk said in a sulky voice.

  “Because you’re not even allowed to use a pay phone for the first two weeks.” He’d checked.

  “I thought you had bought me one. Did you change your mind?”

  Maybe he’d seen Linton’s new phone. Or the box? “You can have it in five weeks if the place says it’s okay. I’ll come up and visit. All right?”

  “Five weeks?”

  Oh God, Dirk. Don’t whine.

  “Want me to drive for a bit?” Dirk asked.

  “You’re not insured. Which reminds me, where did you take my car while I was away?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “An extra three thousand miles on the clock?”

  “Didn’t go anywhere in particular.”

  Linton heard Dirk’s ‘don’t push me on this’ in the petulant tone he knew so well and backed off. What did it matter now?

  “Shit. How long do these roadworks go on for?” Dirk mumbled. “You could have put me on the train.”

  “Where would the fun have been in that? No moaning and whining? I’d have been so bored.”

  At least that raised a chuckle.

  “I wanted to come with you,” Linton said.

  “To see what you’re paying for?”

  “To make sure you’re going to be okay. The place looked nice but I’d rather see for myself.”

  Dirk grunted, probably not believing the lie.

  When they pulled in at a service station to use the bathroom, as well as buying lunch to eat in the car, Linton also bought a bag of sweets, ones they’d liked when they were boys.

  “We could have eaten inside,” Dirk said as he climbed back in the car. “I’m not going to bolt.”

  “Course not.” Though Linton had thought he might. He passed him the bag of food.

  “Ah, you came with me in case I bought fags and alcohol.”

  “Do they sell alcohol at motorway service stations? Wouldn’t that be a bit stupid?”

  “Like letting pubs have car parks? Wow, how crazy is that?”

  Linton laughed. “Bloody hell. That was sharp. You feeling better?”

  “I feel like crap.” Dirk bit into his burger.

  Linton hoped Dirk would eat all of it, but after a couple of bites and a lot of chewing, he set it aside. He didn’t touch the fries but he did sip the milkshake.

  “No appetite,” Dirk mumbled. “Nothing tastes right.”

  “It’s okay. You can still have pudding.” Linton handed over the sweets.

  Dirk took out a flying saucer, put it in his mouth and sucked. “Mmm.”

  “She never let either of us have pudding if we didn’t clear our plates,” Linton said. “Fair in that at least.”

  Dirk reached for another flying saucer. “Heaven forbid you had to have a filling. I don’t think she cared about my teeth. She just liked being mean to me.”

  “Mum was horrible to you.”

  “I couldn’t do anything right. If you did something wrong, she either ignored it or blamed me. I never got to watch what I wanted on TV, not unless you pretended it was something you wanted to watch.”

  “Not sure she was always convinced a boy five years older wanted to watch Fluffytail the Littlest Bunny.”

  Dirk laughed. “I did not want to watch that.”

  “Oh no, that was me.”

  “I didn’t get to choose my clothes. She’d save you treats she’d have rather thrown away than give to me. If you got into trouble at school, she used to shrug. If I got into trouble, I got into worse shit at home.”

  “I did the best I—”r />
  “I know you did.” Dirk cast him a smile. “But after you went away to school, I was heartbroken. I thought eventually I’d be with you and then she sent me to the local comp.”

  “I was always surprised you didn’t hate me.”

  Dirk gave a quiet laugh. “None of it was your fault. I worshipped you. I wanted to be like you. To be your friend.”

  Linton shifted in his seat. “Sometimes I was as mean to you as she was.”

  “Never.”

  “I wish I knew why she hated you so much.”

  “She just didn’t want another kid.”

  Linton thought there was more to it than that.

  Dirk helped himself to a sherbet fountain, unwrapped the paper at the top, tossed aside the stick of liquorish and stuck his finger in the sweet white powder. “After you went off to boarding school, I gave up trying to make her happy. You weren’t there to impress anymore, so I stopped cooperating. When I was older I got into fights, was rude to teachers and did whatever the fuck I wanted.”

  Linton’s heart sank. “I know it was my fault.”

  Dirk took his finger out of his mouth and glared. “No it fucking wasn’t. It was mine. Not your responsibility.”

  “If I’d never brought you to London. If I’d talked to you about sex. If—”

  “Jesus, Linton, don’t talk crap. I was already out of control and I knew what I was. You didn’t make me bi because you were gay and I was confused. Is that what you think?”

  “Course I don’t.” Though to his shame, he had thought that for a while.

  “Opening my eyes to another world was the best thing you ever did for me.”

  “And not persuading you to sit your exams and go to college was the worst.”

  “College isn’t everything. And it wasn’t your decision.”

  “It is everything if you want a job that pays enough to enable you to get a place of your own, to buy things you like, go on holiday, enjoy yourself, and live the life you deserve.”

  “I think I have the life I deserve, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t. You need a fresh start, that’s all. You can be whatever you want. Apart from astrophysicist or US President.”

  Dirk chuckled. “Yeah, well they might have been on my list but I never really knew what I wanted to be, but you were always going to be an architect. You were brilliant at drawing. You were good at everything. Maths was the only thing I was any use at. But you were even better.”

  “You were good at a lot of things. Music. Maths.”

  There was a long pause and Dirk sniggered. “I was really good at the extracurricular stuff.”

  Linton rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t good at everything. I worked hard because I saw it as a way out. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life stuck in the dead-end town where we grew up, with Mum expecting me to go for Sunday lunch every week. Or even worse her deciding she needed to live next door or even move in with me.”

  “I’d have never had that problem.” Dirk laughed. “She couldn’t wait to get shot of me.”

  “I still can’t believe you came out first.”

  “What did I have to lose? She already hated me. She was shocked about you though. Really shocked. Is that why you stopped speaking to her?”

  “Partly. Will you think about college after rehab?”

  Dirk groaned. “Christ, I loathed school. I was a miserable kid.”

  Linton accelerated as he pulled back onto the motorway. “You had reason to be. But college would be different.”

  “You don’t know that.” Dirk sighed. “Nothing seems to make me happy.”

  “Except for drugs?”

  “Yeah. Well they work for a while at least.”

  “For a while being the operative words. You need more than a short-term fix. Excuse the pun. When someone’s unhappy and finds something that makes them happy, they don’t want to let it go. We’re all the same in that, but whereas for most people it’s loving their job or another person, when it’s drugs or alcohol it’s dangerous.”

  “You think I’ve been fucking up my life because I was looking for happiness?”

  “Yes. No one deliberately fucks up their life. Yours is messed up as a consequence of drugs, booze and meaningless sex, but you only did that to feel happy.”

  Dirk sighed. “Once you’ve been high all you can think about is being that high again. If there was coke in this car now, I’d be hard pressed not to take it because I know it would make every bad thing go away. I’d take it even though I know I’d come down so hard I’d want to fucking die.”

  “Don’t give up.” Linton’s voice cracked. “No matter how desperate you get, remember I’m here for you. I’ll drive up whenever you need me. When you get out, you can live with me if you want to.”

  “After I wrecked your flat, you told me you didn’t want to see me again.”

  “I know what I said. I was pissed off with you. But you’re my brother and I want you to be well.”

  Dirk rested his head against Linton’s shoulder. “You know that guy is bi, right?”

  “What guy?”

  Dirk huffed. “Thorne.”

  “Oh him. How do you know?”

  “He used to go out with Amanda Deering but he’s been linked to a couple of models. Male models.”

  “Did you just hear my heart break?”

  “Ha ha. Be careful with him.”

  “Who says I’m going to see him again? I don’t have his number. He doesn’t have mine. One kiss means nothing.” Linton’s stomach rolled.

  Dirk exhaled noisily. “Yeah it does. I’ve never seen you do that before.”

  “Three months in New York taught me to go after what I want.” And not worry about hanging onto it.

  Dirk straightened and turned to look at him. “So you do want him?”

  “I’m…interested.”

  “Yeah, remember not all bi guys are as wonderful as me.”

  Linton forced himself to laugh.

  “It won’t be easy if you do get together.”

  You have no idea.

  “For some fucked-up reason, a woman can be bi without raising too many eyebrows but if a guy says he’s attracted to both men and women I guarantee there’ll be a stunned silence, followed by a lot of assumptions, very few of which will be right. Dating someone who’s bi brings out insecurities in everyone.”

  Linton didn’t want to think or talk about this but he couldn’t bring himself to tell Dirk to shut up.

  “How can you know you’re really what a bi guy wants?” Dirk said quietly. “Will you worry a woman can give him something better than you? And if you’re cheated on, will it feel worse if it’s with someone of the opposite sex?”

  “Cheating is cheating.”

  “Bisexuals get hurt just like everyone else. If a guy leaves me for a woman, it hurts more. Not going to lie about it. I think you’d feel the same if you were with Thorne and he left you for a woman.”

  “Has Thorne publicly said he’s bisexual?”

  “Not that I know of. It’s hard to come out as bi. Much harder than to say you’re gay. He could just be playing the field. On the other hand he could be looking for someone to love. Just the same as if you’re het or gay, most bisexuals want that special person. It’s just that we might end up with a guy or a woman. We won’t know until we find them.”

  “Are you equally attracted to both men and women?”

  “I feel like I am, but it’s usually men I end up with.”

  “Do you want to find one person or would you like to be with a guy and a woman?”

  Dirk frowned. “I know what you saw. I don’t do threesomes very often. I worry I’d be the one left out. I just want…”

  “What?”

  “Someone to love me,” Dirk whispered.

  “I do.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want you to suck my cock.”

  Linton laughed.

  “Can you say it yet?” Dirk asked.

  “What?” Though Lint
on knew.

  “The L word.”

  “No.”

  Dirk chuckled but Linton wasn’t lying. Love didn’t and wouldn’t feature in his world.

  Thorne’s bad temper was still in full flow when he woke the morning after that kiss. The nothing kiss, the brush of lips kiss, the swift kiss, the what-the-fuck-was-that kiss. Going to Secrets hadn’t put him in a better frame of mind. Nor had sleeping. Nor did wanking because it was Linton’s face that popped into his mind as he dragged his hand up and down his cock and it had stayed in his mind until he’d spurted all over his stomach and messed up the damn sheet.

  So much for being careful for a while. At least he’d managed to leave Secrets without another disaster striking. He wanted to blame someone for his foul mood. Owen would do. Everything had gone wrong in his personal life since he and Owen had split up.

  He cleaned himself up and put on his running gear. With his cap low over his face, he set off toward Kensington Gardens. From there he’d head for Hyde Park. A seven kilometre circuit should give him time to run thoughts of Linton to nothing. Thorne concentrated on his breathing, his pace, his technique. He consciously relaxed his shoulders, kept his stride light and quick and his arms moving smoothly. The moment he focused on that, his running fell to pieces. Shit. He was moving too fast and it was hurting and the more it hurt, the more he imagined it hurt.

  He tried to come up with an idea for a movie even though he knew however brilliant the idea might seem when he was running, it was a script he’d never write because when he got home, he’d realise it was a piece of crap. No movie even came to mind today. His head was full of Linton, imagining him lying on his back naked on Thorne’s bed, looking up at him with a smile on his face.

  Thorne gave up trying to direct his thoughts. Maybe he should think about Linton. Thorne didn’t like hearing no. Didn’t like being kissed by someone who then walked away. Particularly if he fancied that someone. And he particularly didn’t like that it was exactly the sort of thing he did himself—sometimes. Okay, often. He wished he could rewind the moment from the point that their lips had met, wished he’d grabbed Linton, pulled him in tight, kissed him hard then thrust him away, but he’d been so shocked, all he’d done was stand there. By the time he’d registered what was happening, Linton was in the cab and gone.