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They’re the wrong side of drunk and the hotel room is too hot, stuffy and stale with windows that won’t open. Jamie had discarded his jacket the moment they’d stumbled in; he can see it lying crumpled on the garishly patterned carpet beside Alex’s brown suede loafers, but he’s still too warm. Sweat is dampening the cotton under his arms, prickling uneasily down his spine and making his head swim with more than just inebriation. Across the darkened room the open minibar is a lit-up rectangle – and when Jamie rolls across the duvet, making another clumsy attempt to wrestle the TV remote from Alex’s delicate-wristed grasp, he can still taste the lemon twist in the back of his throat.
Alex lifts the remote out of reach with the same, infuriating effortlessness he lifts melodies out of thin air. He’s lying on his back and staring upside-down at the TV, dark hair haloed around him on the rumpled sheets. It’s the longest he’s ever grown it, curling irreverently at the juncture of his shoulders and providing endless fidgeting opportunities for his ever-restless fingers. Jamie still isn’t used to it, the way it makes him look almost like someone else, in certain lights. Dreamier, more withdrawn. Effeminate, almost. Lethal. And yet under it all he’s just as pensive and sardonic as he’s always been, just as prone to slow-spoken quick wit and quiet acts of kindness. A dozen different shades of familiarity and unfamiliarity Jamie has watched him cycle through already tonight, the blood-red strobe lights of the club catching a different angle of his face each time he’d leant across the bar, eyes so wide and dark it had seemed as though they held the entirety of the night in their depths.
Jamie can’t see them now, only the soft shadow of lashes against Alex’s cheekbones. He’s close enough that Jamie can smell the muskiness of his skin, the lingering perfume of hotel shampoo. He smells of fresh sweat too, the way he does when the stage-lights are too bright to see anything beyond and he’s gazing up at Jamie from his knees, guitar slung to the side and mouth slightly parted as though he’s uttered a challenge Jamie couldn’t quite hear over the crowd. The t-shirt he’s wearing now is the same one he’d worn onstage when he’d done it a couple of nights ago, faded black with Highly Evolved emblazoned across the chest; it’s rucked up from the way he’s lolling on the duvet, exposing the sharp angle of his hipbone and contrastingly soft skin of his belly. He looks unguarded, completely at ease. Not like Jamie is used to seeing him these days, where he seems perpetually torn between shining a light on himself and retreating into the shadows. A moth caught in the blinds.
Jamie knows indecision has always played a starring role in the way Alex relates with the world; it’s as though he’s never quite been able to make up his mind about just how much of himself to share with it. Jamie’s watched him keep lyrics tucked away in his mind until the last possible moment so he can alter them when they’re halfway through recording, backtrack in conversations as if trying to scuff snow over the footprints he’s left in his wake – and yet croon his desires unapologetically to a room full of strangers, laugh so wide and open his heart suddenly seems like a door anyone could walk straight through.
For a long time, the shifts were subtle, unobtrusive – but ever since they recorded out in the desert last summer, it’s as though all the contrary sides of Alex’s psyche have been growing louder, warring with each other for dominance as he emerges into something new. Glimmers of coy provocation tempered with sullen reserve: a perpetual roulette of deep shadows and brilliant highlights as he relentlessly retreats and emerges. Jamie feels as if he’s spent half the tour unsure of when to slide his sunglasses on and when to reach for the light-switch.
It’s a feeling that reminds him of how he’d spent the earliest days of their friendship: dazzled, and then cut loose. Never quite sure if he wanted to open his eyes wider or shut them altogether.
For a long time, they’d only ever hung out as part of a group of lads on their street – but then suddenly, when they were both fifteen, something had shifted and they’d started spending time together just the two of them. Slowly darkening November afternoons holed up in Alex’s bedroom, Queens of the Stone Age blaring from the stereo and mugs of builders tea on the carpet; an unspoken agreement of just us that Jamie always found himself lying about when he went home. But he hadn’t been able to stop. Alex had been different, on his own. More ruthless in his sarcasm; more earnest in his laughter. Capable of dreamy silences and intent focus in equal measure, turning the vaguest ideas Jamie had into chords that sent goosebumps down his spine, and yet matching Jamie word for word in wry cynicism and deadpan mockery. Through it all ran a note of something Jamie had rapidly found himself addicted to; a shade of something close to admiration, only a little harder to look in the face.
Despite it – or perhaps because of it – they’ve always lived closer to the edge of bickering than Jamie has with the other two, trading sharp jibes and prods as if from the need to cover up what’s beneath. A softness Jamie’s never known what to do with, but which rears its head whenever Alex drops off beside him halfway down the motorway or gets particularly wound up before a show, so nervous he avoids eye-contact with everyone and plays his solos over and over again in the dressing room, shoulders hunched up in concentration. Or like now, where between the glinting eyes and sharp tongue, he looks so unselfconscious, so aglow with newfound, understated self-assurance that Jamie is the one who finds himself avoiding eye-contact for fear of what it might tip them over into.
He's never dared look too closely over the edge he knows their whole friendship is built on, but he’s always been aware of it, the fact it would only take the slightest push at the wrong time to send them hurtling into freefall. It’s taken years of practice, learning to tread his path as far away from the edge as possible – and yet he’s still never really found the knack. He finds himself straying far too often and far too easily, flickering unpredictably like a flame constantly on the brink of igniting. It’s alright when they’re with other people. And most of the time, when it’s just the two of them. But just sometimes, it’s not. Just sometimes, like tonight, he finds himself unwillingly drawn into the hot, unwelcome thoughts lurking in the same dark corners he’s been trying to avoid since he was fifteen.
Because there’s always been something captivating about Alex. Something compulsive, about the way Jamie can make him go from sharp corners to softness, laughing breathily and hiding his mouth like he is now, holding the remote just out of Jamie’s reach as America’s Next Top Model plays across the screen.
“Give over, you wanker.” Jamie makes another drunken lunge for it and almost succeeds – but Alex is always wilier than he looks, and Jamie always forgets. Always falls into the trap. Forgets that for all his apparent fragility, Alex is far more flame than moth. “C’mon, fuck’s sake Al.” Jamie grabs uncoordinatedly for the remote again, a hot surge of annoyance prickling out across his skin. “I’m not watchin’ America’s Top fuckin’ Model with you. Bloody hell.”
“You are,” Alex remarks, and he’s not slurring, but his voice is a little slower than usual. Syrupy. He doesn’t look up as he speaks, eyes focused on the TV screen. “Technically.”
“I’ll technically push you right off this bed,” Jamie retaliates, torn between annoyance and laughter. It’s an edge Alex will often drive him to, a hazy limbo where he doesn’t know whether he wants to sock Alex or laugh with him – or something else altogether. It’s the kind of thing which feels far too close for comfort when they’re both drunk like this, when Jamie can barely gather his thoughts and is operating all on instinct rather than forethought.
“You won’t.” Alex sounds confident, and Jamie feels another wave of annoyance at how well Alex knows him. Just sometimes, he wishes he could elicit a flicker of surprise from Alex, any indication that whatever he says or does isn’t something Alex had already expected from him. Like he’s a novel Alex has already dog-eared all the pages of. “You’re too fond of me.” Alex is grinning lazily as he holds the remote further out of reach, the stretch making his t-shirt ride up even further. His belly is soft and slim, and there’s a slight bruise just above his hipbone where Jamie had caught him accidentally with his guitar at soundcheck a couple of days ago, purpling the gentle flush of his skin.
Jamie feels a sudden, hot rush go through him at the sight of it, the realisation that it’s been there on Alex’s body, hiding beneath his clothes and under the warmth of his skin for days without him knowing. He stares dazedly at its mark, feeling the hot thud of his heart under his t-shirt – and then averts his gaze abruptly, giving up any further attempts to wrestle the remote from Alex. The room is still spinning slightly, and he desperately tries to remember the name of the girl he’d been chatting up earlier in the bar. Lauren? Lily? Lia? He’s not even sure he asked, and suddenly wishes he had, if for nothing else but for something to hold onto. A talisman in the face of his own desires. She’d been nice, too; he doesn’t really understand how he’s wound up here with Alex instead of back in his own room with her. Alex had been chatting up her friend, but in the kind of way where Jamie knew he had no real intention of doing anything other than what they’re doing right now, hanging out and watching shitty telly, drinking their way through the mini bar until dawn starts to poke through the blinds.
Alex doesn’t ask or tell, a lot of the time. But Jamie has known him long enough that, more often than not, it’s still easy to read him, know what he’s trying to say. What he wants. Sometimes it’s so easy and so automatic at this point that it bypasses Jamie’s consciousness altogether, and he finds himself having to retrace his steps to figure out how they got to where they are now. But then other times – what Alex wants feels much harder to reach. As if he’s deliberately holding it at arm’s length. Or maybe he isn’t doing that at all; maybe it’s Jamie who doesn’t want to get close enough to touch it.
He takes a swig of his drink, melting ice cubes bumping against his teeth as he swallows, and finds himself helplessly preoccupied by the thought of the bruise under Alex’s t-shirt. His mind keeps catching on the fact Alex didn’t say anything about it; he didn’t wince when Jamie did it, didn’t make pointed comments about no inter-band violence like the time Nick gave him an impressively green bruise by accidentally knocking against him onstage. Jamie bruised him, and he’s quietly, unobtrusively kept it for himself. The thought that Alex must have felt it, seen it in the shower and known its ache whenever anyone nudged against him, makes something dangerous shiver down Jamie’s spine. Because although he doesn’t feel he has as deft a read on Alex as Alex has on him, he still knows Alex better than most people – and he knows the things Alex keeps quiet are often the things he’s saying the most loudly; an entire song written around something to evoke the shape of it without giving away its colours. Evoking the shadow rather than the object casting it.
“Does it hurt?” He hears himself ask. He’s staring up at the ceiling, but he hears it when Alex shifts.
“What?” Alex is leaning back on his forearms, hair all in disarray and cheeks flushed with alcohol.
“Your –” Jamie clears his throat and waves a hand vaguely in the direction of Alex’s exposed midriff. “Didn’t realise I’d caught you that hard with me guitar the other day. You should’ve said summat.”
“Oh,” Alex tugs slightly at the hem of his t-shirt, pulling it back down so the bruise is mostly covered again. There’s an almost guilty expression on his face, the kind that makes Jamie think of the way he’s seen Alex surreptitiously turn the collar of a shirt up to conceal a love bite. “’S fine. Tellin’ you wouldn’t change the bruise, would it?” There’s a wryness to his smile, like he’s already considered the matter and might even have woven it into neat, ironic ink somewhere. The idea makes something uneasy curl in Jamie’s stomach; it’s suddenly as though the bruise not just Alex’s but somehow his too, and he isn’t sure he likes the idea of it being immortalised for anyone to find – even if it’s only through the carefully obscure lyrics of a song, or shut safely in the pages of Alex’s Moleskine.
“No,” Jamie finds his eyes have strayed to Alex’s waist even though the bruise is no longer visible; he jerks his gaze away abruptly, swallowing. He’s too drunk for this, too drunk not to keep looking all the places he never lets himself look. His heart is thumping. “Suppose not.”
“If it bothers you so much you can always kiss it better.” Alex’s tone is sardonic, lightly taunting. Just facetious enough to be joking if Jamie takes it that way – but dangerously ambiguous. Like if Jamie decided not to take it as a joke, he wouldn’t either. When Jamie snorts incredulously, more a reflex than anything else, Alex flops back down onto the sheets, gaze drifting towards the TV screen again. There’s a slight self-consciousness to his posture that there wasn’t before, a subtle shift that Jamie recognises: a kind of awareness of his own body he exhibits onstage that twists between seductive and shy, seemingly torn between the desire to show off and the instinct to hide away. His stomach is rising and falling repetitively with his breathing, a sliver of skin still visible above his belt. He’s so slender that it’s too long for him, the end flapping loose. Jamie is seized by the sudden desire to grab hold of it, to pull Alex across the bed and wrestle the remote control decisively from his grasp. To feel the supple ripple of muscles under his hands, the long lines of Alex’s body and hear his breathy laughter. To touch him, feel the mark he unknowingly left under his fingertips and leave more in their wake.
He doesn’t; instead, he reaches across to the bedside table for his drink with slightly trembling hands. It’s lukewarm, bittersweet – and does nothing to ease the sense of impatience gathering momentum in his bloodstream. It’s been there all week, simmering under the surface. Hot and prickly, verging on unbearable. He drains the rest of his drink in one and stares at the TV screen without registering anything that’s happening on it, only the thud thud thud of blood in his ears and clench of his jaw. The edge is coming closer and closer, he knows – and worse, he doesn’t know how to stop it. How to stop his own feet from walking him over the sheer drop he’s been so carefully avoiding for years. Under the cotton of his t-shirt, each thump of his heart feels traitorous; like a clenched fist slowly uncurling.
“I could, if you want,” Jamie blurts out suddenly, because his mind is swimming with it. Drowning in it. He can still taste tequila at the back of his throat, and all he wants to do is touch. He’s been wound up for days – weeks – and there’s nowhere left to go, either in his mind or in the walls around them.
“Could what?” Alex turns his head sideways, looking up at Jamie with glazed eyes.
Jamie clears his throat roughly, as if to dislodge what he’s been unsuccessfully trying to swallow down for longer than he’s ever let himself think about. “Kiss it better. If y’like, I mean.” His cheeks flame hot, because it sounds even worse aloud than it had in his head, the wry humour he’d intended falling flat. He can hear the uncertainty in his own voice, and worse than that: the longing.
Alex goes suddenly still, eyes not leaving Jamie. They’re darker than they were a moment ago, intent. “Yeah,” he says, after a pause – quiet, but there’s a flushed hue to his cheeks like the one he gets whenever he’s struck by an idea he can’t wait to tell everyone. “Go on, then.”
Jamie’s heart is thumping so hard it hurts. Alex doesn’t offer any further encouragement, just looks at him with the same kind of silent, challenging provocation he’ll sometimes level at Jamie mid show – only there’s a note of something else in it now. Something hopeful. Wistful, almost. It makes Jamie’s stomach twist. It always does, whenever Alex looks at him like that onstage: a flash of dark magnetism just between them amidst a thousand watching, unknowing eyes. The intimacy of it now, with no one’s eyes but theirs and the tightening silence suspended between them, feels like something else altogether. Something Jamie doesn’t know how to keep looking at, so he doesn’t; he drops his gaze to the hem of Alex’s t-shirt, hesitating for a moment before he reaches out and pushes it up.
The bruise peeks out like a lipstick mark, lurid against soft skin. Jamie watches in dazed fascination as Alex’s breath hitches, stomach muscles visibly tightening. He’s always been slender, but Jamie’s never stopped to look close-up like this. Never allowed himself to. Now he drinks it in like a parched man: the elegant taper of Alex’s waist, the narrowness of his hips. The pale, supple skin and faintest trail of hair leading from his bellybutton down past the buckle of his belt –
Alex is more than halfway to hard, Jamie realises with a jolt that feels like missing his footing on the stairs. He’s seen Alex worked up before, locked in clinches with girls backstage or antsy after weeks on the road – but never up close like this. Never knowing it’s because of him. He can see the outline of Alex’s growing erection, the way he’s tenting the front of his jeans – and something uneasy flutters through Jamie. He almost moves away, almost gets up off the bed and stumbles back to his own room – but finds he can’t quite manage it. Even a year ago, he thinks he would have done. Knows he would. But this tour has shifted something in him; something between the two of them. Something about the desert which has stayed with him like sand in his shoes, pinching with every step he’s tried to take away from whatever this is between them, flickering intermittently like a flame that won’t be put out.
Someone is breathing harshly; it takes a couple of moments for Jamie to realise it’s him. That he’s just as hard as Alex is, his cock straining at the zipper of his jeans.
It’s then that panic floods through him as suddenly as if someone’s poured it, sharp and cold and familiar. He’s caught trickles of it here and there for years, in moments a little like this where they’re far too close and far too drunk – but he’s always responded so quickly that it’s never been able to gather momentum. Here, now, even the ice-cold edges of panic don’t cut close to the sudden flare of heat between them. The hot itch beneath his skin and Alex’s gaze, sultry and watchful. Curious, like nothing about this moment surprises him, and he’s waiting to see where Jamie will take it the same way he might wait to see where Jamie will take the thread of a melody when they’re working out a guitar part together. It’s the same genuine interest, the same focus; the same trust – only a little darker-eyed, a little more expectant. Something shifts in Jamie’s chest, and he feels a rush go through him at the way Alex is wordlessly handing over the reins, allowing him to take the lead. Wanting him to take the lead.
Jamie feels another rush go through him, hotter this time. There’s a slight ringing in his ears as he presses his thumb experimentally into the bruise, watching Alex’s eyes go half-lidded, the colour standing out high on his cheeks and his breath leaving him in a little rush. At his sides, his hands scrunch the sheets into crumpled whorls like Jamie is doing something far more significant than just touching a bruise. He’s sensual and unmistakeably masculine all at once, as captivating as a lit flame – and Jamie wants to burn himself in the glow. From somewhere within, his mind is screaming at him, but it feels like he’s standing a very long way away from it, so all its fearful protests barely register as a whisper above the thunder of adrenaline and pent-up curiosity. Hounded by the beat of his own heart, he finds himself pushing Alex more firmly back against the mattress, the blood rushing in his ears as he leans in closer and presses his mouth experimentally to the florid purple mark.
He feels as much as hears Alex’s sharp intake of breath, the hot skin under his lips rising and then falling sharply. Alex tastes of salt and of want, and where Jamie is used to soft curves he’s all angular lines, as deftly wrought as one of his own songs. Jamie thinks he probably shouldn’t like it as much as he does, but he does. He likes it so much it’s hard to think at all; he doesn’t realise he’s sucking harder kisses to the already purpled skin until Alex starts moaning under him, soft-toned and uninhibited the way Jamie occasionally heard muffled through closed doors or caught a note of in the way he delivers a line mid-performance. The jolt of arousal it sends through Jamie feels as physical as a punch to the chest, white-hot sparks shooting all the way to the tips of his fingers. He stifles the threat of his own moans against Alex’s skin, mouthing his way lower so that he’s sucking new bruises to the line of Alex’s hipbone. Alex is letting out a constant stream of barely-stifled, breathless little sounds now, the muscles in his stomach clenching – and when his hand comes down and curls into Jamie’s hair, Jamie can feel all remaining semblance of sense melt away into the rush of hot-edged adrenaline.
They shouldn’t be doing this, he knows. It’s a bad idea by any standards, messing around with someone you’re stuck on the road with for another four months, much less someone who happens to be Alex. But he doesn’t know how to stop it any more than he knew how to start it. It’s strange and electrifying and unfamiliar, and even the background weight of his own trepidation isn’t enough to make him want to pull away. He can feel the undulation of Alex’s breathing under his mouth, smell the familiar musk of his skin, taste the lingering fragrance of the body wash he used in the shower earlier before they all went out. He’s unmistakeably male, all angles and hard lines – but there’s also a kind of softness, a sweetness running through the way he reaches for Jamie, the unsteadiness of his breath and the parted, wet pink of his lips as Jamie glances upwards and finds himself transfixed.
Alex’s eyes are hooded, and more than ever seem to hold all of the night in them: the same black, glittering expanse Jamie associates with the unfathomable quiet of the desert after midnight. They’re challenging and submissive all at once, irreverent or deferent depending on how the light catches them. They flicker with something else as Jamie keeps looking dazedly upwards, hot-cheeked and with the taste of Alex still in his mouth like a sentence he doesn’t know how to articulate – and it’s too much. Alex looks exactly the way Jamie has always tried not to imagine him, dark-eyed and overwhelmed, all self-consciousness melted away into an expression of open, palpable desire.
He isn’t always one for prolonged eye contact, often hiding his innate expressiveness behind a curtain of hair or a pair of sunglasses – but now he holds Jamie’s gaze unflinchingly, with the kind of rapt focus Jamie associates with him untangling a melody from a guitar. Jamie has watched him often enough, knows that no matter how much of a fight the melody puts up, Alex always finds a way to draw it out in the end. He’s ruthless about it, more so than Jamie has ever known how to be. The association isn’t comforting; Jamie might be the one holding Alex in place on top of the sheets, but he’s suddenly very aware that any control he has in the situation is little more than an illusion. He’s strayed so far from the path that he’s kept to carefully for years that he can’t even see it anymore, let alone find his way back. Worst of all, he doesn’t care enough to try. All he can think about is the heat of Alex, the smell of him. The intoxicating, tempting closeness, wrapping them up into the kind of thing Jamie has been trying to outrun for years – only now he thinks maybe somewhere along the way he’d lost his sense of direction, has been running towards this rather than away for longer than he’d realised.
“You can do more than kiss me, y’know,” Alex confides, voice lower than usual. Almost a whisper, but too sensual. Not trying to persuade Jamie either way, just being honest in the way Alex is: either not playing his cards at all or laying them all face-up on the table. His eyes are dark. “If you want.”
Jamie does want. He wants so much he doesn’t know what to do with himself other than give in to the desire that’s been gnawing a hole in his chest all year. Longer. Ever since they were teenagers, and Alex had looked up at him one afternoon with something in his gaze that’s haunted the edges of Jamie’s subconsciousness ever since, a seed of doubt planted in the back of his mind about all the things he’d never questioned before. It’s flooding in from the edges now, taking everything over – and the familiar wince of shame is muffled by its rush, the damn finally broken after years of being chipped away at here and there, moments small enough that Jamie has been able to write them off as nothing. But he can’t write this off: Alex beneath him on a hotel bed at gone two in the morning, eyes half-lidded with want and the hem of his t-shirt still bunched in Jamie’s fist. His heart is thumping with a swirling cocktail of anticipation and fear, the relentless thrum of it reverberating all the way through him like he’s just stepped into a club where the music is too loud to hear himself think. Thinking will come later, he knows; he won’t be able to outrun it any more than he can this.
But now – now, he lets his gaze flicker down to the even more obvious tent in Alex’s jeans and feels his stomach clench with want. Slowly, one hand still fisted in Alex’s t-shirt the way someone might keep one hand on the door during a hesitant conversation, he shifts closer. He suddenly feels acutely aware of how out of his depth he is, the fact he’s never so much as seen another man like this – even if he has thought about it, stifled it so often doing so is as reflexive as strumming a chord. It’s always been women, soft curves and pink mouths. Nothing like this, his best mate breathing hard under him, all lithe masculine lines and delicate lashes. Hard and wanting, obsidian gaze drawing Jamie further in. He’s watching Jamie like he knows Jamie isn’t going to stop now he’s started, and Jamie would hate it if he weren’t so lost in how much he wants this. Curiosity becomes a heavy load; sometimes, it feels like Alex has already read his mind long before Jamie has the courage to look.
“Alright, yeah. Like –” he swallows, shifting to prop himself up on one elbow so he can reach down, placing his hand over the visible bulge in Alex’s jeans. An exhilarated rush of heat goes instantly through him at the feel of Alex under his palm, and he hears himself let out a grunt. “Fuck. Like this?”
Alex’s mouth is half-open and he nods wordlessly, eyes black. “Yeah.”
He’s so hard; even through the fabric Jamie can feel the heat of him, the shape of him. The sensation is dizzyingly similar to the way Jamie feels under his own hand whenever he touches himself – and there’s an unexpected thrill to it, to knowing exactly what Alex is feeling. With women, he just sees; here, with Alex, he sees and he knows. Knows how the subtle friction in his boxers must feel against the head of his cock as he cants his hips upwards, the subtle tightening in his balls and how aware he must be of the swollen ache between his legs. The same ache that’s driving Jamie wild. He knows exactly what it must feel like to be in Alex’s body right now because it’s everything he’s feeling in his own – and it feels too much to comprehend. All the wires are getting muddled in his head as he palms Alex uncoordinatedly through his jeans and feels his own cock respond in kind, throbbing in the confines of his boxers until it’s bordering on painful. Instinctively, he reaches down to adjust himself – and suddenly finds Alex’s hand curling around his wrist, dextrous and purposeful.
“Let me.” Alex is looking at him, and Jamie catches a flash of uncertainty – like Alex isn’t sure if Jamie will let him; like he desperately wants Jamie to let him, too much to play games about it. The please is implicit, palpable in the air between them and making Jamie’s pulse stumble over itself.
“Yeah.” He lets out a breath all in a rush, and then – “Fuck. Bloody hell, yeah. Okay.”
Dazed, he watches as Alex shifts, tucking his hair behind his ear before reaching for Jamie’s belt. His cheeks are flushed and his mouth slack as he unbuckles it deftly, sliding a hand below the waistband without further preamble. He lets out a little breath as he starts palming Jamie through his boxers, fingers as devastatingly skilled and intuitive as they are with the fretboard of a guitar or wrapped around the body of a pen.
“Oh – fuck.” Jamie clenches his hand into a fist at the surge of pleasure that goes through him. He’s embarrassingly hard; he can feel himself twitching under Alex’s hand, leaking precum through the cotton of his boxers and having to shut his eyes because he can’t deal with this with them open. It shouldn’t feel this good, having Alex touch him like this – it should feel strange. And it does; Alex touches him with a kind of innate knowledge and quiet confidence that could only come from someone who knows themselves like this too, his hand stronger than a woman’s but slender. Sensitive. And although his technique is knowledgeable, it’s as though he’s holding something back as he works Jamie slowly through his boxers. Like he’s still giving Jamie the reins, asking a question with his touch rather than giving Jamie an answer. Spinning it out, giving Jamie too much time to find one.
Jamie squeezes his eyes shut, not trusting himself to reply. His cheeks are burning and Alex’s name is on the tip of his tongue; he clenches his jaw against the urge to say it. “Fuck,” he grits out again instead, and when he glances down he can see Alex’s hand moving rhythmically in his half-undone jeans. It sends a fresh bolt of arousal rushing through him, only intensified by the way Alex moves his hand imperceptibly quicker, expertly massaging the stiff line of Jamie’s cock through his boxers.
It all feels unbearably real. In any drunken or fleeting imaginings Jamie has had of something happening between them, it’s always felt hazy and unspecific, detached from anything in the real world. But this – Jamie can hear the way Alex’s breathing reverberates with the motion of his hand, feel the hint of calluses he’s only ever registered before whenever Alex has passed him a cigarette or showed him a particular chord progression. He can see the slight fraying at the collar of Alex’s Highly Evolved t-shirt from how often he’s worn it, the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows. Alex smells the way he always does, of warm skin and minty gum and the Camel Blues he always smokes because they’re Miles’s cigarette of choice – only there’s a sharper, more male undertone to him now too. Fresh sweat and arousal. They’re close enough that Jamie can taste the contrasting, grapefruit sugariness on his breath from the Paloma he’d watched him order earlier, bittersweet and heady.
He finds himself staring at the parted, pink heat of Alex’s mouth, half-open like he’s halfway through a sentence he hasn’t worked out how to finish yet – and thinks helplessly about kissing it.
The thought is equal parts arousing and shocking; almost as if hearing it, Alex breathes out shakily and slides a hand under the elastic of Jamie’s boxers, and then it’s his hand, warm and expert, thumbing over the head of Jamie’s cock with devastating finesse. The rush of pleasure that goes through him is too much; he can feel the prelude of his orgasm building already, just from this thing that’s been pulled taut between them for long enough that it’s finally snapping – and he’s not ready to let it go yet. With a grunt in the back of his throat, he pulls away enough to push Alex back down onto the mattress and straddle him. The sheets rumple under them and Alex is breathing hard and fast, eyes tracking Jamie with a palpable thrill in them. Like he wanted but hadn’t expected this from Jamie – and Jamie feels an answering thrill go through him at the thought he hasn’t been predictable after all. There’s a kind of unnameable satisfaction to it: knowing that somehow, he’s evaded being as expertly mapped out as everything else Alex looks at. It makes him feel simultaneously less and more claustrophobic in his own want, the power of it rushing through him and making his heart thump.
He leans down and presses his mouth to the bruise again, open-mouthed and breathless as the echoes of Alex’s touch resonate through him. Giving in to instinct, he bites down on the skin just above the bruise – and Alex lets out a high-pitched gasping sound that makes want curl hotly through Jamie’s stomach, suddenly even more aware of his cock throbbing heavy and wet in his boxers. He does it again, moving his hand down to find the bulge in Alex’s jeans again and touching him clumsily in time with the ministrations of his mouth. The buzz of the TV in the background is drowned out by the wet sounds of his mouth and the hitching, gaspy sounds Alex is trying to stifle, one arm thrown over his face as his hips arch up into Jamie’s touch like he’s on the brink of some kind of epiphany.
Jamie has always got a thrill he hasn’t quite known how to explain from doing things for Alex; mundane little things like lifting his suitcase up onto a luggage rack for him when it’s particularly heavy, fixing a broken guitar string and seeing the curve of Alex’s smile in response. Usually, Alex is stubborn about doing things for himself – but for some reason, he’ll let Jamie carry his bags or hand him his jacket or go and buy lunch for him with uncharacteristic deference. The way he looks at Jamie in those moments has never been as straightforward as gratitude, has always made something hot curl through Jamie’s stomach, equal parts compulsive and uneasy. And now – now, it’s all of that turned up to maximum volume. Jamie can feel his heart thudding so hard it feels like it might break itself out of his chest, and all he wants to do is do this for Alex. Make him sound like this, roll his hips like this, scrunch his fists into the sheets like this. Jamie feels drunk on the knowledge that he can; that hiding under Alex’s t-shirt along with the bruise was all of this: the things Jamie has caught glimpses of in Alex’s lyrics or the way he is with other people, and tried to never let himself think about.
“’S this –” Jamie presses the words into another bruising kiss.
“Yeah. S’ – yeah.” Alex sounds more worked up than Jamie’s ever heard him. His hips are arching unconsciously up into Jamie’s touch, and his head is rolled sideways on the bed, dark hair splayed across the nylon sheets as he gasps out. He looks like a cross between some kind of renaissance painting and glossy photo in an X-rated magazine. When his eyes flicker open and find Jamie’s, it feels like how Jamie imagines getting set alight would feel: the heat too sudden and too quick to think about fear. “Let me touch you again,” Alex says, breathlessly. He tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, a gesture that’s somehow both coy and earnest. His gaze is flickering downwards to Jamie’s belt. “Please.” It’s explicit this time, making sparks of arousal shoot to the tips of Jamie’s fingers and toes.
Jamie doesn’t know how to say no to him; he’s never known how to say no to him, especially when he doesn’t want to say no at all. Wordlessly, he nods, letting Alex curl his fist into the front of Jamie’s t-shirt and pull him down so they’re both sprawled on the crumpled sheets together, breathing hard.
It feels somehow even more real this time, arousal having burned away the last vestiges of Jamie’s hesitation and any attempts to remain in some way at arm’s length. The mentality feels dangerously reminiscent of the one that prompts him to down another drink when he’s already on the verge of being blackout drunk, and they’re so close he can taste the lingering perfume of tequila on Alex’s breath as if it’s in his own mouth, see the faint shadow of stubble that feels like a direct contradiction to the plush rosiness of Alex’s parted lips. His teeth are neat and even, and Jamie feels as caught between them as he’s seen words get.
They don’t kiss; Jamie breathes hard and hot against Alex’s neck as Alex reaches into his boxers and starts jerking him off properly, wasting no time on the preliminaries. He’s always been the same: ruthless once he gets to the heart of what he’s been trying to say. His hand is quick and deft, and all Jamie can think is that Alex touches himself with this hand, that he’s touching Jamie the way he touches himself. Intent and ever so slightly desperate, thumbing over the head on every upstroke. Someone is groaning, and it takes a moment for Jamie to realise it’s him, muffling the sounds against the thrumming pulse in Alex’s neck as the pleasure rises within him with alarming sharpness. Alex’s hair is everywhere, smelling of his conditioner and faintly of dry ice from the club earlier, and Jamie can feel his orgasm building quicker than he knows what to do with. Almost as overwhelming is the feel of how hard Alex is where he’s pressed against Jamie’s side, the hot nudge of his cock through his jeans tantalising, incendiary. He’s grinding himself seemingly unconsciously against Jamie’s thigh as he jerks Jamie off, and Jamie is seized by the desire to reach out and touch him – but he keeps his fists clenched in the sheets, because he doesn’t know how he’d stop if he started now. How he’d go back to never thinking about this, only fucking girls who move and talk and moan nothing like Alex.
He’s not naïve, he knows that neither of them are harbouring any deep-seated feelings of romance for each other; Alex doesn’t look at him the way he’s seen Alex look at his girlfriends, or at Miles. It’s more closed. Careful, like he knows Jamie wouldn’t want to be invited in anyway. And Jamie knows that he doesn’t look at Alex the way he’s looked at girls he’s been with either – but it’s also with something more than he’d realised, not quite as uncomplicated as he’s always told himself it is. He doesn’t know what to call it, only that it’s something he wants to look away from. A curiosity that he’s always tried to snuff out, and hadn’t realised how easily it would catch light like a low-burning flame suddenly exposed to oxygen. All he can think now, lost in a haze of pleasure and barely overshadowed shame, is that fire changes what it burns irreversibly. That whatever this is, they will be forever different for it. The difference of an implicit versus explicit please.
“Thought about this, before,” Alex is murmuring in his ear, hot and slow. Breath hitching, like he’s as close as Jamie is. “Didn’t – think you’d let me do this.”
“Didn’t think I would either,” Jamie breathes, and realises too late that it’s as good as a confession he’s thought about this before too. Suddenly, holding himself back feels futile; he unclenches his hands from the duvet and reaches up to grip Alex’s hair, burying his fingers in the silken soft strands. Alex lets out a soft sound, close to a whimper – and he pulls Jamie closer so that he’s not so much jerking Jamie off as they are rutting against each other, half in and half out of their jeans, messy and uncoordinated and so hot Jamie can feel it prickling at the tips of his fingers. Alex is lithe and wanting under him, letting out a constant stream of low sounds and gasps that stoke the fire building in Jamie’s belly even hotter each time. He doesn’t understand what’s happening, how they’ve tipped over into this without warning – only that it’s about to make him come more quickly than he has in months.
He grunts, reaching between them for Alex’s waistband. The half-undone belt clinks at the motion and blood thunders in Jamie’s ears as he fumbles with the button of Alex’s jeans, the elastic of his boxers. They’re striped black and navy ones Jamie has seen a hundred times before – and when he slides his hand into them it’s all humid, hot hardness. Alex is hard enough that he’s wet, cock drooling precum against the front of his boxers. He twitches in Jamie’s hand at the same time as he gasps against the shell of Jamie’s ear, breathing out a low stream of Yes yes yes as Jamie feels another blurt of wetness dribble down his fingers.
Distantly, he’s aware that he’s groaning as he stares down at the movement of his hand in Alex’s boxers. It’s so real it feels almost surreal; Alex’s stomach rising and falling sharply, the belt he’d worn the whole time they were recording out in the desert flapping loose with the motion of Jamie’s hand. He can see the dark shadow of pubic hair as his hand pushes Alex’s underwear down slightly with its movement, and it feels incomprehensibly good, the stiff, hot weight of Alex in his hand. The thrill of being allowed to see Alex like this, touch him like this. Alex, who’s always felt a little held away at arm’s length, never letting anyone see him too closely for too long. Jamie’s caught enough glimpses over the years; more than most, he knows. But this – this is something more. And it’s not the way Alex is moaning helplessly against his neck or arching into Jamie’s touch that makes his heart thud faster – it’s the unspoken, easy trust of it all. The realisation that Alex might have always let him do this; that for all his quick witted quips and sarcasm, he wants this just as much as Jamie does.
They’re moving against each other with more urgency and purpose now, white-hot pleasure building rapidly towards oblivion. Jamie twists his face against Alex’s jaw as he stares dazedly down between them, feeling his cock twitch at the sight of them together, the intimacy of it irrefutable and incendiary in equal measure. He can see himself, red and swollen, through the blur of Alex’s moving hand – and then Alex in his hand too, cock flushed pink and curving up towards his stomach.
After years of knowing the physicality of Alex’s body in other ways – dodging a playful jostle, drinking tea, hunched up over a notebook, swaying drunkenly but fluidly in a club – something about him like this just makes sense in a way Jamie isn’t prepared for. His cock is about the same size as Jamie’s, full and heavy and with a pearl of precum beading at the head, and there’s something about it that’s familiar in the same kind of way Alex’s hands are familiar. Jamie groans, pressing his nose against Alex’s cheekbone and feeling a rush of heat go through him at the unfamiliar rasping hint of stubble, the way Alex’s mouth parts on a hitched breath.
“Fuck, Jamie – I’m –” Alex tries to kiss him, a momentary hot graze of want that Jamie wants to cut himself on – but he turns his head at the last moment, cheeks burning as he buries his face in Alex’s neck instead, their hands moving quicker on each other in a rush of pleasure that’s building so fast Jamie can hear himself gasping out too. Heart hammering in his chest, he stifles himself against Alex’s throat, sucking bruising kisses to compensate for the softer ones he won’t allow himself to indulge in. Alex is letting out short, breathy gasps in response, thrusting forwards into Jamie’s touch like nothing else exists. They move together with the same jerky, relentless fluidity of a lit flame and Jamie lets out a guttural groan as the heads of their cocks nudge against each other intermittently; he can feel the repetitive bump of their hands working each other and then the slick, hot slide of Alex’s erection against his for a moment – and it’s too much, too much, too much.
With a low, visceral sound in the back of his throat, the wave of his orgasm rises up and breaks, tiny stars imploding behind his eyes as he comes all over Alex’s hand. Through the haze of pleasure, he dimly registers Alex getting even louder for a moment, and then going suddenly quiet, spurting wetly over Jamie’s hand and still swollen cock. The sensation of it when Jamie is barely on the other side of his own orgasm is too much; cursing, he bites down on the line of Alex’s collar bone and tries to stifle himself, hips chasing the last aches of pleasure until he’s twitching with the white-hot overstimulation of it and all he can hear is his name in Alex’s mouth, breathy and soft like it’s a secret he doesn’t want to share. He’s vaguely aware that Alex’s mouth is pressed open and panting to his jaw, but he keeps his eyes shut as the aftershocks fizz through his bloodstream – and for a blurry few moments, he manages to stay lost in the blissed-out, hazy relief of having finally scratched an itch he’s been ignoring for months. Years. Ever since he was old enough to realise what it might be.
But then as the glow of his orgasm starts to wane, pin-pick like jolts of panic edge their way into the forefront of his mind and his heart starts thumping sickeningly. The room swims unsteadily back into view and the sweat is starting too cool under his t-shirt. Suddenly, he feels cold all over, humiliation moving in like a hangover. All the things that his mind has been screaming at him as if from some long distance away suddenly feel in unbearably close range, as if they’re being shouted directly into his ear. He winces at their volume, all the heat gone like water swirling away down a plughole; a hot flush of humiliation rises up his neck instead, and he feels irreparably disgusted with himself for allowing himself to be taken over by something he’s worked so hard to keep at bay for so long. For getting so caught up in Alex that he’d forgotten he’d be left with himself at the end of it all.
Distantly, he registers Alex shifting beside him on the bed as if he’d caught his name in Jamie’s thoughts. He’s quiet now, breathing slowing towards a steadier rhythm Jamie is more familiar with. One that’s been the understated soundtrack to the last eight years of Jamie’s life, in stuffy coaches and midnight deserts and unfamiliar, impersonal hotel rooms just like this; the thought makes him feel worse rather than better. He doesn’t know how to look at Alex, so he doesn’t: he stares up at the light on the ceiling until his eyes burn with it and he’s managed to tune out the sound of Alex’s breathing in favour of the upbeat music and American-accented dialogue on the TV. The shame that closes in is familiar in all but its intensity: he feels as at risk of burning up from it as he did from the heat between them as Alex clears his throat and sits up, the movement reverberating through the mattress.
Against his better judgement, Jamie chances a glance over at him, only to see him pulling his already rucked-up shirt the rest of the way off over his head and using it to clean himself up. Frozen, Jamie watches with his heart thumping, feeling as though he’s reeling from some kind of physical impact; like someone has knocked him off course and he’s still dizzy and disorientated from the blow. Alex’s hair is dark and soft, brushing the familiar, wiry line of his shoulders in slightly dishevelled waves. He’s so gracefully slender he could almost be a woman if it weren’t for the narrow taper of his waist, the glimpse of dark hair under his arms and understated flex of muscles in his shoulders as he zips himself back into his jeans. He turns suddenly, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear and holding out the t-shirt to Jamie with a gaze more open and uncertain than Jamie had expected.
Jamie feels his cheeks flame hot as their eyes meet, and suddenly the echoes of all the sounds he knows he made feel very loud in the silence between them. “Ta,” he mutters, dropping his gaze like he’s been struck. He sits up and clumsily wipes himself clean as quickly as he can manage with his shaky hands, tucking himself back into his jeans and doing his belt up on the wrong notch. Alex’s t-shirt feels like it’s burning his hands. He doesn’t know what to do with it; in the end, he tosses it over the side of the bed Alex had been sprawled on, trying not to wonder whether if every time Alex wears it from now on he’ll think of them doing this. Of being restless and foolish in a hotel room after midnight in all the ways Jamie has tried not to think about since they first started staying in hotels.
When he looks up, Alex’s gaze is still on him, a little more unreachable. His eyes are lighter brown again, and there’s something observant and understated in them. Knowing, almost – only without the confidence. Something that makes Jamie think of the way he looks out the window on long journeys.
After a moment, Alex looks away. He edges gracefully off the bed and goes over to his suitcase by the door, rifling through it for a moment before tugging on a fresh t-shirt. The deepened bruise on his hip disappears from view, and he pushes a hand through his rumpled hair in a way that suggests he’s feeling slightly self-conscious. He suddenly looks a lot younger: a little drunk and a lot tired, lilac smudges under his eyes and deeper purple smudges on his neck like he’s been up all night with his girlfriend. Only it wasn’t his girlfriend, it was Jamie – and the thought is as thrilling as it is jarring.
Jamie swallows, wondering how long it’ll take the freshly cast bruises to fade; how long it’ll be before he wants to make them all over again. Already, he can taste the ache to do so in the back of his throat like a drink he isn’t quite finished with, and he hates it. He’d always thought that if they ever did anything, it would erase his curiosity for it – a once-and-out-of-his-system deal. But now, looking at Alex in the dim light of the unslept in hotel room, he realises how naïve that had been; that maybe he’d always known it couldn’t ever be like that, and that was why he resisted it for so long.
Alex doesn’t say anything as he goes over to the minibar, like he knows Jamie is two steps away from picking a fight or stumbling from the room. Jamie feels a pang of frustration at not being given the provocation he desperately craves as distraction for what’s been set in motion; he watches with a sense of building anger as Alex unscrews a glass bottle of water, taking a couple of swigs before handing it to Jamie. “You’ll regret it in the mornin’ if you don’t,” he says, when Jamie doesn’t take the bottle. His voice is light and matter of fact and sounds like home – but his gaze lingers, flickering over Jamie’s expression like he’s trying to gauge what’s behind it. His cheeks are a still a little flushed, his mouth reddened like maybe he’d been biting his lip earlier; the thought makes Jamie’s stomach twist.
He's already full of regrets now, but he takes the water bottle wordlessly anyway, wincing at the brush of Alex’s fingers and the visceral, confronting memories they set alight all over again. He chugs down a few long gulps of water just for something to do, feeling more ill at ease than he ever has with anyone he’s messed around with in a hotel room after midnight. Because normally with one night stands, everyone knows where they are. But this – Jamie doesn’t know where they are at all. Him and Alex. He hadn’t known before it, and he knows even less now; he doesn’t dare look up at Alex for fear he might find out. “I’d better –” he gestures inanely at the door. “’S late,” he says, although he thinks it’s probably edging into the territory where it’s more early than late.
“Yeah,” Alex agrees, unreadably. Then – “You don’t have to. If you don’t want to.” He isn’t looking at Jamie now, he’s looking down, fiddling with the creases on the coverlet. Jamie is reminded suddenly of the way he looks when he’s rehearsing his solos, head bowed, in the dressing room before a show.
Jamie falters, his heart thudding. He knows if he stays and they meet the morning together then it’ll be an acknowledgement he just can’t face; he stands before he can think too closely about his answer. “I’ll see you at breakfast,” he says instead, but doesn’t quite manage to make himself move. He feels like a moth that’s been dancing round a flame for hours, and suddenly the flame has been extinguished and he feels dizzy and disorientated. His jacket is still crumpled by Alex’s loafers on the floor: his stomach drops at how little time ago it was he’d tossed it thoughtlessly there, how much has happened since. Before he’d walked into this room after Alex, exchanging drunkenly facetious remarks about a group of lads at the bar they’d been at, he’d never so much as kissed another man. Now – Jamie doesn’t want to think about what now is. He’s not like Alex, he’s never been drawn to mapping out the dark, unexplored corners of his own desires. He’s never had that kind of freedom in his own curiosity; it’s always been too closely hemmed in by fear, and nothing about that has changed. If anything, it feels as though it’s clamped down even harder, hardly any room left for him at all.
“Okay,” Alex is looking at him from the bed, sheets crumpled around him in the shapes their bodies have left like sand after a tide. He rubs a hand over his face. For a moment, he looks like he’s on the brink of saying something else, more vulnerable than Jamie has seen him all night; it’s the slightly dreamy expression he gets when he’s found what he wants to say, but is still working out how to extract it from the ether of his thoughts and turn it into something legible to other people.
Jamie hates himself for not waiting to find out what it is. He grapples for the door handle and stumbles out into the harsh, unflinching light of the hallway. The door swings shut behind him, not quite hard enough to close properly; it catches on the latch. For a moment, he reaches out with the intention of pulling it properly closed – but then lets his hand drop like a stone, not trusting himself not to open it again instead.
He can feel his heart closing back up into a fist as he fumbles for the keys to his room, not allowing himself to breathe properly until the door is shut and locked behind him, the sudden silence ringing in his ears. The air in his suite is much colder than it was in Alex’s. With a jolt, he realises he’d forgotten to shut the windows before he went out earlier; the beginnings of dawn are everywhere.