

## PERSONAL RELATIONS

A series of short stories by

Anna Butler

© June 2017

ISBN: 9781370963164

Personal Relations © 2017Anna Butler

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, situations and incidents are the product of the author's imagination.

This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the author.

## Contents

Shopping List

Gossip Queen

All Because of Him

Candlelight

A Kiss Is Just A Kiss, But A Good Blow Job Is, Well, A Good Blow Job

Happy Holidays

Author's Note

SHOPPING LIST

March 2012, London

"Tall."

"Tall?" Aiden wriggles around in his seat for a minute or two, frowning. "Sure?"

"I'm sure." John Hogarth raises his hand to catch the waitress's attention, and when he has that, taps his glass to get a refill. He's stuck with his nephew for at least the next three or four hours while his sister fritters away her money on some serious shoe shopping. He'll need the alcohol to get through it, sanity intact.

"Mmnn." Aiden leans his chin on his hands in a deep-in-thought pose.

Whoa. _Far_ too reminiscent of John's father, from the tilt of the head to the thinness of nostrils, bright eyes hooded with eyelids drooping at the corners, and the thin-lipped, downturned mouth. The image of rectitude and solemnity that only a man of the Church can wear to perfection when faced with his offspring's childhood transgressions. John takes a healthy swig at his drink. How does Aiden manage it? He's only seven. Genetics has to be the science of the devil.

"Why?" Aiden asks, and his tone is his grandfather's too. Not the booming declamations from the pulpit or the fruity tenor unashamedly leading the hymn singing, but the pained tone of a man tried by the antics of the sinners around him.

John can only shake his head in rueful wonder at his own lack of a nice, shiny spine. Here he is, a successful PR professional with his own business—all right, in partnership with two old friends from university, but still. His own business and one that's increasingly making a name for itself. Lewis-Hogarth-Richards are good. Bloody good. So bloody good they have a nice juicy contract handling some of the Olympics work and are handling it well. So how is it Sal only has to comment that her fatherless boy needs time with his favourite uncle ("To _bond_ , John. To teach him things other than the name of every trout fly ever tied by mankind.") and that little dig at their father has turned John's spine to the finest jelly. Sal knows too many of his pressable buttons. There's no reason she couldn't have taken her blasted offspring shopping with her.

"It's the kissing thing," John explains, already regretting the game they'd devised to while away the time waiting for his partners, Kit Lewis and George Richards, to join him for what has been planned as a business-focused lunch. Sal's desire for new shoes is screwing with more people than just John. "I don't want to get a crick in the neck."

Aiden grimaces. "Ugh! Do you have to do that?"

"Afraid so. It's expected."

"Do what?" Kit Lewis asks from behind him.

John glowers in Kit's direction. "You're late."

"Hi, Uncle Kit!" Aiden instantly sheds his pose of grandfatherly seriousness for Kit's spontaneity, glittering and consciously charming.

John winces. Aiden is altogether too adept at soaking up other people's mannerisms, his talent for mimicry encouraged by Kit despite John's protests. If truth be told, it amuses John as much as anyone else, until Aiden decides he's going to be Kit for a while. Then it stops being funny. Then it's almost unbearable.

"Hi there, Tiger." Kit ruffles Aiden's hair and slides into a seat. He turns his usual alluring smile onto John. "And hello to you too, grouch. What's bitten you in the arse?"

"You're late for lunch, of course." Aiden switches back to seriousness.

"I'm always late." Kit glances at John. "George says he's sorry, but he's stuck in a meeting with the finance people at Mascetti's, working on their final figures for the Olympic TV ads. He won't get away for hours, so you just have me." Kit turns back to Aiden and pokes a disrespectful finger into his midriff. "I wasn't expecting you, though. I thought I could have a nice tête-a-tête lunch with your uncle. You're one hell of a gooseberry." A second's pause for consideration. "Maybe not as green."

"Oh, my mum's gone shopping, so I'm to stay with Uncle John until she gets back."

"That explains the snarl I got, then."

"I think Uncle John's hungry."

"Well, we'd better take care of that," Kit says, and signals the waitress with a smile that probably has her rocking back on her heels. It certainly has her hurrying to their table, and her answering smile seems far friendlier than the professional one she'd used on John.

John spends the next few minutes watching the two self-absorbed creatures in front of him, the original and its miniature copy, as they have all the fun of ordering lunch between them. He agrees to every suggestion they make. Not worth arguing.

"What were you two talking about when I got here?" Kit asks, sipping delicately at a glass of wine.

Aiden sips just as delicately at the Coke he's insisted on having served in an identical wine glass. "The list."

"What list?"

"The list about someone for Uncle John."

"Someone for your Uncle John?"

Aiden nods. "Grandad was talking to Mum and Grannie today. He said it was high time Uncle John found someone and got married."

"Did he now?" Kit says, all his attention seemingly on putting his glass down in one exact spot.

Aiden has a very good memory, with all the mimic's ability to repeat conversations. He has his family's intonations down pat. "Grandad said that Uncle John was wasting his life, and the sooner they got him sorted out the better for everybody. Grannie said she'd like more grandchildren and then she looked at Mum and went all scowly-frowny like this—" Aiden's face scrunches into a passable impression of a sixty-something vicar's wife trying not to cry. "Why does she want more, Uncle Kit? They've got me. Mum was on her phone, so she just said 'mmmmnnn' and 'uh-huh', and 'bad-word it, Adam's seeing that Cathy Dawson woman, I thought I had him in the bag'. Anyhow, I asked Grandad who he thought we should get. Grannie stopped looking frowny but she went pink and said that I was quite the little pitcher. What does that mean, Uncle Kit? Mum said 'uh-huh' again. Then Grandad told me I wasn't to say anything to anybody about other people's private conversations. He used his sermon voice. You know, Uncle John."

John does indeed know and can empathise with Aiden's faint air of resentment.

"Oh." Kit looks at John and grins slightly. "But my guess is that you told the grouch here."

"Of course I did. I tell Uncle John everything."

"Snitch." Kit is disapproving, but then, as John can attest, he has more to hide than either John or Aiden. Stands to reason he dislikes whistle-blowers.

"Uncle John told me he'd talk to Grandad about it."

"I bet. Time for one of those father-son chats?"

"No," John says, a touch grimly. "Time for a son-father chat. I intend to do all the talking, mainly about how I can manage my life without his interference, thank you very much. I don't need him or anyone else to help me."

"Really? Things have changed. You used to need all the help I could give you in Uni." Kit gives John a smile that has him floundering for a second, drowning in its warmth and intimacy.

He does wish Kit wouldn't do that. Despite ten years of knowing Kit, of fending off the occasional drunken hit on his virtue because he can never quite believe Kit means it or wants the same things he does, or seeing the devastating impact Kit can have on the people who tangle with him... Despite all that, John has to harden his heart when Kit does things like that to him. Hardening the heart hurts. And not in a good way.

"What does that mean?" Aiden asks.

"That your Uncle John was never very good with the ladies, even with me helping him along."

"That's overegging the pudding, Kit."

"Pfft." Kit stares at him, expression unusually serious. "Question is, are you ready to find someone?"

It would be so satisfying to smack Kit around the head for being obtuse, but John settles for a shrug and a "I wouldn't mind."

Kit gives him a thoughtful glance, one eyebrow quirked in Spock fashion. They'd spent hours at Uni perfecting that, and only Kit can bring it off with credit. Not that George had even tried, being more of a Stars Wars man himself, while John was a better Doctor Who. He still has his Tom Baker scarf somewhere; he hasn't upgraded to the newer models, because he can't manage David Tennant's accent even when he's drunk. He has Matt Smith's hair though. That's a start.

Kit turns to Aiden. "Good idea, d'you think? Who's it going to be?"

"I don't know. I asked Uncle John."

"And what did he say?"

"He said he had no bad-word idea, and then he said what the very-bad-word did Grandad think he was playing at and that he'll have something to say about interfering old men. And then he said Grandad would get it all wrong, and I'd better help out by making a list of all the... the..." Aiden pauses, his memory failing him for once over the new word he'd learned that day. "What was it?"

"Criteria," John says, seeing how much Kit appreciates Aiden's verbatim report. "That just means all the things I'd want that someone to have."

"Ah." Kit nods. "A shopping list."

"I guess." John forces his mouth to curve into a smile. "I hate shopping."

"This is different. This is the best kind of shopping. Can I help?" Kit's almost as eager as Aiden. "How far had you got?"

"We'd only decided on tall," John says.

"For kissing," explains Aiden, as the waitress puts plates in front of them, oblivious to her slight start. "So he doesn't get a crick in his neck."

John, conscious of the waitress's interest, grins at her weakly, all too aware that neither Kit nor Aiden share his reticence and won't much care who overhears. It seems to John that she drifts away unusually slowly, as if she's straining to hear what's going on. If she's not careful, she'll be getting a derisory tip for being such a bloody nosy-parker.

"Seems reasonable," Kit agrees. "How tall, though? We'll have to be exact here. We don't want your Grandad looking at people who're an inch too tall or an inch too small. He won't want to waste his time on people who are obviously unsuitable. We'll have to give him an exact specification. What do you think, John? About my height?"

John stares, the pasta he's just speared onto his fork suspended in mid-air. "Your height?"

"Well, we're about the same." Kit holds his hand up in the air a little above his head, palm held out flat and flicks it between himself and John to drive the point home. "That's good for kissing. That way, nobody gets a sore neck."

Kit's green eyes, bright and glittering, are so innocently, ingenuously wide that John almost falls into them, momentarily unable to breathe. With an effort, he restarts both his lungs and the fork's upward movement, and manages a "That sounds fine" without his voice doing an embarrassing break and croak in the middle. For which he's grateful.

"Okay." Kit takes a hasty few mouthfuls of food and pulls a notebook out of the Mulberry satchel he'd hung over the back of his chair when he arrived, along with a disreputable stub of a pencil. Most people, of course, would have pulled out a tablet, but Kit has a fondness for paper and pen. He uses his iPad to play games and mock people on Facebook. He opens the notebook at a clean page and carefully smooths the page flat, his thumb rubbing down the book's spine, his fingers spread across the white paper

John shifts uneasily in his chair.

Kit licks the pencil.

John looks away so fast he almost gives himself whiplash. The sudden rush of heat has him bending his head to the plate again, concentrating on his pasta. It's tasteless and bland.

He tells himself to remember all those years he and George kept a running tally of Kit's conquests, the list George always refers to as Kit's 'inventory'. Remember how long that list was. Just... remember. The way he's always had to remember.

"Inventory," he says, sotto voce, to drive the memory home.

"Now then," Kit says, in the business-like yet charming manner he employs for serious things like sucking up to major clients and winning lucrative contracts. He carefully prints the title on the top of the page:

SHOPPING LIST: SOMEONE FOR JOHN

Aiden is admiring. "You write nice. My teacher writes like that."

"Nicely," corrects his conscientious uncle, unheeded.

"I had to practice," Kit says, beaming with a wholly spurious modesty, and writes:

Tall - just like Kit

"Hair?" Kit bolts down another quick mouthful of food.

"Hair would be nice," John agrees.

Aiden and Kit look at each other. Kit rolls his eyes and sighs. Aiden rolls _his_ eyes and sighs, an instant behind Kit. Watching them, John just sighs. No delicate sips from the wineglass for him. He swigs down a large mouthful, as a sort of necessary anaesthesia. If this keeps up he'll be pissed before mid-afternoon.

"Oh, a flash of wit." Kit puts down his pencil to offer applause.

"Uncle Kit meant what colour hair, Uncle John." Aiden's eyes are rolling so hard he'll end up with a headache, and John won't have an ounce of sympathy for him.

John shrugs. He's sure Kit did. He's just not sure what else Kit means.

"Brown? Black?" Kit purses his lips. "What about a redhead?"

"Don't know one."

"And you think that will stop your father?" Kit gives him a measuring look. "What do you think, Aiden? Your uncle's so dark, I think we should go for some contrast here, something to complement him. What about blond?"

"What's that?" Aiden, being an unmannerly little tyke, picks up his bowl to slurp down the marinara sauce.

John decides not to worry too much about table manners until he needs it as a diversion. "Remember you met Canary Wilson this morning when your mum dropped you off at my office? She's blonde."

"She has golden hair, just like a princess." Aiden licks at the red moustache the sauce has left on his upper lip. "She's nice."

John doesn't normally think of Canary as nice. One of the best in the business, yes, but she's usually too focused for _nice_. "She has a boyfriend. He's an engineer, or something. Works for London Transport."

Kit makes a tch-ing sound between his teeth. "She'll do anything for free Tube travel, that one."

"You could share. You always tell me I should share things, like my sweets." Aiden gives John a hard look. "And your share's always my favourite ones."

"He's a rotten sort of uncle to have," Kit says. "But you can't share women like that, Aiden. It's not on. They're aren't like sweets."

"She's awfully pretty. Just like a princess in a book." Aiden picks up the bowl again and sticks out his tongue, but even John balks at bowl-licking in public. Aiden sighs at John's shocked hiss and puts the bowl down.

"She is. But not nearly tall enough," Kit points out. "Use your bread, Aiden. That's what it's for."

"Not as much fun," Aiden says, but mops out his bowl, as directed.

Staring at his plate, John worries first about what in hell Kit is up to, and then about the invidious effect of children's literature on his nephew's precocious appreciation of the opposite sex, while having a simultaneous vision of Aiden's adolescence that leaves him shuddering in apprehension. He puts his fork down, appetite gone. Dear God, he hopes Sal remarries long before then and Aiden can be someone else's problem when it comes to hormones. Maybe he can find this Adam bloke Sal was moaning about, and have an encouraging word.

"And anyway, I was thinking a darker blond. Not as golden and lacking the final 'e'. Between you and me, Aiden, princesses have hair that might be, well, too golden for your Uncle John. He's a bit dull for that."

"Hey!"

"More like your hair, then?" Aiden suspends his bowl-mopping and stares at Kit. "Yours is a sort of gold."

Kit puts down his fork for a moment and pulls a lock of dark blond hair in front of his eyes, squinting at it. "It might do. What do you think, John? Something along the lines of this should contrast with yours pretty well. Subtly gold and gleaming, without being flashy."

John swallows hard. Unable even to look the food in the eye anymore, he pushes his plate aside. "It's okay, I guess."

"Is that a yes?"

"Okay. Yes."

Kit picks up the pencil, licks the point again and writes:

Subtly-gold blond hair \- just like Kit

"We're making progress," Kit says. "Slow but sure. Now, eyes."

"Uuhh?" John drags his own eyes up from reading Kit's list upside down, trying to work out what's going on inside the machiavellian mind inhabiting the man in front of him.

"What's your favourite colour eyes, Aiden?" Kit asks.

"Brown." Aiden gives John a melting look of adoration and hero worship.

Not exactly subtle, since John's the only one at the table with brown eyes, but he's helpless before Aiden's charm. He's Sal's son, all right. "Very flattering, I'm sure. And?"

"And?"

"And what do you want?"

"Can I have something sticky and nice for pudding? With chocolate?"

"It's all in the timing," Kit murmurs, raising his chin in a proud smirk. "And the training."

John laughs for the first time since Sal dumped Aiden on him. "You're corrupting him. It's like he's been cloned from you, some days."

"Then they've cloned my good taste, as well. Brown's my favourite, too."

John stares, then instead of offering the healthy fruit salad he'd been determined his nephew should have for dessert, he finds himself agreeing to profiteroles, stuffed with rich, thick crème anglais and swimming in chocolate sauce. But it's the last gasp of whatever sense of self-preservation he has that prompts his hasty addition, "But if you're sick, Kit will have to look after you."

"Then I'll have a lot of chocolate sauce."

John just laughs again, and calls over the waitress to give the order. Not quite up to choux pastry at that time of day, he opts for the fruit salad for himself. Kit shudders at what he calls John's Puritanical tendencies and demands cheesecake.

"Now that's settled, can we please get on?" Kit jabs his pencil at the page, leaving a dent beside _blond_. "We were deciding on eye colour."

"Grey? Blue? Brown? Both there?" John says. "Although pirate eyepatches can be sexy... no. Does it matter?"

"Of course it matters! You've got to take this seriously, John, or the Lord alone knows who you'll end up with."

"All right." John pushes back the surge of discomfort that uncurls like lead in his belly, half afraid that Kit's having some huge joke at his expense and half sorry that the diversion of Aiden's profiteroles hasn't been enough to turn the conversation onto something else. Kit seems to be determined not to be side-tracked. Yet another instance of John getting indisputable evidence Kit isn't nearly as frivolous as he pretends.

"So, what goes with subtly gold-blond hair?" Kit once more pulls forward the lock of hair and squints at it. "Can't be brown. Two brown-eyed people together are too matchy-matchy. We'll be wearing identical sweaters next. Blue's a good possibility, I suppose. Grey?"

John starts to smile, his anger at his father's disgraceful interference and a vague depression both lifting. A throbbing pressure starts up in his groin and he shifts in his seat again. "Grey's too cold."

"Then what's left?"

"Green," Aiden mumbles, barely looking up from his dessert, mouth smeared with chocolate sauce.

John meets Kit's intense gaze. "Green would be good."

"Dark green? Light green? Emerald? Jade?"

"We'll need something for a comparison, a kind of example." John is still all at sea about where Kit's heading with this, but surprising himself about how willing he is to drift until he finds out. Every time Kit's tried this on since Uni, John's closed him down fast. But this time... this time feels different.

"Don't know what we could use." Kit sounds doubtful.

John takes a deep breath and finally joins in whatever game it is Kit's playing. If it's like most of the games Kit drags him into, he'll end up losing his lunch money, metaphorically speaking. But, hey, who needs to eat, especially metaphorically?

"Your green eyes go pretty well with that subtly gold-blond hair," he says, just as the waitress leans in to refill their glasses. John flushes. She stares and grins, looking from John to Kit and back again, eyebrow raised. Shit! Just what he needs. He stares coldly back at her. Aiden isn't the only one who can channel uptight moralistic Church of England archdeacons and when it comes down to it, John's had years more practice. The waitress retreats rapidly, the grin wiped off her face.

Kit's expression is unnaturally solemn. "Really, John, where's your sense of timing? The kid and I have it in spades."

"You must have got mine too."

"Well, I certainly intend to get yours," Kit says, and while John chokes and splutters, he adds to the list:

Green eyes - just like Kit

John's heart lurches at the unmistakable suggestion. Kit can't mean it. He just can't mean it. Can he? Does he mean it? Oh God, what if he really means it?

Kit turns his attention to Aiden. "Okay, Tiger. What's next on the list?"

"I dunno," Aiden says, sounding bored. He's polished off the profiteroles and is eyeing the remains of Kit's cheesecake, pointedly ignoring the fruit salad. Not that John blames him. The strawberries are imported and tasteless. He should have had the cheesecake himself.

Kit pushes his dessert plate in Aiden's direction. "Well, let's move onto other things. What sort of things should this person be interested in? We need a few shared interests for those all too short hours when your uncle's not fixated on work."

Hot sex. Lots and lots of hot... John glances at his nephew and swallows the words unsaid.

"Apart from the obvious one that we can't mention in front of the child," Kit says, smooth as cream on glass.

Has Kit had developed ESP abilities without telling anyone about it? Does Kit, through the same hitherto unknown ESP ability, know about the growing discomfort in John's groin? Kit smiles at him. He knows. Oh God, he knows.

John looks unflinchingly into those wicked green eyes. "Cricket," he says firmly, daring Kit to find anything suggestive at all to say about that.

Kit is, of course, equal to the challenge. "Oh, all those athletic men in pressed whites!" He positively glows. "I love Lords on a sunny summer afternoon."

Loves cricket - just like Kit

"How are you on smoking?" Kit asks, looking up from the page, and tapping the satchel where he keeps the single packet of cigarettes that usually lasts him a week. He's been trying to give up completely for at least the last five years. He claims to lack motivation.

"Prefer not." John really doesn't like the smell or taste of tobacco, although he's always tolerated Kit smoking because, well, _Kit_.

"Ah." Kit glances at the satchel. "Well, I always wanted a good incentive..."

John lets the smile break out, warmth spreading through him from the chest out.

"Good. Anything else?" Kit licks the pencil again, watching John closely.

John hesitates. Kit just doesn't want the same things he does. Not silly things like cricket or smoking. John's wants are a lot deeper than that. He doesn't want the casual kind of thing that's the breath of life to Kit. It's the main reason that he's always side-stepped Kit's occasional advances, pretending not to even see them most times.

"Well," he says, slowly. "I'm kind of serious, Kit."

Kit really should give up on eye-rolling. Supercilious is not a good look on him. "Just how long have I known you?"

"Too long."

"So what makes you think I don't know that?" Kit writes something down quickly. He looks over his list, frowning.

"Finished?" Aiden asks.

"Think so." Kit studies the list for a moment more. "Okay, I think it's done. But I don't think that we need bother your Grandad with it."

"Am I a hopeless case then?" John considers going back to sighing.

"Naw. It's just that there's nothing for him to do. I think we've cracked it."

"Read it out, then," Aiden says.

Kit clears his throat and reads the list in quiet tone.

SHOPPING LIST : SOMEONE FOR JOHN

Tall - just like Kit

Subtly gold-blond hair \- just like Kit

Green eyes - just like Kit

Loves cricket - just like Kit

Non-smoker- just like Kit

He pauses then reads the last line in a voice that trembles slightly.

Seriously loves John - just like Kit

John's face flares with heat.

"Of course," Kit says, "I'm lying about one or two things."

"Which things?" John's voice is a croak.

"I haven't really given up smoking, though I promise to try, but I mean the rest. 'Specially the next bit."

"The next bit?"

"About how serious I am."

"Oh." John holds out his hand and Kit puts the notebook into it. He reads the list through twice, each time his eyes dwelling on the last line.

"Very serious," Kit says, and there's a tremor underlying his soft voice, a kind of uncertainty that John has never heard before. Not from Kit, at any rate.

"Okay." John reads the shopping list once again, then nods. "This isn't the place to talk about it, and we need to talk. I'll take Aiden home. Dad should be there and can step up to do childcare duty. My place? In a couple of hours."

Kit smile would ignite steel. He takes a deep, rather wavering breath, and glows. Damn him, he's glowing and there's something about the way he's looking at John, as if John's dessert and better than cheesecake. He grins. "Text me when you're home. I've a little shopping of my own to do."

**~*~**

The Rev. James W Hogarth is an immensely dignified man with a great deal of gravitas, an imposing presence and a powerful personality. He's a man who was greatly respected by the parishioners and clergy within his archdeaconry and by his bishop (and in the Church of England, the clergy and their bishops are seldom in harmony), and even after his retirement is seen as a safe pair of clerical hands when it comes to various contentious committees at Church House. He's also a man who looks extremely sheepish and self-conscious when his son and grandson arrive on his doorstep.

"Ah. John. I wasn't expecting to see you today." He looks around vaguely. "Your mother's out. And Sal."

John glances down at Aiden, then pointedly at his father, keeping the grim-faced expression steady. "That's all right, Dad. You're the one I was looking for, anyway. I think you know why I'm here. Aiden told me all about your interesting proposition for my future."

His father winces visibly. It's good for the old man to be caught out now and then, to be reminded he isn't infallible. He's a retired Archdeacon, not the bloody Pope.

"I'm prepared to overlook your interference this time, Dad."

"I'm not interfering, John—"

"Damn right you're not. What you are doing, is taking care Aiden for the rest of the day." John hesitates. He's not entirely sure what Kit intends, but what the hell. Or sure what he really thinks about what's going to happen... but really, what the everlasting hell. "I've got a date. A hot date."

"A date!" his father says, eager, then bites off the question before he can ask it.

"Good," John says, approving his father's restraint and knowing exactly what that effort has cost.

His father sighs and holds out his hand to take his punishment. Aiden hugs John, and tucks his hand into his grandfather's.

"I'll text Sal and tell him he's home." John turns to go. If he hurries, he'll be back at his West India Quay flat within the hour.

"Will you... er...?"

"Tell you about it? I might. But then again, I might not. Bye, Dad." John pauses and turns back on the threshold to smile gently at his father. "By the way, I let him have profiteroles and gallons of chocolate ganache. I should think you'll be on toilet duty within the hour." He takes a moment to savour his revenge, to treasure the expression on his father's face, and the smile broadens. "Love to Mum!"

**~*~**

By the time the door chime sounds, John is racked with doubt. As time ticks past, all of his old uncertainties resurface.

Kit's well... Kit. Whatever he was playing at over lunch, John has almost convinced himself he misheard and misunderstood everything, that he's made a complete and utter fool of himself by misreading the signals Kit sent him, and that his stupidity will ruin their long friendship. Not to mention the business... Jesus, George will kill the pair of them. Kit will never be able to forgive him, will never feel comfortable with him again. He's ruined everything, ruined the most important thing in his life. His face burns.

He's kept a safe distance from Kit for years. It's not the first time Kit's propositioned... no. That's not fair. Propositioning sounds too soulless, too mechanical a process. Kit has claimed love and devotion before, but he was always more pissed than the proverbial newt when he did it. John's honest enough to admit that Kit being drunk gave him enough cover to pretend not to hear or see it, to believe it's the wine talking or the tequila. He's never been sure Kit meant it, before. But now...

When the door chime sounds he's tempted to retreat to the safest place and panic. The cupboard under the stairs, perhaps, a la Harry Potter. No one would look for him there.

The chime sounds again.

He swallows hard, forces himself to go to the door.

Kit bounds in as soon as John cracks the door open. "At last! I thought you'd gone deaf." He's in the hallway in two steps, and when John opens his lips to say something, anything, fastens himself onto John's mouth like a leech.

Astonished, John just lets him. There's still the sharp tang of wine and a faint smokiness on the lips pressing against his and on the hot, hot tongue pushing into his mouth. John stands frozen only for a second, tasting that distinctive Kit taste for the first time, then he closes his eyes and melts into Kit's embrace, his own tongue pushing eagerly into Kit's mouth to taste it more. He gets both arms up around Kit's neck and pulls him in closer. The world contracts into the heat of Kit's mouth on his, Kit's hands moving on his back in slow, sensuous sweeps.

When finally they break apart for air, Kit draws back, smiling into John's eyes. "How's the neck?"

"Perfect," John says. He's having trouble breathing. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. That's it. Easy when you get the hang of it. "Not a crick anywhere."

"Well, we can cross the first item off the list, then. We know I've got the hair and eyes, that I love cricket as much as you do, and I haven't had a smoke for... ."

"About ten minutes," John says, staring into those intense green eyes and twisting his fingers into the gleaming, subtly-gold hair.

"It was nerves! I didn't say I'd give up smoking immediately. What's left?"

"Getting serious." John has severe pulmonary trouble again at the thought.

"Ah yes. Getting serious." Kit puffs out a little sigh. "I suppose we need to get this over with." He pulls John over to the sofa, a huge purple velvet affair that really should have clued everyone into John's inner queer a lot earlier. "Me first, okay?"

John's surprised, and maybe a little alarmed, to see Kit's hands are trembling.

"I've wanted this for a very long time," Kit says, after a moment of staring so intently that John raises a hand and rubs at his cheek. Is Kit staring at an outbreak of spots or something? "Since before we left Uni. You've always been so skittish about it though—"

"I've known you a long time."

Kit's grimace wrinkles up his nose in a way that makes John want to say bad words like 'cute' and 'sweet' and 'Oh God, I want him so much I'm aching for it.' John has to press his lips tight shut to stop the words tumbling out.

"Yeah, I know." Kit grimaces again. "Thing is, when we met at Uni I was stupid, right? I'd just discovered why God gave men cocks. I was sort of worried that if I didn't use it a lot, the technology would fail, or something."

"Don't think they fall off if you don't use 'em, Kit."

"Big risk to take though, and I need to see the scientific evidence. Anyhow, by the time I'd worked out that what I really want is you and only you, I'd already queered my pitch. You've never believed I was serious. And I know I acted like a complete arse every time I made a move on you and you waltzed away as if you hadn't seen me. I'll admit I didn't ever handle that well."

Given that Kit had appeared to handle it by throwing himself into the most torrid affair possible with whoever he could nail, John didn't feel he had grounds for disputing that assessment. Kit hadn't acted like a complete arse. He'd been a complete arse.

"And that made things worse. You were even more skittish after that." Kit scowls and broods. His hands close on John's, the grip painful enough to make John wince. "It was one of those virtuous circle things, only not so virtuous. You didn't fall for me because I was too busy playing the field, so when I asked you said no, and the only thing I could do was play harder, so when I asked you again you said no because I was too busy playing the field... round and round, and no way out."

"You were never serious."

"I _wasn't_. I wasn't serious with anyone else. I am serious with you."

John opens his mouth, and then closes it again words unsaid.

"I'd begun to think you'd never come around," Kit says. "Most times I work up the guts to ask you, you pretend you haven't seen it or heard me, and retreat faster than Napoleon from Moscow." He frowns. "Why not this time?"

John doesn't have to think about it. "You aren't drunk."

Kit stares at him, mouth open. "That's it? I'm not drunk? Bloody hell, John, it was always Dutch courage with me. I didn't ever dare ask you sober."

"I never thought you meant it," John's rather apologetic. Because seriously, if Kit had always meant it, they'd wasted a lot of time. "I thought it was just the booze talking. Today... today was different."

"I'm sober for a start, and Aiden handed me the opportunity on a plate. I am serious about this, John Hogarth. I've always been serious about this."

John nods.

"Sober. Serious. Wanting to make a real go at it with you. Not just the fast fuck and move on thing I've had with everyone else while I was waiting for you to realise I bloody well meant it. Just..." Kit stops, and with the drooping of eyelids and mouth, he looks uncertain, not as cocky as usual, unsure of himself. "It's what the list said— _seriously loves John_. I want to do that. I want to love you very seriously."

John manages a smile, and seeing it, Kit relaxes. The trembling in his hands stop.

"Do you want that, too?"

"I always have," John says. He hadn't quite realised it until he said it, but now he knows. Now he knows for sure.

The uncertain look fades from Kit's face. But still, he's not his usual confident, extrovert self. "Then maybe we should start as I mean to go on. I'd like to love you. Seriously. All night."

Complete pulmonary paralysis.

Breathe. Breathe.

John can feel his face burning, but he nods. "Oh God, yes!" he says with absolute, if breathless, conviction. "Kiss me again."

Kit laughs and does as he's told, and John melts away again for several long delicious minutes to a place where there's only the sharp tangy taste that's already coming to mean 'Kit', the rush of rattled breathing, Kit's hands sliding under his shirt, feeling scalding hot against his bare skin. He slips his own hands inside Kit's shirt to return the favour, running them lightly over a body he has never before touched with such intimacy and warmth.

Well, what does it matter? Who the hell needs to breathe anyway?

When they break apart, Kit tugs him up off the sofa and towards the bedroom without another word said. Progress is satisfyingly slow. They shed clothes and shoes on the way, stopping every second or two for another long, deep kiss, for more exploration of familiar, newly intimately familiar, bodies.

John isn't sure how long it takes for them to get naked and into his bed. Just the right amount of time, though. Not too slow, not too fast. Just enough time to get seriously hot. And then he is lying under Kit, skin pressed to warm skin, feeling Kit's weight holding him down, Kit's cock pressing against his thigh, Kit's mouth on his and, fantasy of fantasies, Kit's hands running down his sides to start pumping his almost painfully-hard cock.

He moans into the mouth fastened on his, biting gently at Kit's lower lip, his hands cupping the smooth-skinned buttocks, pulling him in closer. It's been quite a while since a man had held him like this. Not that he's been a monk, but it hadn't ever been Kit. Substitutes haven't proved to be satisfactory or long lasting, no matter how John has tried to make it work. This is different. This was, oh, so very different.

"John." Kit is murmuring between fast distracting kisses that run from one ear, around the line of his jaw and up to the other ear. "John. I want to make love to you. Please let me, John."

John answer is to part his legs and thrust up against Kit, invitingly.

"I won't hurt you," Kit promises, leaning over the edge of the bed to find the results of his own shopping trip. He'd tossed the lube and condoms he'd gone to find onto the floor at some point in that long slow undressing.

"I know," John says, tangling both hands in the blond hair flopping down to obscure Kit's eyes. "Right now, Kit. Do it right now. I can't hold on much longer."

Kit grins. "Me neither."

Another long, long kiss, another endless time of bodies straining together, rubbing up against each other, then John's back is arching as a well-lubed finger pushes gently inside him. He catches his breath sharply at the intrusion, gasping as Kit's probing finger finds the magic little spot, his whole body responding in answer to the rhythm of Kit's wicked, evil, skilful finger. Another finger, and another, and John is beyond thought and speech, conscious only of Kit lifting himself up for a minute, and it's too much, too much... John clutches at the beloved weight holding him down as Kit pushes slowly up into him, bending his knees outwards to give Kit more room.

Kit's inside him. Dear God, is Kit inside him! Kit lies on him, still, breathing hard. John loves that, knowing that Kit is letting him get used to the feeling, waiting to be sure he's ready before starting to stroke. This is as hot as it gets, but God, is it loving too.

"All right?" There's strain in Kit's voice.

John nods, and hooks his legs around Kit's waist. "Go," he says in Kit's ear.

Kit, grinning down at him, pulls back almost until he's left completely, then slams into him, pounding on his prostate and sending a wave of such intense pressure through him that John's drowning in it. Another stroke, and another, and then he's bucking wildly under Kit, matching him thrust for thrust, trying to get him in harder and higher, and the intense pain-pleasure of orgasm makes him feel his whole body is exploding through the white heat in his balls. Kit is yelling something that sounds ridiculously like he loves John and they're both holding on and gasping and the heat's washing over John until he can barely breathe unaided.

And then it's an exhausted, happy time, holding each other, with tired little kisses and caresses, little half-broken words of love and pleasure, until Kit slides reluctantly out of John and gathers him into an embrace.

It's several minutes before John can manage an entire sentence. "I think we got everything on the shopping list, Kit."

Kit's smile is beatific. Serene. As unlike the usually energetic, jazzed up Kit as could be.

"Love you," John says, for the first time. It won't be the last.

Kit's fingers caress his cheek. "I love you too, John. A lot."

"Just as well," John says, dizzy, starting his lungs up again. He'll have to watch that. It could be an inconvenient reaction to realising that Kit loves him. Very inconvenient. He needs his breath for a second bout just as soon as humanly possible. "You've made the sale. Time to get down to some serious consumer testing of the product..."

^^++^^++^^++^^

Gossip Queen

May 2012

"Do you know anything about Kit's latest squeeze?"

"Latest squeeze?" John repeats.

"Dunno why I'm asking you, since you never like to gossip." George Richards takes a long pull at his beer, and wipes the froth from his top lip with back of his hand. "Surely you've noticed? Heard the gossip? Seen the difference in Kit?"

"He seems pretty much the same to me." John sips at his own beer in what Kit, had he been in the _Ship Aground_ with them, would describe as a nice, lady-like way. "What's the latest, then?"

"Word is that he's off the market. I mean, really off the market, tied up with someone so special that he's not available. Have you ever heard that one before?"

"That's new."

"Where Kit Lewis is concerned? Damn right that's new. It's like he's had some sort of personality transplant."

"Mmn," John says.

"Bloody unnatural, if you ask me. Not like him. I never thought he'd be like that with anyone except—" George stops abruptly and eyes John sidelong. He coughs. "Better not say, I suppose. But it seems to be true. The girls in here have all given up trying to catch Kit's eye. So've the boys. It's as if he doesn't even see them. He's given up flirting, John. Kit! Can you fathom it? The man breathed less often than he flirted."

John manages another "Mmn."

"He isn't out on the razzle every night. He hasn't gone drinking for a week that I know of, and it's probably longer. He's even given up smoking at last. The universe must have shifted half an inch over, or something. Whoever he's seeing, this is mega." George gives John a pitying look. "Surely you've heard about it! Everyone knows."

John shrugs.

"You must go around half-comatose," George says. "Anyhow, Kit is definitely hooked by someone and the ladies are settling for us lesser mortals. Even no-hopers like Giles are getting some action."

John raises an eyebrow at this rather unkind aspersion cast on their admittedly gauche and retiring chief designer and webmaster. He doesn't have to say anything. The eyebrow is enough.

"You know what I mean. Giles would be the first one to tell you he's shy, only he'd stutter so badly through the confession that you wouldn't work out more than one word in three. That boy goes scarlet with embarrassment saying good morning to his best friends. He nearly dies when he has to speak to a girl. And have you seen how they treat him? They barely know he's there, most of the time. But Giles..." George pauses for effect and says, impressively, "John, Giles is taking Canary on a date. Canary. On a date."

"Canary?" John glances over to a neighbouring table to check out the lady in question.

Lewis-Hogarth-Richards occupies space in the same building as two accountancy firms and a corporate lawyer's office. Relations with the other companies are friendly, to the point where half a dozen women, culled from each of the firms, are having a shared lunch. Canary Wilson is among them: pretty and vivacious, delicate and tiny, and not looking at all as though she's one of the most cut-throat and ambitious communications professionals in the business. She'll clamber over anyone to get a better contract or a spot in PR Weekly, and barely notice the scars her dainty stiletto-heeled boots leave on those she's left behind her. She's a looker, is Canary, and in demand. John can't imagine her and Giles. But it's quite possible that George's theory about the ladies' chagrin over Kit is accurate: they all look morose.

"She's quite something, is our Canary." George shakes his head over his beer. "And she's going out with Giles. Astonishing."

"You're a malicious old gossip," John says, grinning and wondering what happened to the London Transport engineer Canary had been seeing. Maybe his ticket expired, or something. "Giles may be shy but he's one of the good guys."

"Yeah, yeah. I know that. I wasn't getting at Giles. Just she turned me down flat and yet... I mean, Giles! The point I'm trying to make here is that the rest of us have a chance at last. Kit's not putting himself about anymore and the ladies are pining for some action." George finishes off his ale. "I'm taking Ellie Brown to dinner," he says, giving John an oddly tentative look.

Ellie is an actress, currently between jobs at the National because the 'theatre is where it's _real_ , dahling, nowhere near as soulless as TV'. She's been temping in the corporate law firm's offices for the last six months. They'd met at the building's Christmas party, most of which John can't remember with any accuracy. He might have kissed Ellie in the emergency stairwell—at least, he thinks it was Ellie—but she'd departed soon afterwards with Ben Rosens, the corporate lawyer himself. She'd kissed Ben Rosens in the emergency stairwell too; of that much, John is certain. He'd seen them.

"Good for you," he says. "You might want to watch Rosens, though. He had plans in that direction at Christmas, at any rate."

"But you don't?"

"No. I don't."

"Okay. I don't mind crossing Rosens, but it would've been a dirty trick if you'd been interested." George blows out a noisy little breath and finally, thinks John, gets to the crux of what he wants. "I was hoping that you'd noticed what was going on."

"I don't do gossip, much." John feels slightly shamed, as if confessing to a personal moral failing.

"I thought you might tell me who it is."

John finishes off his beer, regarding George over the top of his glass. "Tell you who it is?"

"He usually tells you everything."

John lets his mouth twitch, the closest he'll come to smiling. "Does he? There's a bet on, is there?"

"Of course there's a bet on. The entire building's in on it. I heard that at least two offices put in their weekly Lottery money, even though the odds of Kit and a new squeeze lasting longer than two trips around the block are almost as bad as winning the lottery. You don't think it might be Livvy, do you? She didn't like letting go. Like _Fatal Attraction_ without the bunny boiling—"

"Only because there aren't many bunnies hopping about South London," John says.

Livvy Simmons had been the fourth in their early partnership, but burning from a short fling with Kit, she'd ruptured their new and fledgling company. Only now, four years later, were they getting out of the financial doldrums after buying her out. So bad had it been, punches had been thrown. By Livvy. She'd blacked Kit's eye nicely.

Mind you, he'd asked for it. And the only reason she'd blacked his eye was that she got there before John and George could. It took some time for things to get back on an even keel.

"So, not Livvy?"

"Haven't seen her for at least a year. Last I heard, she was taking on the comms director role in one of the local authorities. Newham, I think."

"Well, that's one local authority we probably won't get any business from." But George only shrugs as he speaks, philosophical.

" And she's seeing someone. Don't know how serious it is, but it isn't Kit." John frowns. "A banker, maybe? Someone in the City, anyway. She was all over Twitter about it a few weeks ago."

George nods. "Always better to keep it outside of work. That was a disaster."

George isn't joking The Titanic had been less of a disaster. Much less.

"Mmmn." John focuses on his beer, tilting the glass to get the last few drops.

"Canary tried to give him a whirl, did you know? Failed, obviously, if she's stepping out with Giles."

"That's another juicy rumour that got by me. Do people not tell me things because I'm the boss? One of the bosses."

"No. People don't tell you things because you're an innocent." George signals to the bar tender to refill their pints. "Damn, I was hoping you'd give me a bit of an edge."

"Sorry. You'll have to work it out on your own. No, I won't have another, thanks. I've got a meeting this afternoon with the design team at the Olympics organising committee. I'll need all my wits about me." John glances at his watch. "In fact, I had better be on my way. See you later. I'll be back around four."

George grunts and waves a hand in farewell.

**~*~**

Canary hustles out of the pub to join John in the street, muttering something about walking back to work with him to put a pitch together for a new contract with one of the bigger City banks.

Hopefully not the one Livvy Simmons' new bloke works for. John would prefer to avoid another Titanic iceberg.

"Little bird tells me you have a date," John says.

Canary rolls her eyes. "This company is a hotbed of gossip."

"Funny that. I almost never hear it."

"You must be deaf, then. I tell you, I could go and lock myself in the basement storeroom, wrap myself in four hundred metres of PVC mesh substrate"—which has John twitching, because, well, _kinky_ —"entirely on my own and no-one to see me, no-one to hear me. And sneeze. I guarantee that when I get back to the office, sixteen people will ask me how my cold is before I get more than three feet towards my desk." She huffs a bit. "It's impossible to have a private life around here."

"I don't have a problem. I don't think people talk about me like that. Do they?"

Lewis-Hogarth-Richards occupies the top floor of a converted Victorian warehouse in Jacob Street, one street back from the riverside in Bermondsey—which makes Canary's point about the basement store room all the more telling. They go into the lobby together and John, having been brought up to be polite, holds the door for her as they go in and calls the lift. She stands blocking the lift doors so they won't close.

"You're you," she says. "You probably just don't notice. Who told you about my date, then?"

"George."

She laughs. "Gawd. He's worse than my old grannie when it comes to gabbing about other people's business." And when John gestures to the lift, she shakes her head and adds, "No, it's okay, I'm not going up just yet. I really do need to check the substrate for some banners for CitBank. Hey, listen, do you know who Kit's seeing? That's the real juicy bit of gossip at the moment."

"George asked me that, too. His excuse was he has a bet going on it. What's yours?"

"I'm just nosy." Canary tries her most winning smile and pokes John familiarly in the ribs. "Go on. You can tell me."

He shrugs. "I'm sure. But I don't know what I can tell you."

"See?" she says, tone derisive. "You just don't notice things."

"Plus I'm deaf and, according to George, comatose." He glances up as the door alarm gives a peevish little toot, and a light flashes. "Someone's called the lift. Better go. Have a nice time with Giles."

"I will. Find out and tell me, okay?"

He grins and, when she steps back, he lets the doors close.

**~*~**

The Olympics committee meeting goes pretty well in the end. John is good at pitching the company's work. He can do upbeat, professional and authoritative with the best of them and he's a demon with a PowerPoint presentation. Animated bullet points and everything. With Kit's ability to smooch celebrities into signing up to endorse their campaigns and George's financial savvy, Lewis-Hogarth-Richards is moving up to stand against the big boys. They get invited to all the government departments' pitches now almost on automatic; and if the work isn't wildly exciting, the Government at least pays its bills on time. John wends his way to his parents' house in Dulwich Village for the monthly family supper, rather pleased with himself.

The whole family is there. Sal had moved back into the parental house with Aiden a few months earlier, when her marriage, always sticky and intermittent, came off the rails altogether. Her soon-to-be ex is rumoured to have run away to a remote tropical island off the Tasmanian coast to monitor the mating habits of land crabs. Takes one to know one, in John's opinion. Sal's ex is no loss to society. It astonishes John how she always picks such complete tossers. The biggest downside is that Aiden's main male role model is now John's father. John isn't entirely convinced that a retired Church of England archdeacon with a passion for fly fishing, collecting teapots and mediaeval manuscripts is the sort of role-model a football-crazy seven-year-old needs. It certainly hadn't been the one John had needed.

Sal pounces when their father is off to one side talking to their poor mother about something that interests none of his children, and probably doesn't interest Mum much either, if her blank-eyed expression is anything to go by. From the way his father's hands are moving, he's miming tying a fishing fly. Mum will have heard that one a thousand times.

Well, Sal maybe doesn't pounce, exactly. But she's intrigued enough to look up from her iPhone. "I heard something interesting about Kit."

"Did you?"

She flourishes the phone at him. "He's changed his FB status to 'off the market'."

"I didn't know you two were Facebook friends."

"Pfft," Sal says. "He's a bloke. I keep tabs on possibilities." And as John stares, she laughs. "What? He likes Aiden, Aiden likes him. I had him on the list of maybes, that's all. And now someone else has snaffled him."

Story of Sal's life, if the truth be told. Her ex had been semi-detached long before Aiden was even born. Astonishing he stuck around as long as he did before the land crabs seduced him.

"You stalk them on Facebook?"

"Of course not!" But Sal isn't convincing. She looks pink around the ears. "I merely monitor the possibilities and... well, all right. I keep an eye on them. So, before I take him off my list, what I want to know who's stolen Kit from under my nose and is it really as serious as it sounds? I know that you know. He tells you everything, so don't think you can put me off with your usual tactics."

"What usual tactics?"

"You look vague and say you never listen to gossip. You say that no one ever tells you anything, and you say it with the sort of innocent expression that makes people believe you. You always, but always, avoid a direct answer. You answer with a question or a shrug or something that sounds like an answer but isn't really. It's really rather clever of you because most people go away thinking that you don't know anything and that you're too pure for gossip. Well, you don't fool me."

"I don't know what you're talking about. No-one ever tells me the good bits. I swear, I'm always the last to know."

"Nonsense. Your best tactic is pretending that you're incredibly good at being dense about people, but both you and I know that most of it is a sham." Sal pauses. "Well, maybe not a complete sham because sometimes you are just dense—"

"Thanks."

"—but not where Kit Lewis is concerned. You've never been dense there. But you do cover for him."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do. So, do tell me who he's seeing. He always tells you what he's up to, I know he does. Spill it, little brother. Who is she? Who's the new woman in Kit's life?"

"How do you know there's a new woman?"

"John!"

"I'm just—"

"You're just using the tactic of answering with another question and hoping I'll get diverted. I don't do diverted. I want to know who she is."

John holds up both hands, the bad guy surrendering to the sheriff. "Okay. You cornered me. But I know nothing whatsoever about any new woman in Kit's life. Cross my heart and hope to die, I don't."

She stares at him, eyes narrowing, channelling their father in one of his more moralistic, you-won't-wish-to-deceive-me moods. He stares right back and makes a helpless little shrugging motion. Sal draws in a deep breath and blows it out again noisily. "Oh."

"Yeah," John says, and he has never been so delighted in his life when their father, realising his children had been left to their own devices too long, pulls them back into the conversation and demands their opinion on the merits of the Beadeye Cats Whisker or the Brown Humpy when it comes to trout fishing in Devon, because Devonian trout, it seems, are more peskily intelligent than those of other counties and require more subtle means of entrapment. He is, for a moment or two, quite indulgently fond of the old man.

For a moment or two, anyway.

**~*~**

"So," his mother says, as he goes to kiss her goodnight and take his leave. "What's this I hear about Kit?"

"Have you heard something about Kit, Mum?" John asks, wondering if Sal's a chip off the old block when it comes to stalking his friends on Facebook. He hadn't even realised his mother knows what Facebook is. He's conscious of his sister in the background, making derisive and uncomplimentary faces at him.

"Oh," his mother says, clearly disappointed. "I'd hoped you'd know."

John smiles and shrugs.

Sal rolls her eyes and goes back to her phone and the delights of social media. Probably hunting for new possibilities to stalk.

**~*~**

"I heard one or two bits of news about you today," John says. "Tell me, do you have any bets running at the moment?"

"Me? No. Not really. George is running the office pool at the moment. Why?"

"About who it is you're seeing?"

Kit looks wounded. "Why would you think I'd be involved in betting on something like that? I mean, how insensitive do you think I am?"

John merely looks at him, cocks an eyebrow, and considers that he'd learned the art of evasion from a master.

Kit grimaces. "I'm not doing it directly, of course, because no-one would bite then. George is running it, but I get fifty percent... we get fifty percent."

"Thought so," John says. "I've had half a dozen people corner me today wanting to know who the new woman is in your life. One of them George, by the way."

"The devious bastard! Did you throw out any hints?"

"No. Did you want me to?"

"Nah. It's probably better to keep 'em guessing. It'll push the odds up."

"As long as you have a good and romantic reason," John says, dry as alum. "Don't worry, Kit, I kept your little secret, at the trifling cost of deceiving George, Canary, Sal and Mum. Dad acted all disinterested, by the way, but I have my doubts about how sincere he was in that. They'd all heard that you were, and I quote, 'off the market', giving up flirting, and unavailable because you'd been snaffled by someone special."

"Well, for once rumour is telling the exact truth. Cool."

"Really?"

"Really. Well, I guess I owe you for keeping my secrets safe and allowing me to make a killing on the betting. How can I ever repay you?"

John smiles. He rolls over onto his back, and Kit follows him, keeping his long, lean body pressed up close.

"Well," he says. "Why don't we start with a blow-job and see where we go to from there? After all, if you're seeing someone special, it only makes sense to prove it to me. Otherwise I'll think it's all idle gossip."

^^++^^++^^++^^

All Because of Him

Early July, 2012

"You aren't paying attention." George Richards has no compunction about digging his business partner in the ribs. None. Indeed, he hopes it hurts. Kit Lewis is distracted and preoccupied, and this is an important contract.

"It's the Government, for God's sake." Canary Wilson pushes her papers into her trendy Cambridge satchel, scowling. _Name like that, she'd bloody better be creative_ , Kit had said when they hired her and so far she'd lived up to it. "I mean, who else in this god-forsaken business pays on time? Only the Government can afford to. When all the hoopla over the Olympics is done and dusted, we'll need contracts like this."

They won't lose the contract. Kit may have been abstracted at this follow-up briefing to their successful pitch for a branding and PR contract for a big public information campaign, but the civil servants discussing the finer points of the brief with them probably didn't even notice. Even abstracted, Kit is brilliant. Damn him.

Still, Kit needs to get his shit together. Lewis-Hogarth-Richards is counted as one of the big boys on the public relations block now, featured in PR Weekly in virtually every edition, fashionable, profitable, cutting-edge. George intends they stay that way.

But Kit just stares at him, expression vacant, eyes half-slitted against the evening light coming through the government department's rather grimy windows. He sighs, putting his papers together in a lacklustre way that puts George's teeth on edge.

George fights back a frisson of anxiety. There had better not be anything seriously wrong here. "Kit?"

"Uh?"

"Are you all right?"

"Oh." Kit looks down at his papers in his hand and tosses them into his own satchel—Mulberry, expensive, much better than Cambridge, and George still regrets not buying one for himself—and nods.

George can't pursue it, right then. The chief civil servant they're working with pokes her head around the door, asking if they're ready to be escorted out. All of them, even Kit, perk up and project relentless, sunny energy. Bright, breezy and so bloody competent they pee honey and shit rainbows. The chief civil servant doesn't appear to notice. She's probably seen it all before.

Out in the street, the long stretch of Whitehall before them, George sees Canary into a cab to get back to her Hammersmith flat and hails another to take him and Kit back to the office in oh-so-trendy Bermondsey, where Lewis-Hogarth-Richards inhabit the top floor in a converted warehouse near the river. Very trendy, very expensive. Kit and his shit really, really can't afford to fall apart.

All the good feeling George has about winning this contract in the first place—all down to him and Kit since the third in their partnership, John Hogarth, is tied up on another job—starts to melt away, replaced by something close to apprehension. "Something wrong, Kit?"

Kit focuses on him and shakes his head, smiling.

"Well, okay." George is unconvinced. He glances at his watch. His girlfriend will be on stage at the National by now, and he has loads of time before he needs to be at the stage door to collect her. Not much fun, dating an actress. Between matinees and evening performances, they don't see anywhere near enough of each other. Still, Ellie's worth it. "Let's dump this stuff at the office and go and eat. I don't have to pick up Ellie until about ten thirty. So how about we go to José's? I'd kill for some of their prawn fritters. John said he'll call in later and we can catch up before the weekend."

Kit purses his lips. Looks thoughtful.

Sighing, George capitulates entirely. "I'll buy."

**~*~**

"Spill it," George orders. "Just tell me what the fuck is the matter with you."

Kit has fallen in with George's plan for dinner, gone with him to José's, queued up behind him as George negotiated for the table, and is now sitting in a corner of the bar, half-hidden behind a potted palm, to while away the wait time (really, thirty minutes in José's on a Friday night is not bad and Kit can just stop with the bloody sighing). Kit is staring vacantly down at his cocktail. His whole demeanour invites—indeed, begs—inquiry.

There is only so much flesh and blood can take. And although George's flesh and blood cringes at the thought of getting involved in whatever is bothering Kit, he can't bear to watch without knowing what it is he's watching. Curiosity is his besetting sin, and he knows it.

There's a glint of something like satisfaction and mischief in Kit's eyes, the look of a man who's been waiting for a cue and at last it's come; at last, it's performance time. For all that, Kit's not of Shakespearian school of acting. He's not making hammy gestures and overstated declamations. It's all rather understated, pared-back, modernist. Like one of those minimalist dramas that Ellie drags him to sometimes, little scenes in which some aspect of love and life and death is depicted with a kind of direct sparseness, with an economy of words and movement where every emotion and action is stripped down to raw essentials.

Highbrow. Arty. The sort of highbrow art that's deadly serious, intellectual and not exactly a barrel of laughs, when what you'd rather do is pop a can of lager and watch an episode of _Hollyoaks_. George's sense of impending doom deepens.

Kit does sigh again. Deeply. "It's the whole changing lifestyle thing, Georgie-Boy. Commitment. Moving in together." He swallows his cocktail so convulsively, his Adam's apple jumps. "It needs thinking about. It's Big Stuff."

George stares, because there's something very unnatural about Kit saying the word 'commitment' without it being torn out of him by dentists' drills and serrated forceps. He can't find the words to delineate quite how unnatural.

"I'm not getting cold feet, you understand. I'm just... just nervous. My mind's been a bit out to lunch about it, I suppose. Thinking about things. Wondering if I should sell my flat. Stuff like that." Kit frowns slightly, but those wicked eyes are shining. "I don't know if I'm coming or going."

"As you showed at the meeting with the department." And George doesn't care his tone is so acidic it could eat through steel.

Kit hunches his shoulders and looks apologetic. As well he damn well should. "I can't help it! My heart is on fire. Blazing like a sun."

George sighs.

"Californian wild fire levels," Kit adds, with evident pride in the incendiary imagery. He bows his head, an actor seeking applause, lays a hand over the hot organ in question and sighs again. Deeply. Romantically. And then takes a self-congratulatory swig of his cocktail.

"Oh hell. You're in 'love' again." George adds air quotes, because he suspects Kit loves only one person in this world and everything else is compensation. Kit isn't in love with anyone other than John Hogarth, and hasn't been for the last ten years at least, but the performance he's inflicting on George suggests he wants into someone's tight pants, anyway, and that always means toiling and moiling and trouble on George's part. George tries denial. It's the only way to deal. "You have heartburn? Indigestion? You need some antacid. I can get some from the bar, maybe."

Kit just looks at him, wounded, a man whose finest tragic performance has been greeted with inappropriate laughter.

George looks around the restaurant for help. Every damn trendy lovvie and PR guru in the capital is here, of course, but not a paramedic in sight. They probably didn't have so much as an elastoplast behind the bar, much less a cure for Kit. There never bloody is any bloody help when you bloody well need it.

Mind you, he doesn't think there is a cure for Kit. You take the infection and either die of it or develop some immunity. And George can speak to that from personal, if unrequited, experience.

Still... Kit and the C word. Unprecedented. Maybe he's just winding George up and this isn't related to John at all.

A man can hope.

Kit looks rather hurt, the manipulative bastard. "Aren't you still running the betting pool on who I'm seeing?"

George stares. He sags back into his chair, the relief washing over him like a tsunami. "Shit, I'd forgotten about that. You haven't mentioned it in weeks."

"I'm being subtle."

George contents himself with A Look, with as much derision as he can put into it.

Kit doesn't appear to notice. "No, I'm serious. Subtle."

"You haven't said anything. I thought you were just taking the piss. I mean, you and monogamy. About as likely as me voting Tory."

"Pfft," Kit says. "I changed my Facebook settings and everything. And I sent out at least three tweets. That's about the equivalent of announcing my engagement."

"In this unromantic age," George agrees. "You're really seeing someone and it's so serious you're talking about moving in together?"

Kit nods.

"Well, hell on a Christmas cracker." George lifts his margarita glass for the three forlorn drops left swilling around the bottom, and wishes he'd laid in an entire jug of it. The three drops do nothing but tantalise. "You really mean it."

Kit nods again, grinning now. "This is buying furniture together, thinking about getting a cat and arguing about who gets in the shower first each morning sort of serious." He's obviously more alert now, because he snags a passing waitress and orders some refills.

George is piteously grateful. He needs alcohol to get through this. "And you're telling me this now, why?"

Kit shrugs. "Time to collect on the wagers. I heard people were betting their lottery money on it. The pool should be... oh, all of twenty quid by now."

"And you need twenty quid?"

"It's very expensive furniture." Kit finishes the last of his cocktail. "It's been fun, watching you all wondering who it is and trying to find out. Time to come clean, though. It's too important to keep hidden."

"And claim your twenty quid. You old romantic." George smiles at the waitress when she arrives with the refills. Bless her, she brings them an entire jug along with the credit card reader. Kit busies himself with eating roasted peanuts and refilling their glasses while George hands her his credit card, and keys in a suitably large tip for her foresight. When she's gone again, he returns to the fray. "I think it's great you've found someone special. Maybe you are in love after all."

"Don't like the L word much. But yeah. I think I am."

"I never thought I'd live to see the day. You! You getting to the love and commitment and moving in stage with anyone. I mean, you've been a bit hung up on—" George stops. Better not mention John.

Kit does it for him, anyway. "John." He takes a long drink from his margarita. "What makes you think that's changed?"

George stares. "The commitment thing? Moving in with someone?"

"Doesn't change one iota of what I feel for John."

George puffs out the breathy little noise of a steam engine in terminal decline. His nerves twitch. "Don't do this, Kit. Don't do it to the poor sap you've been seeing. It's not fair."

Kit makes a little whaddya-know sort of head toss and a one-shouldered shrug, a little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. None of which does anything _at all_ to reassure George.

Oh God.

John, George and Kit have been friends since Uni, and George's coming to think that Kit is the cross he bears as the price of ever taking his degree in the first place. Worse than a bloody student loan. George has spent the last ten years watching Kit lurch from lover to lover, never constant to any of the poor bastards, male or female, and in between he's been Kit's confidante about what went wrong this time and why can't John see what's under his nose when Kit would offer him hand and heart in an instant?

Because Kit on another John-related frenzy of offering, getting rejected, going on a bender with whoever's willing to bump uglies with him, remorse, offering to John again, getting rejected, going on a bender... It's never just Kit who suffers. The collateral damage can be downright shocking.

George would really like to drown himself right then, and his margarita glass just isn't big enough. He swigs it down with nowhere near the respect the top-shelf tequila deserves. "I can't be doing with it, Kit."

The eyes looking into George's morph from shiny to dreamy. Kit is enjoying himself. He focuses on something over George's shoulder.

"You don't have to worry. Everything will work out."

"It will, will it? Fat bloody chance. Does this new squeeze of yours know about John?"

"Of course."

"Seriously? You're talking about choosing furniture with someone, when you still have the hots for John. Classy."

"It'll all work, I promise. It's all because of him." Kit points.

George won't turn around to see who's just come in. If only it isn't his worst nightmare come true.... Safer not to look. Really. Much safer.

Kit just shakes his head and sighs again. If not for the frank pleasure in those deceitful green eyes, he's the picture of lovelorn passion.

George feels like sighing himself. It's beginning to annoy him, Kit sitting there punctuating every sentence with enough gusty breathing to keep a fair-sized kite airborne. He's grateful Kit hadn't eaten anything particularly odorous for lunch, and says so, as nastily as he knows how.

But Kit doesn't react. He's still staring over George's shoulder, his mouth slack and open. The idjit looks like he'll start drooling any second. But then comes that little smile again.

George has to look away before he throws up. He twists in his chair, checking over the crowd to reassure himself that Kit's just kidding. And what do you know? There he is. John Hogarth, in the flesh, fighting his way through the crowds to the bar, his sister Sal in tow. There's no mistaking the height and that mop of sticky-up hedgehog hair.

He turns back to Kit, the nervous twitch so bad his right eyelid winks uncomfortably. He can't stop it. "No," he says, tone as flat as he can manage it. "Just stop it. Stop it right now."

George is sharper than he intended to be, and Kit says nothing, looking hurt. His mouth turns down at the corners and his bottom lip pushes out, like an eight year old. You could set dinner for six on that lip.

"Never mind," George says. "Just never mind." He hesitates, then takes a deep breath. Trapped in this little drama of Kit's making, he isn't likely to get off stage until he's played out his part. As he knows from bitter experience. Thank God he's dating an actress. He gets his tips from an expert. "I know you're trying to freak me out, but what the hell! Let's play along here. Tell me straight. Are you seeing someone new?"

Kit grimaces. "Define new."

"Someone who isn't John."

"Mmn." Kit looks shiftier than an entire church full of choirboys.

George hangs onto his patience with both hands. "So you're a lying git. There isn't anyone new and what we're talking about here is a John thing again? You're going for another burst of being in love with John."

"Mmmmn," Kit sighs. And nods.

George wonders whether putting the brain-dead out of their misery can be claimed as a valid defence at the trial. "It has to be oh, nearly a year since you tried this one on last. You've been telling me you're in love with John since Uni, and what have you ever done about it? What do you feel, Kit? Really?" He waits while Kit thinks about it, the twitch in his right eyelid flickering so bad that he can feel the headache starting. What's the betting Kit will be honest for once? Ha! Who was he kidding? "Nothing, eh? Well, that's good, Kit. Nothing's good. Nothing's very good."

Kit still looks thoughtful, frowning, lips pursed up.

"I mean, feeling nothing inside's better than, say, indigestion. Or a coronary. It's better than that, isn't it? Than madness, or sickness, or anything like that." George tries not to sigh. There are enough people around here sighing. "Or being all mixed up inside and chaotic, or pretending you love someone..."

Kit's eyes light up. "It is pretty chaotic." He taps his chest and nods his thanks to George for the inspiration.

George groans aloud. He can't help it. A decade of being Kit's friend would have a saint groaning and looking around for a cricket bat to brain the idjit with. "Honest, you sound demented tonight. Why chaos? Am I supposed to notice a difference when it comes to you?"

Kit smiles. Brilliantly. Knock your socks off, Kit-Lewis-special brilliance. He gestures to the bar where John must now be hidden in the crowd. "He just has to smile, you see, and... everything sort of tumbles about in here and melts."

"No, he bloody doesn't and no, you bloody aren't melting. Stop it. You are not feeling anything, do you hear me?"

Kit nods solemnly.

"You do this to me all the time, just to wind me up. Why does it give you such a kick to lust after John when he has far too much sense to get entangled with you? Fuck, if I'm in for another few weeks of you mooning over John, I'll go and throw myself under the number 22 bus. It'll be less painful. You know you don't mean it."

Kit looks as though he wants to oblige. Really he does. But he shrugs and nods again. Solemnly.

He means it. George puts his head in his hands and groans aloud.

He groans because John Hogarth is no man's fool. Kit trots around the sexual block with anyone willing to tango with him, because, he says, he can't get the one man in London he loves. But the one man in London who won't put up with Kit's trotting, is John. It's a sort of gay Catch 22. Catch 69, maybe. Who the hell knows?

George's sure John loves Kit. He's also sure John doesn't trust him. So whenever Kit shows signs of yearning, John backs off fast. George's job appears to be to bring Kit back to normal, so Kit's shenanigans don't upset their business applecart. Some days, George thinks he was born with 'sucker' tattooed on his forehead.

Or some other portion of his anatomy.

Thinking back to previous outbreaks, George remembers how he's dealt with the infection before. "Hot sex worked, last time. There was wots-is-name... Timmy something or other. The graphic designer who works for A-TeamDesigns. Mind you, I still think he was more about industrial espionage than wanting to get his hands on what you keep in your pants. The way they waltzed off with that contract was highly suspicious. But he'd do in a pinch. Because what you need is to get your end away, and put this nonsense out of your head." He sees the expression on Kit's face and cuts in fast, before Kit can say it. "And not with John! Not with him!"

Kit subsides, looking faintly disappointed.

"Right," George says. "Not Timmy Wotisname. Oh God, it's not Livvy again is it? I know you two had a little fling..." His voice trails off at the way Kit's eyes widen in something close to horror. "No, you're right there. Some things a man just shouldn't do twice. She'd black more than your eye if you tried that again." The woman would eat him for breakfast and spit out the bones. Delicately, of course. And the bastard would deserve it. Kit's fling with Livvy Simpson almost cost them the company. "Look, why not just give it all up? I've some really good whacky 'baccy. The best. I've never seen such good quality. I was saving it, but what the hell! I'll doctor up a spliff for you and you'll forget all this crap, and leave me alone, okay?"

Kit's silent for a long moment. This time the smile is apologetic. "No. No thanks. I don't think pharmaceuticals can fix me this time. Thanks for the offer though."

George goes back to head holding. "Why are you doing this to me? What is _wrong_ with you?"

Kit chuffs out the sort of trilling, devil-may-care laugh that, if George can record it on his iPhone, means no jury in the Old Bailey would convict. Not even a jury made up of average men on the street who think all creative types are like Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen on crack and therefore worthy of prison. Dartmoor, by preference. For life.

Smiling, Kit says, "Love."

"Dee-ment-ted," George says, drawing it out for emphasis.

Kit looks at him as if he's mad, and maybe he is. God knows, ten years of Kit and insanity is a real possibility. One of the two of them is heading for the funny farm, at all events. Kit looks towards the bar, where John is. "And it's all because of him."

"So you said." George is provoked too far. "Love! What do you know about it? All you know about is sex. Love isn't about sex. It isn't about how many notches you can get on your bed post. It's not about you trying to drive me potty. It's about feelings!" George thinks of lost loves, of Kit who never seen him as anything but a stalwart friend and confidant and really George's fine with that, of the way Livvy Simpson never even realised he was there. And then he thinks of Ellie's slow smile when she wakes and how her eyes crinkle up against the sunlight. "It's about emotions. Real emotions, like fireworks on a summer evening exploding in a dusk as purple as the bloom on a grape. Explosive and wonderful and..."

Straightening up in his chair, Kit beams with so much approval that George feels the tears prick in the back of his eyelids, aghast at what he's done, fanning the flames like that. Kit's nodding like the bloody Churchill dog. He'll nod his head right off. If George's lucky. "You get it. You really get it."

"Shit," George says, burying his head in his hands. "Oh shit." He jumps when a hand falls on his shoulder.

"Hi guys!" John says, cheerfully oblivious. "Didn't see you when we came in." He frowns at George. "Is something wrong?"

"I'm fine," George chokes out, putting such blazing dislike into the glare he gives John that the poor man recoils. George grinds his teeth. Damn! That hurts. "Fine!"

"Right," John says, evidently taken aback by George's ferocity. "I'm not staying."

"Good!" George snaps.

"I just promised Sal one drink while she waits for this new bloke she's seeing, and then I'm off home. It's been a long week." John glances at Kit, and smiles. "So give me about an hour, Kit."

Kit looks up and nods, all dreaminess and forlorn lovelorn-iness gone. The lust pouring off him is at industrial-strength and George has to look away, too embarrassed to witness it.

"Don't be late," John says, and the possessive, anticipatory note in his voice has George's left eye twitching to join the right. "See you later. Are you sure you're okay, George? You don't look too good."

"I'm fine," George says, faint and drooping.

What. The. Fuck?

"Okay. Don't be late, Kit."

George watches him go to the accompaniment of more seriously gusty sigh from Kit. He's dazed. Ten years—a third of his bloody life!—of Kit's fantasies, and he'd long ago stopped believing in it, except as something Kit does to annoy him. But he can't deny that look, the tone of John's voice. Or the smug grin Kit gives him. Kit's bursting with it.

No wonder the bugger was abstracted at the meeting.

No. Bloody. Wonder.

Kit and John. At long last.

George thinks of Ellie, and how she makes him feel like he has the sun trapped in his chest. Well, maybe this was what Kit needs. Kill or cure, maybe. Or love and marriage.

George gives in. "Love, huh?"

Kit smiles the smile of a man who's achieved everything he's been dreaming of for years. "And it's all because of him."

^^++^^++^^++^^

Candlelight

January, 2013

It's not that Kit Lewis is a vain man. Truly he's not. He knows he has a handsome face, a lithe body and more charm than is good for him or anyone around him—he's not blind and he has a perfectly serviceable mirror—but Kit isn't really, truly, horribly vain. He's just aware of his attributes. Come to think on it, he's very aware of his attributes and how to use them to his advantage. But he's not vain.

Before he tangled himself up with John Hogarth, Kit spent a lot of time trotting around the block with anyone he could persuade to trot with him. He's always been open-minded, taking his chances where he sees them. Because of those aforementioned attributes, he's wined and dined a lot of women and he's wined and dined a lot of men. Opportunistic, John said once, and his tone was not approving. John had seen pretty clearly that the Kit Lewis of those years was devil-may-care and casual, body-hungry and heart-free, and no one who deliberately set out to hold him would succeed. Not the sort of man you'd want dating your sister. Or your brother. Or you.

Kit swears he's a reformed character these days. But as a result of his rash, youthful experimentation, if anyone's experienced in all the arts and wiles of allurement, it's Kit. It stands to reason that he's seen every possible shift and stratagem, the little deceptions that enhance the good and hide the bad—the eyes made bigger and brighter with kohl, lips reddened and softened ready for kissing, cheekbones highlighted to accentuate the good bone structure underneath, skin dusted with powder to even out the tone and hide the blemishes. And he has, of course, noticed how candlelight flatters and compliments, how it makes the skin and hair glow with soft gold, and how the shifting shadows make everything softer and gentler.

So when he's the one who wants to make a good impression, memories of all these harmless enhancements flit through his brain, reminding him of this effect or that as he sifts through them to decide which might give him an edge. Not that he really needs one, of course, since Kit Lewis is practically in the thesaurus as a synonym for 'alluring'.

All right. Maybe Kit's a little vain.

There's a limit to his vanity, though. He's not averse to darkening his eyelashes to make his eyes more noticeable, for example, but he draws the line at kohl. If you ask him, he'll admit that he tried it once. _I can't use it_ , he once confided to one of his dearest friends and now business partner, George Richards. _Nearly put my damned eye out with the kohl pencil and, believe me, having to dab at a red and weepy eye all through dinner does not give your date the impression you're irresistibly sexy. They're more likely to be worrying about catching pink-eye._

George's response isn't recorded but it wasn't likely to have been sympathetic. He tends to look on Kit's entanglements with a cynical eye. Not that George's lack of empathy ever bothers Kit. George is a good friend and Kit loves him, but he doesn't _love_ him. Not that way.

No. That love's reserved for John. It took Kit a couple of years to realise that he could trot around the block until the sun cooled, and it wouldn't be worth as much as ten minutes with John Hogarth. Unfortunately, John being of the 'loves Kit but isn't sure about trusting him' school of experience, it was another few years before Kit got his chance.

Still, perseverance won out. He and John are an item now and Kit's committed to keeping it that way. They've toughed out telling family and friends, and got through John's parents' shock. John's sister Sal gave them a moment's attention, even looking up from her iPhone before administering a shrugged _Whatever_ , and young Aiden, her son, is all childlike acceptance and indifference. George is too, after a few days of sulking and worrying aloud about the impact on the business of two of the three partners being—and here George's air quotes had been savage—'romantically involved'.

Kit wants to woo John tonight. It's the first time for weeks they've had the chance to spend uninterrupted time together and they have important stuff to talk about, what with putting their flats on the market and buying a joint one together. That's a big step forward and deserves a celebration. While Kit's delighted that their PR partnership is buzzing with energy and they have almost more work than they can handle, the downside is that this thing he has with John, this more-than-affair that has his blood singing and his heart hammering, has had to take a back seat to the need to smooch their clients and woo new business. Tonight's the first opportunity he's had for a month to plan the perfect seduction. And Kit Lewis is not the man to waste an opportunity. A quiet, romantic dinner, a good wine to wash it down, and then... well, John has a nice big bed that Kit is keen to put to good use.

What you have to understand about Kit Lewis is that he never had a lot as a kid or growing up. His parents died when he was in his early teens and, brought up by a dutiful but rather distant uncle, he got himself through university on sheer talent and by working so hard that no one who knew him then could ever understand how he had any energy at all left for block trotting. But you know what that sort of history means: Kit never takes anything for granted. You maybe wouldn't expect it, when you think about that ne'er-do-well, devil-may-care reputation, but Kit goes to a lot of trouble when his heart is really set on something. He knows that he could probably sidle into the flat after an evening dancing in the clubs and hustle John straight into bed, and John would let him. But that, he thinks, is a paradox: an emotionless passion. There might come a time when loving John becomes casual and ordinary, to be fitted in between a business meeting and a drink in a wine bar as if Kit's become desensitised to the wonder of it. But that time won't come if Kit can help it.

So, he's made the effort to make it a night to remember. He's sorted out the special dinner, getting a new and fashionable bistro to deliver the best from their _a la carte_ menu. He's sold his soul three times over for a bottle of wine of a vintage so rare that it costs almost as much as he made in salary last month. All that remains to do now, is make the best of those God-given attributes so that John's so dazzled by them that the evening will end precisely the way Kit wants it to.

His eye twitching in painful remembrance of the physical risks of cosmetics, he finds time for a flattering haircut, darkens his eyelashes with subtle delicacy, and opts for candlelight as a sure-fire way of making both John and himself look pretty and put them both in the mood for romance. Not that he needs to be put into the mood, you understand. This is Kit Lewis we're talking about here. He's a walking stereotype of how the human male is pretty much always up for sex.

The room is dimly lit, its fashionably grey and mint striped walls softened by flickering shadows and mellow light. The candlelight is perfect. The meal is perfect. The wine is perfect.

And John is perfect.

John sips his wine, and Kit stares, fascinated, at the play of light on his face. John, damn him, has the sort of bone structure that never needs enhancement, and something inside Kit grows warm and surges up into his throat as he falls in love all over again, seduced by the way that the candlelight casts shadows in the little hollows under John's cheekbones and under his jaw. Kit likes to lick and kiss the spot under John's jaw. He really likes to do that. John seems to like it too.

John puts down the glass. The wine glows a clear red in the candlelight, like a jewel trapped in crystal.

The warmth inside Kit grows until he wonders if he's glowing too, a light to rival the candles. He has to take a minute to allow his breathing to even out before he can put the candelabrum to one side of the small table, careful of the little flames and the soft, hot wax. John's smiling at him when he leans forward and he gives in to the urge to kiss that little shadowed spot. John makes a soft _Ahhhh_ sound, tilts his head back and lets Kit do his worst.

Or maybe it's his best.

Kit's mouth trails along the line of John's jaw, making it into a line of little kisses. His lips touch every millimetre of skin, not letting one tiny morsel of it escape. When he reaches John's mouth, it's with the slow, delicious slide of John's lips against his; John's hot, wet tongue flickering out to lick him; John's teeth nipping, gently, at his lower lip.

Kit's almost sorry to pull away and sit back far enough to study John's face, cupping John's jaw in his hands. He's awed. He's pretty sure that's the right word. Awed. What he feels is more than just pleased, more than just pleasure; it has something transcendental about it, something touched with might and power and a tiny smidgeon of terror. After all these months together, he's still awed that he's allowed to do this; to touch, kiss, hold, to look into familiar brown eyes, a deeper, darker brown than usual in the shadowed candlelight, and see himself reflected there.

He licks his lips, suddenly nervous, because the look in those eyes almost stops his breath. He feels the muscles move against his palms as a smile rounds John's cheeks, John's mouth curving up under his touch. John's hands are on him, clamped on his upper arms, and they're leaning in towards each other and this table is so tiny, that they're in the same space, close and together. John is limned in golden candlelight and so beautiful that Kit's breath hitches in his throat like a sob that he can't hold back.

And the warm thing inside him swells and grows until it feels like he has a sun trapped beneath his ribs, bursting to get out and fill the world with gold. Because John leans in and kisses him and laughs, the choke of laughter that comes from deep in his chest, and Kit can feel every little tremor of it vibrating through his bones.

^^++^^++^^++^^

A Kiss is Just A Kiss...But A Good Blow Job is a Good Blow Job

December, 2015

John Hogarth shrugs his way out of his evening jacket, wincing and groaning and generally carrying on as if he's just returned from the Battle of the Somme, gravely wounded and about to breathe his last. So far as Kit Lewis knows, John was merely supposed to be representing their PR firm at an industry dinner, being wooed by contractors who want their business. The black eye looks like the courtship got a little rough.

Kit helps him out of the jacket, grimacing in sympathy at the way John hisses with pain and trying not to think unworthy thoughts about how smoking hot John is in formal evening gear. Because John is. In his ordinary, day-to-day jeans and untucked shirt, John is hot enough to make Kit's breath come short. John in evening clothes has Kit heading into severe respiratory distress and a pressing need for oxygen.

Or something.

He turns John's face towards the light. The skin around the left eye is blackening already and there's a nasty-looking cut on his eyebrow, held together with a couple of butterfly steristrips. He's bled all over the front of his best dress shirt. "You're getting one helluva shiner there. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you were invited out to a business dinner by Williams Design, right?"

"You know it."

"Indulge me here. And the point of that was not only because Thom Williams lusts after your pretty arse—which is why he only ever invites you and not me—but so they could smooch you to get more contracts out of us?"

"You know that too."

"I'm just checking, to make sure I wasn't operating under some sort of misapprehension and we'd got the invitations mixed up. Because you've come home looking like you were at the bottom of a rugby scrum."

"Thom jabbed me in the face with his elbow."

"Why did you let him do that, you great lummox?"

"There was a power failure and a bit of a panic when the lights went out. People were running about all over the place. His PA fell off her heels and knocked me flying into Thom, who jabbed me in the eye and as I pulled back from that, I went down the stairs. Luckily only half a dozen steps, but still." John touches the cut gingerly. "I have no idea how I did this. If Thom hadn't looked so horrified, I'd suspect he did it on purpose."

"Probably a moment of blind rage because you're immune to smooching and your arse belongs to me. Stand still." In the bathroom, Kit runs a handkerchief under the tap, returns to the bedroom and dabs gently at the cut above John's eyebrow. John does a bit more hissing and jerks his head back like a nervous horse. "Thom must have very sharp elbows."

"All the better to get rid of your opponents on the way up to the top. He didn't get to own his company on charm and hard work."

"Still, it's a novel way to impress yourself on your clients. Literally."

John manages a sort of grin. "Not half. Leave it, Kit. It'll be all right."

"Did you get a doctor to take a look at it?"

"The paramedics were called out. One looked. He said it didn't need stitches. He also said I wasn't dead yet and wasn't likely to need major surgery. I was barely walking wounded, in fact, and would I care to stop cluttering up his ambulance and leave it for those who really needed his medical services?" John looks more than a little put out. "He did give me a couple of pain-killers though, before he threw me out."

"Bloody NHS." Kit is slightly despairing. There are days when John isn't safe to be allowed out without a nanny. "Typical. This is just typical. You have to be the only person in the business who gets taken to dinner, caught in a power blackout, trapped in the Banqueting Chamber with everyone getting blasted on champagne, caught in the subsequent panic and half-riot—"

"There were lots of other people trapped in there," John protests. "Including my host. Who was also very blasted." He adds, bitterly, "I wish I'd been blasted."

"So do I. Because did anybody else throw themselves down a staircase in the dark and end up in an ambulance being snarked at by compassionate paramedics?"

John shakes his head.

"Thought so. At least, the champagne might have anaesthetised you a bit when it came to letting people shove sharp elbows in your eye. Honestly, what were you thinking? You should have sat tight on that nice neat bottom of yours and waited for the lights to come back on, not gone traipsing about in the dark. 'Died in an elbow attack' does not look good on the firm's annual report. It means you haven't achieved your full potential. It's disappointing. It's downright ridiculous. It's just not done."

"Are you seriously saying that to achieve my full potential I have to die in a blaze of glory?"

"It's written in the staff handbook somewhere." Kit puts one hand against John's poor contused cheek. "You look tired."

"I am dead on my feet."

"No you aren't. That paramedic said so." Kit grins. "Come on. Let's get you to bed."

"I'm too tired to sleep." But John lets Kit pull him towards the bed. "And I'm bruised and aching all over. Not tonight, Josephine. Sorry."

"Puh. You won't have to do a thing. I'll do all the work, as usual." As he speaks, Kit helps ease John's white dress shirt over his shoulders. "In deference to your concussion and bruises."

That's a very inelegant snort John has there.

It takes him a little while to get John down to his skin. Kit likes to savour his pleasures and undressing John definitely falls into that category. It's a treat. Or maybe A Treat. Better than an ice cream Mars Bar on a hot day. It involves a lot of touching, murmuring and kissing to give John his full meed of worship and reverence.

Kit Lewis never rests on his laurels, you see. It has taken him a long time to win John Hogarth and he isn't going to risk that victory by any lack of attention to detail in his efforts to keep John happy. Really, in his attempts to keep John.

_Mine_ , he thinks.

Removing the shirt involves a lot of concentration on John's shoulders as Kit uncovers them. John has nice shoulders, well developed and smooth skinned. Kit likes them. He mouths the skin gently as he slowly works the shirt down over John's arms. That's fun, especially when Kit starts across John's collarbones and then moves south down his chest, licking and kissing as he goes, and down the softer skin of John's belly. When he glances up, John's grinning and things have perked up considerably. He looks a lot less like the Battle of the Somme, and a lot more interested in what Kit's doing.

It doesn't take much, Kit thinks, but with a deep affection.

Getting John's trousers off is a job that has to be done carefully and thoroughly. Kit takes his time. It's not because he's not eager to get cracking with the delights that John hides in his trousers, mind you; it's more that Kit loves the anticipation, savouring what's to come. Taking his time getting there adds a piquancy that never stales.

Mine.

He loves the slow pulling down of the zip, the way that his left hand has to rest on John's hip to hold the material taut so he can get a good grip on the metal tag and start tugging. John always jumps slightly when Kit's hand rubs gently against the jutting hip bone and Kit looks forward to that. John grins at him, and licks his lips. Oh yes. Definitely no concussion and an increasing interest in what Kit's doing. John is well on the way to recovery. Kit's grip tightens as he smiles back and leans down for another kiss. There are a lot of kisses. Not that he's counting and definitely not complaining.

He loves the way that John's hips move up slowly until John's bowed upward, balanced on his heels and his shoulders to allow Kit to slide the waistband down. John often holds the pose for a second or two, to allow Kit to run both hands over John's buttocks, smoothing the softer fabric of the boxers against them. They're always warm in Kit's hands, firm, inviting. When John straightens his bowed back and lowers his hips, he crooks a finger at Kit, beckoning for another kiss. Kit loves that too, licking his way into John's hot, wet mouth.

Mine.

He loves teasing the fabric down over John's knees. He kisses his way down the inside of John's left thigh, loving every little twitch as the strong muscles contract and quiver under his tongue. Then he goes back and licks and kisses his way down John's right thigh, soothing the little quivers all the way down to John's knees. Kit loves John's knees. There's a little scar on the right one that John got falling off his bicycle in the Euston Road to avoid being mown down by a taxi. Honestly, the man really isn't safe out alone. Kit presses his lips against the scar, tongue washing the shiny, puckered skin. That makes John laugh, the deep, throaty laugh that no one other than Kit ever hears. It fills Kit with the warmth of melted marshmallow that John has a laugh for him alone.

Mine.

He loves freeing John's feet. John has long feet, like his hands; long and slender and elegant. He licks John's ankles, swirling his tongue around them. It's a shame that John's feet have to be hidden inside shoes and boots for most of the time. It's a shame too, remarks Kit, that despite their elegance, John falls over his own feet so often. He whisks the pants away and finally frees the long legs. John pouts, and Kit goes back for another little kiss or six, consoling this time.

And Kit really loves knowing that he gets to do this all over again as he takes off John's boxers. And when he starts, hands settling on John's hips and finger slipping under the waistband to touch warm skin, John's hiss isn't one of pain. Not now. Kit thinks John may have entirely forgotten about the bruises and the nicely-developing black eye. His contortions to allow Kit to pull off the boxers have a new energy and quickening enthusiasm. And in proof, John's cock bobs up merrily when it's released.

Still mine.

Kit settles back on his heels, settles his hands to cup John's hips and just looks. John's cock isn't one of those humongous ones that make a man wince to think where it's going—or wince with envy—but it's a good size, thick and meaty with a flared head. It's a nice cock. Kit's very fond of it. It deserves a moment of silent admiration before he sets to work on it. John, damn him, lies back watching Kit, smiling and expectant.

Kit lifts one hand to his mouth, wets his thumb and runs it around the ridge just under the head. John's breath catches on a hitch. As Kit's thumb slides to the underside, to where the ridge meets, John's entire body twitches. He sighs.

Kit smiles. He drops a kiss on the cock head, and jumps up. He's out of his clothes in seconds—a skill he perfected as a teenager and has practised assiduously since. When he climbs back onto the bed, John has already parted his legs in anticipation. Kit kneels between them.

"Ready? Sure you aren't too tired? Not too bruised and aching?"

"Get on with it," John says, but he's laughing.

Kit laughs with him. He cups John's balls in one hand, massaging them gently. His tongue licks once around the head of John's cock, along the little ridge, before he ducks his head down and licks along the entire underside of John's cock, from root to top, sucking and kissing as he goes.

That works. John's tenser than a watch spring, coiled ready to go off. He moans, his breathing quickening and harshening.

Mine.

Kit's tongue traces the contour of John's cock. He taps the with his tongue, laughing silently as John's back arches. John whines a little. As you do, in such circumstances. Kit could bring him off in a minute, doing this, but that's far too quick. Kit likes pleasuring John. He likes to savour it.

He goes back to the long, lazy licks up John's cock, root to tip again. Like licking an ice cream cone on Brighton beach. Start slow and deep down, and move up, purposefully, varying the intensity of contact. Sometimes his tongue is hard up against it; sometimes gentle, barely touching, little butterfly touches that have John squirming and laughing. Once or twice when he reaches the tip, he encloses it in his mouth, sliding it in, and moves his head around in a circle to let the tip slide around his mouth. Clockwise. Anticlockwise. Never tightening his lips too much, but letting John's cock find its own route around his mouth. It's more fun that way. Lasts longer.

Mine.

He can keep this up for hours. Lick the shaft. Let it slide in. Flick his tongue over the tip. Apply a tiny amount of suction. Flutter his tongue over the tip. Lick again. Let it slide again. More suction. More butterfly touches of tongue and fingers. Lick around the ridge below the head. Suck on the join underneath. Vary pace and pressure. Fast and hard. Slow and soft. Slow and hard. Fast and gentle. Slow and gentle. Fast and hard... over and over, while massaging John's balls with one hand and sliding a finger up and down the shaft with the other or slipping it under him to play with his opening.

Over and over.

Until John's panting, thrusting with his hips, the head of his cock swelling a little in Kit's mouth and the taste of pre-cum is bitter on Kit's tongue. And John's in spasms, hips jerking now, legs stiff, hands lifting out of Kit's hair to curl into fists. Quick as a flash, Kit presses his thumb against the base of John's cock, stopping him, sucking hard on the head until John's squirming and moaning, his hands reaching out and falling back helplessly, his lips drawn back and his jaw hard and set.

Mine.

Until Kit releases the pressure and lets him go and he comes and comes while Kit sucks him down, thrashing and yelling loud enough to frighten the cat.

Until Kit sits back on his heels again and watches him, smiling, licking his lips. "That's all your bruises kissed better, then," he says.

John breathes hard. He reaches out a hand. Kit takes it, laces their fingers together.

All mine.

"Mine," he says.

"Oh, I suppose so," John says, and smiles.

^^++^^++^^++^^

Happy Holidays

February – March, 2017

"Do you know what day this is?"

John Hogarth starts, taken by surprise by his partner's sudden and stealthy appearance in the dimly lit storeroom. He suppresses a quiet little shriek and only the convulsive tightening of his grip stops him from dropping his clipboard. How in hell does Kit do that? He's perpetually creeping up on John when John is least expecting it.

Kit leans up against the doorframe. The light of the hallway behind him edges down the side of his cheek as he turns his head, sliding across his nose and jaw to illuminate the mouth that only that morning had kissed John into jelly-kneed submission. Nice images, both Kit limned by light and the memory of the fun in the shower they'd had earlier. Both are guaranteed to appeal to the artist in John.

John swallows and loosens his grip on the clipboard. His fingers are aching. "What?"

"Do you know what day this is?"

Heart hammering, John considers the question. He looks it in the face, noting its innocent and inoffensive expression, and thinks about it. He walks round behind it, considering it from all angles, carefully scanning every surface, eyes narrowed in concentration, looking for even the slightest, microscopic sign of trouble. And then he picks it up and shakes it vigorously to see what sort of scam and trap could possibly fall out of it.

Nothing. It seems harmless enough. But then, he's been caught by Kit's seemingly harmless questions before. More than once and far too often.

"Er... Tuesday?"

"Well of course it's Tuesday!" The 'you idiot!' is unspoken, but so loud it's deafening. "But what else?"

John shakes his head. He drops the clipboard onto a shelf and straightens, stretching his back.

"You got me there," he admits.

"That's very bad of you, John. It's not very enlightened, this ignorance about the world. I always thought you were a liberal kind of guy."

John sticks his hands into his jeans pockets. "Fully paid up and card carrying member. I'm as liberal as they come."

"Caring. Sharing. With a social conscience."

"But of course. I support human rights. I support the idea of helping those less fortunate than me. I like the welfare state. I'd rather my taxes went on job creation than nuclear weapons. I support my local coffee shop over heartless global mega-corporations. I'd rescue a kitten in distress if I knew where to find one—"

"But you don't know what day this is." Kit's mouth curves upward into the familiar lopsided grin. "I'm disappointed in you. London's the greatest metropolis in the world. Any true humanitarian would be working to increase understanding of different cultures and our city's minorities. They'd reach out to others, encourage everyone to join in each other's celebrations and share their cultural heritage."

John sighs. It hasn't been a harmless question after all. "All right," he says with the deep fatalism that comes from too many years as Kit's favourite fall guy. "Enlighten my ignorance. What day is it and what does that have to do with my liberalness, or the lack thereof?"

"It's Health and Sports Day in Japan," Kit says, and smiles.

"Health and Sports Day."

"Yeah."

"In Japan."

"That's what I said."

"Kit, last time I looked your family is so Scottish they shit tartan, and mine's so English they don't have blood in their veins, they have tea. We're both Caucasian. We've never even been to Japan on vacation. You hate sushi."

"We should go. Anyhow, the recruitment agency just sent us details of a likely candidate for junior graphics designer. Miko Takahashi. She's Japanese. She sent me a link to her online portfolio."

"Looking good?"

"Very good. She's only a year out of university but she's done some very good work, both here and in an internship in New York. I'll send you the link. I've arranged to do an interview tomorrow and if that's good, I'll bring her in to meet everyone and maybe she can start Monday."

"Great. There's more work than we can handle right now. Which is why I'm the one in here checking how much PVC mesh substrate we have for the banners CitBankCorp want to hang in their atrium."

Kit's grin widens. "I know we're busy. Great, isn't it? Better than when we started out, when one job a month if we were lucky was all we had between us and financial ruin. Thing is, we're getting to be quite the mixed team here. Multicultural. I kind of like it. So I vote we start celebrating everyone's holidays."

"We'd never get any work done!"

Kit rolls his eyes. "I didn't say we should have the day off. Just that we should celebrate the holidays."

Another jolt of suspicion, fuelled by a sense of self-preservation that screams at John to be careful. To be very, very careful. "If this celebration involves me paying for all the drinks in the pub tonight, or sponsoring you on a trip to...oh, I don't know. LA. Or—"

"My, aren't we the suspicious one! Nothing like that. It's more fun than that."

"Uh-huh."

"What do you think about when someone says Health and Sports to you?"

John crushes down the memories of humiliating Sports Days at school where his exemplary academic record hadn't done much to stop him from coming last in the 400 metre relay every year. He hadn't shone at games.

"Running," he offers, and from Kit's wry grin, the double meaning hasn't escaped his clever partner in crime.

"Good! Very good! We're getting there. Close, anyway, and here's a clue. Try thinking about physical activity and exercise."

Waggling eyebrows were a clue? Who knew?

"Physical activity and exercise," John says, playing for time.

"Will you stop repeating everything I say? It's beginning to get to me. Physical activity." Kit smiles, and reaches to turn the key in the lock. "Physical. Activity."

"Ah!" John understands at last. He grins. "Well, now. Physical. Activity."

"And exercise." This time Kit doesn't complain about his words being repeated, right down to the significant pauses between them. "Slow but sure, that's my boy John."

"Oh, I dunno. I don't think I have the time. There's so much to do, and problem is, I have this business partner. He's very driven. Demanding."

"I checked. He's okay with a little physical activity and you bet he's going to be demanding."

Kit pushes back against the door frame to give himself some momentum and moves forward. He's beside John so fast his feet blur. John, backed up against the wall, has nowhere to go. Kit blocks him in, presses up against him, warm and close. Kit's expression is the one he wears when they have a tricky design to pull together, like the concept artboards they'd done for the V&A's last exhibition. It's his focused and intent expression. John likes having Kit focus on him like that, watching Kit's eyes sharpen and brighten, seeing the little frown between the eyes smooth out as whatever the issue is falls victim to Kit's invention and creativity. John has fallen victim himself there, once or twice, over the last few years.

"I wish we were home." Kit lifts his hand and rests it against the side of John's face. "I could show you properly there." He winks. "Some real one-on-one physical activity. Until then..."

His voice trails off. He brushes his mouth against John's, so gently John has to strain to feel it, has to press right back with his lips. He pulls John in close, tugging until John leans in and presses the side of his face against Kit's. He can feel Kit's warm breath on his ear.

They stand quiet and entwined for a long time, just holding on. Until, that is, their studio manager bangs on the door yelling about the CitBankCorp account. Even then, it was several minutes before either of them feel inclined to move and it's only to finish early, hand the entire company over the third partner, George Richards, for the day and head on home.

They both feel the need for some exercise.

**~*~**

"Do you know what day this is?"

John jumps, startled. All right, he isn't supposed to be working this hard over the weekend—at all, really, as that was one of the things he and Kit had promised each other when they got together, made more relevant when they bought their flat, that they'd leave the business behind on weekends and damn the deadlines—but the following week is going to be damn awful with two client presentations and a reception to organise. If he doesn't get a little ahead, he'll spend all day Monday running to catch up.

"Huh?" He gets his heart rate back under control and stares.

"I said, do you know what day this is?"

John considers the question. He looks it in the face, noting its innocent and inoffensive expression, and thinks about it. He walks round behind it, considering it from all angles, carefully scanning every surface... hey! Wait a minute.

Last time Kit asked this question it led to some very enjoyable physical activity and exercise. It can't possibly be Health and Sports Day in Japan again, but it's all too probable Kit has something up his sleeve...

"Er – Saturday."

"Of course it's Saturday!" Kit shoulders John out from in front of the Mac and holds out an imperious hand. "Come on."

John sighs and gets up. He's too well conditioned, he realises, to put up much resistance when Kit crooks a finger. "You should be the one doing the presentation to Michael Bowyer next week, anyway. You're better at smooching the clients than I am."

"Equal partners, remember? You're the creative director, and it'll be your work you're showing off."

"I can't believe you suckered me into doing this. I need my head examined. You really are better at that stuff than me, Kit."

"You can do it. I hook 'em, you land 'em."

A lifetime of coping with his father's obsessions has John shuddering and declaring "No fishing metaphors!" But he's grinning as Kit links their hands together and tugs him out of the study and into the living room. Kit has the sound system remote in his hand and uses it as they step over the threshold. He's pulled out all the stops while John has been working on that damn presentation. Dinner, dim lights, Lou Reed on the sound system. John lets his grin widen. Lou Reed. Right.

"Romantic," he says, and half turns to meet Kit's kiss.

Kit licks his way into the kiss, parting John's mouth with his tongue, and licks his way out again, leaving John aching for more. "As you said, it's Saturday. Date night." He tilts his head onto one side. "Do you know what day this is?"

John nods to the iPod deck. "A perfect day, by the sound of it."

"It will be," promises Kit, "but it's also Cry of Liberation Day in Mexico."

John makes a helpless gesture with his free hand. "Cry of Liberation Day."

"Yup."

"In Mexico."

"We aren't going through that repeating every word I say thing again, are we?" Kit asks, sounding uneasy.

"You're making it up. No one could have a holiday called Cry of Liberation Day."

"They do in Mexico. Well, it's Cry of Dolores, really, but I don't want to get us confused by bringing girls into it. It was something to do with a revolution. Don't ask me what or which revolution. Mexico's had a few."

"And how do you propose to celebrate that?" John glances at Kit's preparations. "Takeaway chicken tikka masala? That's the best you can come up with to celebrate the Cry of Dolores? Couldn't you at least have got tamales?"

"I like chicken tikka. Besides, it's from the Bombay Palace. The best." Kit grins. He tugs at John's hand, getting him over to the long sectional couch and pushing him back onto it. "Cry of Dolores, John. You're the noisy one. I'm going to liberate you out of those jeans and if I don't have you crying out loud with delight, then my name isn't Kit Lewis."

John smiles. "I love a challenge. I don't cry out loud, for God's sake!"

"That a bet?"

"It is. What is your name, anyway?"

It only takes a mere half hour to prove it's Kit Lewis, of course. The man wins his bets. As always. John doesn't mind. He doesn't even protest at the time it takes. He likes slow and deep.

Good thing they have a microwave, or they'd have had to eat the chicken tikka cold. The chicken will taste all right, but cold rice is an offence against humanity. Too sticky.

**~*~**

"Do you know what day this is?" Kit rolls over in bed, ignoring the Sunday Times he crushes on the way. He rolls right over the Arts section without so much as a by-your-leave and certainly without remorse.

He's naked and so very beautiful, even with his hair, a darker blond than it used to be, all on end and mouth still sticky from the syrupy pancakes they'd had for breakfast. John decides he could live without remorse and certainly without the Arts section. He has more of a struggle about living without licking the sticky syrup away. That's more of a moral dilemma.

John's reading spectacles slide down his nose as he folds the business section carefully—the article on Bowyer Industries is desperately uninteresting but he keeps on going for the sake of business. Bowyer's is the biggest private contract they've ever landed, literally worth millions to rebrand and publicise everything from the man's media company to his private jet. This will see them staying at the front of the pack. They'd have to expand again.

Kit glances at the paper and grimaces. "Your sense of duty is overdeveloped. You have the presentation done and you're good, John. You're always good. Bowyer will take one look at your designs and he'll want to marry them and have a dozen children with them. You'll sweep him off his feet."

"I'm glad you're so confident."

"In you? Always." Kit's hand closes over John's. With his other hand he reaches up and carefully takes away the spectacles, writhing over John for a second to put them on the bedside cabinet. Which is exciting and leads to several minutes of distraction in which John reinforces his decision that remorse isn't necessary and he can get to like kissing sweet, sticky mouths.

Kit pulls back, stretching out his long, still-lean body. "You didn't answer me. Do you know what day this is?"

John considers the question. He looks it in the face, noting its innocent and inoffensive expression, and thinks about it. He walks round behind it... Mmn. There's a pattern here.

A pattern that had so far ended in cuddling, exercise and a really stellar date night. And indigestion. Chicken tikka was best eaten fresh.

He lets the smile start. The indigestion had faded, thanks to a benevolent deity and whoever invented Rennies. "Sunday?"

Kit blows out a noisy sigh, blowing strands of hair away from his eyes. "Yeah, it's Sunday. You know, for the best artistic designer in London, you have no imagination. At all. Today is a very special day."

"OK." John waits.

"It's the Day of the Union of Eastern Romalia with the Bulga. In Bulgaria."

"Day of the Union of Eastern Romalia with the Bulga."

"Yeah."

"In Bulgaria."

"John!"

"You're talking about the assimilation of one bit of country by another, right? And you intend to celebrate this how, exactly?"

"Think of it as metaphorical." Another writhe across John to reach the bedside cabinet has Kit rubbing himself up against John like a cat, and John's breath coming short. Very short. Kit grabs the condoms and the tube of lubricant. "I thought union might be in order here. You like being assimilated."

John looks down at the tube, then up at Kit. He licks his lips. He can still taste the syrup. "Only the one union?"

"Oh my, no. I've a few future reunions in mind, as it happens. We have all day."

John smiles and slides down the bed. "Do you want to be Eastern Romalia or the Bulga?"

Kit indicates his groin. "What do you think, Romy?"

"I don't know why I asked." John wriggles to get himself lined up with Kit, nose to nose.

Kit's response is to push at John's shoulder until John rolli onto his back, compliant and lazy and grinning. Kit sits up and looks John over a couple of times, gaze sweeping from head to foot to head again. It's so intense, John thinks he should be able to feel it, like a ghost touch as it passes over him. It makes him shiver. In a good way, but still a shiver.

Kit slithers over him, skin to skin, to give him a kiss that threatens to take John's soul out through his lips and leaves him complaining when Kit shifts away to straddle John's legs. Only then does Kit touch him properly and only with his fingertips. He strokes careful little shapes over the outside of John's thighs, keeping everything symmetrical so John's hips are cocooned between Kit's hands. Kit's fingertips move up and across John's thighs, skirting his balls and cock, and, as John parts his legs, keep up those precise little shapes as they move round onto John's inner thighs, up to the crease at the very top and slowly, very slowly and feather light, down to John's knees.

The light touch is maddening. John wants more, wants harder, wants to know what in hell it was Kit is drawing on his skin. Most of all, he wants more and harder. Kit's fingertips touch and smooth while John twists, arching his back and whining out a complaining "Kit!"

Kit moves quickly up to straddle the tops of John's thighs and swoops down to smother the next whining complaint in John's throat, stopping John's mouth with his own. They're pressed chest to chest. John's nipples peak at the contact, rubbing against Kit's chest, and heat pools down between his legs. His hips heave and he lets his mouth curve into a smile under Kit's, letting Kit know how much he likes this. He lifts his hips and rotate them, to rub his cock up against the sensitive area between Kit's thighs. It's Kit's turn to do a little whining.

John chuckles, tilting back his head to let Kit lick his throat in long sweeps of his tongue up over John's chin. Another deep and dirty kiss. Very deep. Very dirty. John likes that. So Kit does it again. And again, before working his way back down John's throat, using lips and tongue to feel and taste the skin before licking down John's breastbone with broad, wet strokes. Kit's bent at an angle, bowing his back and shifting his arse down over John's legs, his fingers painting invisible shapes... hearts. They're little hearts. Kit's fingers paint invisible hearts over John's skin as he goes.

"Kit," John says as Kit kneels between his legs.

He lifts his legs up onto Kit's shoulders, crossing his ankles to anchor himself. Kit, smiling, turns his head from side to side, kissing each knee. Sweet. As sweet as the hearts. Careful not to dislodge John, Kit leans forward again, brushing his lips down the inside of John's left leg from knee to thigh, stooping to get his tongue sweeping over the base of John's balls. Kit hums something in the back of his throat as he mouths at them. One hand still traces little hearts on John's skin, while the other works into his backside, stretching him open.

This time, when John whines, he can't even manage Kit's name. Kit laughs. Somehow, Kit's found time to slip on a condom and lube up his own cock. Happens every time they make love and John can never work out how Kit does it, because Kit's hands still appear to be busy on his skin and getting him ready. John can't recall an instant when he couldn't feel the touch of both. But somehow Kit does it.

After five years together, John's body opens easily for Kit, used to him, welcoming him. John lets out a long shuddery moan and Kit surges in, gasping. Kit's hand is slick with lube. He closes it around John's cock, fisting it to the same rhythm his own finds inside John's body. Their breath comes hard and fast.

John pushes back against the cock in his backside, contracting the muscles when Kit surges forward and making the Kit-shaped channel in him tighter, relaxing when Kit pulls back. His legs slip down to hook around Kit's waist, giving him more purchase on every thrust Kit makes—tightening and relaxing, tightening and relaxing. Kit isn't just rubbing up against John's prostate then, but banging on it, every blow sending lightning sizzling through John's veins. He can't think anymore. He's all lightning and fire, heat and the sweet sort-of-pain that has him yelling, and Kit yelling, and has Kit's hips juddering as he slams in one last time. Kit tightens his hand on John's cock until John spurts over his fingers at the same time Kit's cock is spasming.

Kit's mouth is on his. Kit's voice murmuring against his lips. Kit loves him. Again and again, over and over, that's what Kit whispers as he kisses John's lips and puts little feather kisses along the line of John's jaw, and slowly their heart rates slow and John can breathe again.

They're chest to chest again, Kit still firmly lodged inside. John takes his first real breath for several minutes, getting enough air into his lungs to speak. He cards his fingers through Kit's hair.

"Do you reckon they have this much fun in Bulgaria?"

Kit grins. "No way in hell. They only have the one union. Give me time to get my breath back, and we'll have our first reunion. First of many."

Once it would have taken only minutes for them to be ready for another bout, John observed. "We're getting older. These days, we're taking longer."

"I sent for Viagra on-line, did I tell you?"

John snorts, and shifts, loving the burn and the fullness from Kit's cock in there. "As if. I'm not going to be outdone by you, Kit Lewis. Ready to be assimilated again whenever you are."

Kit grins. "Resistance is futile," he says. And pounces.

**~*~**

**[09:55:07] Kit.Lewis1:** Do you know what day this is?

John pulls down the laptop lid, hiding the IM message that has just flashed on his screen. He doesn't close the laptop down completely. He can't. In thirty minutes he'll need the presentation notes he's laboured over for the last couple of days. The little icon in the taskbar winks at him, defying his efforts to ignore it.

Michael Bowyer, CEO of Bowyer Industries, is still talking. The man has a vision to impart, it appears, and is deaf and blind to everything else. The members of the BI board hang on his every word, staring at him like they're witnessing the Second Coming, or something.

Sycophants. Sycophants in sharp Dolce e Gabbana suits and handmade shoes.

John shifts uncomfortably. He's made a gesture towards convention by wearing a suit jacket with his best, most designery jeans. Compared to this lot, he looks dangerously Bohemian. One or two glance his way and smile the way sharks smile while they eye up lunch, before turning those intent gazes onto Bowyer again. They're all like puppies, waiting for the alpha dog's permission to attack.

John inches open the laptop lid. The icon flashes at him cheerily.

**[10:01:24] Kit.Lewis1:** I know you're there. Do you know what day this is?

Bowyer drones on. "And before we go any further, I'd better introduce John Hogarth, of Lewis-Hogarth-Richards, our new PR, design and branding contractors..."

**[10:03:01] John Hogarth5:** Working, here!

He sits through the introductions, committing the names to memory.

**[10:03:32] Kit.Lewis1:** It'll be a breeze.

"I invited John to listen to our meeting today so he could get a real feel for our mission and values. John and his team will be working on the full expression of our new brand. I think that's what you call it, John? The brand expression?"

"Yes, Mike. Everything from your email signatures to stationery, from every possible public relations and publicity tool to your website. And, of course, your internal communications too. We have plans for your company intranet and how to brand all staff communications." John taps the laptop. "I have examples here."

They'll get onto the detail in a moment or two, apparently, although Mike Bowyer says clearly that he's seen the designs and loves them. Despite Kit's prediction, he doesn't express any matrimonial intentions towards them or their creator, but he likes them. One or two of the suits look disappointed. They've been balked of their prey with that public endorsement, and won't dare treat John like so much chum in the water. In the meantime, Bowyer has more wisdom to impart on his company's vision and mission. Feeling safer, John opens the laptop lid a little further.

**[10:07:51] Kit.Lewis1:** C'mon, John. Do you know what day this is?

John doesn't jump this time. He considers Kit's question, and looks it in the face, noting its innocent and inoffensive expression, and answering it with an innocent and inoffensive expression of his own.

**[10:08:17] John.Hogarth5:** It's Thursday

**[10:08:46] John Hogarth5:** This is where I start getting out of my clothes, right?

**[10:09:15] Kit.Lewis1:** In a meeting with a client?

**[10:10:05] Kit.Lewis1:** Do you think that'll seal the deal with Bowyer? Not my type. And I don't like sharing.

**[10:10:31] Kit.Lewis1:** I mean, I was just asking what day this is.

John lets his mouth tighten and looks away from the screen. Bowyer has moved on to a review of the general economic situation, analysing global economic trends solely in relation to how they affect Bowyer Industries' bottom line.

**[10:12:43] Kit.Lewis1:** John?

**[10:15:13] Kit.Lewis1:** Okay. I lied. It is a special day.

**[10:15:56] Kit.Lewis1:** It's Motherhood and Beauty Day in Armenia.

John hopes he looks like he's taking notes while apparently listening to Bowyer as intently as any BI employee. He smiles and nods whenever Bowyer glances at him.

**[10:16:48] John.Hogarth5:** Motherhood and Beauty Day.

**[10:17:11] Kit.Lewis1:** You've got it.

**[10:17:50] John.Hogarth5:** In Armenia.

**[10:18:39] Kit.Lewis1:** Stop that!

**[10:20:14] John.Hogarth5:** No. I don't see how you can celebrate that one.

"I'll ask John to take us through the designs in a moment, but first I wanted to add a word or two about my expectations of—"

**[10:22:02] Kit.Lewis1:** We'll strike a blow for men's liberation and pretend it's Manhood and Beauty Day. We're both men.

**[10:22:47] Kit.Lewis1:** And I'm beautiful.

**[10:23:24] John.Hogarth5:** You're on your own, Kit. Signing out.

**[10:25:18] Kit.Lewis1:** Hey!

**[10:26:06] Kit.Lewis1:** Just kidding.

**[10:30:31] Kit.Lewis1:** John?

**[10:31:19] Kit.Lewis1:** If you don't like that one, we could celebrate another one. How about the Landing Day of the Thirty-Three Orientales in Uruguay?

**[10:33:24] John.Hogarth5:** Landing Day of the Thirty-Three Orientales.

**[10:35:08] Kit.Lewis1:** Sigh. Yes

**[10:35:49] John.Hogarth5:** In Uruguay.

**[10:37:12] Kit.Lewis1:** I'm going to kill you.

"And now over to John." Mike Bowyer nods in John's direction.

John sighs, flicks out of IM and into his presentation notes. The IM icon flashes at him, but he has a job to do.

Anyway, he knows his Kit. He isn't really in danger of death, although injury is another matter. The least he can expect is that Kit will make pretty damn certain both of them walk around pretty carefully for a couple of days.

He points the laser at the projector and launches into the presentation, and all the time he's smiling so much his audience of suits probably thinks he's a typical artist, out of his head on something trippy composed of illegal chemicals.

But then, none of them are going home that night to celebrate the Landing of the Thirty-Three Orientales with Kit Lewis.

Poor suckers.

**~*~**

"Do you know what day this is?" Kit's lounging on the sofa, smiling.

John considers his answer. "It's the Day of the Autonomous Community in Spain."

Kit's jaw drops. "The Day of the Autonomous Community?"

"Yes."

"In Spain."

"That's the one."

Kit frowns. "Which autonomous community? La Rioja? Castile?"

"Dunno. Does it matter?"

"No. I suppose not. I didn't mean that one anyway."

John joins him on the sofa. "Ah, then you have to be referring to Upswing of the Revolution Day in the Congo."

"Upswing of the Revolution Day."

"Yup."

"In the Congo."

John has a sudden realisation about why Kit had threatened to kill him. It is a damn annoying reaction. His mouth tightens. "Yes."

Kit shakes his head. "No, it wasn't that one, either."

"Okay. How about the Day of Accord and Reconciliation in Russia? The Day of the Nationalisation of the Oil Industry in Ecuador? National Salvation Revolution Day in Antigua? Tomb Sweeping Day in Korea?"

"People like celebrating revolutions." Kit adds, sadly, "You've found the website."

"Google is our friend. You were pretty casual about which ones you chose, weren't you? Did we celebrate any of them on the right date?"

Kit shrugs. "I just liked the names. Didn't matter about the dates."

"Ah. Makes sense in Kit-land, I guess. So which one were you going for this time?"

"Svetitskhovloba in Georgia."

"Sevetits-what?"

"Svetitskhovloba. In Georgia. Not the one in the US where they twang banjos. The one over beside Russia somewhere."

"Svetitskhovloba." John shakes his head. Trust Kit to choose the exotic-sounding one. The one no one can spell.

"You've got it."

"In Georgia."

"I swear I'll kill you," Kit says, glowering. "They will never find the body. And if they did, no one would blame me. I'd get off."

"What the hell does it mean?"

"I dunno. I just thought it made a brilliant excuse to have sex with you."

John grins at him. "Kit, why in hell do you need an excuse?"

Kit looks suddenly shy, a look so unusual on him that John is staggered. "I know. But I never want it to be just ordinary for you, John. I know we've been together... huh, five years. Can you believe that? Longer than most of the straight couples we know."

"Five years," John says, and smiles. Almost of its own volition, his hand lifts to play with Kit's thick hair. He loves Kit's hair.

"Five great years. I just want it always to be fun and exciting and just wonderful for you. Not just the same old, same old. Not just boring and every-day."

"It is fun. It always is." John leans in to kiss him. That takes up a few gratifyingly moan-filled minutes. When he pulls back, Kit no longer looks shy, but disgustingly complacent. John doesn't care. "It's all the boring, everyday things that make it real. It's always fun and exciting and wonderful. Like you."

Kit pretends to blush, fanning his cheeks with both hands. "Aw, shucks." He grins. "Don't say the L word. I'll just get all mushy."

"Mushy won't do. I need you hard-edged. We have a lot to celebrate. Five years and a lot of revolutions. You on for a little... what was it? Svetits-something-or-other? Peace and Accord? National Revolution Day? Getting married?"

"You bet! All of them." Kit gestures to his groin. "I tell you, John, I've got quite the revolutionary upswing going on here! Just for—" He stops dead, his mouth dropping open. What colour he has in his face drains away. "Whoa."

John grins. "I thought if you really like celebrating special days, we could forget all the stuff everyone else does and create our own. What d'you think?"

Kit's mouth is making ob-ob-ob shapes. Like a goldfish. He swallows so hard his Adam's apple bounces. "Okay," he says, in a sort of squeak. If John were a less principled man, that is almost blackmail-worthy.

John presses his lips together to stop them splitting his face with a smile so big it could eat entire galaxies. "So, we just have to choose a day. Victory Day in Estonia? Dragon Boat Festival in China? National Poetry Day?"

Kit, who has been smiling at John in a misty, emotional sort of way for the last couple of minutes does another stopping dead moment, the smile wiped off. "Not that! Remember when Lym and Mike got married last year and the guys quoted some really bad poetry at each other? Everyone cried buckets with trying not to laugh. You had to hide your face in the order of service sheet, and you snorted. No poetry."

"Everyone's a critic."

"Promise me no poetry, and you're on."

"No poetry. I promise." John holds out his hands to take both of Kit's, and rather to his surprise they're trembling worse than an attack of St. Vitus' Dance. Luckily, Kit's are too. Sweet. They even have the same fit of nerves together. "We'll find a day, Kit."

"So when I ask you what day it is...?"

John grins. "Our high day and holiday, Kit. The right day."

Kit grins back. He grasps his revolutionary upswing with one hand, keeping hold of one of John's hands with the other. "That'll do. Let's celebrate."

^^++^^++^^++^^
Author's Note

I don't write contemporary m/m romance—I write science fiction usually, with a side order of steampunk—so this collection of short stories is as surprising to me as to you.

It started with the second story I ever had published: a short story called _Happy Holidays_ in an anthology from Dreamspinner Press. I took a story that had lurked on my hard drive for years, changed some of the details (I took my two heroes, Kit Lewis and John Hogarth, and set them and their business in New York, thinking that would resonate best with the huge m/m market, which is predominantly American) and DSP ran with it. When the rights reverted to me earlier this year, I took the opportunity to bring Kit and John back to their London roots and revise _Happy Holidays_ a little, dig out a few more short stories from the hard drive, and suddenly I had a small collection of light-hearted, frothy and romantic stories charting their love affair across four or five years from the London Olympics onwards.

I had a lot of fun putting this together. I hope you enjoyed reading it.

Here's some information about my science fiction novels:

The Taking Shield Series

A classic space opera, military sci-fi series where Earth's a dead planet, dark for thousands of years; lost for so long no one even knows where the solar system is. Her last known colony, Albion, has grown to be regional galactic power in its own right. But its drive to expand and found colonies of its own has threatened an alien race, the Maess, against whom Albion is now fighting a last-ditch battle for survival in a war that's dragged on for generations.

Taking Shield charts the missions and adventures of Shield Captain Bennet, scion of a prominent military family. Bennet, also an analyst with the Military Strategy Unit, uncovers crucial data about the Maess to help with the war effort. Against the demands of his family's 'triple goddess' of Duty, Honour and Service, is set Bennet's relationships with lovers and family—his difficult relationship with his long term partner, Joss; his estrangement from his father, Caeden, the commander of Fleet's First Flotilla; and Fleet Lieutenant Flynn, who, over the course of the series, develops into Bennet's main love interest.

Over the Taking Shield arc, Bennet will see the extremes to which humanity's enemies, and his own people, will go to win the war. Some days he isn't able to tell friend from foe. Some days he doubts everything, including himself, as he strives to ensure Albion's victory. And some days he isn't sure, any longer, what victory looks like.

For more information on the Shield universe, visit <https://annabutlerfiction.com/>

Taking Shield e-books and paperbacks are available. Follow these links to my website for information and for signed paperbacks:

 Taking Shield 01: Gyrfalcon

 Taking Shield 02: Heart Scarab

 Taking Shield 03: Makepeace

 Taking Shield 04: The Chains of Their Sins

Taking Shield 05: Day of Wrath coming late in 2017

**~*~**

The Lancaster's Luck Series

A classic m/m romance with the added twist of a steampunk world where aeroships fill the skies of Victorian London and our hero uses pistols powered by luminferous aether and phlogiston. Published by Dreamspinner Press, the first book of the series, The Gilded Scarab, was a finalist in the Romantic Times Reviewer's Awards in 2015.

When Captain Rafe Lancaster is invalided out of the Britannic Imperium's Aero Corps after crashing his aerofighter during the Second Boer War, his eyesight is damaged permanently, and his career as a fighter pilot is over. Returning to Londinium in late November 1899, he's lost the skies he loved, has no place in a society ruled by an elite oligarchy of powerful Houses, and is hard up, homeless, and in desperate need of a new direction in life.

Everything changes when he buys a coffeehouse near the Britannic Imperium Museum in Bloomsbury, the haunt of Aegyptologists. For the first time in years, Rafe is free to be himself. In a city powered by luminiferous aether and phlogiston, and where powerful men use House assassins to target their rivals, Rafe must navigate dangerous politics, learn to make the best coffee in Londinium, and fend off murder and kidnap attempts before he can find happiness with the man he loves.

Lancaster's Luck ebooks and paperbacks are available. Follow these links to my website for information and for signed paperbacks:

The Gilded Scarab

The Jackal's House

(coming later in 2017 from Dreamspinner Press)

**~*~**

Passing Shadows

If you enjoyed the Taking Shield books, why not take a look at the series prequel, _Passing Shadows_? It tells the story of the destruction of Earth, ten thousand years before the events of Gyrfalcon and the following books, in a trilogy of short stories narrated by Li Liang, a pilot and first officer on a ship caught up in the destruction and the immediate aftermath as the few surviving humans run for their lives.

_Passing Shadows_ is available in ebook and paperback. Follow the link to my website for information and for signed paperbacks:

Passing Shadows

**~*~**

FlashWired

A novella depicting an even earlier period in Earth's history, as humanity first starts moving out to the stars, founding colonies on new planets. In it, scouts from a coloniser ship come across an alien society that has a disturbingly practical use for the other races it encounters.

FlashWired is available in ebook and paperback. Follow the link to my website for information and for signed paperbacks:

FlashWired

**~*~**

To keep in touch with publication of new books, you can follow my blog and sign up for my newsletter Newsletters are sent only when I have something substantive to say: progress on the books, events I'm attending, occasional giveaways and offers of ARCs of new or forthcoming books in return for (absolutely honest) reviews. You won't be peppered with emails every few days. Promise!

You can contact me through my website (<https://annabutlerfiction.com/>) or at annabutlerfiction@gmail.com

