Three weeks after the Garden Party of Doom, David checked his reflection in the full-length mirror in Ryan and Samir’s bedroom. Technically, the room was supposed to be off-limits to him while he camped out on their sofa under a spare blanket and a large amount of sufferance on Samir’s part—honestly, David might have had a bit of a tendresse for Ryan back when Ryan and Samir were first getting coupled up, but that didn’t mean he had designs on him now—but he felt sure they’d have agreed, had they been here, that this was an emergency.
After all, wasn’t this about getting him out of their hair? Figuratively speaking, as both had, with encroaching baldness, embraced the fully shaven look. Their heads, seen over the back of the sofa, now resembled nothing so much as a couple of ethnically diverse hen’s eggs snuggled up for warmth.
That comment hadn’t gone down at all well. Hence, today’s mission. And the mirror.
Not too bad, even if he did say so himself. His tailored shirt clung in all the right places—not, in David’s considered opinion, that there were actually any wrong places for a little clinging to occur. It emphasised his trim waist and made him seem at least six inches taller, while its deep-purple colour set off his pale complexion and dark hair beautifully. His super-skinny black jeans added a casual note, and not incidentally clove lovingly to what had more than once been described as a pair of rather finely sculpted buttocks. Hmm. Should he add a belt? Perhaps the one with the large silver buckle that drew attention to certain other assets?
“What do you think, Gregory?” he mused aloud. “To flaunt, or not to flaunt, that is the question.”
Gregory, being a teddy bear of very little voice, said nothing.
“I think not,” David said decisively.
He frowned at Gregory, who was perched on Ryan and Samir’s bed. This was perfectly allowable; the prohibition had only been regarding David laying a finger on their specially imported Tom of Finland duvet cover. He’d therefore felt nary a qualm in placing Gregory strategically on one bulging, denim-clad crotch. When you were a teddy bear, you had to take your thrills where you could find them.
“Don’t look at me like that. There are, believe it or not, times when discretion really is the better part of valour. And I’m almost positive that turning up at the house of your ex-crush and his current boyfriend to beg a favour is one of them.” Samir’s lukewarm reception had, David felt uncomfortably sure, been merely a pale reflection of the antagonism he was likely to encounter from Patrick upon arriving at his and Mark’s rural idyll.
Gregory’s glassy-eyed stare seemed to show a certain cynicism.
“I said ex-crush, and I meant ex-crush. Ex, ex, ex. Oh, bugger it. Now you’ve made me think of Xavier. And look at you—you’re not even ready to go yet.” David retrieved Gregory from his place in 1970s gay heaven, and marched out of the bedroom, pausing at the door to check no trace of his penetration into Ryan and Samir’s inner sanctum remained.
Then he took the tiny deerstalker from its temporary home on the living room mantelpiece and fastened it securely onto Gregory’s head with the attached elastic. “There. You’re a perfect little classic Holmes. Try not to have an identity crisis.”
Now, to drive or not to drive? Hmm. Although it was a crying shame to leave Mrs. Merdle, his lovely sunset-orange MG GS—bought, with exquisite irony, mere weeks before he’d lost his job—languishing in her garage, David instinctively felt that turning up, metaphorical cap in hand, at the wheel of a brand-new car wouldn’t be the best way to get results. Public transport it was, then. Not without some difficulty, he slid his Oyster card into his back pocket.
Still, David rather liked travelling by Underground. True, it was death to any kind of grooming—particularly the Northern Line, which always left him feeling as if he’d indulged in a bit of rough trade in an abandoned coal bunker and then spritzed lightly with eau de burnt diesel—but you saw such fascinating people on the Tube. And people always seemed so interested in him, particularly whenever he took Gregory along for the ride.
Today was no exception. By the time he’d made his way across town to St. Pancras, David had starred in three strangers’ selfies, had four people compliment him on his teddy bear, and fended off a couple of queries as to where the Sherlock fan convention was taking place.
All in all, David was in a fabulous mood as he wandered through the station. St. Pancras was his favourite station too, with its high arched roof, its bright shopping arcade, and its street pianos. There was a music student—at least, he looked like a student, with his un-ironed shirt and vitamin-deprived pallor—pounding out something stolid and Russian-sounding on the piano just past Eurostar arrivals. A couple of Japanese tourists, or possibly his proud parents, were taking photos of him.
David smiled fondly and strolled on. There was a second piano farther down the main concourse, out of earshot of the first. On a whim, David set Gregory atop its scarred wooden frame and sat down to give a spirited, if slightly rusty, rendition of Danse Macabre, just to confuse people. When he glanced up at the end, quite a crowd had gathered, and the Japanese couple were now taking pictures of him.
So probably not maybe-a-music-student’s parents. Either that or family relations were about to get a tad strained.
The journey out to Bishops Langley was boringly uneventful, although David did have an interesting philosophical discussion with a four-year-old as to whether grown-ups were allowed to have teddy bears.
“I’m so sorry about that,” the mother said, fussing with her son’s collar as David rose to get off the train. “I hope he wasn’t bothering you too much.”
“Oh, no.” David beamed at the little family. “Future politician in the making.” From the over-reliance on “My daddy says” in his arguments, he’d undoubtedly be a Tory, but one couldn’t have everything.
A taxi took him the short distance from Bishops Langley to Shamwell, and before he knew it, David was knocking on Mark’s door.
The first hint that things might not all go his way today came when the door opened to reveal, not Mark, but Patrick, his current lover. Or, as Patrick himself would no doubt put it, Mark’s lover, period, but David was of the hope-springs-eternal persuasion when it came to attractive older men.
“Oh. It’s you,” Patrick said flatly.
The frosty welcome was, David felt, unfair. Patrick had been the one who’d got the guy, after all. Where was his magnanimity in victory? David beamed resolutely. “Can Mark come out to play?”
Patrick heaved a sigh. “Mark?” he yelled in the direction of the stairs.
There was the indistinct sound of Mark’s voice.
“He’ll be down in a minute. Coffee?”
“That would be lovely. The little moppet tells me you’ve moved in here now,” David added, perhaps a tiny bit pointedly, as he followed his reluctant host into the living room. Patrick might have won in love, but David was still persona tres grata in Fen’s life. He set Gregory down on the sofa and straightened his deerstalker.
“All going well?” he asked, scanning the room surreptitiously for signs of Patrick’s invading presence. Was that a new throw on the armchair? There was definitely a new games console by the television. At least Patrick hadn’t stooped to marking his territory with loved-up photos of him and Mark in blissful coupledom on the mantelpiece . . . Ah, there they were. On the bookshelf.
“Yeah. Fine.” Patrick ran a hand over his hair, throwing a glance over to the stairs. “Fen’s out with her boyfriend right now.”
“That’s a shame. That they’re out, that is. Not about the boyfriend. Ollie seems like a charming young man, from what I’ve seen. And what Fen tells me in her frequent phone calls, of course. Still, we can have a cosy little threesome.” David’s cheeks were beginning to ache from all this determined smiling. Which was rather unfair seeing as Patrick wasn’t even trying.
Patrick shook himself minutely. “I’ll go put the kettle on.”
David sighed and joined Gregory on the sofa. He steadfastly avoided looking at the bookshelf with its wanton flaunting of the fact that Mark was happier without him.
Mark’s welcome, when he finally appeared, was infinitely better than his lover’s had been. He was dressed in new-looking jeans and a shirt David wouldn’t personally have worn had the alternative been a bondage harness and leather chaps at a meeting of the Westboro Baptist Church. Apparently Patrick had failed to exert a positive influence on Mark’s clothing choices. David mourned for the lost opportunity to take the man in hand. So to speak.
“David, how are you?” Mark held out his arms to give David a much-needed hug. “I’ve been meaning to get in touch. I hear you’re, ah, job hunting?”
David reluctantly pulled back from Mark’s embrace and allowed his face to fall into tragic lines. “It’s true. Charles and I have parted ways. Some things just cannot be endured. I was deaf to his pleading—”
Mark fixed him with a stern look. “Strange that. I happened to meet up with him for drinks the other day, and he told me he’d fired you for sexual misconduct.”
“Sexual misconduct? I like that!” David puffed up his chest.
“So I’ve heard.”
“That was not what it was like at all.” David pouted, deflating. “How was I supposed to know the cock I was sucking belonged to another woman? It didn’t have a ring on it. If you ask me, I’m the victim in all this.”
“From what I’ve heard, you might have a case for unfair dismissal.” Patrick, who’d appeared behind Mark, said it as though the words were being pulled from him along with his fingernails.
But he’d said it. Touched, David beamed at him. “I knew you liked me really.”
“Yeah, don’t push it.”
“Are you interested in pursuing that?” Mark asked. “Do sit down, by the way.”
They sat, David back on the sofa with Gregory, and Mark on the armchair with Patrick’s throw. Patrick remained standing, rather pointedly, in David’s opinion.
“I should probably say at once,” Mark continued, “I feel something of a conflict of interest. While I certainly don’t condone Charles’s behaviour, I have tried to stay on friendly terms with him.”
David put on a glum expression. Not only was it rather restful after all that manic smiling at Patrick, it also reflected his current mood much more closely. “Tell me honestly, do you think it’d be worth it? I suppose a payout might be nice, but what if it all goes horribly wrong and I end up owing thousands of pounds of legal costs? Or worse, having to go back to work for Charles? No, I think I’m going to have to take this one on the fine-boned yet masculine chin. I did wonder, though . . . Fen tells me you’re starting a business?”
“Yes, that’s right. Accountancy and tax services, but with a focus on small, local businesses and charitable organisations.” Mark smiled, his eyes crinkling up rather winsomely at the corners. “Going back to my roots. You see, most local organisations are run by people without an accountancy background. You wouldn’t believe how many people working for very worthy causes that would be eligible for lottery funding or other grants, don’t apply for them. Apparently they find the paperwork too daunting. It’s not simply a matter of filling in a form, you see. The organisation has to make sure their financial statements are in order and up-to-date as well.”
David did not clap his hands together in glee, but it was a close-run thing. “That sounds like a lot of work for one man,” he said slowly. “Don’t forget, you wouldn’t want to find business eating into your time with the little moppet again.” He paused and gave Mark a significant look. “Especially now she’s started going out with boys. You never can tell what might happen if you take your eye off the balls. So you know what you need?”
“Let me guess—” Patrick said dryly.
“A paperwork fairy!” David cut him off, beaming brightly at Mark in the hopes a hitherto latent talent for hypnosis would suddenly manifest itself in his hour of need. It always seemed to work in stories. “It’d be perfect—you’d have me for all the tedious drudgery, and you’d be able to concentrate on . . . on the nontedious, un-drudgey stuff.” It was a weak finish, but David couldn’t be expected to do his best work in the face of Patrick’s unsubtle glare.
“Are you sure it would work for you?” Mark sounded doubtful. “I wouldn’t be able to pay you anything like what you were getting in London. And then there’s the travel out here to consider on top of that.”
David took a deep breath. Crunch time. “As it turns out, London isn’t actually an issue. You see, I’m a teensy bit short of somewhere to live. You know I was sharing the flat with Brian, the bisexual ballet dancer? Funny story, but he’s fallen totally, hopelessly in love with one of Charles’s daughters. The eldest one, thank God, or he’d have had to change his name to Brian the bye-bye-bollocks. He’s even planning to get down on one knee to her, and not in the fun way. And apparently the whole prospect of parental approval—remember, ballet dancer—becomes a lot remoter if he’s cohabiting avec moi.”
Mark frowned. “Wouldn’t Charles be more worried about the bisexual thing? Than the ballet dancing, I mean.”
“Please. Do you know how much the corps de ballet get paid? NHS nurses look upon them with pity. Homeless people accost them on the street and ply them with spare change and out-of-date sandwiches. Besides, give Bri-bri some credit. He’s hardly going to be waving his bisexual thing in dear old Charles’s face, no matter how fetching the colours on the flag.”
“If he’s that hard up, how’s he going to manage the rent if you go?”
David shrugged. “Meh. Trust fund. Some people have all the luck.”
Mark’s frown deepened. It didn’t enhance his appearance, making him rather resemble one of those overbred dogs with an excess-skin problem. Maybe David should suggest Botox? A teensy nip and tuck? Although possibly not at this precise moment. “Doesn’t that render the whole low-pay question moot?” Mark asked at last.
David gave Gregory a helpless look. Gregory, being literally unable to help himself, returned it. “I know you’re an accountant, but don’t you think you’re rather hung up on money?” He sighed. “In any case, the whole thing is moot as a moot hall. Whatever that is. Somewhere people gather to discuss pointless questions? He kicked me out three weeks ago, and I’ve been homeless ever since. Forced to wander the streets, begging for shelter—”
“Meaning what, exactly?” Patrick cut in, a little harshly for David’s liking.
“Meaning, I’ve been camping out at a friend’s.” David sent him a hard stare. “It’s horrible.”
Patrick raised an eyebrow. “The welcome run out already?”
David suppressed a wince. Loyalty to Ryan and Samir—after all, they had helped him out in a pinch—and perhaps a smidge of embarrassed pride prevented him from letting Patrick know how close he’d come to the bone with that little riposte. “No. It’s the sofa. Far too short and entirely too lumpy.”
Patrick’s expression didn’t soften. “Have you tried checking for peas under the cushions, Princess?”
Mark coughed. “I’m sure we’d all agree it’s not an ideal situation to be in. But what do you want from us?”
David crossed mental fingers and took a deep metaphorical breath. “Well, I was thinking, what with you having more spare rooms than you can shake a feather duster at, and the little moppet et moi getting on so famously, maybe I could come and stay with you for an, ah, indeterminate period? Just until I get back on my graceful and elegantly shod feet?”
David glanced at Patrick, and his heart sank. The forecast, it seemed, was for sudden squalls followed by a sharp drop in temperature. Violent storms were not ruled out.
Mark, who’d apparently also been taking note of Patrick’s expression, turned back to David and coughed. “Ah . . .”
Time for the puppy-dog eyes. “Pleeease? They’ve told me I have to be out by the end of the month. You wouldn’t make a teddy bear homeless, would you?” David waggled Gregory at them in illustration, then had to bend down to pick up a carelessly dropped meerschaum pipe.
When he looked up again, Mark’s face was doing complex contortions reminiscent of someone with chronic constipation. “It’s just, well, given the circumstances you and Patrick met under . . .”
“But nothing was going on between us! I mean, I’d have noticed. I was right there. In front of your crotch. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Although what a mouse might have been doing in there, I hate to think.”
Patrick made a breathy noise. “So you wouldn’t only be working together, you’d be living together too?”
“But not in the biblical sense,” David stressed. “Would it help if I promise to avert my eyes every time Mark emerges from the bathroom in a skimpy towel, all hot and steamy? Or walks around in his boxers on laundry day? Or—”
“Mark, it’s your house, your decision.” Patrick turned on his heel and left the room.
Mark’s gaze tracked him helplessly. “I’m sorry, David. I don’t think it’d be a good idea. And it’d be confusing for Fen too—you know how, um, invested she got in the idea of you and me getting together a few months ago.”
David’s shoulders went all slumpy. “No, it’s fine. I wouldn’t want to be the cause of another broken home for the little moppet. Gregory and I will pack our bags and be on our way. There are plenty of hotels in London. And hostels for the homeless. And doorways, and railway bridges . . .”
“David, I’m sorry. I’d like to help, honestly I would. But don’t you have any family?”
“There’s Hen. My mother. But she lives out in darkest Kent, and I really think the commute up to Hertfordshire would be unmanageable.” David frowned, although only slightly, so as not to cause wrinkles. He sometimes felt his looks were all he had going for him these days. “You know, when I abandoned you and the little moppet to the tender mercies of your young man, I’d been picturing them as significantly more tender. Is he always this much of a grump?”
“No, God, no. You’ve just caught him on a bad day.” Mark’s smile faltered as he caught David’s searching gaze, and he went on hastily. “Patrick only found out this morning his mum’s relationship has ended, and, well, he’s a bit protective of her. Doesn’t like her to be unhappy. She said it was a mutual agreement to split, but he thinks she’s just putting on a brave face. And, you see, it was with a friend of ours, so it’s awkward all round.”
“Anyone I know?” David perked up minutely. The prospect of gossip could generally be counted upon to raise his spirits a tad, although today it was more of a micro-tad. Possibly even a pico-tad.
“I don’t think so. Rory—he’s one of the Spartans. A couple of years older than me.” Mark’s eyes widened. “Actually, there’s a thought. He lives up on Pig Lane, and I’m pretty sure he’s got a spare room. Maybe he’d be willing to have you as a lodger? I get the feeling he’d be glad of some extra money—he’s divorced, with two children.”
“Tell him how good I am with the little moppet,” David urged.
“They don’t live with him.”
“Oh. Then tell him about my stunning good looks and winning personality?”
Mark laughed. “He’s straight. Very straight.”
“A minor detail. And subject to change without notice, I’ve always found.”
“David, sex was what got you into this mess in the first place. I’d hold off on trying to seduce anyone else right now. Besides, I don’t think Patrick would be happy.”
“What wouldn’t Patrick be happy about?” said the man himself, standing in the doorway with his arms folded, the epitome of a stern, macho patriarch.
David was starting to see a glimmer of what Mark liked about him.
Mark coughed. “Oh, ah, we were talking about the possibility of David living with Rory. As a lodger,” he added a tad too quickly and with just a smidge too much emphasis.
Patrick blinked. Then he smiled what David liked to think of as an Evil Vizier smile, although it’d be equally at home on the face of a shark spying a lone swimmer who’d ventured out too far on a particularly choppy day when he also happened to be wearing swimming trunks made out of bacon. “Yeah, that’d be a solution. Why don’t you have a word with him?”
David wondered if the smile of foreboding was meant for him, or for that faithless seducer of mothers, Rory.