Mistletoe Threeway

Posted on by
Howard finally surrenders his cherry in a post-"Party"verse fic. Starring Vince, Howard and Dennis the Head Shaman.

Category:

Characters: , ,

Genre: , , ,

Rating:

Warning: , , ,

Status:

Length: words

Author’s Notes: Most of this story was written by easilyled – I just did the sex scene near the end.

[nextpage title=”Chapter 1″]
Chapter 1

“Why are you looking at me that way, Howard?” Vince was stood behind the counter of the Nabootique, leaning on it nonchalantly and picking at the voluminous sleeve of his diaphanous, vaguely ethnic smock, as if there weren’t a ball of mistletoe floating in the air above his head.

“I’m not looking at you, am I?” Howard snapped mildly. “I’m looking at the thing above your head. What’s that about?”

“It’s genius, isn’t it?” Vince enthused. “Basically, it’s mistletoe specially treated with anti-hairspray. The chemicals in the treated mistletoe simultaneously attract and repel the chemicals in the hairspray – sold separately – and create a sort of powerful festive force field. They’re like two magnets, yeah? Or like the moon held in the earth’s gravitational embrace.” Vince embraced the air to demonstrate, his eyes closed and his pursed-lipped face a mask of serene bliss.

Howard tried to keep his own face blank, but couldn’t quite suppress a tic of a twitch affecting the entire right side of his face. He automatically swatted at it, like a fly, making Vince assume an expression of horror, which Howard feigned not to see. “And the point of that is?” he asked.

Vince took his cue from Howard and ignored his friend’s symptoms of imminent mental breakdown. “What do you mean, what’s the point? It’s to fit in as much kissing during Chrimbo as possible!”

“It’s called a hat and wire.”

“Where’s your Vision, Howard?”

“Occupied with more important things.”

“Oh yeah, like what?”

“Like creating an utopic society based on the model of Stationery Village. Lester Corncrake has already agreed to join.”

“Lester Corncrake is a Disembodied Head.”

“And so will we all be in Stationery Republic, Vince. It’s about getting past the body. Just… moving past it. Like an undertaker in the night.”

“Okay, that went in so many creepy directions, I don’t even know where to begin. Anyway, the Airborne Mistletoe is part of my line.”

“Your ‘line’? You have a ‘line’ now?”

“‘Course I do. The Vince Noir Futuristic Traditions Line.”

Howard quirked an eyebrow. “That’s pretty good, actually,” he half-muttered into his mustache.

“Thought so.”

“It’ll never sell though,” Howard pronounced, poking the floating mistletoe experimentally with a pencil, wearing a little tight smile of triumph that was somewhat unpleasant to see.

“Easy, you off-sale Scroogist. Why not? Who doesn’t like kissing?”

“That much kissing? With randoms off the street? Street-randoms? The thing’s a death-magnet.” He gave it another, more aggressive poke before Vince could duck away. “Especially at this time of year. Imagine the germs!”

“You imagine the germs! And touch my line again–”

“Touch your what now?”

“–an’ I’ll obliviate you.”

“Oh yeah? That sounds serious, sir.”

“Maybe it is. So you’d better just… watch yourself. In case.”

Howard shook his head, arms akimbo, eyes lit up strangely as he continued to stare at Vince’s tiny holidaytastic satellite. “It’s nothing but an invitation to pneumonia.”

“Well it’s definitely not an invitation to you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. And your poking.”

“Just don’t come crying to me, squealing like a hungry piglet – “Ooooooh, where’s Mama Sow’s sweet gushing nipple–”

Vince gagged audibly, which Howard ignored.

“–when your wanton, derelict kissing–”

“Derelict kissing!?”

“–when it lands you in the hospital, with a machine, a thing of metal and… dials, doing your breathing for you.”

“Slow down there, Mama Sow! Don’t start composing me eulogy yet. This is not for me, is it? I’m just using it to demonstrate.”

“To demonstrate what?”

“The – product!”

Secretly gleeful that Vince had meandered into his trap, Howard made a sweeping gesture with his arm indicating Vince’s form, which was clearly visible (almost audible, Howard thought) in the inadequate covering of a loose smock, as flimsy as a sigh, over his clinging silver jumpsuit. “And what exactly is the product?”

The door opened then with a tingle of shop-bells, heralding the arrival of a pretty young woman with a brunette fringe, in a sunshine-yellow pea coat that made Vince forget Howard’s insinuation and brighten like a child handed a toy. “Alright?” he greeted her.

Howard felt a sharp twinge of anxiety in his stomach as she instantly returned Vince’s grin. But then her smile faltered. “What’s – that over your head?”

Howard grinned maniacally, waiting.

But Vince didn’t miss a beat – he only smiled wider. “It’s Airborne Mistletoe. Follows you wherever you go. So you don’t have to take your chances, hoping to catch your Special Someone at the right moment.”

Howard’s face fell faster than a shy soufflé as he saw that the girl was charmed. “That’s so romantic!” she cried.

“Romantic!” Howard thundered before he could stop himself. “Romantic is… setting a trap! Following your beloved around! Don’t worry – I mean secretly! Learning their habits, like a predator in the wild. Deciding where to plant the mistletoe. Then waiting, lurking in the shadows, for them to walk by the spot – so you can pretend it’s a coincidence. If necessary, setting up a hammock, in case you have to wait in the spot a few days, and making a small or smallish fire, to cook your omelets. THAT, you know-nothing Camden mannequins, is ROMANTIC.”

Howard paused for breath, while the girl looked at him as if deciding whether to scream. Vince watched her with concern. “Don’t mind him, yeah?” he said hurriedly, coming around the counter and taking her elbow gently. “He’s – practicing a part for a play. He’s playing a rapist stalker mentalist.” He shot Howard a look that was half-exasperated, half-pleading. “Tone down the mental, would you, Hamlet? You’re scaring the customers.”

“You’re in a play?” The girl looked at Howard with new interest, and palpable relief. “You’re very good!”

Howard simply snarled at her, making her jump and cling to Vince, who rolled his eyes and patted her back comfortingly. “Anyway. What do you think of my invention? It’s part of my new line – Futuristic Traditions.”

Lost in the warm bubbly bath of Vince’s attention, the girl had forgotten Howard and his psychotic ranting already. She giggled and replied, “Well – I’d like to try it out first, before I commit myself.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah! Sure.” Vince leaned in obligingly for the kiss.

Howard watched, torn between disbelief and rage, as Vince launched himself at the girl’s face, nibbling expertly at her lips. And felt himself die slightly inside as he thought he caught Vince momentarily suck on her tongue – before the little tart slid it deep in Vince’s mouth.

For months now, ever since his *coughcough* 32nd *cough* birthday, Howard had secretly been telling himself that even though the rest had been a lie, a desperate manoeuvre to keep the Head Shaman from ceremoniously decapitating him – that Vince couldn’t have sucked on his tongue that way without feeling some kind of attraction – of deep, powerful, molten attraction – for Howard. But of course – that was only the naïve impression of a virgin, wasn’t it? It was just a technique – like everything Vince did. Unique and flawless and designed to maximally please. And completely impersonal. Howard often wondered if Vince got any personal pleasure out of anything he did, or if his only pleasure consisted of pleasing others.

Right now, however, he was causing Howard excruciating pain as he and the girl continued to snog endlessly, relentlessly, panting and slurping away, making Howard’s skin crawl even as his stomach contracted into a ball of angry jealousy as dense as a collapsed star. He might have lost his kissing virginity that night on the roof, but he was losing his illusions only now – those precious illusions he’d always been so afraid would go swirling down the putrid urinal of experience when the rest of it went.

And then, as he continued to watch avidly as if their faces were the urinal and he was trying to catch in them the last traces of his illusions as they swirled down the dirty drain (or some such confused metaphor, Howard wasn’t thinking particularly clearly) Vince snuck a glance at him out of the corner of his eye. A glance that a neutral observer might have described as “opaque,” or perhaps, at a stretch, as seductive in its heavy-lidded haziness, but that Howard, who was far from neutral, instantly read as mischievous and mocking. And reacted, with the same instantaneousity, by charging at Vince and grabbing him by the smock, but unable to gain a purchase on that wisp of smoke, took him by the throat instead, and not only broke off the endless kiss, but shook the mistletoe creation out of its hold. It dropped to the floor with a decidedly unfestive thud, inert, and Howard shook Vince like a rag-doll while the girl shrieked, and Howard laughed, awfully. And Vince choked and stared at Howard with glassy disbelieving goggle-eyes, a squeak attempting to emerge from his throat and turn into a plea, but it was too late.

“It’s too late!” Howard shouted, shattering his fantasy – and also the kiss taking place in front of him.

“I’ll take it,” the girl told Vince when she’d caught her breath.

“50 euros,” Vince replied, looking with concern at the stockroom, where Howard had disappeared, slamming the door behind him. He was inside giving himself discreet Chinese burns.

Howard wouldn’t come out no matter how often Vince knocked on the door during the day. Vince was left to handle the pre-Christmas rush by himself. He told Vince that he was reorganizing the stockroom to make its arrangement more logical – which was actually true, and very soothing.

Vince’s sales figures were so good that Naboo let him off early. They closed up the shop and had champagne, then set off for a night on the town. Vince didn’t try to get Howard to come out again – he was angry at him by now. He didn’t know what had set Howard off that way, or what right Howard had to be upset. He’s the one who’d rejected Vince’s unspoken offer to go for the Mistletoe Threeway. Just because Howard was so fastidious was no reason to hurt his friend’s feelings that way.

Everything had been crap between them, anyway, ever since The Roof. Everything they usually did suddenly turned Weird. The midnight crimping grew awkward – Howard had even suggested that they each get their own bedrooms (or more precisely, that Vince move into the cupboard). He pretended it was because Vince woke him up by always coming in late, but why weren’t the snail-shell earplugs Vince had made for him (at the cost of two snails’ homes) good enough for that anymore? And when Vince tried to bring things back to normal by suggesting a bout of satsuma-throwing in their vests and pants, Howard made excuses, saying that he needed to go round to Lester Corncrake’s and feed him. Like he was a chia pet.

He’d rather spend time with a blind head than with Vince these days.

“He’s right,” Vince said, biting his lip. “It’s too late.”

“It only two a.m.!” Bollo replied, grooving on the dancefloor, where Vince had suddenly stopped moving. “Get with it, Vince.” And began to sing, “‘But if my Daddy say I fine – No, no, no!’” He grabbed Vince by his delicate wrist and pulled him in close, grinding his generous ape-hips against Vince’s slender lady-man ones. “Show-off,” Vince thought.

Back at the shop, Howard had finally gained the courage to emerge from the stockroom, and had managed to exhaust himself with obsessive-compulsive rearranging to the point where he thought he might be able to sleep.

As he was stumbling his way to the stairwell, a towering figure stepped out of the shadows. Howard balked, catching the menacing glint of a sword, and the duller one of a bald head, in the softly glowing fairylights.

“Howard Moon,” boomed Dennis, the Head Shaman. “Where’s your little boyfriend?”

“Probably at the disco, pulling,” Howard grumbled. He was in no mood to pretend to be a gayist, or even coherent. And remembering Lester Corncrake’s fate made him burn with indignation at this disgusting bully’s presence in his shop. “What do you want, sir?”

To Howard’s surprise, Dennis lowered his eyes as if confused. Was that a rosy blush creeping into his cheeks, mingling with the blue and green of the fairylights?

“Is the blind mental around? I feel slightly sheepish for what I did to him.”

“Lester Corncrake’s Head is at home, sir, sleeping. As you should be.”

Was the bloody-minded Shaman Warrior fidgeting?

“Wife threw me out,” he muttered at last.

“Really?” Howard replied with heavy sarcasm. “You seemed so happy together. Is your plan to crash at Naboo’s, then? He’s out with Vince – but I suppose you can get into his flat using your magic, or sword, or however you got in here.”

“They left the door unlocked.”

“Oh. Fair enough.”

Howard made a move towards the beaded curtain that separated the shop from the corridor, but Dennis grabbed his arm.

“Wait!”

Howard stiffened, and closed his eyes, waiting for the blade to fall.

But Dennis released him. “I’m lonely. I need someone to talk to.”

“Don’t you have any friends? Never mind,” Howard answered himself.

He sighed, then fetched stools for both of them.

“Got anything to drink?” Dennis asked eagerly, settling himself onto a stool.

Howard knew now that he wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight.

Vince tried to be quiet as he entered his and Howard’s dark bedroom. The sky was lightening outside, but the blush of the sunrise hadn’t yet reached the tops of the surrounding buildings. He stripped off his jumpsuit, sweaty from the night of dancing, and tossed it on the floor with the others, then prepared to crawl into bed carefully. Howard didn’t like being touched – except sometimes, at night, he was up for a cuddle, after a long emotional bout of crimping. But lately Vince had thought it better not to risk it.

Vince shrieked as his limbs unexpectedly encountered a meaty form on his side of the bed. He disentangled himself as quickly as he could, falling onto the floor.

“Vince?”

On the other side of the bed – Howard’s side – someone had sat up. Vince recognized Howard’s outline.

“Howard! There’s someone sleeping in our bed!”

“Yeah, I know that, Baby Bear.”

Suddenly it dawned on Vince what was happening. He felt a perfect fool.

“Howard! Did you-?”

“What?”

Howard shimmied to the end of the bed and climbed off. He came towards Vince. “Keep it down,” he told him. “It’s the Head Shaman.”

“Howard!” Vince shrieked.

Howard reflexively grabbed the back of Vince’s head and clamped a hand over his mouth. He was crouched in front of Vince – still in his clothes, which he’d worn to bed, while Vince was sprawled on the floor, legs out in front of him, propped up by his hands, naked. They always went to bed naked, but Howard hadn’t felt that was appropriate, or in fact safe, when the drunken Head Shaman had asked if he could sleep in Howard’s bed – especially after his comments about Howard’s pumpkin ass and questions about his waxing habits.

Behind Howard’s hand, muffled laughter began to emerge from Vince. Howard looked severely into his friend’s bulbous eyes, which glistened with excited mischief in the dark room.

“Will you be quiet now?” Howard asked, and removed his hand, rubbing it against his trousers to take the tickle away. He didn’t really want to hear anything Vince would say, but felt that staying that way looking at each other any longer involved an obscure danger.

“Howard!” Vince whispered, still giggling under his breath. “You had it off with the Head Shaman?”

“No!” Howard shouted.

Dennis stirred on the bed and muttered in his sleep. “Methuselah – no! Not the squash racket!”

“No,” Howard repeated, hissing it quietly and angrily this time. “He had an argument with his wife and came here. He got wasted and passed out.”

“You mean – you’ve still not had it off then?” Vince asked, his face serious now.

“Why would I let you know if I did?” Howard asked, aware that he sounded slightly sulky. “So you can put it on MySpace?”

“I’d never do that, Howard.” Vince smiled at him, stroking his arm soothingly. Howard let him – it was the first time in months Howard had let him.

“Really?”

“Of course not. I’m on Facebook now. MySpace is for pensioners and Lily Allen fans.”

But Howard could tell he was teasing, and couldn’t help smiling a little. And he didn’t push him away when Vince grasped his upper arms and pulled Howard towards him – and then they were kissing again, and Howard couldn’t believe it could be as good the second time as the first. Their mouths parted against each other, and Vince ran his tongue along the side of Howard’s – and suddenly the intrusive image of a bright yellow pea coat burst into Howard’s mind, like a blossoming migraine, and he pulled away. Vince opened his eyes, startled, and looked at Howard in bewilderment. There was light in the room now, and the pain in Howard’s eyes was so laceratingly clear Vince felt like he’d been slapped.

“Go on. Why did you stop?”

Vince and Howard started, and Howard turned his head. Dennis was sitting upright on the bed, facing them, arms folded, his sword resting across his lap.

“Go on, I said. I want to see more of this. So you’re a virgin, are you, Moon? How… piquant. But it can’t be very easy on your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend!” Howard nearly screamed in frustration.

Dennis’s silver alien eyes narrowed and flitted from Howard to Vince. “So – you’re not in love?”

“I am,” Vince said quickly. “I am, but he’s not.”

“How can you say that?” Howard demanded. “I’m not the one who goes around kissing everyone I meet – and in exactly the same way!”

“What are you talking about, you strap-on sushi kit?”

“About the fact that there’s no passion – no soul – behind anything you do, Vince!”

“I try to make people happy! I try to make you happy! And the thanks I get is you accusing me of having no soul?”

“I want you to try to make me happier than you make other people – happy!”

“If you could tell me what to do to not make you always angry that would be a start!”

“I just did tell you!”

“What? I’m lost.”

“Enough arguing!” Dennis stood, gripping his sword. “I liked the kissing better. Do the kissing again.”

“Are you some kind of pervert?” Vince asked him.

“Yes,” Dennis replied. “A pervert with a very big sword.”

“Point.” Vince cast his eyes downward, distressed. There was no escape.

“I’m sure this isn’t what you wanted your first time to be,” Vince apologized to Howard, who was now naked as well, lying on the bed, on his back, with his knees bent, with Vince lying on top of him. Vince stared at the wall over Howard’s head, Howard at Vince’s small white shoulder.

“Actually, I just wanted it to be a time,” Howard replied.

Their eyes met briefly, and Howard attempted a reassuring smile. Instinctively, he planted an affectionate kiss on Vince’s shoulder, then lay his head back on the pillow. Vince bit his lip and his face dipped shyly, but he kept his eyes on Howard’s.

“I’ll try to make it good.”

“Don’t try!” Howard replied, with an edge of yearning in his voice that made Vince shiver with alertness. “That’s what I’m saying! You don’t always have to be the best and brightest with the biggest bounciest hair! Just – do what you feel, yeah?”

“Start fucking!” Dennis barked.

“Mate – why don’t you make yourself useful!” Vince snapped.

Dennis took a step towards the bed.

“Not like that! We could use a little something to – ease the process. Make a soft landing. Yeah?”

“I’m not following you.”

“Don’t play dumb, magic-boy. All extreme sports calendar models do anal. Everyone knows that.”

“Oh! You want cooking oil!”

“Exactly. Run to the kitchen, would you, love?”

Dennis left the room reluctantly, watching them over his shoulder as he went. “Don’t do anything until I get back!”

As soon as he was gone, Vince leapt out of the bed and locked the door, then leaned against it. Howard sat up and watched as Vince slid down the door, collapsing in front of it. When he was sat on the floor he pulled his skinny legs up to his chest and put his arms around them, his head back against the door, apparently scrutinizing the ceiling. Feeling more than a little self-conscious, Howard nevertheless got out of bed and went to him. He knelt beside Vince and waited, but when Vince made no move to acknowledge him, Howard made the first move.

“Alright, little man?” he asked tentatively, daring only to brush Vince’s hair off his shoulder.

“I can’t do it, Howard!” Vince groaned, shaking his head in a pique, which made the hair immediately fall back in place. Automatically, Howard brushed it away again, slightly hypnotized, this time letting his fingers drag against the smooth, soft surface of the curve of Vince’s neck.

“I don’t mind, honestly. It’s probably time to get it over with, isn’t it?”

“I mean I can’t perform under this pressure!” He looked at Howard wildly. “You know about me and pressure! I expect perfection of myself, and what happens? I fold like a pup tent in a strong breeze! So to speak.” He cast his eyes down between his legs ashamedly.

Howard smiled dreamily, now playing with Vince’s ear, his finger tracing its whorls. “You mean like that time at school when you were cast in the play?”

“I was just playing a tree! All I had to do was stand there and hold me leaves up!”

“Instead you panicked because you didn’t feel like you were doing enough, and started body-popping.”

“For twenty minutes! I couldn’t figure out how to get off!”

“The audience loved it, though. They cheered you on. I was playing the lead, but they all forgot about me. I had to abandon the speech I’d written especially for my character at a crucial moment in his trajectory.”

“You mean when he loses his hat?”

“The director always undersold the psychological ramifications of that incident.”

“Yeah. I never apologized for that, did I, Howard?”

“No. But it doesn’t matter. I’m a shit writer.”

“Howard.”

Vince turned to look at Howard, and took Howard’s face in his hand. Vince’s hand was surprisingly warm. Howard smiled at him, and reached over and took up his other hand. He brought it to his mouth and bit Vince’s knuckles lightly, still smiling, and then held it under his chin.

“Why so serious? It’s not like you’re killing someone. And it’s not for real, is it? It’s just some pervert’s fantasy.”

“I want it to be for real,” Vince said, holding Howard’s eyes. They both wanted to look away, and neither did. The moment was held too long – and then longer. And then it started to feel not strange, but right, and Howard’s face moved closer to Vince’s, and Vince’s hand snaked around from Howard’s face through his hair to the back of his neck, which was burningly hot.

The door vibrated with Dennis’s pounding.

“Did I miss anything? I made popcorn!”

Vince stamped his foot on the floor. “This is never going to happen!”

“Don’t make me teleport in there!” Dennis warned from the other side of the door.

Howard stood, sighing, wincing as his joints creaked, and returned to the bed. He resumed the devirginization position and waited.

“Vince?” Several minutes had passed, and Howard was starting to wonder what was going on, as well as getting cold.

“I’m right here.” Vince appeared at the side of the bed so suddenly that Howard felt unnerved instead of relieved. Before he could process that feeling, however, Vince had climbed on top of him, in a strangely business-like manner. He examined Howard’s face closely and speculatively, as if it were a foreign object whose meaning he was trying to determine.

“Vince?!” Howard asked again.

“Right here! You’re a remarkably handsome man, you know.”

“I am!? Oh. Yeah. ‘Course I am. You don’t need to tell Howard Moon that…. I was voted Total Hottie of 2007 by the Librarians Who Like Jazz Association. What happened to the Head Shaman?”

“He probably got a call on his mobile from his wife.”

“Oh… that makes sense.”

“Now, Howard. I should fairly inform you that I’ve never done this before.”

“You haven’t?”

“I never even considered it before that night on the roof. But I’ve done a lot of deflowering of virgins in my time.”

“You have!?”

“This ought to be doubly pleasurable, seeing as how it’ll also be a defloration of myself.”

“It will!?”

“My manginity. Right. Let’s do this thing.”

Vince’s lips against Howard’s were brutal, pressing down, smothering him. His tongue forced its way into Howard’s mouth, apparently searching out his tonsils. Howard wanted to protest, to push him away, overwhelmed, but his cock sprang up rebelliously, hardening against Vince’s. At last Vince pulled back. He licked his lips thoughtfully.

“Mmmmmm… good. You like it?” He grabbed Howard’s cock and pumped it in his hand, roughly.

“Vince,” Howard panted, “I don’t mean to criticize, but… where’s the romance?”

“I’ll send you flowers after, baby. If you suck my cock like a good little woman.”

“NO!” Howard grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him away, onto the bed. He scrambled on top of Vince and held him down easily with his greater weight and strength, but their erections remained squished together in a hot damp mass, throbbing, as Howard tried to regain hold of his senses. Vince was laughing, his sweaty fringe in his eyes, his eyes glittering beneath, black locks splayed against the pillow.

“What are you doing?” Howard demanded, trying to make it all make sense. “I don’t even know you!”

Something in Howard’s tone brought Vince to calm, but a malevolent smirk soon crept onto his face, and his clearly-formed words cut deep into Howard. “But I know you. Cut the bullshit. You don’t want gentleness or tenderness. You want to be taken like a bitch. Now lie down like a good boy and let Daddy tie you up and take care of you.”

Howard stared at him another moment in disbelief. Then a little whimper escaped his throat involuntarily, and slowly he nodded.

“Yes, sir, Daddy, sir.”

Howard lay on his back and raised his arms for Vince’s ministrations. He closed his eyes and sighed as he heard bedsheets being torn. Then felt the material, cool and strangely scratchy, against his wrists. “Tighter,” he instructed, frowning.

“No more talking, dickhead,” Vince told him, and shoved a thumb up Howard’s arse, without preparation.

After a moment, Howard pushed against it. It felt ridiculously painful, like someone had stuck a small fire up his bum. Wincing, he whispered, “Vince… is this it? Are we having sex?”

Vince laughed back, harshly.

Howard looked confused. “I just thought – since you’re inside me, and…”

“Fool! Aren’t you ever going to shut up?” Using the flat of his hand, Vince slapped Howard hard across the face. At the same time, he used his thumb inside to punctuate every word with a violent motion up.

At every dry stab, Howard shuddered.

Vince changed tactics. With Howard’s tightness, the thumb had hardly broken through the first clench of muscles, even after several shoves. So Vince began a series of vicious twists, each time swivelling the thumb little further. It was soon wedged in far past the knuckle.

Howard yelled in panic at the intrusion. His muscles went into spasm inside at the pain. He strained the bonds around his wrists – but the knots were firmly tight. His ankles were fixed down, too, bound to the bedposts – and he couldn’t even remember Vince doing that.

“You virgins,” Vince snorted. “Always screaming and saying no! As if that doesn’t just heat my blood. Make me want to despoil you all the more.”

Howard yelped. Every time he tried to struggle away, the thumb was just twisting and rubbing the more painfully. It was agony.

Vince’s gaze flicked up and down Howard’s body, coming to rest Howard’s cock, still treacherously half-hard on his belly.

Vince sneered in amusement. “Ha! You don’t fool me! I know what you really want. A man with a sword larger than a toddler’s leg. And who’s not afraid to use it.”

Howard forced himself to calm. The pain wasn’t so bad if he stopped moving. He took in a shaky breath.

“That’s better. Now you’ve got the right idea. Going to lie there and let Daddy get on with business?”

“Vince…?” asked Howard, weakly. He searched for a grin, a cheeky look from his friend – anything to confirm this was still a game.

Vince loomed silently over Howard. Behind the shadow of his fringe his eyes were dark and unknowable.

Then very deliberately, Vince stuck out his tongue. In one swift motion he’d licked Howard’s face, up from the jawline across Howard’s cheek and across the red mark where Howard had been slapped. But he didn’t stop there. He continued up to Howard’s left eye socket. There he jammed in the tip of his tongue and swished it wetly around.

Howard’s breath hitched. He’d shut both eyes before the tongue descended, but the exploration of his eyeball was still pretty unnerving.

“Tasty,” said Vince. The tip of his tongue was just poking out as he licked it against his lips. “Very, very tasty. Virgin tears.”

Howard blinked. His left eyelashes were weighed down with Vince’s spit.

Vince’s face was still startlingly close. “So, you going to be a good boy for Daddy? Hmmm? Are you?” He leaned further in and whispered into Howard’s ear. His voice was strangely deep and resonant. “Because believe me, I’m not finished yet.”

Howard’s eyes widened. That voice… fear chilled his skin. But this was Vince, wasn’t it? He could trust Vince.

“I didn’t hear a yes,” warned Vince. He pushed his slim-hipped body onto Howard’s. Their hot cocks touched.

Howard let out a moan. Before he could think, he was rocking his hips up, mashing their cocks together and working himself back to full hardness. “Y…yes… Yes sir. Please sir.”

“Right decision, meathead.”

Howard moaned once more – this time in pain. Vince had yanked his thumb straight out of Howard’s arse. It was even more intense than when Vince had forced the thumb in, like Howard’s innards were being dragged out backwards.

“Now, first things first,” announced Vince, sitting up straight, and starting to climb off Howard.

As the emptiness in his arse throbbed to a memory, Vince’s warm body was leaving him too. Howard shivered with the loss of them both.

But within seconds, something else was being shoved towards Howard, right in his face – the waving end of Vince’s cock.

“Go on – suck me off, bitch.”

Howard strained at his bonds, uselessly. “Vince – you know I… I’ve… never before…”

“Yes, yes!” Vince replied, impatiently. “I know! Less talking, more sucking!”

Vince’s cock shoved harder. It smeared moisture across Howard’s lips.

“Come on! Open up!” barked Vince.

Until recently, Howard had never even imagined this – sucking another man’s cock, or how it would taste and feel inside his mouth. But suddenly, it didn’t seem so wrong. Perhaps because the cock in question belonged to Vince.

Ever since their kiss on the rooftop, he’d been looking at Vince in a brand new way. Stealing shameful glances at him – at the bulge Vince swung around, so obvious in those tight shiny jumpsuits. Lying in bed at night, wishing more than anything that Vince would come over and slip in for a cuddle. Vince had never needed an invite before – all it took was a couple of crimps, and he’d strip off and jump right in. Why had Vince stopped?

So when Howard opened up his mouth, he didn’t question it as the erect cock slipped in quite naturally. And when he licked cautiously at the silken head and it gave a distinct leap in response, it almost felt like coming home.

In fact, pride was filling his chest. Yes – he, Howard TJ Moon, had made Vince’s cock twitch with sheer sexual pleasure. Of course it had! For years he’d wasted his mighty sexual powers, his god-given magnetism. He’d frittered it away on self-abuse like throwing tadpoles in the wind. No longer would that happen – no, sir.

Because now he had Vince.

Howard opened wider, about to take Vince further in, right to the root.

“Call that a blow job?” Vince grabbed a handful of Howard’s hair, forcing his head sharply up. Then Vince plunged aggressively, deeper into Howard’s throat. “I said suck! Not slobber like a toddler puffing into a balloon! Again!”

Howard choked, gasping for air.

“No! No! Not like that, either!”

Howard gave a half-strangled slurp, his chest rising and falling, helpless as Vince thrust in and out.

“Arrgh!” shouted Vince. “Mind the teeth!”

Howard twisted away, trying desperately to escape. But Vince was holding his head in an iron grip.

Eventually, after Howard had been spluttering and hacking over his cock for about a minute, Vince withdrew. He shoved Howard’s head away in disgust. “Useless! And your mouth showed such promise!”

Howard flopped sideways to the pillow and exploded into a coughing fit. Saliva and a string of something stickier dribbled out the corner of his mouth, forming a wet, warm puddle underneath.

Vince stood wide-legged by the bed, surveying Howard with his hands on his hips. His drool-smeared erection stuck out like a flagstaff. “Well,” he sneered, showing his teeth in a surprisingly wolfish leer. “It matters not.” He took up the Head Shaman’s sword and raised it above his head. An unearthly light glinted from its blade.

The sword came down with a swish and snick.

Pain shot through Howard’s legs. His tight ankle bonds had been hacked free by the sword’s blow. Howard brought his knees up and down again, stretching his legs out and revelling in the freedom. Pins and needles prickled inside his thighs.

“Resume position!” barked Vince, flinging away the sword. It fell with a harsh clang against the wall. And jumping on top of Howard, Vince pinned him to the bed.

As his aching limbs were forced double again, Howard felt that reality had melted and flown away.

He’d always imagined sex would be a more purely physical affair – in-out-in-out, dirty fumbles and fluid spurting. Not like this.

Like when Vince had been choking him with his cock. Howard had hated it, he’d been crying stupid, acrid tears of self-pity, and yet – oh God, he wanted it. It was foul, yet he knew he deserved every inch, and more. It was all too much.

Howard pulled at the bindings on his wrists, wishing he could caress the forceful little body on top as it tried to stab him with his cock. Wth another pang of self-disgust, Howard realised that not being able to touch Vince was only making him all the more aroused.

“Yes! Daddy’s on target!” shouted Vince, triumphantly.

Howard lifted his hips and closed his eyes, trying to welcome the battering at his already-abused entrance.

But the blunt head of Vince’s cock wouldn’t go in, no matter how many times Vince pushed and roared in frustration. Vince shoved a few more times, angrily. It achieved nothing except white-lipped whimpers from the tied-up man below.

Throwing his head back, Vince laughed theatrically. “Aha! I knew it! Such a tight little virgin after all!” He looked around. “I believe something will be required… no, not the popcorn… perhaps for later on.”

He leaned over and started rummaging on the floor by the bed. Howard looked down and was surprised to see a box of golden popcorn sitting on the ground. Next to that was a bottle of cooking oil, the very same brand that Bollo used to fry his eggs and bacon in – oh right, thought Howard. It must be the bottle from the kitchen. How had it got there? Perhaps the Head Shaman had magicked it or something before he’d gone off to answer his phone call.

Vince straightened up. He unscrewed the bottle and tossed the top over his shoulder. It fell without sound into the darkness. Then stretching out his arm, Vince tipped the bottle up and poured the whole lot out in one go. It gave a noisy gurgle.

Howard jumped. A stream of cold oil had hit him right on the cock and balls. The oil gushed further down and Howard arched his back. He parted his thighs wide as the coolness slid into his crack, trickling down and easing the itchy burning inside. He sighed in relief. The mattress below began to spawn two oily buttock-dimple lakes of overflow.

Vince re-positioned himself. He grabbed Howard’s thighs hard. Angry marks sprung up beneath his fingers, flaring across Howard’s flesh.

With the goal finally oiled and ready for piercing, Vince grit his teeth and tensed his buttocks.

The head of Vince’s cock inched forward in a series of shoves. When it finally forced through the tight ring of muscles at Howard’s entrance, Vince let out a sharp breath of satisfaction. But then his cock stopped short, wedged fast. Vince gave a few short, frustrated bounces, all to no avail.

“Blast to Hades’ codpiece! Out of oil!”

Vince pulled out with a short, nasal grunt, took his cock in his hand, and rubbed it across Howard’s dangling balls, up and down like a chef rolling a shushi roll. Soon it was glistening with the oil trapped in Howard’s scrotal hairs.

“Aha!” Vince preened. He cupped his length in his hands like a prize marrow oiled for ‘Best Novelty Vegetable’ at the local fair. He readied himself for re-entry.

Howard felt the prodding at his entrance. He steeled himself again.

This was it, he was going to get to have sex, to do it at least once before he died. And Vince was going to be his very first, perhaps his only… Howard thrust his hips up, trying to help the penetration.

Or perhaps they’d already had sex. After all, Vince’s cock had had been inside him, if only for a second.

At the thought of Vince’s cock inside him again, Howard wriggled his hips even more. His fingers strained, as if trying to touch something invisible and pull it closer.

“Anything,” he panted. “Anything you want. Make me do things. Anything. I’ll do it.”

Howard flushed. A memory flashed before him – of how disgusted Vince had been the first time he’d caught Howard in the cupboard, self-inducing his Chinese burns. And now this. How would he ever face Vince again?

Howard turned his face to the side, and so he didn’t see the blow about to fall.

Vince hit Howard’s face in exactly the same place he had the last time. The skin on Howard’s right cheekbone flared white, immediately flushing to an angry purple.

“Of course you want me to use you!” shouted Vince. “I’m the best! Now keep still and let Daddy do his business!”

Howard gasped – but not at the blow. The shock of the afterheat on his battered skin – it was arousing him even more. What sort of person got off on this? No wonder no one had ever wanted to have sex with him before.

But Vince was already sinking his cock into Howard, deeply, and right up to the hilt. Howard had no time to do anything now but break into a slick, all-over-body sweat and scream. And with a deep, un-Vince-like roar, the man on top drew back and started to pound into Howard.

Within seconds, Howard was being rammed up backwards against the wall. The crown of his head jammered each time Vince slammed in. Helplessly, Howard tried to push back against it with his tied hands. But it was useless. All he could do was try to ride it out, his arse afire with bizarre intensity.

Then Vince grabbed Howard’s buttocks, lifting him higher. As the angle changed, colours pinged and exploded before Howard’s eyes. Heat prickled down the inside of his thighs. His toes curled.

Howard threw his head back and stretched his mouth open wide. A thought wisped through his melting brain – this must be what pleasure feels like.

Vince thrust in once more, slick and easy with oil. He hit the same spot all over again. Howard arched up, the colours behind his eyelids even brighter. He grabbed the bindings to his wrists and pulled them as if grabbing onto life.

But Vince was speedily approaching his peak. He let out a growl, and began to come.

Howard could hardly believe it. Vince was really coming inside him. But there was no mistaking it – Howard’s insides were so abused by now that he felt every spasm, spurt and jolt from Vince with a dozen times sensitivity.

Eventually, the last tremors from Vince’s cock pumped away to a gentle tremble.

Howard wanted to hold Vince, to kiss him, to stroke him and thank him for being his first time – but Vince was sprawled on top of him, far out of reach of Howard’s bound arms.

Anyway, at least one thing was for sure, thought Howard. His virginity was long gone. When another man shot his happy juice up your arse, then goodbye maidenhood.

Eventually Vince’s cock started to retreat, slipping out in a mess of sperm and oil. Panting, Vince pulled himself to his knees.

Howard chafed at his tightly-pulled wrists. As Vince had lifted up, his body had stroked across Howard’s still-hard cock. Howard was still so painfully hard. He was so close to coming himself. “Please, Vince,” he breathed. “Please… touch me.”

But Vince was too busy examining his own genitals. There were shiny red streaks along Vince’s cock, showing neon bright in the dimness of the bedroom.

With an inquiring noise, Vince reached forward and stretched Howard’s cheeks apart. He made an inspection of Howard’s anus.

Howard leant into Vince’s slightest touch. “Yes,” Howard begged, waggling his erection, hoping that Vince would get the general idea.

“Hmm. Less blood than for your average devirginization,” stated Vince. “Probably not the fabled arse-hymen. Pity.” And, inspection over, Vince bunched up a corner of sheet from the end of the bed and coolly began to wipe the stains from his penis.

Howard couldn’t care less what rubbish Vince gibbered. He only wanted those hands around his cock, pumping it up and down. “Vince! Stop messing about! You’re not going to leave me like this?”

Vince had retrieved the box of popcorn and was sitting strangely straight-backed on the end of the bed, picking out the largest kernels in a pompous, overly fussy way. It reminded Howard of something or someone he couldn’t quite remember. But Howard had other, more urgent things on his mind.

“Vince?” cried Howard, in frustration. He thrashed about, desperate to find anything to rub himself against to relieve the pressure. “Oh God, please!”

“Ahhh…” Vince munched on the popcorn with obvious pleasure. “This has really been a most enjoyable encounter.” He looked over at Howard. His eyes suddenly narrowed. “You are a quite remarkably attractive man.”

“Then why won’t you touch me, Vince?” howled Howard.

Vince tilted his head as he considered this. He set down his popcorn. “Well – I usually have a rule about virgins – but I think I’ll make an exception for you.”

Vince moved towards the bed. Howard’s hopes rose.

“So you enjoyed performing as my cock-sucking little bitch?”

“Just pull me off, Vince!” shouted Howard, losing all dignity. “You worked me up so that I’m close to bursting! I can’t bear it!”

Vince laughed. “So eager for more! Well,” he stepped up close. Howard could feel his breath. “Stay that way. And we’ll see.”

And Vince placed one last lick onto Howard’s face, pressing down hard across the colouring bruise. Then he smiled – the same eerie smile as before, which narrowed his eyes and ended in a hint of snarl.

“What? We’ll see? Fuck that!” wailed Howard, pulling at his bonds. “What about now, you bastard! At least untie me so I can wank myself off!” Howard widened his eyes. “No Vince, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it – don’t go!”

But Vince had hefted up the Head Shaman’s sword under one arm and, sticking the box of popcorn under his other, was making his way out the door, still totally naked.

Howard was left alone in the darkness of the night, with only a hard on for company, and thinking – so that was sex. Wondering if the aching in his frustrated balls could possibly get any worse.

Yes. Probably it would. The night was young.

The ache when he woke up, some time in the afternoon, was terrible – in his arms, which were still tied to the bedposts, and in his arse. His cock, however, was bobbing cheerfully at his stomach.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Vince moving around, doing something with his clothes. Probably deciding what to wear, from the rate he was throwing them around.

“Good morning?” he called shyly.

Vince stopped moving. He came to the bed and stood over Howard. He met Howard’s eager expression with a look of haughty contempt, complete with flared nostrils, that Howard only knew him to wear when he was both furious and hurt. It had happened then, just as Howard had feared.

He’d always known that if he ever had sex with anyone, they’d hate him for it afterwards.

“Oh. You’re awake, are you, Casanova?” Vince sneered.

“Vince, I’m sorry. Can we just forget it ever happened?”

“Do you even know what happened?”

“What do you mean?” Now that he was beginning to wake up more fully, he was becoming irritated with Vince as well. What right did he have to act this way? Hadn’t he been the one who wanted it to happen?

“It wasn’t ME, you berk!” Vince cried, his voice cracking.

“Now wait a minute. We were both involved. Everything was consensual. You may regret it now, but don’t pretend that you weren’t even here….”

“Want to know where I was? Up there!” Vince pointed at the ceiling over the bed. “Out of me body. Just a floating consciousness. I couldn’t even get off. Just watch you and him go at it!”

“Him? Who?” Fully awake now, Howard was starting to wonder if Vince had simply gone mad.

“The Head Shaman, you twit! He occupied my body to get off with you! You lost your cherry to a murdering madman! And you couldn’t even tell the difference between us.”

“This… is a dream. There’s something wrong here….”

“Wrong!?” Vince’s voice sounded strangled. “I’ll show you wrong!” He snatched something glittery off the floor and held it up for Howard to see.

“Vince!” Howard’s voice was hushed, scared. “Who did that to the mirror-ball suit?”

“Your little matey, Dennis! He tore it up to tie you up! It’s in pieces now!” Vince was nearly in tears.

“You can wear it that way and say it’s your new look,” Howard pointed out consolingly.

“Not a bad idea actually,” Vince admitted reluctantly. “But that’s not the point, Howard!” he cried.

“Look, Vince, would you just untie me, so we can talk!”

“No way! You can stay that way, you dirty manwhore. I’m leaving. I’m getting me own room, elsewheres.” Vince hefted a giant trunk – Howard realized now that he’d been packing – towards the door, but soon gave up. “Oi! I’ll send for my stuff later.”

“Vince… where are you going?” Howard pleaded.

“Away from you!”

After Vince had left, Howard waited, the blazing ache in his back and arms and shoulders and arse almost overpowering any ability to feel the loss of Vince – of their friendship or any hope of a relationship. He hoped it would also overpower his humiliation at being discovered by Naboo and Bollo when he called for their help. Which he would have to do soon, because he wouldn’t be able to take it much longer. And then, after they’d laughed at him (he figured for about an hour, depending on how much weed they’d had), he’d be fired. Out on the streets, days before Christmas. A street-random.

It wasn’t nearly as bad he’d thought losing his virginity would be.

End Notes: Chapter 2 by easilyled to come soon

[nextpage title=”Chapter 2″]
New Permutations of Voyerism! Comin’ atcha

Author’s Notes: This part by easilyled

“Think this have connection to Head Shaman’s visit?” Bollo asked Naboo shrewdly over his shoulder as he chased the little colourful beads that were rolling all over the floor, disappearing into every hiding place they could find, trying to escape the broom’s bristles.

They’d just been treated to the sound of Vince hollering as he rolled down the stairs and the sight of him landing on his arse at the bottom, staring at the customers gawping at him through the beaded curtain, then trying to use it to pull himself to his feet, which had sent him sprawling to the floor even more brutally, beads spilling on his head and over his shoulders.

Naboo, Bollo, and the customers had then watched in silent horror as he tried once again to right himself, only to slip on the beads when he took a step forward on a platform heel, and crash painfully to the ground again, landing this time flat on his back.

At this point Bollo had recovered from his shock enough to step forward to offer Vince a hand.

Of course, he slipped on the beads as well and landed on his furry back, groaning.

“Berks!” Naboo shook his head. He pulled a whistle out of his smock, blew on it, and traffic-directed the perplexed customers out of the shop until they had the situation sorted.

But even after he managed to get both Vince and Bollo on their feet at the same time, Vince refused to tell him what had made him go spastic.

“I’m running away!” was all he’d say. But, seeing that his way was blocked by the customers, who were now loitering at the front of the shop and staring through the windows, he headed for the stockroom instead, slamming and locking the door behind him.

It did, indeed, seem like the logical outcome of the sight that had greeted them when Naboo and Bollo had come home from the club early that morning, a few hours after Vince. Dennis had ducked out Howard and Vince’s room as Naboo and Bollo were heading down the corridor to theirs.

“Alright, Dennis?” Naboo had asked, managing to convey extreme skepticism without altering his blank expression.

But the expressions that played over Dennis’s face in rapid succession – the shiftiness changing to shock changing to guilt changing to elaborate heartiness – made Naboo frown deeply.

“Oh… Naboo, Bollo!” he greeted them. “I was just… looking for you!”

“Here I am,” Naboo said, and waited.

“I had a fight with Methuselah and she tossed me out.” Dennis made a pathetic face at Naboo.

“You’re not staying here,” Naboo answered immediately. “Get out.” He pointed towards the stairwell.

“But, Naboo….”

“Have some dignity, man!” Naboo half-snapped, half-pleaded, losing his patience. “You’re supposed to be our shaman leader, ya bald tossbag.”

“You’re right… alright, then. I’ll be off. See you at the next meeting, eh? And, erm, keep up the good work… yes!” Dennis hurried down the corridor, seemingly relieved.

“He agree to that far too quickly,” said Bollo as Dennis disappeared down the stairs.

“I know,” Naboo agreed. “And he has no dignity to appeal to.”

“I got a bad feeling about this.”

“Oh, really? Come on – let’s get some sleep, we’ll need it.”

When Howard and Vince didn’t get up in time to open the shop, Naboo and Bollo did it instead, not wanting to disturb them and uncover something they’d rather not know about. It was bad enough wondering what Howard and Vince did in their room at nighttimes, besides crimp. But they’d both known that some kind of emotional storm was coming.

“You get all them?” Naboo asked Bollo, who was still pushing the broom around.

“Bollo think so.”

“Good, coz I’ve got to let the customers back in. It’s almost Christmas. I’m running a business here, not a circus.”

“Uh… Bollo know how to juggle.”

“I said I’m not….”

Howard’s plaintive voice traveled down the stairwell. “Naboo? Bollo? Help! Anybody!”

Naboo brushed past Bollo. “Find out what’s wrong with Vince. I need him on the floor sharpish. I’ll go sort Howard. And then fire the ballbag,” Naboo announced just as he slipped on a stray mischievous bead and went crashing to the ground.

“Go ‘way,” Vince mumbled, sniffling, in reply to Bollo’s tentative knocks.

“Come on, Vince. It almost Christmas. Bollo need your retail genius. And… uh… for Vince to show Bollo how to use cash register.”

“Don’t care about Christmas,” Vince replied. “And I don’t remember when I ever cared about retail. I’m leaving here for good as soon as I come out of this stockroom.”

“When that be?” Bollo asked, hopeful.

“Never!” Vince replied, and burst out crying again. Bollo gave up and left, facing the now large group of customers outside the windows with a perplexity equaling their own.

Vince couldn’t get the images out of his head. His usually cheerfully blank mind hadn’t developed any resistance to the kind of dark thoughts and memories now assaulting it. He’d never felt so helpless. Well, actually, he had, the night before, and now it was still going on, differently. He wished he had a poncho, but all he’d been able to find after going through the boxes in the stockroom was a sarong with a bird-of-paradise print. It did turn him on slightly when he put it on, but didn’t help with his mood at all.

One moment, he’d been sitting on the floor of his and Howard’s room, leaning against the door, trying to think how he could possibly make Howard’s first time special for him when a big bald man (albeit with a smallish head, relative to his body size) was going to be standing over them with a sword, perving. The next instant he was watching himself climb on top of Howard – seeing his own skinny white back, with its prominent spine, from above. He recognized himself and didn’t recognize himself at once. He’d used many mirrors to see himself from many angles over the years, but he’d never managed to glimpse that one. And yet, the… body’s movements were so intimately familiar, he recognized them with something other than his eyes. But to see it, when it wasn’t “attached” to him… that was a whole new perspective.

It wasn’t attractive, really, that almost transparently thin body, the spine almost grotesque, its movements like watching silver mercury darting in a petri dish. Yet at the same time he was fascinated by that silky spine and its slinky, serpentine movements, which he watched intently as though it had some secret to reveal to him.

It took him several moments to realize that beneath that form, Howard and the body were snogging.

The body sat up, its shaggy black hair concealing any clue to its expression. “Mmmmmm, good,” it said. “You like it?”

“Howard!” Vince screamed from the ceiling. “Howard – wot you DOIN’, you silly prick? That’s not me, is it? Don’t let him touch you! Get him off you, the creepy little mollusk!”

His voice was so loud it seemed like it would shatter him. It was louder than he’d ever used it in reality. And yet, even as the sound came out, surprising him, he knew that Howard couldn’t hear him. That he was, in fact, making no sound.

And it began to occur to him to wonder what he was, exactly, at this moment. He thrashed his body violently, desperately, trying to feel something, or draw attention to himself. And yet he knew that he wasn’t moving it at all. Which made sense, after all, since he had no body to move. It was down there.

He’d always sort of wanted this, to float free of his body. But he’d never imagined it this way. Particularly he’d never imagined that he would be watching his body, doing things to his friend, underneath him.

As that thought came to him, he started to wonder just how exactly his body had got away from him. It seemed clear, at least, that his body had left him – he hadn’t made the decision to leave his body. How long had it been planning this mutiny? And had it always wanted to do things to Howard, things that Vince had also sometimes thought he might like to do, but he wasn’t exactly sure? Was that, in fact, why his body had chosen to go its own way, and leave him to his own devices? Or more accurately, really, without any devices.

Vince’s attention was returned to the drama unfolding on the bed, as the body struck Howard across the face, hard. He gasped (or would have), and (didn’t) bite his lip (he had none), and felt, if possible, even more alienated from the thing on the bed.

He was sure he’d never wanted to do that to Howard.

“Howard!” he cried again, but this time his voice was small, faint, more of a whimper.

He couldn’t stop commenting on the action on the bed, now, however, as useless as it was.

“Stop it!” he told himself. “Vince, what’s the matter with you? He doesn’t like that… you’re hurting him. It’s Howard – why are you hurting him? God, Vincent, you’re one sick puppy. When I’ve got control over you again, we’re going to see a therapist quicksmart. STOP IT!” he shouted helplessly. He wished that if he couldn’t cry he wouldn’t still feel like he wanted to… terribly. It was all the worse, in fact, for not being able to.

And it worked, this time. The treacherous body had withdrawn its thumb from Howard’s anus – with one last painful wrench that made Vince wince. And then, for both Howard on the bed, and Vince on the ceiling, there was relief.

But then the body shifted its position, and Vince watched, goggle-eyed (not very fair, that, that he would have to see this although he had no eyes), as it shoved his cock (it was still Vince’s cock!) in Howard’s mouth. And heard the sound of his cock sliding in and out of Howard’s mouth, the slippery smacking noises, and Howard’s muffled moaning and difficult breathing.

And now, although he still wanted to cry, in fact more, something else was happening to him, over which he seemed to have no control.

Without his body, it felt like every defense had been stripped from him. He was alive with arousal. Straining, yearning. Yearning to feel and taste what he was seeing. Or feel and taste anything. And yet, he couldn’t touch himself, even if there’d been anything to touch.

It was horrible – he felt so guilty – that he should be getting off when Howard was getting mistreated that way – and by him, though not through any fault of his own. He tried to fight back the feeling, but without any body, there didn’t seem to be anything he could do. There was no stiffy to fight off by thinking of Bob Fossil in a baby bonnet. He was all unfocused arousal, and there was no way to distract himself from the scene playing out in front of him.

And then the body clambered off Howard (to Vince’s relief, though also disappointment) and Vince gasped and gaped in shock now that he had a clear view of Howard for the first time since – whatever – had happened.

“Howard, you kinky bitch!”

Howard was liking what Vince’s sick freak body was doing to him.

And that turned Vince on even more, although he hadn’t known it was possible to be more aroused than he already was – especially without any way to satisfy it.

And then the creepy sensation of being watched came over him, and he tore his gaze away from Howard’s erection to find that Howard was looking directly at him.

His heart leapt, mistaking the look for recognition.

“Howard!” he called. “This is a trick, yeah? You’ve figured out that that cheeky monkey’s not me. It’s just my body got away from me – I think, I’m not too sure. I don’t have it anymore, anyway. Anyway, make it come back to me. It won’t get too far without me. The looks, plus the personality – that’s what makes Vince Noir, and the looks oughtn’t forget that. What’s next – are my clothes going to start thinking they can pull by themselves? Hey – Howard!” Howard wasn’t looking at his face at all. He was looking at Vince’s shoulder – where his shoulder would be – whatever. And not actually at that at all. “Howard? Howard! Howardhowardhowardhowardhoward – HOWARDLOOKOUT!”

The body was standing over Howard with the Head Shaman’s sword raised as if to strike him.

“Vince, you psycho!” Vince cried desperately. “Don’t do it – that’s Howard, your mate, you love him!”

Vince apparently heard him, or somehow had to obey him – because the sword came down at Howard’s ankles, and didn’t chop off his feet. Instead it cut him free from – Vince’s throat made a little wounded constricted sound as he realized it – the remains of the mirror-ball suit.

And that’s when the suspicions started.

Vince’s body might be enough of a pervert to do unspeakable, painful and humiliating things to Howard, that Howard liked.

But no part of Vince would ever conceivably do That to the mirror-ball suit.

The realization took its sweet time fully dawning on Vince, while in the meantime Dennis finally succeeded in deflowering Howard’s arse. As Vince watched Howard lose his virginity to someone other than himself (“when I cross that physical barrier it’ll be forever, sir” – Howard’s words from that night on The Roof briefly darted across Vince’s consciousness like a colourful fish in an aquarium, then out of sight), the thing-that-wasn’t-him turned and glanced up at Vince, over his shoulder – the expression in his eye pure malevolence, wearing a wolfish grin. And then turned back to his business – ignoring Vince so flatly, it was like he wasn’t even there.

And it all fell into place.

And at some point, as he continued to have to watch, all of the strange new feelings of helplessness and violation and humiliation and rage all mixed up with lust turned into just plain rage… all of it directed at Howard. Howard, who couldn’t even tell the difference between Vince and Obviously Not Vince. Howard, who’d clearly liked all the vile things Dennis had done to him.

Nothing Dennis had done to him was nearly enough.

And his mind turned to fantasies of just what he would do to Howard when – if – he got his body back.

He’d fucking actually kill him.

He woke up after an interval of unconsciousness to find himself shivering and naked in bed, the sticky, repulsive remains of the acts he’d had no part in all over his body, which still felt strangely not his own. Howard, also not his own, was asleep next to him, still bound and murmuring with a creased brow.

Vince raised himself up weakly on one elbow that felt funny, watery, like when it goes numb before pins and needles. He looked at Howard. The immediate urge to kill him was gone. He just felt exhausted and weirdly empty and didn’t want to do anything except cry.

And wank himself off.

Both of which he was doing now, in the stockroom, as long as the images kept coming at him. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it would have been doing it while it happened, but considering that the images were of a nearly hallucinatory quality, it was better than most fantasies. But his face wore a look of repulsion as he watched his hand working his cock, as though hand and cock were something detached from him. He wondered if he were ever going to feel at home in his body again.

When he was finished, he felt a bit calmer, if only because it seemed to make the mental replay stop. He found a dirty cloth and wiped up the mess as best he could, and did up his flies. Now he could hear the yelling in the shop.

He opened the door to find Naboo reaming out Howard in front of a shopful of gaping customers. Howard was pale, staring, and disheveled. He seemed to hardly know where he was or what was happening.

“If you and Vince want to play kinky sex games with my married tossbag of a boss, that’s completely disgusting, but all I ask is that you try not to take it so far that you put my best salesman out of commission – especially during this time of year. What the hell is the matter with you?”

Howard, watching the customers stare at him, their faces appalled, was smiling faintly, brokenly, like some mechanism inside had snapped. Vince noticed the bruises on his wrists from the hours of binding, and there was a large one forming on his face as well, where Dennis had hit him. He winced in involuntary sympathy.

“I’m not even going to bother to turn my back on you,” Naboo went on. “It’s wasted on you. Just get out.”

Vince stepped out of the stockroom, and the customers turned to look at him, which caused him to blush faintly, but he was so distressed and angry still, he barely registered them and their looks.

Howard saw him, and their eyes met.

Howard stepped toward him, then faltered, and stopped. “I’m sorry. Vince. Please….” He attempted a smile, but his anxiety made it into a grotesque, twitchy parody, and fear screamed out of his eyes.

Vince’s face darkened, and he legged it out of the shop, pushing past the whispering customers.

Howard went after him.

“Vince!” he called. He started to run, but slipped on the wet snow, and fell on his knee hard. That would be another bruise. “Please! Just let me talk to you!”

Vince didn’t stop, but his awkward platforms and the continuing sense of being out-of-synch with his body made him slip as well, and fall on his bum for the fourth or fifth time that morning.

Howard was almost inclined to giggle, but luckily suppressing it. He used the opportunity to catch up with Vince, and held out his hand to the prone, pathetic figure.

“Let’s go somewhere and talk, yeah?”

Vince folded his arms across his chest, refusing to move although the cold wetness was fast soaking through his thin drainpipes and his bum was going numb. “I don’t want to talk to you ever again.” He stared up at Howard furiously, the look in his eye accusing. “You’ve got no idea what I’ve just been through.”

“What YOU’VE been through, you selfish bitch?” Something in Howard snapped, and he grabbed Vince by the arm and pulled him to his feet. Vince, surprised, said nothing and offered no resistance. It was then they both noticed that not only had their argument drawn the attention of several passers-by, who’d stopped to watch it, but the crowd from the shop had followed them outside, many of them accompanied by balls of mistletoe floating over their heads, some of which drew the attention of the passers-by.

Howard found himself paralyzed by their attention, his flicker of righteous anger lost like a howl of frustration in the existential void. It was Vince who led him by the hand into the nearby alleyway, and then told the gawkers who followed them to fuck off.

“Okay, Howard,” Vince said with an appearance of reasonableness that Howard well knew to distrust. “You’re going to explain it to me? Make it good, then, alright?”

Howard opened his mouth, but nothing came out. How could he put it in words Vince would understand? How could he put it in words at all? Was he going to say that he apparently had no will where Vince was concerned, and that’s why he’d let him… or no, that other one… do all of those things? Wouldn’t knowing that disgust Vince even more than he was disgusted now?

Instead he found himself gazing blearily at Vince’s outfit. Vince was only wearing some kind of silly thin T-shirt that was too small for him, exposing a white strip of navel where his low-slung jeans failed to meet it, and a short leather jacket – Howard took them both in, finding them ludicrous, in themselves but also as a protection against the cold. Although he himself, not having expected to find himself outside, only had on a short-sleeved shirt, and in his haste to get dressed after Naboo had untied him (making gagging noises that Howard feared weren’t just to be cruel), he’d done up the buttons wrong. Vince noticed this now as well, and his hands reached out and started to undo the buttons, starting at the bottom.

“What are you doing?” Howard asked, although they were less words than sound, and sound not with the purpose of communicating, but just to fill up the silence.

“Fixing your shirt,” Vince replied, in the same fashion. And then he looked up at Howard all of a sudden, big-eyed, and pressed his cold lips against Howard’s tenderly.

Howard hadn’t realized how much tension he’d been holding in his body until it all fell away at that touch. Vince was going to forgive him – it didn’t matter now that it hadn’t been Howard’s fault anyway. Or maybe it had – or why did he feel guilty this way? But that didn’t matter now either. Still, he pulled back just a little from the kiss, which had been growing deeper, and Vince, just as automatically, put his hand up to Howard’s face, to keep him there.

“Ow!” Howard shoved Vince away instinctively, hard. Vince nearly slipped again.

Howard’s hand was raised to his bruised cheek, not touching it, but shielding it protectively. As if, Vince realized, Howard was expecting him to strike.

“How could you not know?” Vince asked. His dismayed voice sounded unnaturally clear and real in the silence that had fallen between them.

Howard just kept staring at him.

Frustrated, Vince grabbed Howard’s arm more roughly than he’d ever done before. “I’m not going to hurt you!”

Howard didn’t know what he’d done until he saw Vince sprawled on the ground in front of him, looking up at him in shock, blood bright on his lower lip. Blood that was also on Howard’s throbbing knuckles, which he was rubbing with his other hand.

There was no possible explanation now.

Howard ran out of the alleyway, and didn’t stop even when he heard Vince call after him. He didn’t stop until the cramps forming in his abused limbs forced him to. He bent over, wheezing.

“Look, Harold, it’s one of those crack addicts!” he heard a disgusted elderly woman comment to her uninterested husband as they walked by.

“Thanks very much, madam,” he nodded to her, baring his teeth in a grin so unpleasant that she gripped her husband’s arm tighter and hurried him along. Just before they turned the corner he noticed she was adorned with of Vince’s mistletoe gadgets. Unless he’d started seeing things.

The snow had started to fall, and he was wet and shivering and bruised and aching, and he wondered where he was going to go. He stuck his hands in his trouser pockets to warm them, but pulled one out immediately, encountering something unexpected. It fluttered out and he grabbed it out of the air before it could land.

The business card read: “Dennis Winthorpe, Head Shaman. For all your shaman needs.” Under the neat print were a phone and fax number. He turned it over and started at the sight of a hand-written note on the back. It said, “Call me if you need a place to stay. I’ll always repay a good turn done to me. Love, D.”

Howard’s hand flexed automatically, and the card fluttered into a dirty pile of slush.

After staring at it a moment, he retrieved it. The ink hadn’t run. Well, it was shaman-ink.

After all, he reflected, was he above this? Was he above anything?

And where else did he have to turn?

He shoved the card in his pocket, and set out with determination – to Lester Corncrake’s.

[nextpage title=”Chapter 3″]
Chapter 3

Author’s Notes: This part by accioarse.

“Hey, Howard, don’t bust my beeswax!”

Howard thumped his brown corduroy suitcase to the floor. “Why didn’t you tell me you were moving, Lester? I’d have helped!”

Lester tried to shrug, but as he was a disembodied head, the effect was more of a general wobble.

“Some really creepy guy with a skull on his face answered the door at your old place. He tried to get me to filth up his cradle!”

“Oh yeah… that’d be little Rich. Don’t worry, he only sucks souls on weekends. His main job’s in IT.”

Howard stuck his head around the door, taking in Lester’s new flat. “Um… isn’t it a little bit cramped?”

“Well, a head like me don’t need the same living space that a whole man would. All I need’s my jazz records,” Lester lifted his eyebrows towards his heaving shelves, “my trusty record player to play the records on – and of course my hatstand! Can’t forget my collection of all-purpose snoods! Snoods! For sleeping in, for keeping out cold weather, for tying up webbed ears – they’re all a head could ever want!” He cackled with laughter.

Howard looked at his large suitcase. He looked at the small room in front of him. The suitcase obviously wasn’t going to fit. It was less like a flat and more like a broom cupboard. “So where am I going to put this?”

“Well, I guess you’re gonna have to set it down outside.”

Howard looked nervously up and down the corridor. “And it’ll be safe out here?”

Lester shook with more laughter. “No, I guess not!”

Well. Howard supposed that he didn’t have much of a choice. It was either in here or on the street… or he could always make a phone call to Dennis. He still had Dennis’s card, surprisingly heavy in his pocket for such a small rectangle. But he wasn’t even going to consider that third option.

He hauled his suitcase up against the corridor wall – then stood a second, frowning. He shifted the case slightly, made another adjustment… and another. Finally the suitcase had been parked to his liking. Howard gave a little nod, as if such neat baggage arrangements would deter any pilfering. Then he closed the door and settled down into Lester’s new flat.

It was hard for a naturally awkward man like Howard to find a comfortable way to sit on the floor, especially when the area available was very small and practically L-shaped. But he tried, folding his legs into the shape of a Japanese fan and then cramping them around the side of the record player.

At least he’d now get a little R & R, and he certainly needed it. Lester had a fine collection of jazz records. What better way to spend an evening than to sit quietly, having a nice listen to some hot bebop?

But the floor was so uncomfortably hard. Lester seemed quite happy on his little cushion, nodding away to the beat, but Howard couldn’t get quite into his usual jazz trance. Instead of digging the funky patterns flying through the air in a kaleidoscope of beats, he found himself imagining a series of soft squishy sofas flying through the air in time to the music. They came towards him, berthing under his aching parts and giving wonderful relief.

Even that old wooden chair behind the counter at the Nabootique seemed like bliss now. Howard remembered the hours he’d sat at his post, suffering dutiful numb bum while Vince had been twirling away, trying on all the most ridiculous clothing, like an overgrown kitten with a tutu compulsion.

Howard swallowed back a sudden ache. He’d never work at the Nabootique again. Never get to complain about Vince’s lack of work ethic, his disdain of basic stocktaking principles or his relentless gadding about.

Huge chunks of his life that he’d spent moaning at Vince. He’d never thought he’d miss it so much.

He shifted uncomfortably, trying to find a better position on the hard floor. All day, he’d been trying to ignore the pain and the burning. Not to mention the blood. There’d been blood on the sheets last night after he’d been… deflowered. Today there’d been even more. Howard had been horrified to see it every time he’d gone to the loo.

And every time he took a step, the inside of him itched. It felt slack, and raw, and just wrong, in the place where Vince – no, the not Vince – had shoved up inside.

What if something serious had been damaged? The idea of showing it to anyone else made Howard shudder. He’d have to tell them what had happened. No – what he’d asked to happen. After all, he’d said yes. Demanded the knots were even tighter around his wrists. Wanted it even harder.

If only it really had been Vince last night. It would have all been so different.

At least, Howard hoped that it would be different. Perhaps sex was supposed to bleed and hurt. Perhaps it was always like this. Did everyone else knew that was what it was like – everyone in the world except Howard?

Is that what Vince had meant? Last night, it had sounded like a typical Vince-like boast, “I’ll try to make it good.” He’d even got angry, snapped at Vince and told him off. Really, Vince must have been trying to warn him. Protect him, even.

So why didn’t Vince understand now? Last night, Howard had been tied up, anally thumb-stabbed and then had a cock pushed down his throat. Did Vince think he’d do that with just anyone? Let anyone do that to him, anyone at all, and any time they wanted? That he hadn’t thought it was Vince?

As if on cue, Howard’s arse throbbed, as if to tell him how squalid and soiled he was – just another notch on the bedpost of a perverted virgin-obsessed shaman.

He couldn’t stand it any more. Howard got up, deciding to go check on his suitcase, to stretch his legs – anything to give him something to do.

The corridor was empty. Howard’s suitcase was gone.

Running up and down the corridor, Howard didn’t know which way to turn, where he should be looking first. “No! No! Oh my God! All my stuff! My jazz bookmarks! That one with Dizzy – where his cheeks actually explode all over a small child! That bookmark was an one-off!”

A couple of heads began to pop out of doorways.

“And my polo necks! All gone! I had polo necks in eight shades of nutmeg! A whole octave of jazz browns! I’ll never own that many again! Noooo!” Howard stretched his arms wide at the neighbours. “Have you seen a suitcase? This big and a in an angry beige – here just here a moment ago? It was full of jazz!”

The neighbours shook their heads cautiously, not really wanting to get involved with a red-faced man who shouted and kept brown bags full of jazz.

Just as Howard began to hyperventilate, Lester appeared out in the corridor. He was mounted on a dinky little car with pink wheels, which whined as they spun of their own accord.

“Hey Howard – what ya worrying about?”

“My… suitcase!” panted Howard.

“Oh, is that all? The folks who took it are long gone.”

Howard turned disbelievingly to Lester, noticing his miniature form of transport for the first time. “What…?”

“Oh yeah! I heard them. Draggin’ your case all the way downstairs. Bumpety bumpety bump! Didn’t you hear it?”

“What? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Well slap me, Charlie! Thought you’d be glad to get rid of it! Wasn’t the thing too big for the room anyhow?”

Howard took in a pained breath. “Yes! It was! But everything I owned was in that one bag!”

“Was it, Howard? Well, sorry to hear about that.”

A terrible thought struck Howard. “My money! All my savings too! I’d stashed the notes inside my Gogol!”

“In your goggles? Why d’you put them there?”

“No! Gogol! It’s intense Russian literature!” Howard grabbed his hair in both hands. “Oh no! Even the classics are against me!”

“Howard – now, I know you’re upset, but you’re making no kinda sense.”

“I stuffed the notes in a book and put them in the middle of my case!”

Or Howard had decided that after he’d been mugged by a sweet little seven year old girl on the way there. She’d first asked him to fetch her ball back, then when he was distracted, headbutted him in the balls. While he’d been laid out on the pavement she’d lifted his trumpet, his thermos flask, and his favourite tweedy scarf – although after inspection of his tartan-covered flask, she’d thrown it back on his prone body.

Lester tilted his head. “Well, seems that weren’t such a good idea.”

“No,” said Howard, looking up and down the empty corridor. “You’re right. Not such a good idea at all.”

Several hours later, Howard had calmed down enough to think about dinner.

Lester creased his eyes in amusement, as if it were the funniest thing possible. “Eating? Skidildeedoo! Why, I don’t need that kinda thing any more! Think about it, son! I ain’t got a belly!”

Howard was astounded. “But I’d been going to your old place every day to feed you!”

“Shucks, Howard – and don’t take this the wrong way, it’s been mighty good of you and all – but I’ve been collecting the runoff into little plastic bags and throwing them in the garbage.”

“What? Runoff?”

“Oh yeah! It runs right through my neck like feeding time at the whorehouse. But you seemed so happy feeding me, with all your soups and rices and little lentil goulashes. I didn’t want to hurt you by telling you to stop.”

Howard had a picture of what the ‘runoff’ might entail. He felt a bit queasy, although his stomach still rumbled. “But what about me? I still need to eat.”

“You go on ahead, Howard. There’s a little fried chicken bar around the corner. They do great saucy wings.”

Howard stood up. Then he remembered. “Oh. Lester you wouldn’t lend me some money, would you?”

“Sure thing, Howard. In that jar over there. That’s where I keep the beer tokens.”

Howard looked deep into the jar. He counted once, then counted again, just to make sure. “Lester, I know you’re putting me up already – thanks for that. It’s good of you. But I need to borrow quite a bit more than this. Just for a while, until I get a new job.”

“Sure thing, Howard. How much?”

“Well – I’ve just lost all my stuff, and I need new clothes for interviews and the like. There’s a total of two Euros and seven cents here in the jar. So – a hundred Euros more? Would that be okay?”

Lester seemed to find this more hilarious than anything Howard had said so far that evening. “Well – if you can find any more money than that hereabouts, you’re welcome to have it. Did you think the vinyl record mending business was a sure fire money spinner? Why d’you think I’m living in a broom closet? Everyone’s onto iPods and Down Roads and iPegging nowadays.”

“Ah.” Howard saw his immediate future. He was going to be a lot hungrier.

“But don’t you fret. As the wise grasshopper said when faced by the lawnmower of destiny – lose your body, free your mind.”

Howard twitched his face. His moustache bristled. “I see. And how does that apply to my situation, exactly?”

“No, Howard. You don’t get it yet. There’s something even better than money. And I’m gonna give it to you.”

“It isn’t another one of your stories about ancient jazz wisdom? Because I think I’ve already had all of those, thanks.”

“No, Howard. The gift is music. Choose any record. It’s yours.”

Howard paused, hardly believing his ears. “What? Really?”

“Yep.”

“Any record? At all? You mean it?”

A second ago, Howard had owned precisely nothing. Well, apart from a borrowed two Euro seven cents, if you wanted to be pedantic. Now he was about to possess an LP out of Lester Corncrakes’s legendary private collection.

He started to rummage through the shelves, flipping the sleeves over in excitement. It only took him a half a minute to find what he was looking for.

“This one.” Howard voice was shaking a little with emotion. “Thanks for this, Lester.”

“Sure. No problem. Wanna play it now?”

Howard took his new disc out of the cover using the very tips of his fingers, scared that he might drop it. Gently, he removed the dust sleeve and set the needle on the record. Then he sat back, reverently.

The sound of ‘Some Kind of Haze’ by the JuJu Bead Orchestra trickled through the air.

Howard thought that deities probably listened to this very music. That made sense. It was that primal. They probably lounged about in the sky on their big jazzy clouds every night, rattling their halos to the beat. They would drift off to celestial sleep during the forty minute horn breaks.

The slap bass line kicked in, and Howard’s heart rose along with the sound. He smiled at Lester. Lester smiled back.

This is mine, thought Howard. I may not have much, but I have this.

When Howard woke up, the first thing he realised was how much he really needed to pee. The second thing he discovered was that there was no bathroom in Lester’s flat. He hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since yesterday lunchtime – that must be why he hadn’t noticed.

Lester was still snoozing on his pillow as Howard crawled out. He left the door carefully ajar so that he could get back in later.

Howard’s footsteps rang out in the corridor. It was quiet and eerie. He spotted a small window at the end of the hallway, misted up with morning dew, and went over to peer through. There was a park right beside the block of flats, with some trees and a bit of grass.

Howard frowned. A park – great. So this was what it had come to. He was about to relieve himself against shrubbery, like an animal.

When Howard came back from his ablutions, Lester had woken up.

“Listen, Howard. You can’t stay here tonight.”

Howard was aghast. “Why not?”

“Now, I’ll be glad to have you in, any other time. And I’ll leave you my spare keys, and you can stay here all day when I’m at work. But tonight you have to be gone by seven pm. I have… an appointment. Yeah, that’s right. A business meeting.” Lester looked shifty.

“Business? And they’re coming here, to this flat, at night? But how will they fit? There isn’t a chair for them to sit on. There isn’t even room for a chair!”

“Oh, that don’t matter. He’ll fit in fine. He’s just a head like me… Oops.”

“Lester?”

“Forget I said anything. He doesn’t want his wife to know.”

“No! It’s not – is it? That pink freak of a shaman? The one who came to my birthday party and crashed the DJ booth? With the tentacles and the obscene bell end forehead and the bizarre Fleetwood Mac obsession?” And, Howard added, silently, the one who was seen later on waving his pink alien penis in the air and doing obscene things with it and with you, behind my very own birthday bouncy castle.

“Yeah,” admitted Lester. “He’s been coming round. You know, just now and again.”

“What the hell for?”

“Come on, Howard. Don’t make me have to spell it out for you.”

“No! You don’t mean…”

“Well. We’re two consenting adults.”

“No! You’re kidding me! You don’t have to do it, Lester. You can say no!”

Lester was taken aback for a second. Then he smiled, almost bashfully. “I’d rather say do it some more… and a little bit to the left.”

But Howard was almost talking to himself. “You think it’s going to be okay, but it’s not, it hurts! And it’s even worse afterwards. Everyone hates you and says it’s all your fault. And the blood…”

“Howard? What’re you on about?”

“Trust me. Lester. You don’t want to do it. I know what it’s like.”

“What what’s like?”

“What have we been talking about? Sex!”

Lester laughed. “Come on! Howard! You’re the most famous virgin in all of Dalston town!”

“How…”

“How do I know? Everyone does! Ten minutes after your birthday party, the news was all around like stink on knees!”

Howard chewed his bottom lip. He didn’t want to go into too much detail. “No… I’ve had sex all right.”

“Yeah, right! I believe you. You’re like a cold sore in a drought.”

“I have done it! With a real other person, too!”

Lester cackled insanely, so hard that his grey felt hat fell onto the LP player and started to spin round. “Okay – prove it! So what’s it like?”

“No! I… don’t want to say.”

“Go on, Howard. Try me.”

Howard took a deep breath. He closed his eyes, remembering. “Okay. So this is how it goes. First they tear up some glitter fabric, so they can tie you up with it, by your wrists, and pretty tight. Then they use their thumb. It hurts – really hurts. They sort of screw the thumb around…” Howard winced. He decided he should skip forward a bit. “Oh, and there’s the part when they hit you.” He touched the bruise high on his cheek, from when he’d been slapped hard and ordered to start sucking cock. His face felt more stiff and swollen all the time. “See this bruise here on my face? There – that proves it! How did I get that unless I’ve had sex!”

“Come on, Howard! The same way you did last week – by walking into a door!”

Howard looked crestfallen. “Oh. But what about the rest of it?”

Lester shook his head, so his whole person had to swing from side to side. “Thumbs and glitter? Whatever. It don’t sound like any whoopie I’ve ever made. Did you eat a lot of cheese before going to bed or something?”

“No! No! I didn’t dream it!”

“Whatever you say. Anyway. I’ll need you out before my tentacled love baby comes round tonight. Okay? You can hang out here all day tomorrow, when I’m at work – so that’s not so bad, right? Just don’t come back round till after ten tomorrow morning. “

“Thanks,” muttered Howard, taking the spare keys.

“Tony’s great! He got me this rinky-dink little buggy!” said Lester, getting into his little pink four-wheeler and revving it up. “It’s powered by Shaman Juice – two thousand miles the teaspoon!” He zoomed out to the hall and started doing wheelies.

Howard followed Lester out and stood there, listless, as the pink cart raced round and round his sandals. He wondered if he’d ever be enthusiastic as that about anything, ever again.

Howard spent that morning trying to look for work.

First he said goodbye to his one single possession, ‘Some Kind of Haze’, stroking the album cover, putting it back on the shelf beside Lester’s other jazz LPs and giving it a little wave goodbye. Then he locked up the tiny flat and went out.

It was raining.

Howard remembered he didn’t own any clothes now, apart from the ones he stood up in. He had a pair of Jesus sandals with thick brown socks, some mega jumbo relaxed-fit cords, a thin polo neck in muffin beige, a short-sleeved shirt with a green bamboo design, and on top of it all, his dark overcoat and hat.

He had a feeling he’d be wearing these clothes for quite a while. Time to get a job.

By midday, his cords were rain-soaked to the knee and his coat was soaked all the way through. As for his sandals, he could hardly walk in them, they were such a floppy wet mess. He’d been turned down by five bookshops, a bakery, two pubs, and a florist’s. Not to mention the curt, “No, thank you,” he’d got at a specialist bra emporium for the larger lady. He thought he might have been pushing his luck at the last shop, but he was starting to get a bit desperate.

On the plus side, an old lady had mistaken him for a tramp and pressed a kindly five Euro note into his hand.

At least he now had enough for a hot lunch.

“Hey there? Lester Corncrake’s Vinyl Mending, Rare Jazz LP Finder and Pole Dancing Service?”

“Hi Lester! It’s Vince. Thought I’d phone to ask if you’d seen Howard. We had a bit of a fight and he’s legged it without telling me where he’s off to. You know what he’s like.”

Lester began to laugh down the phone. “Oh, hi Vince. Sure, I know where Howard is.”

“What’s so funny, then?”

“It’s Howard! He says he’s been having sex! Can you believe it?”

“Hmmm,” replied Vince, noncommittally.

“Apparently some girl beat him up and Howard thinks that’s sex now! Ah, you gotta love him.”

“How Howard doing, then?”

“Got a black eye the size of a saucepan! She must have walloped him real good!”

“Listen, Lester. Any chance of putting him on the phone?”

“No can do.”

“Well, how about later?”

“No, he’s out all tonight as well.”

Typical. Vince had spent ages working himself up to make this call, and now Howard wasn’t even there. “Well, when you see him, tell him that it’s… Even though he… “ He made a noise of frustration.

“What, Vince?”

“Is Howard really out all of tonight? It doesn’t sound like him at all.”

“Sure I’m sure! He won’t be back till late tomorrow morning. Probably off to his lady friend getting the other eye blacked up! Am I right?”

Suspicion curled at Vince’s heart. “Really? You think that’s where he’ll be?”

Lester cackled. “Oh, sure! He’s had a taste of that good ol’ stuff, and he’s off straight back for more!”

“Listen, Lester. Don’t say anything to Howard. Yeah – don’t tell him I called at all. You do that?”

“Sure thing.”

“No, Lester – you promise?”

“Sheesh. Okay, then. I promise. See ya later, Vince! Byeeee!”

“Yeah, bye.” Vince put the receiver down.

He bit on the end of his thumbnail.

Funny – in loads of ways, sharing a bedroom with Howard had annoyed the hell out of him. Every night, Howard made those little grunting noises as he took off his hideous muddy brown trousers and shirts. Then folded them into neat little piles. It always drove Vince crazy. Not to mention alphabeticsing every single one of his mouldy old timewarped possessions. And Howard shrieked regularly during nightmares, waking Vince up when he really needed his beauty sleep.

Vince checked his pocket mirror again. Yeah, dark rings beneath his eyes. Three hours, that’s all he’d got last night. What a shocker. But he couldn’t help it. The room had seemed so wrong and empty without Howard.

Funny. You’d never think you’d miss that sort of thing, would you?

But he did.

By four am in the morning, Howard was in the dark, sitting under a piece of cardboard box and looking at the Nabootique. At the moment, the building was just a solid outline of black, but every now and then somebody would get up and put on a light.

At one fifty eight, the light had turned on in the upstairs living room. Howard knew Vince, and how he got up to watch cartoons when he was a bit upset and couldn’t sleep. He was probably up watching Colobus the Crab, the Animated Adventures.

Then at three forty one the light had gone off and remained that way ever since. Howard supposed that he might as well stay here for all of the night. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do.

That afternoon, the rain had stopped and the sun had thankfully come out. Howard had gone into the little park by Lester’s, hidden behind a bush, and taken most of his clothes off. He’d wrung as much wet out of them as he could, dancing in the cold, and put them back on, wrinkled and crushed.

Then he’d gone to find as many shops as possible with hot-air blowers at their entrance, and stood there for as long as he thought he could possibly get away with. He looked a little bedraggled now, but at least he was drier.

It was a mild night for a January, and Howard was sitting on top of four large cardboard boxes, and using an extra-thick one as a kind of makeshift poncho, but he was still shivering until his bones clinked. If his clothes had been wet as well, he thought he might not have made it through the night.

Howard’s attention was fixed so hard on the shop across the road that he didn’t notice a shadow in the distance. Just a few feet above street level, a carpet was hovering, watching Howard as he watched the Nabootique. And on that carpet sat a bald-pated man, with a sword deep beneath his great, brooding robes.

Just before dawn, the heavens opened once again. This time the rain tore even more fiercely down, ripping through Howard’s clothes, whipping at his coat and battering his hat across his skull, as if hating him with all its fury.

Howard abandoned his wet and useless boxes and ran to a doorway. Even there, the wind whipped his face like ice. Howard shrank down, wishing that the day would come soon.

A long, dark shape fell across Howard’s field of vision. The storm seemed cut through in its wake, folding round to fall helplessly to the side.

“Pluto’s nipples!” came a growl. The voice was deep and horribly familiar to Howard. “I forgot the headlights.”

There was a click. Two cones of light flared up the street, with two red lights glowing at the rear. In between was the outline of a flying carpet and the silhouette of a man cross-legged in the middle, stiff-backed and completely unaffected by the storm.

Howard pushed himself further back into the doorway.

He recognised that deep growl. It had been at the edge of Vince’s voice the whole time he’d loomed over him, while tying him to the bed, while hitting him, while pushing up his legs… no, that hadn’t been Vince!

And afterwards, the man who hadn’t been Vince had wiped Howard’s blood off his cock, and then sat on the edge of Vince’s bed calmly eating popcorn. The way he’d been sitting – elbows out, chest wide and with his chin jutting high – the same way the man on the flying carpet was sitting right now.

A pair of albino eyes shone through the dark. “Ah, Howard! Come now! I wish to talk!”

An arm extended from a bulky robe, through the rain and out towards Howard.

Howard felt emotion thumping through his legs, urging him to life. He took a step forward, lifting his hand, feeling the rain pelt his fingers and stretching out with all his might.

End Notes: Chapter 4 coming up very soon by accioarse, then chapter 5 by easilyled.

[nextpage title=”Chapter 4″]
Chapter 4

Author’s Notes: This part by accioarse, in which Howard and the Head Shaman meet again for the first time since Howard’s fateful devirginisation.

Dennis the Head Shaman flew backwards through the air, his cloak streaming in front of his face and his arms spinning like a windmill on in a gale. There was a sickening thud as he hit the ground.

Howard stretched his knuckles, grimacing with satisfaction. Finally, he’d hit the right person. He ran around the side of the flying carpet and over to where Dennis lay.

Dennis was sprawled on his back, groaning. A few feathers from his headdress stuck up around his bald head, the rest were already flattened down by the rain. He lifted his hand, gesturing to Howard in acknowledgement. “I can tell you’re a bit upset.”

“Upset? You lost me everything! You wanker!” Howard roared as he kicked Dennis in the ribs, and angling back, got ready to kick again.

“Enough!” Dennis lifted his outer robe to reveal a glint. Even through the downpour, there was the sound of metal scraping across metal.

Howard stepped back, stretching his arms out wide, and yelling across the hiss of rain. “Well, go on then, kill me! Or are you going to fuck me first? Isn’t that the way you usually work?”

Using slow, deliberate movements, Dennis returned the sword to its scabbard. “No. I told you. I just want to talk.” He stood up, brushed some street debris from his robe – gravel, a crisp packet and two used condoms – and climbed back onto his carpet. “Get on. We’ll go somewhere.”

“Go with you? Hah! You must be off your head!” And with that, Howard spun on his heels, and took off down the street.

His already-wet Jesus sandals were slipping all over the place as he ran. It was as if he’d tied a pair of uncooperative halibuts to his feet. For a second, Howard dared a look to the side, and he skidded so hard he almost fell.

Dennis had kicked his carpet into a low gear and was just cruising beside him, kerb-crawling along with a nonchalant air. What was worse, the rain wasn’t coming anywhere near the flying carpet. A wonderful dry bubble somehow surrounded him. Howard grit his teeth, put his head down and ran even faster. His hatred intensified with every soggy stride.

Howard’s lungs were burning now, his back was aching and a pain was stabbing him right through his side. All he’d had to eat since lunchtime yesterday was one pack of pickled onion crisps. He didn’t think he could keep this running up for long on that.

As he sprinted round a corner, Howard saw a light.

Dennis pointed at the illuminated building, “I believe that may be a place of mortal refreshment! We may stop – yes?”

Howard squinted through the downpour. It looked like Ma O’Bunions Greasy Spoon and Potato Bar.

“Would that be an acceptable place of gathering?”

It would be dry in the caf�. There would be food there, too – and people. Other people. It would be safe. Howard came to a decision, skidding through a pool of water to stand, gasping. “Yeah. Why… not?”

Dennis’s face lit up. “You agree to my proposal? We shall talk?”

Howard’s knuckles were still red and raw from where they’d slammed against Dennis’s face. Now they’d been battered frozen on his run and were stiff and swollen. Carefully, he slipped them in his pockets.

He let himself think of breakfast. Cooked breakfast. Mounds of food, so hot they hissed and sizzled. Hunching his shoulders, he began to slosh through the cold puddles towards the light. “Yeah, okay. We talk. But only if we eat. And you’re paying.”

“I can only offer my humble apologies.”

Howard snorted. He dipped his sausage in ketchup, stuck it in his mouth and chewed.

“Do you accept my contrition?” Dennis stretched out with his fingertips, almost reaching the bruise on Howard’s face.

Howard stabbed wildly at him with his fork. Splats of red hit the tablecloth. “Hey, you! I said no touching! Stay on your side of the table!”

Dennis dropped his hand, but his albino eyes kept staring. “You tell me this now, but that’s not what you said last night. You told me to proceed with the lovemaking. You insisted I tighten the bonds. When I struck your face, your manhood only hardened the further.”

Howard shot a look around, in case any other customers were listening in. He bent in closer. ““Keep it down! Yeah, when I thought I was doing it with Vince! Haven’t you got it at all yet?”

“Yes. I thought it preferable to use the girlish one’s body. You seemed to enjoy mouth to mouth contact with him – and he came surprisingly well equipped.”

“So that was it? Just steal Vince for the night? Didn’t you think about him? That he might not want his body stolen?”

Dennis sat back in his chair, apparently bewildered by this concept.

Howard speared a sausage. He eyed it with some violence. A few bites, and it was gone.

“In any case, that is not my reason for requesting this gathering. No. Naboo has informed me you no longer are in his employ.”

Howard raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. Funny thing, that. It happened right after he found me tied up and naked, and you scuttling away down the stairs.”

“At least let me help you in this. I can find you alternative employ.”

Howard laughed through a mouthful of beans. He leant in again. “Really? Why the sudden concern? Last night, the only thing you wanted from me, if I remember, was that I should suck you off like a good little bitch.” He sat back, suddenly suspicious. “Or is that what…?”

Behind Dennis’s eyes flashed a sudden spark.

Howard jabbed forward with his fork, trying to redefine some personal boundaries. “No way! Forget I said it! That’s never going to happen! Not again, anyway…”

Dennis set his white fingers on the table, interweaving them and thinking deeply. Finally, he heaved a sigh. “Alas. That it should come to this. But it seems that I must tell you all.” And with that, he began to unbutton his shirt.

Howard’s fork clattered down. “Hey! Stop that! No! You can’t get naked in a greasy spoon!”

But Dennis had already pulled his shirt down, as far as a rosy left nipple, down to several lines of tattoos curving across his chest like blue waves on the sea. Then he opened his shirt even further, and bared his ribs – the same ribs which Howard had been kicking at fiercely just a short while ago.

“My wife – Methuselah – she did this. With a squash racket.” Dennis gestured at himself, and then to Howard’s face. “Just as I have done that to you.”

Howard stared in horror. There were huge bruises flaring across Dennis’s side like fireworks – blue, green and violet, tinting to jaundiced yellow at the edges. “Why the hell did she do that?”

Dennis pulled his shirt closed. “I asked her. The same way, last night, you asked me.”

“No, I didn’t…”

“But I saw it. I saw your pleasure. I saw your manhood stiffen as I struck you.”

Howard sat back from the table, appalled.

“It is good, is it not? After it is done? There is a kind of pleasure in it. A fire.”

Before he could stop himself, Howard was nodding. He clenched his fists, trying to hold himself back from revealing any more.

“Howard! Do not feel such shame!”

To his horror, Howard felt himself flush.

“And the others – you must not tell them. They will not understand. They will despise you.”

“They… despise me?”

“Of course! Have they not done so already? Thrown you out upon the streets of a cold winter night?”

Howard swallowed. He gave another little nod.

“Yes! Like a bucket of llama’s scrotum parts, once they are too old and withered to be of use any longer! Whoosh! Into the gutter!” Dennis made a brusque gesture to illustrate, and ended by clasping his hand down onto Howard’s. “So you see, those who are like us, we must stand together!”

This time, Howard didn’t even flinch at the contact. He was too busy remembering. Last night – when he’d been tied up, and hit, and had his…. reaction. Vince had been there the whole time. Watching it all. Seeing what Howard was really like.

And the next morning, when they’d been kissing – what had Howard done? Only gone and hit him! By now, Vince must think that Howard couldn’t get even slightly aroused without some form of extreme violence being necessary.

Dennis was stroking Howard’s hand now, lingering on the rawness around the knuckles, dragging across it with his large, white fingers. “Yes, we are alike. We are as brothers, yes?”

Howard nodded again. It felt as though he was hardly there.

“Good! Now. The first thing. You have no place to live, correct?”

Howard came to in time to catch the last few words. “Actually, I…”

“But you do not. I saw you standing there in the rain. Alone, wretched and pathetic. Like a badly smelling llama that is also a eunuch.”

“No, it’s just while…”

“So I will find you somewhere to live! Wait! I shall do this thing for you!”

Dennis gave Howard’s hand a final squeeze. Then he threw the sleeves of his robe back with a flourish, whipped out his mobile and began tapping on the keys like a demon.

Howard looked around. His head was in a blur. People were talking, eating, drinking tea, shaking rain off their coats at the door… it all seemed normal enough. Harmless, even. Now Howard knew better. If these people knew what he was like, if they knew how he’d got this bruise, he’d be thrown out of here and shunned, just like he had at the Nabootique.

He brought his fingers to the side of his face and pushed at his bruise. It ached, but that was somehow okay. Manageable. Unlike so much else in his life right now.

But perhaps… if he just sat down quietly for a little while… perhaps it all could just wait till later… Howard’s eyes fluttered. The sausage, bacon, and everything else were starting to hit his digestion like a big, warm sleepy brick. His surroundings began fading in and out.

Dennis was still shouting into his mobile, mostly in a language foreign to Howard. He laughed, and it sounded very far away. As if down a dank, deep, clanging tunnel. There was a tiny little digital beep – like the Control Tower of Howard’s brain had finally given him permission to sleep. Howard’s head slumped over to the side. He began to drift.

Suddenly, he leapt up. A great heavy slap had landed on his shoulder.

Dennis’s voice was very loud and near. “Good news, my friend! Eat up!”

Howard picked up his fork. He stared at the last few beans on his plate.

“More quickly! With all speed! We must depart!”

“Oh… Where to?”

“You are in luck – I have found a place, and very close! Now – the time for eating is over! The time for leaving has begun!”

“Oh. Okay. Right. Give me a minute, then.” Getting to his feet, Howard staggered in the direction of the caf� toilet.

A few seconds later, he’d clanged open the door of the cubicle, undid his belt, and been reminded in the blood still seeping from his arse of what Dennis had done to him the night before.

Howard was suddenly a lot more awake.

When he came back into to the caf�, Dennis just standing there, completely relaxed, for all the world as if everything was just fine between them. Dennis was waiting for Howard. He held open the front door of the caf� and bared his teeth in a kind of a smile.

Howard glanced back at the table they’d just been sitting at. It was already full with new customers. There were no empty spaces left anywhere in the breakfast-time rush, no room for someone without money to quietly disappear.

Winter rain was whipping now through the open front door. Howard hadn’t even stepped outside, but his clothes already felt like they were freezing back against his body. A lady pushed past him, shoving him even closer to Dennis as she made her way to the back of the jostling queue.

It was then, with a thud, that Howard realised what was going to happen.

All he needed was a place to go, somewhere to sleep, somewhere away from the rain and loneliness and the cold winter night. Somewhere he could just curl up in a ball until all of this had gone away.

Dennis had promised him a place. And so Howard was going with Dennis. It was as simple as that.

Howard pulled up the collar of his coat. As he left the building, he tried not to make contact with Dennis or any part of his smugly outstretched arm. And there Howard was, out on the street. He’d made his decision.

Dennis followed, unrolling his magic carpet, and throwing it so that it rose with a hum to hover several feet above the tarmac. Taking a run-up, he landed expertly and cross-legged on top.

At first, Howard was too tired to climb aboard. Head bent, he just stood beside the carpet, dimly grateful for its dryness amid the storm. All around him, rain was flicked away by some invisible shamanistic force field.

Eventually, Howard attempted to get on. And after several goes, he was sprawled on the carpet, clinging to its saggy centre.

And then they were off.

The carpet gave a sharp swerve, knocking Howard back down from the seated position he’d managed to work up to. He lay face down again, flat against the pile. Slowly, he untangled himself once more. He looked over at Dennis, ramrod-straight at the helm, arms crossed and head high as he steered the carpet.

Dennis spared a look at his ungainly passenger, and smirked, showing teeth all the way back to the canines. Howard suspected he was being mocked.

He managed to wobble himself up into a kneeling position. “Thought this was supposed to be a magic carpet. I’d say it’s more like a very tedious one.” Howard harrumphed at his own joke.

Dennis turned around. “Oh. Did you wish for the scenic route? You should have made a request. I could have looped by the Pyramids of Dalston.”

Howard grabbed on tightly as they took another corner. “Yeah, why not? The Oblongs of Hackney while you’re at it, too.”

Then the carpet screeched to a sudden halt, and Howard fell over all over again.

“In any case, you are too late. We have arrived.”

Howard set his wet hat at a jaunty angle, pulled his overcoat into shape, and attempted to dismount.

“Howard? Was it your intention to fall into that mud-filled drainage system? Do you require assistance?”

“No! No! I’m alright! Just… urrgh… might be a bit carpet sick. Too many sausages. That last one is repeating on me.”

But at the first “no” Dennis was already marching away, through the rain and towards the bright entrance of a high-rise apartment building.

Howard inspected his arm. He’d acquired some new dirt in his fall, down his arm and behind his elbow, the colour of twice-distilled night but smelling far more foul.

He picked himself up. The street was narrow and bare. The grey on grey of buildings loomed up and down. Outside the weather-shelter of the magic carpet there was nothing except for the deadening hiss of rain. Silent, dark and empty. No witnesses as to what was about to happen.

Meanwhile, Dennis was at the door to the apartment building, holding open the front door, impatient to usher Howard on.

Howard hesitated. This did not seem like a good idea.

Dennis’s eyebrows lifted as he looked back into the building. “Aha! And here is Balthazar with the keys!”

A short, thin man emerged, wearing a bright orange boiler suit, horribly stained, several sizes too large for him and held up with a utility belt. He had the face of a ferret on a diet. Dennis went inside to greet him with much bluff backslapping. The ferret, on his part, tried to dodge away, his face becoming even more sour.

After a minute, Dennis came back out, full of grins. He neatly rolled the carpet up, stuck it under his arm and strode back into the building, beckoning at Howard to follow.

As soon as the carpet was gone, the rain returned with a vengeance. A hundred painful needles pelted down across Howard’s neck and face as he stood there, miserable and cold.

Dennis was inside, waving at him. The ferret man, that Balthazar – he looked up too. His thin face twisted at Howard expectantly. Both of them were waiting. It seemed stupid to just keep standing out in the rain like this. Warmth was only a few feet away, and it looked like heaven.

Reluctantly, Howard opened the door and stepped inside.

Immediately, his coat began to steam. It was almost a jungle in here, it was so hot and so lush. Potted ferns were grouped about the entrance hall, some as high as small trees. Cunningly spotlit works of art shone out through broad and dripping leaves. The floor was creamy marble, and all the fittings gleamed.

Dennis and Balthazar were by the lifts, reflected by the many walls of glass. Dennis said something – Howard couldn’t hear quite what. Then both of them turned in Howard’s direction. They stared at him, and began to laugh. Balthazar’s laugh was high and nasal, Dennis’s was low and oily. Their grotesquely stretched faces reflected back in a dozen ways.

A drip of sweat slithered into the hollow of Howard’s back.

Of course – Dennis must do this all the time – take strangers like him to anonymous buildings for god knows what. And now Dennis was showing off his latest pickup to weasel-face, and both of them were laughing themselves stupid.

Or perhaps Dennis had been telling the story of last night – how he’d been so clever and Howard had been so trusting, and how he’d tricked a fuck out of Howard, taken away his virginity, and even made him beg in the process.

Dennis laughed again. Balthazar was silent, his eyes calculating and slatted. Howard’s stomach twisted as the noise slid round the glassy walls. He shifted backwards and heard a squelching underfoot. Looking down, he saw trails of rainwater from under each of his sandaled feet. He was soiling the nice clean marble floor.

Perhaps they were just laughing at that – the state of him, at how sodden and filthy he’d become. God knows what they wanted with him, a mulch-based street random like he was. Whatever they were plotting for him over there, it might be far, far worse than just a quick shag from Dennis.

Howard’s skin crawled all over. He’d been such an idiot. He had to get out, and now.

At that moment, Dennis shouted across, “Come, Howard. Over here! Balthazar – he was just showing me a picture! His wife’s second sister – she has a moustache just like yours, yes, exactly the same! But she is a woman, so that makes it very humorous!” Dennis bellowed with laughter and waved at Balthazar as he left. “Next time you bring more photographs – yes?”

Balthazar pushed past Howard as he made for the exit. His face was puckering up into the consistency of an affronted raisin. He mumbled, “Great big knob-headed twat… Being all friendly-like, showing you pictures of my daughter’s wedding? You can stuff it up your…”

Howard felt such a sense of relief that it propelled him all the way to the lifts.

Dennis jangled a set of keys at Howard, beaming as he punched at the lift buttons. “Yes, having fun with friends is always good! Is it not?”

“Yes,” agreed Howard. Then he nearly toppled over as Dennis slapped him on the back in celebration of their hearty accord.

Howard took a tiny step back, while trying not to make it too obvious.

“I sense you are uneasy with me, Howard.”

“No! No!”

“Did you not wish for a place to stay? Have I not found you one?”

“Yes, but…”

“But what, Howard? Have I done something to displease you?”

Howard shuffled back even further. “Of course not!” But it was hard to get too far away when trapped in a small, moving, glass-lined lift with a medium large shaman.

And Dennis seemed to fill up the whole space just by existing. He was taller than Howard, or bigger, or more solid – Howard wasn’t sure which one. In any case, while Dennis stood wide-legged, fluffing up his huge cloak and rearranging his sword, Howard was busy shrinking into a corner, as if he could possibly hide in a tiny, well-lit, mirror-lined room.

Dennis took a step forward. “No, Howard! You must not feel under any pressure!”

“I don’t!” insisted Howard, cowering a little more.

“If you wish, we do not have to go to this flat. Even though I have taken so much trouble in arranging this, and all for you.”

Howard thought of the cold rain outside, the darkness, and how he couldn’t go back to Lester’s for hours yet. “Well… we might as well have a look. Now that we’re here.”

“And I will not visit you while you live here – unless you ask it of me. I will respect your privacy. “

Howard was surprised. He’d expected certain… conditions to come attached to Dennis’s generosity. “Oh… really?”

“Yes. I will not visit you here before you ask me first.”

“Oh. Well… that’s very good of you…. “

Dennis raised his arms either side of Howard and above his head, pushing his hands against the glass and trapping Howard between them. “Unless you say you do not want to see me. Is that how it is? After all that I have done for you?”

Howard pushed himself back against the lift wall. The mirror glass was slick against his fingertips. “No, no! Of course not!”

“So you are telling me that I should come?”

Tendrils from the huge, shaggy shaman’s over-robe were brushing at Howard’s neck. He took in shallow lungfuls of air, unable to break Dennis’s gaze.

“You do want me to visit?”

Howard gasped out a tiny yes.

Dennis raised his forefinger. He brushed the back of it against Howard’s lower lip. “And when I visit… You will show me how much you’ve been looking forward to seeing me?”

A lump caught in Howard’s throat. He felt the weight of terrible expectation.

Howard jumped up with shock as the lift gave a loud ping. They had had reached their floor.

Like a flash, Howard slithered under Dennis. With a twist, and a push from the wall, he fled out of the lift. And like a fish into the fire, he jumped straight towards the unknown.

“Fuck, it’s huge!”

Dennis smiled benevolently, his eyelids half-closed. “Ahhh… I knew you only had to see it to approve.

Howard looked up from where he was kneeling on the floor. “Yeah, I had no idea!”

Dennis widened his leg stance, and extended his attitude of satisfaction.

“No really… you weren’t kidding!” Howard felt genuine flutterings of excitement as he knelt down and opened another cabinet. He was imagining how his one record, ‘Some Kind of Haze’, would sound on this setup. Pretty good, he reckoned. These amps were amazing. “Hey! What’s this, another LP player? And this one’s from the fifties! It’s vintage! What’s that control panel? Are there speakers all over the flat?”

Dennis looked over Howard’s shoulder. “Yes. It is all wired together. To the bathrooms, to the bongo museum, the medieval library, the sauna-cum-billiard room… It is a good place, no?”

Howard stopped. Slowly, he put the lid of a turntable down. “It’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it. But… there’s no way I can afford it. I told you. I’m broke.”

Dennis put his hand on Howard’s arm. “With this kind of talk, you offend me.”

“But really…”

Dennis came closer. Gently, he touched Howard’s face. “What I told you, in the refreshment house – did you not believe it? The payment does not concern you. It is not your money that I want.”

Howard took in a deep breath. This was it – the moment he’d been dreading. The moment when it all had to be paid for. “Dennis. I… don’t think I can do this.”

Dennis lifted an eyebrow. “Can? Can do what?”

Howard closed his eyes. “Well… you hurt me pretty bad last night. There’s blood. I’ve been bleeding all day. I’m not up to… not tonight. I just can’t. Please.”

Dennis drew in a deep and jagged breath.

Howard looked straight at Dennis, trying to judge his reaction. “So… that’s okay then?”

Dennis looked back into Howard’s eyes. His fingers brushed the corner of Howard’s mouth. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

Howard shivered. So – it wasn’t going to be enough. “Well, I could always… I mean, if you want… “

“What do I want?” whispered Dennis, his voice low.

“I thought you might… I mean… something…”

Now Dennis was cradling Howard’s face. “What something?”

“I don’t know…” said Howard. He felt trapped under Dennis’s gaze.

Dennis’s pupils had melted wide and dark. “Howard. Whatever happens now, it’s up to you.”

Howard wanted to twist out of Dennis’s grasp, to scream, to cry, to shout. He’d just spent the night on the street in a cardboard box, for Christ’s ake! What the hell did he have to do, just to get a bed in the dry and warmth? “No! Stop saying that! Just tell me what you want!”

“I think you know that already, Howard.”

And then Howard caught it – that slight look downwards from Dennis. It was just a momentary flick, but it reminded him of how Dennis had gone on about cocksucking, kept calling Howard his good little cocksucking bitch. And in the caf�, there’d been that light in his eyes as soon as Howard had mentioned it again.

Howard fell to his knees. He grabbed at Dennis’s robes, pushing them back, trying to find the opening. Dennis was breathing deep now, his ribcage twitching in and out, his fingers gripping Howard’s shoulder.

There it was – a rough tie fastening at the crotch. Howard pulled it loose, whipping the string through the eyelet with still-numb fingers. The fabric opened up, revealing pale white flesh. Dennis gave a groan and grabbed at Howard’s head.

All of sudden, Howard was in incredible pain. Strong fingers had grabbed his hair and were pulling it backwards by the roots. Arse first, he landed on the thick wool carpet. He winced with the impact on his abused parts.

“Yet again you insult me!”

Howard crawled backwards, more than slightly intimidated.

“I offer you sanctuary, all through the goodness of my heart, and this is how you repay me?” Dennis did up his breeches, somehow managing to do even that with a flourish, and flung his cloak back down on top of them with a snap.

Howard was stunned. He couldn’t understand how he’d read it all so wrong. “No! I didn’t…”

“Didn’t what? Didn’t mean to offer me this insult? But what did you think you were doing?”

“I…I don’t…”

Dennis strode about the room. He found some paper on a side table and scribbled on it. “Here! This is my number.”

Howard got off the floor. “I didn’t mean to… “

Dennis looked at him with cold fury. “Perhaps you should wait before you call. I do not think we should see each other for quite a while. Not until you have mastered both your ingratitude and your… urges.”

“No, I meant to say… I just didn’t get round… Please, don’t go! I meant to say – thanks for the flat!”

But he was talking to thin air. The door had already slammed shut, and Dennis was long gone.

Howard dragged himself into the first bedroom he found, stripping off his wet overcoat on the way. He fell on the bed, trailing his wet and his dirt. The bruises from where Dennis had tied him up had become vivid purple rings now, encircling his wrists.

But he was far too tired to care.

Howard turned his head on the once-clean pillow, and there were pictures of people wrestling all over the walls, in black and white and without any clothes on. That didn’t matter either now. All he wanted was some sleep.

At last, he was safe. What a relief. And what a relief to have got it all so wrong. No more hitting, no more tying up, no more confusing arousal and definitely no more sex with Dennis, ever and ever again.

The very last thing Howard thought before he fell asleep was how lonely it was going to be, sleeping in this huge bedroom every night from now on without Vince.

Then the ten-ton elephant of sleep rolled over, trumpeted its call of unconsciousness, and parked itself firmly across Howard’s face.

Dennis was downstairs in the foyer beside a particularly resplendent fern, standing with his legs wide, chest out, and barking into his mobile phone.

“Of course, I indulged him before, when I relieved him of his virginity. So it’s only natural he should come back for more!”

He laughed – a dirty growling sound.

“Ha! There he was, crawling towards me, tongue out and begging for it! So I just threw him to the floor and told him to control himself. He has to learn I’m a busy man. Anyway, there’ll be plenty of time later for when he wants to suck my…”

He gave a sudden noise, halfway between an exhalation and a snort.

“You don’t want to hear any more? Jealous, are we? Ha! I’m not surprised! I know what you go back home to every night! I’ve seen pictures of your wife, remember…”

He stopped mid flow.

“Ah, yes, I grant you, that one tonight didn’t look particularly great either. Last night I got some heavy use out of him. I think I might have broken him a little. That’s the problem with these modern virgins, they wear out so quickly. But at least he’s keen! Ah, yes! At the rate he’s going, I’ll need chains just to stop him humping my leg every time I walk in! That reminds me. Can I borrow your larger whip? Yes, the one belonging to your wife’s sister’s uncle?”

He listened to the reply on the phone, then sighed.

“Yes, I know, Balthazar, I know. I owe you already for getting me the flat. Ten crates of cosmic juice. Tomorrow night shall surely be acceptable?”

He paused, hoisting up his roll of magic carpet and transferring the weight beneath his other arm.

“No, I haven’t tried this gear myself. Not exactly. Blue grade cosmic juice gives me a slight… allergic reaction. But it’s all good stuff, I promise. Come on, Balthazar – when have I ever let you down?”

He listened again.

“Yes, apart from that one time… yes, and perhaps that other. But this time I’m good, I swear! Listen, I really have to get back now. It’s my wife’s cheese and dwarf party and she’s been planning it for weeks. If I’m late, she will thrash me, and not in the good way, with the jet ski cables and the ping pong ball insertion and the melons…”

He paused.

“Yes, alright, Balthazar. I understand. You didn’t want to hear about that either. So tomorrow I’ll be there with the juice. And yes, it’ll be the high grade stuff. See you there.” Dennis clicked off the phone.

He pushed the doors of the foyer open and went to stand outside. Atmospheric pressure had changed, and he raised a cautious finger to test the new wind speed.

Then, patting the side of his robe, Dennis checked to see that the special aral wood cocktail sticks were still in place. They were cut from the hills of Turkmenistan, excellent for making cheese and pickle hedgehogs, and the perfect early-morning, cross-time zone excuse for his unsuspecting wife.

With a swish, Dennis hopped on board his carpet, put it into gear, and zoomed up high among the clouds.

Over Dalston, sunrise was breaking. The storm had stopped, and a fresh new day had been swept down in its wake. The sky was full of flush, and fire, and the fingers of ebbing clouds.

Red sky at morning – shaman’s warning. It was the promise of many storms yet to come.

End Notes: NEXT PART TO BE WRITTEN BY EASILYLED! YAY, CAN’T WAIT!

(PS She has promised me Howard in sexual slavery. I’m not joking. I really can’t wait.)

+ posts