I have a kind of shockingly instant reaction to that—surprisingly, it’s not a heart attack—and I shift uncomfortably, shaking my head and feeling my skin heat horribly when I realize there’s no hair for me to hide behind.
“Danny, will you look in the mirror? My heart is gonna give out if you don’t. I’m so scared you’re going to regret it and hate me.”
His lips, my fingers.
Fuck.
“I’ll never hate you.” I try to keep holding his gaze. God, it actually hurts how fast my heart is beating. “Can you do what you did to your bruise to my face?” I whisper. It’s only because in this moment I trust him so completely that I can ask him this, that I can get the words out at all.
He nods tightly, and before I can comprehend what’s happening, he presses his lips to my cheek and hugs me so tightly, I can’t breathe or even want to.
MICKY MAKES
me hold the lantern right next to my ear and works slowly and methodically, applying a base layer of really cold cream and then further layers of creams and powders. Every time he touches me, I can feel how careful he’s being, how his fingers are shaking but he’s trying so hard to stop them.
“It’s okay. Relax,” he murmurs more than once, but I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or to himself.
I haven’t looked in the mirror. I’m afraid to. I’m afraid looking will break the spell, this sudden magic that I’m letting build around us. For one night I want to pretend, even though I know how much it’s going to hurt.
I lied when I said I didn’t want to know what it felt like to be normal; I’d give anything. Maybe I’ll end up giving everything. But tonight I just want to know what it feels like to be someone else.
And if it breaks my heart, maybe it was always meant to be broken.
“DANNY? WILL
you close your eyes?” Micky asks softly.
We’re on the Tube, rushing through the dark under central London. Even if I close my eyes, the station announcements will sound out over the speakers telling us exactly where we are, but this is part of the game, and we both want to play.
Micky takes hold of my hand. “Don’t listen,” he whispers, placing a cool hand over one of my ears and pulling me to my feet.
I smile. He smells of flower water from the cold shower that made him yelp, and the wool of his suit. The comforting and the unfamiliar. The truth and the unknown.
To be honest I don’t care so much where we’re going, just that I’m going there with him.
He leads me off the Tube train, telling me to watch my step, guiding me with his body, staying close. It’s evening and it’s busy, and crowds sometimes make me feel like a panicked bird in a cage, but tonight I pretend they’re not there and focus on Micky.
He faces me on the escalator, hands on my shoulders. “I’m gonna remember this,” he whispers. “Tonight. With you.”
I still have my eyes closed, but I can feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek. My heart is beating so fast I can’t hear anything else.
Back at the swimming pool, I didn’t look in the mirror. Even after Micky put all the makeup on me, I didn’t look, and Micky stopped asking me to. So what the boy whom Micky sees in front of him looks like, I don’t know, but I feel as if I have all his attention, and this thought has me more turned on than I’ve ever been.
My skin is hypersensitive. The fabric of my shirt rubs mercilessly against my hard nipples. Thankfully the suit jacket is long, but it doesn’t stop me wanting to put my hand between my legs to relieve the ache, just a little.
The underground air is warm, and I feel hot and unsteady as though I might come undone, here on the escalator, need and want spilling out of me in an uncontained flood of unrequited desire. Instead I squeeze his hand tighter, trying to ignore how much I wish I could pull him into my arms.
We walk. My eyes are closed. Micky leads me slowly as we navigate curbs and steps, taking so much care I don’t stumble that I think my heart might burst out of my chest. We could have walked a hundred meters or a couple of miles—I’ve no idea.
“We’re here. Look,” Micky says, finally coming to a stop.
When I don’t look, he lifts my hand and presses his mouth to my knuckle. The wet tip of his tongue swirls against my skin, as soft as fuck.
Oh.
Mortifyingly, I think I moan as a painful kind of pleasure jolts through me from deep in my stomach right through my dick. Opening my eyes now is almost too much—my senses are drowning me.
“Is your shoulder okay?”
Turning my head, I blink at him and see the way he’s smiling. See that he
knows
it wasn’t my shoulder that drew that sound out of me. Making me think he needs to know I liked what he did, or at least that I didn’t mind it.
If he needs to do this because of some sort of fucked-up gratitude he has going on, it will probably kill me. I’m confused because I think he knows that would hurt me, and I think—fuck,
I hope
—he doesn’t want to hurt me. I’m so, so confused. But in my heart a million voices are shouting they don’t care about the
why—
only the
is
, the
now
, the
this
.
My heart trusts him.
I swallow. “My shoulder’s fine.”
On the edge of my vision, a huge building is lit up against the dark. When I turn and look and actually see where it is he’s brought me, music sounds inside me.
The Albert Hall.
I can’t believe he remembered this. That night at the Pagoda, Micky asked me the places in London I’d never been. Of course I’ve walked past it… but…. I suspect we’re dressed like this because we’re going in.
With a smile a mile wide, I turn to look at him, see the way his face lights up as he takes in my reaction. I want to hug him and never let go, and as soon as I make that first move closer to him, he’s there, arms open, pulling me tight.
IT’S ALMOST
as if we somehow fell through the glass tiles in the swimming pool bathroom into another dimension. Right now I’m in another world. A world of gleaming black leather and dark gold. We walk right around the crowd making their way through the front entrance. A few people catch my eye, but they seem more drawn to Micky’s hand in mine than the fact that I don’t belong. I feel like I’m wearing a mask and I can be anyone I want. It’s a superpower Micky has given me, and he probably doesn’t even know it.
With an assuredness I’ve always kind of sensed he has but I’ve never quite seen, Micky leads me purposefully to the stage door. He stops outside and looks around before leaning in to whisper, “No one will ask, but if they do, I’m going to say we’re with the Phoenix Youth Orchestra—the PYO. You won’t have to say a word…. Do you trust me?”
I think some spirit has possessed me, some Loki-like charm, because instead of answering, I lift our joined hands and lick all the way across his knuckles. The action probably affects me more than Micky, but his eyes go huge and he swallows as though he’s thirsty and desperately needs a drink.
He tastes nice. All savory and a little sweet. I smile to myself, pleased I got the guts to do that even if it was a little weird. Micky was weird first, so I don’t feel so bad.
My touch seems to have immobilized him, though, and he sinks back against the wall. Eventually I have to prompt him to move. If we don’t go in, we’re going to miss stuff, and I don’t want to miss a thing. But even when we’re through the door, Micky keeps turning to look at me, his eyes all dark like night fallen across a sea.
“I’m kinda hoping you like classical music,” he says as we walk down a brightly lit corridor that follows the circular shape of the building. Every so often we pass people walking in the opposite direction carrying instruments: mostly violins, sometimes cellos, occasionally something twisted and shiny that I can’t name, but they’re definitely not trumpets.
“Sometimes orchestras play in the parks,” I say, looking around at everything. Music is this magic thing, inextricably linked with the smell of hot grass and summer rain, and now this, here.
“Three orchestras are playing tonight. American ones.” Micky squeezes my hand as he peers at the notices stuck to the doors we pass: “New York Youth—Brass.” “Pennsylvania State Youth—Wind.” “Phoenix Youth—Strings.”
I feel a tremor go through him and his step falters, but we move on. “Phoenix Youth—Brass.” He falters again and I grip his hand tighter. He’s vibrating like an elastic band pulled too tight.
“Is Phoenix in Arizona?” I ask. I don’t really have a clue, but somehow I just know it is before he confirms it.
“Home.”
“Phoenix—Wind.”
He stops.
Through the little window halfway up the door, we can see the light is on and the room is empty apart from what looks like a hundred black cases.
“I’m sorry,” Micky says, resting his forehead on the door. “Fuck…. I wanted to do this for you, not me. So fucking selfish,” he mutters.
I turn to tell him that just being with him is for me, but I’m shocked to see he’s upset—a sudden wash of tears and jagged breathing. He leans unsteadily against the door, looking like his legs are about to give out.
Voices echo from a nearby room; a door closes. I glance again at the handwritten sign for Phoenix Wind before opening the door and pulling him into the room. I push him against the wall next to the door, far enough out of sight that the room still looks empty from outside. His eyes are closed as I touch his cheeks, his hair, without even thinking, needing only to take away his pain, somehow knowing being touched like this makes him feel good, and hoping maybe it will help.
“No one makes me feel like you do,” he mumbles as I stroke his hair. “Please, don’t ever let me go.”
“I won’t.” I don’t think I can.
“Run away with me? We’ll join the orchestra, stow away in cello cases, travel the world.” Gripping the lapels of my suit, he pulls me forward, nestling his head on my shoulder, pressing his ear to my chest.
“Your heartbeat is going crazy,” he whispers, after a while.
I let out a strangled laugh.
What an understatement.
My heart has gone fucking supernova.
There is no way I can stop what I’m feeling, no going back from this, no shield in the entirety of the universe that can protect a heart from love.
“It’s okay,” I murmur into his hair. “It’ll be okay.”
But perhaps nothing will be okay again.
I SUSPECT
the concert might have started by now as we sit in some backstage room colonized by the PYO’s instrument cases.
Micky picks up the occasional case and looks at the name tag. I think maybe he’s building up to tell me something important, but the only thing he says is “Have you ever played a clarinet?” I shake my head. “Can I show you?”
“Okay.”
Micky picks up one of the cases nearest him. With a kind of reverence, he opens it up and starts piecing the shining instrument together.
Won’t they mind?
I want to ask him. The thing looks like it must be worth a fortune.
When he’s twisted it all into one, he holds it out to me, but I shake my head. “I don’t want to break it.”
“You won’t,” he says with a smile. “Put your mouth here and kinda blow from deep in your stomach.” He touches his stomach then stares at my mouth.
“Show me how,” I say kind of tightly, because it feels as though the atmosphere between us is a giant sticky spiderweb, and we both want to be trapped where we are, but it’s kind of frustrating too.
His gaze is intense, like the way he looked at me when I licked across his knuckle. He puts the clarinet to his lips and takes a deep breath. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but it isn’t Micky belting out just about the fastest piece of music I’ve ever heard.
“Wow,” I say, my ears still ringing from the sound. I’m not a “wow” sort of person, but Micky can really play, like properly and well.
“Gershwin,” he says, catching his breath. “Used to get sent out of rehearsals for doing that—butchering beautiful music.”
That
was
beautiful. I’m beginning to think maybe he was in this orchestra, in Phoenix. When he smiles, I know he knows what I’m thinking.
“Just an orchestra. Not the PYO,” he says with a shrug.
Micky never talks about music, so it’s either not that important to him or it’s too painful a memory. He doesn’t look pained now, though. That time beneath the London Eye, he told me makeup was his thing, and I don’t think he was lying about that.
“Here.” He passes me the clarinet again, positions my fingers on the neck. “Blow from here,” he says, reaching over and placing a hand flat on my stomach.
I guess he was aiming for my diaphragm, but he ends up much lower down.
I suck in a mouthful of air and choke.
Micky put his hand over his mouth and laughs as if he knows he should be embarrassed, but he sort of isn’t. “Sorry,” he says, biting his lip as I blush.
The next half hour is spent with Micky teaching me how to make a clear sound instead of a musical fart. It’s kind of wonderful. I can’t remember the last time anyone sat down with me and showed me something like this, taught me something. And I don’t care that we’re missing an orchestra playing out on stage. This feels way more precious.
The way it takes me out of myself is precious. I don’t think about Dashiel or Dollman, I don’t think about sharks, nothing but my hands and mouth on the instrument, and Micky’s eyes on me.
We do eventually sneak our way into the auditorium from backstage. We’ve missed one orchestra and there is a lull as the stage is being set for another. Micky tells some woman with a name tag and a clipboard that we urgently need to get through to sit with the rest of our orchestra. She peers at her list and tells him they’re seated on the other side of the stage, and we need to go back out and around. Micky draws himself up, looks at her in a really sort of haughty way and puts on this real deep cowboyish drawl.
“Little lady, my daddy has bought up
all
the seats in the front row for this performance. I promised him I would sit with him a while before I go and see my friends. I’ll see to it that he knows your name.”