by Zack
“Where we going?”
Ben’s voice came sloppy with dance exhaustion and poppers.
“Somewhere nice,” Gil shouted in his ear.
And then they were in the dark. Gil reached out for Mike’s shoulder and they pushed through hard bodies. Gil heard Ben’s gasp, and squeezed his waist tighter. Mike found a corner and Gil pressed Ben up against him. Dark, so dark, hot and steamy. He started to rove over Ben’s sturdy figure and thrilled to the boy’s hand reaching behind to grasp his dick in the running shorts. He felt around Ben’s front and fought for a moment with Mike’s hands for supremacy. Mike yielded possession of Ben’s stiff cock and helped by pulling the boy’s shorts down. His head fell back on Gil’s shoulder. Between them, they stripped Ben naked and Gil rubbed the top of Mike’s unruly hair, slid hands down to his face and felt lips working hard at Ben’s nipples. Gil himself kept up a slow stroke on Ben’s cock while he explored the hard globes of ass cheeks with his left hand. Ben’s hissed intake of breath matched the sweat-slick fingering of his asshole. Gil worked his fingers in and around, enjoying the way the boy wiggled and writhed in pleasure. And then he felt his lover’s lips and tongue working at the fingers with which he was jerking Ben. He slipped his grip down to the base to give Mike some inches of rigid flesh to suck.
He broke off fingering Ben to yank his own shorts down out of the way. He spat on his fingers and used the saliva to lube up his freed erection. Then he strained under Ben’s weight to get in position. The boy must have understood and welcomed it, because he steadied himself and reached back around Gil to pull him in close. Gil felt the bell end of his cock press against Ben’s ass cleft. For a few seconds they both moved to find the way in, and then with a heaving sigh, Gil slipped into the boy and Ben’s hands scrabbled frantically at him.
The feel of Mike sucking the boy’s front and the suction of Ben’s ass muscles on his own cock drew Gil into a state of heightened consciousness, which exploded like an atomic bomb in his head when some obliging stranger pressed a poppers bottle under his nose. A gasp escaped his parted lips and he fucked in a delirium of motion and sensation. He jerked his head forward over Ben’s shoulder, aware of the wiry brush of his sideburn, the gurgling in Ben’s heaving throat, Mike’s loud slurping down below.
“Huh, huh, huh …” Ben was going. Gil, still hanging onto the root of Ben’s cock, felt his balls coalesce into one lump. And then the boy shuddered convulsively and went rigid as he began to feed Mike. Gil, in communion with both, felt and tasted the ejaculation and it squeezed his own trigger. He started to come in Ben, so strongly it felt like a torrent. He let go of Ben’s cock and fumbled his hands forward under Mike’s chin to stroke his lover’s gulping throat. Through his fingers and the bobbing Adam’s apple Gil sensed the magic of each spurt he released into Ben’s ass finding its way through to the boy’s cock and out into his lover’s busy mouth.
Barely capable of holding himself up, he staggered under Ben’s dead weight as they both finished coming. Minutes spent in the dark meant he was able to see better in the dim borrowed light from the distant corridor. He made out a spare bit of bench against the wall behind where Mike still crouched, wiping his lips from his exertions. Gil managed to maneuver Ben to the bench and sat him down, his ankles tangled in his shorts. Gil flopped down next to him as Mike got to his feet, stroking himself. Gil reached out and pulled Mike’s big cock out from under the hem of his shorts, leaned forward and engulfed the head with his mouth. He felt Mike’s hands grip the back of his head and hold him steady as he started a frantic throat fuck, which quickly built in intensity until he let fly with a sharp cry and flooded Gil with his hot jizz.
To his surprise Gil felt Ben push in, desperate to take some of Mike’s seed. He let the boy take over and finish Mike off. And then, hot, sweaty, sticky, satiated, they all swayed to their feet in a three-way embrace, arms interlocked around damp necks. From beyond the close confines of the packed sex room came the throbbing beat of disco, and for a moment it almost sounded as though a Christmas carol were playing until Gil understood the hymnal quality of Abba’s Lay All Your Love On Me disco mix, sure to be a perennial favorite.
“More, Gil?”
Mike glanced at Gil’s empty plate and then at his mother, who stood poised over the table with carving knife in hand.
“She means would you like her to dismember more of the Meleagris gallopavo for your delectation.”
“Stop showing off, Dad,” Will said around a forkful of Brussels sprouts and a pig in its blanket.
Mike had already told Gil that in their household the father didn’t do the carving of a joint. His dad could saw away with a bow on his cello with great skill, but whenever he got hold of a carving knife, it always spelled a disaster of polygonal chunks or mangled shreds of meat. He’d also promised Gil the pigs in blankets—in this case the traditional chipolata sausage wrapped in streaky bacon—would be cooked the way he liked it, well done.
Gil patted his flat stomach and thrust it out comically to prove how full to bursting he was. “No, thank you, Mrs. Smith. As my mother taught me to say in polite society, I am replete.”
“And he needs some room for the pudding,” Mike’s dad put in.
Mike wondered when would be the right time to break the news to them, that Gil was so much more to him than a flat mate, a work colleague. How would they take it? He knew also how embarrassed Gil would feel, who had felt unable to confront his own parents with the news that he was gay. He’d promised himself to make the situation clear when Gil returned to London … but Christmas didn’t seem like the right time at all. Gil, of course, was behaving impeccably, even though he would have preferred spending Christmas Day in their own flat, but Christmas lunch was a hard Smith habit to break.
“Mike?”
“Oh … no thanks, Mum. Like Gil, I feel as tight as a drum. That was great.”
“I’m surprised either of you even got it up this morning,” Will said on clearing his mouth. “Ow!”
Mike glared at his brother in a way that threatened another kick on the shin.
“Oh, was it such a late night? I’m sure I heard you come in, William. It didn’t seem that late.”
Mike knew his father spoke to soothe his brother’s ruffled feathers. And that was a worry. Mike couldn’t expect Will to keep the knowledge to himself for much longer. Abruptly, he leaned across the table corner, grabbed Will by the head, and knuckled him as he kissed his cheek.
“Ooarrgh, geddorf!” Will pulled back, grinning broadly.
Mrs. Smith pushed her chair back and began to gather dishes and plates. Instantly, Gil was on his feet to help.
“Goodness, Gil, sit down. I can do this and Adrian will give me a hand, won’t you dear? You boys sit still and chat among yourselves. I’ll bring the pud in a few minutes.”
The elder Smiths cleared the table efficiently and disappeared into the kitchen with much clattering. Will attacked his front teeth with a toothpick, and mumbled around it. “Dad’s got a concert tomorrow, on Boxing Day. Can you believe it!”
“The quartet’s in demand. You should be pleased. It pays your pocket money while you lounge around at university.”
“Do you lounge, Will?”
Will gave Gil the finger. “Not like you guys.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “And what the hell happened to Ben last night? I got a call from him just before you came around and he was all funny.”
Gil raised curious eyebrows. “How, funny?”
“All giggly. Did you fuck him or something?”
“Don’t be vulgar,” Mike said. He even sounded pompous to himself. Both Gil and Will broke out in laughter.
When he calmed down, Will jabbed a thumb toward the kitchen. “And when are you going to tell them, hey?”
It seemed his brother could read his mind, or had he seen it in his expression a moment ago. Gil shuffled uncomfortably and shrugged. Mike sighed to himself. It wasn’t really Gil’s problem. “Not that it’s any of you
r bloody business, but I will … when I’m ready. And when Gil feels it’s okay to do so. Meantime, you …” light shin tap … “keep your big trap shut, and that includes funny little innuendos.”
Will lifted his arms, hands palms up. “Kay! Keep your hair on. Where’s the Chrimble spirit?”
“The—as you so elegantly put it—Chrimble spirit is a two-way street. I won’t tell Mum and Dad that my private prezzie to you was a packet of rubbers, now will I?”
Will smirked. “Thank you, Mikey. I’ll think of you whenever I use one.”
And at that moment the Christmas pudding arrived amid a blaze of blue vodka and brandy flames.
“What do you want to do?” Mike asked him.
They had gotten away from Mike’s parent’s house a bit after the Queen’s speech on the television. It was Gil’s second, but he still found it surreal that a real live, reigning monarch should deign to address her subjects in such a way. The strain of the ordeal was evident, but pluckily she plowed on, and what she said actually brought a tear to his eye. He wondered what fellow Americans would think if Ronald Reagan addressed the nation in a similar vein.
“What do I want to do? Hmmm, a difficult one, but now the lunch has gone down, what I’d really like to do is you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Pretty badly, in fact.”
“How?”
“I’d like to get undressed and lie down head to toe with you and then sixty-nine for an hour until we can’t hold it in any longer. That’s what I’d really like to do on this dark and late afternoon. Basically go to bed and make love to you until, what do you call it, Boxers’ Day?”
“Boxing Day.”
“What’s so boxy about the day after Christmas?”
“Why don’t we just go and undress? I can always educate you about Boxing Day on another day.”
Gil luxuriated in the feel of the sheet stretched across the Dunlopillo mattresses, in the fact that even laid out full length, his head and feet reached nowhere near the edges of the big bed. He cast his mind idly back to the day it had arrived and that sexy flibberty-gibbet from Heals furniture store had helped Mike put it together before they almost destroyed it. His toes curled at the memory, and then Mike was with him and their naked flesh merged, abdominals to pectorals, biceps to outer thighs, the flop of hair against sensitive skin. Dusk came early in the Christmas gloom and neither cared, curled into each other they rimmed and sucked with the sensuous and slow sureness of each other’s bodies and how feather-light fingertips, tongue licks, and lip pressure could raise the bar of desire to ultimate climax. The wholly communion of lovers.
CHAPTER SIX
Marrakesh Express
Mike stared unseeingly across Aberdare Gardens at the generous red-brick façades opposite, softened by the early February mist which drifted idly along the street. No job prospects on the horizon. And there’s Gil, depressed as shit one moment, bright as a button the next. Life! Jim had rung the day before with the bad news that neither of his best bets for taking an interest in Blood of Satan wanted it, and advised shelving it. After passing the receiver to Gil he went and picked up the bedroom extension in time to hear Jim saying, “You see, they all say much the same, Gil. There’s just no box-office in traditional horror, even less after The Monster Club.”
“Yeah, but Mike tells me that had a terrible marketing campaign, with the poster making like it’s a kids’ film—”
“True enough, but it had a good cast, with Vincent Price, John Carradine, Donald Pleasance, and several other A-listers, but it still flopped.”
“And Sam Raimi. I caught a viewing of The Evil Dead in the States—”
“Never heard of it.”
Gil’s swallow was audible over the line. “Okay. It hasn’t opened here, I guess.”
“I’m really sorry, Gil. I read quite a bit and I think you have a definite talent for plotting and … not too bad on dialog, although I’d advise, if you don’t do it, speaking it out loud to see how it sounds.”
Mike replaced the receiver and went out to the sitting room. Gil had slumped down on the sofa. He went over and gave him a hug. That was two days ago, and Gil busied himself with this and that, but Mike caught the unguarded looks of sadness, which he kissed away at nights, and banished for a while by arousing Gil and lying back to be fucked.
And then this morning, just after they had finished a breakfast of tea and cornflakes, Jim rang for Gil with a plan to get him writing. After listening for a minute, Gil lowered the phone so he could shout down to Mike in the kitchen. “You got any VHS cassettes with something called Thunderbirds?”
“The old TV series. I might have. Yes, I think I’ve got a couple somewhere Trev left once. He’s the Thunderbird y nerdy.”
After more conversation, Gil dropped the phone on its cradle and almost skipped into the kitchen. “Hey! Jim says this guy Anderson’s got a new series coming called Terrahawks and they may need scripts, or at least ideas, and I should try it. He’ll put anything I do through to the right people. What do you think?”
“Wow. Sounds good. When they need anything?”
“Soon, couple-a months or thereabouts. Jim says I should watch some Thunderbirds to get the feel.”
Mike repressed his doubts but sounded cautious. “They’ll hardly want War and Peace, but it might be good practice, and get you an in.”
He left Gil rummaging through boxes in search of Thunderbirds cassettes and muttering about needing to go see Trevor, and wandered into the bedroom. The big bay window he had filled with a large desk, so each of them could do work there or on the round dining table when they needed space. He idly pushed aside a sheaf of papers, job applications, as he stared out the window. He was beginning to think he might be reduced to enlisting for the Falklands War or, worse still, trying for a job at the BBC, when the phone’s jangle made him start.
“Four-eight-three, double-four-five-six.”
He recognized the gravelly voice immediately.
“Mike, I have a job for you, if you want it, and you’ll be mad if you don’t.”
“And a Happy New Year to you too, Don.”
“Get your ass down to Amber Films in Wardour Street in the next hour.”
The phone slammed down at the other end. Mike smiled. “Old bastard.” Still, the brief time he’d worked with Don Waverley on The Wall might be paying dividends.
Five …
He strode out to the hall and grabbed boots and jacket.
Four …
Gil moved aside as Mike threw himself down on the sofa and shoved his feet into the boots.
Three …
Lace-ups, so it took a second to tie them.
Two …
Quick peck on Gil’s cheek and an affectionate ruffle of his silky blond hair.
One …
Kerrashh!
Thunderbirds are GO!
“Shit, they’re puppets. Jim never said …”
“I gotta go, Gil. Good news at last, I hope. Should be back for lunch, otherwise I’ll ring. And if my darling brother calls round, tell him to bugger off. Meantime, you get writing!”
He had mixed feelings about the series, but the aphorism of beggars and choosers came to mind. In only the space of a year, British movie jobs seemed to have evaporated, so the chances of his getting one were reduced. Even Mike hadn’t found anything yet, although wasn’t that why he had dashed off? So Gil decided to put any reservations from his head and concentrate on getting into this puppetry thing. Jim had promised to post him the specs and outline concepts, which he should get in the morning.
He spent a couple of hours reading passages of dialog from Blood of Satan aloud to see if it rang true, while watching his pale reflection in the French window. The grass on the lawn looked rank. Mike should have got someone to mow it before winter set in. He turned back and climbed the two steps Mike had built from heavy fiberboard sections to create a raised seating area. It was supposed to make the sitting room with its thirteen-foot ceilin
g feel more intimate. But Mike had never gotten around to carpeting the expanse, so the room echoed and just smelled of wood glue.
Perhaps Jim was right. Once it was spoken aloud, some of the lines he’d written in his lonely Mar Vista bedroom in L.A. sounded crappy. Mar Vista and quiet McLaughlin Avenue off Washington. Already it felt like an age ago since he last walked the wide tree-lined avenue to catch a city bus to Venice or the other way to the Second Street Tunnel in Figueroa for filming. That was such a difference. Here the domestic streets were narrow and cozy, there so wide and soulless, like his dialog.
The front door banged and a moment later Mike rushed into the large sitting room, leaped the two steps to the raised area and threw himself at Gil, who fell back on the complaining sofa, smothered in his own donkey jacket, which Mike must have borrowed to go out. “Hey! Umph.”
“Get packing. Nothing heavy. It’ll be warm.”
“Right. Okay, packing, yes. Good idea. Where are we going?”
“Marrakesh.”
As Mike bounded upright to divest himself of the jacket, Gil felt bound to ask, “Why?”
You’re looking at the second assistant director on the biggest budget movie of the year in planning. I’ve even had to sign an N.D.A.—”
“A what?”
“Non-disclosure agreement. Can’t say a word to anyone or they’ll have to kill me.”
“Not even me?”
“Nope. Not even you, my beautiful Marrakesh-bound boy.”
“Ah-hah. You got an advance.”
“And stopped in at the Lunn Poly on Finchley Road and got a last-minute deal for a short week in Morocco.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow, Gatwick, nine in the morning.”
“Shit, Mike. That’s short notice. What about this thing I’m supposed to start writing?”
“You have time for that. Anyway, it’s only four days and we both need a break and some winter sun. Got any swimming gear?”
