by Zack
Comes of being jumped up as a hot property for the girlies before his balls had even dropped. Mike didn’t have much time for his antics off set. At something like fourteen, Nathaniel Heathcliff had knocked the socks off pre-teen girls (and often rather more clothing) with his role as lead singer with the slyly named Split Britches. An early live appearance on the BBC’s Top of the Pops caused a riot in the studio on the evening of its Wednesday recording, and a police charge out on Wood Lane when several thousand screaming girls—and quite a lot of boys too—attacked the gates of Television Centre. The news meant that a staggering seventeen-plus million watched when the show was broadcast in its usual seven-thirty slot the next day.
Since then, Mike reflected, the renamed Nathan Cliffe had rocketed to international stardom by going solo. His pretty-boy face under floppy blond hair, neat body, close-fitting pants, oleaginous hip gyrations, crooning voice, and undeniable sex appeal had delivered six number ones on both sides of the Atlantic, and two massive global stadium tours. All this was accomplished by his father and mother, for Nate (to friends) relied on his parents as his mentors, agents, and fixers. Their unalloyed commitment to their son’s career and wellbeing filled pages of the music and general press with articles celebrating the virtues of their warm family life and the beneficial influence they had on one so talented, famous, and stinking rich. Nathan Cliffe: paragon of decency, politeness, and downright niceness. He might poke the sexy on stage to get the girls screaming and wanting to have his babies, but he combined it with a nicely judged modesty in interview. Mike thought it had to be a great gift to project such innocence from such a dirty mind as he knew the kid had. A lethal combination when Nathan set his heart on getting into someone’s pants. Like Mike’s.
The moment it was bruited abroad that the phenomenally successful children’s novel Terry Blood and the Vampire’s Rubies was to be turned into a major motion picture franchise, there simply wasn’t another celeb in anyone’s mind to play the teenaged Terry Blood than teen hero Nathan Cliffe. Newspapers carried photographs of Nathan doctored to show him wearing the trademark Blood spectacles perched on the end of his beautiful nose and his hair recolored black. The fact that Terry was written as being just thirteen and Nathan had slipped past his eighteenth birthday a few months before starting to film didn’t matter. The boy was young teen personified. “If he doesn’t lose his looks, he’ll be playing little kids when he’s thirty,” Bruce Dolland, the third assistant director often said.
Since there was no argument from Rupert Kinder and Sam Styles, producing for First Metropolitan, Nathan got the part, and was belle of the ball when he appeared with his youthful co-stars at a packed press show at the Empire cinema on Leicester Square. Styles and Kinder might be venerable Hollywood studio hacks with a vast back catalogue of successful movies between them, but they were canny enough to know that the global legend of Terry Blood originated in England, and that’s where the pre-publicity had to be generated and where the young cast had to be found. And so Jon Frankwell and Chryselle Mistral joined Nathan in a Leicester Square thronged by screaming fans.
For Nathan, Mike reflected, it must have been business as normal, but his two lead co-stars might have found it all a bit overwhelming. Frankwell, playing Terry’s best vampire friend Jason Argonauticus, had enjoyed a few bit parts in TV drama productions, and Chryselle Mistral, playing deathly vamp Chloe Chtulluhu, was still studying at drama school, but she had at least released a single which had gone to number two in the UK charts and—usefully—was breaking into the U.S. Top Ten right then. What America would eventually make of this untried cast had yet to be seen. Mike knew all too well Nathan’s scathing opinion of his young fellow thesps and what he thought of the massive Terry Blood novels: “Valium in print.”
Fortunately, Mike hadn’t been signed on with the crew for the preliminaries and so avoided the horrors of pre-schedule photo shoots, which portrayed the three young leads as the best of friends, larking with their costumes, shiny and hungry to get on with the excitement of working on the most awaited movie of the decade—“Which obviously means not much is going to happen for the next eight years,” Gil had observed drily.
Mike sighed. Just gone seven-fifteen. Time to get Nathan going, It always took some time. The chauffeur drove him to the studio to arrive at seven if it was to be an eight start. He came sans entourage most mornings, at the insistence of Henze’s, who banned all possible managerial interference on his sets. In this he was aided by the First Met credo of total production secrecy, closed sets, non-disclosure agreements, and non-interference from any outside organization—and that included artists’ agents, which kept Nathan Cliffe’s famous parent-agents at bay.
Make-up for the scenes on the production sheet for today was not onerous, unlike for Gordon Houghton, the character actor playing the part of Fumbledim, the kindly headmaster of the vampire college Terry, Jason, and Chloe attended, who had three ladies fussing over him for two hours every morning with prosthetics and pancake—all the whiskers, warts, and bad teeth. But all too often for Mike’s liking Nathan played the youth-needs-his-rest card. Mike fervently hoped he wouldn’t this morning with such a load of scenes to get through. Henze got pretty snappy when any of his crew “let him down the pan.”
“Oh, Mikey. I’m so sleepy today,” had been yesterday’s lament. “It’s okay for an old person like you, but I need my sleep.”
“You little shit, I’m not old!” Mike had retorted with indignation.
What’s the brat got in store this morning?
He strode down the hallway of the adjacent make-up department to the star’s suite, what Nathan called his “Green Room, now I’m an act-tor.”
“Watch him,” Steph, one of the make-up artists snapped as Mike pushed open the door and stood aside to let her out. “He’s in one of his little-boy-lost moods.”
“Oh bugger,” Mike murmured.
Steph grinned wickedly and whispered up against his ear. “Yes, just a widdly-tiddly bit bastard. Anyway, you’re the one who has what he wants.”
“That’s what I’m frightened of.”
She shook her head. “Well for chrissakes give it him. Maybe he’ll behave better.”
Mike grimaced. “I hope you’re kidding.”
“Try it, lover. You might even like it. I’m off to get Jon ready. At least he’s a real sweetheart. Pity he can’t act.”
She patted his bum and swept off up the hallway for her next “paint job.”
Nathan turned his slothful golden gaze on Mike, a moue of sullenness on his plumptious reddened lips. He was slumped like a floppy bunny all over the chair pushed back from the make-up table and brightly lit mirror. “I thought you weren’t coming, Mikey. I need a cuddle.”
“You need to get ready, Nathan. Wolfgang’s listed a shit-load of shots to get through this morning and Don’s on the warpath over slips in this week’s schedule as it is.”
He knew the mention of the first assistant director’s name would provoke a reaction. The grizzled Don Waverley, veteran of too many big-budget blockbusters to name, terrified Nathan, and Don made no pretense of his loathing for “child actors.”
Nathan sat up a bit straighter, and reached for Terry Blood’s famous trademark spectacles. He began singing in a high-pitched voice. “Little girls were made to kiss, little boys were made to kiss ’em. Little girls were made to miss, little boys were made to miss ’em.” He turned big eyes on Mike, lashes fluttering. “You’re the only one I’m dreaming of, I’d do anything to win your love, because some-ome-oh-how I know … it’s Heaven’s Plan.”
Mike swallowed his irritation. He’d learned within a few days that Nathan fed on the annoyance of others at the things he said and did. “And what’s that?”
“Oh, just some old song my Dad says I should record as a cover, by … I forget.”
“That’s all very well, but have you got your lines sorted for this morning?”
“Oh, Mikey! How am I supposed to learn all this shit
ty crap. I can’t hold half of it in my head for an hour, let alone all day. Listen …” With an irritable flick of his head to chuck his dyed-black hair from his eyes, Nathan read aloud from the latest script revision, the fifth since the start of the shoot. “This is the bit where Jason Argonauticus is hesitating over whether to shag his girlfriend or eat her and I have to advise him. Here goes.” His voice deepened a tone. “‘You think the dead, whose blood we suck to slake our enervating need, ever leave us? You think we don’t recall them more clearly than ever when the urge returns, or when the decrepitude of ordinary folk assails us?’
“Terry turns his golden eyes on Jason and opens them wide. ‘At these times, when I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind, I use the Raphanoc spell and it informs me whether to enjoy the physicality of a friend or if it’s time to consume their soul.’ He turns up the volume and intensity of gaze. ‘Jason, like as I, you are of the pureblood …’ Oh, it’s such shit. Decrepitude of ordinary folk. Like as I? Really!”
“Well, it’s certainly not Shakespeare, but there it is—you’re hardly a member of the R.S.C. either. And now’s the time—”
“And now’s the place, and Grease is the way we’re feeling.”
Deep sigh … “Come on, Nathan. I have to have you—”
“That’ll be the day.”
Mike privately called Nathan the “starling,” although there were moments when he more resembled a starlet, like now. He fluttered his famous eyelashes and before Mike could stop him, leapt from the chair and flung his arms around Mike’s waist. He ground his ample crotch in its tightly tailored vampire college trousers against Mike’s. “God, but I want you, Michael Smith.”
Mike reached down and gently untangled Nathan’s arms. “I’m already had.”
“What, the Yankee guy you go on about?”
“Gil is my … well, boyfriend.”
Nathan snapped a quick shrug and turned to grab up his script. “I bet he’s nowhere near as good in bed as me.”
He poked his prehensile and very long tongue out and wiggled it lasciviously, the one that when employed to effect on stage in a number, often reduced some teenyboppers to life-threatening seizures. He put it away with a snarky grin.
“Just wait till you get a feel-up from that.” He straightened, tugged at his stage clothes, his eyes still holding Mike’s. He filled his lungs deeply, slowly released the breath and said, “I need to get into character, I’m a blood sucker. I need something to suck.” His eyes wandered pointedly down to Mike’s jeans.
“Nathan …” Mike shook his head in resignation. But Nathan walked mildly to the door and waited with an infuriating bland expression. With a snort of suppressed amusement, Mike bowed from the waist and ceremoniously waved Terry Blood through for his first carmine-crusted-lips close-up of the day.
* * *
Gil sat at the circular dining table, writing by the gloomy winter light coming through the tall French windows. Several sharpened pencils lay in a row to this left, two blunted ones to the right of the pad on which his latest masterpiece was taking shape. Gil was struggling with some words or, more accurately, with their order, and Will was not helping. Mike’s brother had plumped down on the lower step leading up to the elevated area (which now echoed less hollowly, thanks to the Moroccan rug covering most of its expanse). As he ripped each leaf from the pad, Will leaned over to snatch it up and began chortling as he read aloud.
SGT. MAJ. ZOG: One of my men has just reported—
DR. LEO BRADY: Yeah, I got it. [turns to Mary Lo] How are we doing?
CAPT. MARY LO: We are doing just fine. If the memory block we dropped gives us a clear, then we’ll be landing about ten miles from the energy source.
RADIO VOICE: Sergeant-major, landing ten-twenty clear.
SGT. MAJ. ZOG: My reconnaissance party … sir … report that the LZ is safe for landing.
DR. LEO BRADY: Okay, Mary, take her down. [Cut to exterior planet surface, with the Falcon Fury landing, cross-cut with Mary Lo piloting]
BRADY: Zog, take your squad to the site of the energy source and report.
SGT. MAJ. ZOG: Sir.
DR. LEO BRADY: And use reasonable caution. [pauses dramatically] Expect the unexpected. [exits right]
“What is this crap?”
“Something Jim at the Union suggested I give a shot.”
When it was clear Gil wasn’t elaborating further, Will shuffled the pages together. “What’s it for?”
“Some new animation series for TV.” He looked up. “You ever watch Thunderbirds?”
Will screwed his nose into a moue of distaste. “Kids rubbish. Sort of crap Mike’s friends like.”
“It made money. They’re asking for scripts for a new one, working title Falcon Fury, so I’m trying out for it. I won’t get my name on it, I know, because it will no doubt get heavily rewritten, but if I get paid …”
Will consulted a page. “What’s a Hudson?”
Gil went back to scribbling words. “Heuristic Universal Driver with Sensory and Orbital Navigation.”
“Naturally. Silly I didn’t know that. Almost as rubbish as that rubbish Mike’s on now— Terry Blood and the Vampire’s Balls —”
“Rubies.”
“When did you last have a screw?”
Gil froze at the abrupt change of subject and colored slightly. He got nervous the minute the mini-Mike opposite started in on sex. “What’s it to you … William?”
Will grinned back broadly, with raised eyebrows, his all-innocent look that tended to unhinge an internal organ somewhere below Gil’s stomach. “I just wondered,” he said airily. You’ve been a bit … irritable lately. So I reckon you aren’t getting enough.”
“I’m trying to write here.” Gil bent his head so the fringe of blond hair fell across his eyes and hid Will, and went back to writing. He wanted to get done with the scene where scheming and evil alien Zelda convinces the Doctor that she can teleport her minions to Earth, and Will just wasn’t helping.
“Do you want to hear about the first time I got a blow job?”
“No.”
Will wasn’t put off. A sneaky peek through the fringe revealed his happy smile. Gil dropped his eyes to the pad again.
“It was in my boarding house. There was this guy in my dorm—”
“Not listening.”
“Very serious type, straight-laced and all that, so he took me by surprise one day as we walked up to school together when he blurted out …”
Gil stopped writing at the deliberate pause, realized Will had him caught, and hurried on writing.
“He said if you waited around in the village square, over by the bushes behind the public loos, there were men who’d offer you money if you let them suck you off.”
“Which obviously took your interest.”
“I asked how much, mostly cos I didn’t believe him, either that there were men or even if there were, that he’d do anything about it. I thought Simon just wasn’t like that. That was his name, Simon.”
Gil put the pencil down. It was blunt anyway. So he picked a sharpened one up and slowly raised his head to gaze at the boy opposite. At his faint sigh, Will smiled again. “What did he say?”
Will leaned forward, elbows on the table edge to engage Gil with a quiet intensity. “A tenner. That’s what he said. I said I don’t believe you, and he damned well took out a wallet and showed me it was stuffed with one-, five-, and ten-pound notes. Loads of em.”
“And then?”
“I dared him, didn’t I? He shrugged and told me to meet him at the main gate as soon as afternoon school ended, and we walked across to the square. There’s an old bench back of the convenience block and he sat down; so did I. Well, we waited there, legs outstretched, trying to look casual, and after ten minutes or so this guy strolls past, throws a quick look, and disappears around the block. I glanced at Simon, and he just said to wait a bit. Sure enough, three minutes or so later, back comes the same guy. He nods at Simon
. They know each other, I think. He flicks me a glance as well and raises an eyebrow, looks me up and down and I stare back with, I hope, no expression. Then my mate gets to his feet. The man nods, glances at me again and says, ‘Both of you, then?’ I’m feeling a bit funny. Like I’ve messed about with some others in my boarding house, but nothing serious.”
Gil had lost sight of his script. Will’s almost monotonous voice was sucking him into the story and the boy’s dark eyes seemed to beckon dangerously.
“I suppose I could have walked away then, but something in the way this mate of mine, Simon, changed—like when an urbane Christopher Lee turns into Dracula, only this wasn’t horrible, it was very exciting because it was so out of character for him—the change dragged me in his wake.”
Will paused again, licked his lips. Gil realized he’d hardly blinked since Will started.
“It’s also the way that guy keeps looking at me, so full of … I don’t know exactly, like he he’s been given an unexpected present. He seems … really hungry. He doesn’t say much, and I follow him and Simon down West Hill to the place where there’s a path onto Hampstead Heath. It’s very quiet and private if you turn sideways there, off the path, tucked under a high wall and surrounded by thick bushes. The guy doesn’t waste much time and starts groping the front of Simon’s trousers. I’m feeling a mix of excitement and embarrassment. I’m not sure what to do, what’s expected of me. I don’t want to go too close because it feels so intimate, what’s happening—he’s undoing the fly—but I don’t feel I can stand too far away either. I lean up against the wall some feet from where Simon’s doing the same as the guy kneels in front of him. It’s a shock. I’ve seen Simon naked in the showers before, but never with an erection, and, my God, it’s surprisingly big. The guy’s really getting into it and I’m as hard as I’ve ever been. He sees me fingering myself from the corner of his eyes and reaches out to pull me closer, until I’m rubbing Simon’s shoulder. I can actually feel the thrills shooting up and down his twitching arm next to mine.
