ACCUSATION
m/m, NC17


“You cheated,” he said. His tone was bemused; as if betrayed. “You cheated!”

“Fucking didn’t,” came the spirited reply.

Andi glared at his partner across the table. “That’s not the hand I originally dealt you.”

The other man raised a delicately shaped eyebrow. “X-ray vision now, is it? I have the same hand I started with. You just can’t face losing.”

Andi dropped his cards on to the table and flushed. “If you can’t play properly, Piers, there’s no point in it.”

Piers’ cards were spread out, face up in front of him. He tapped his long slender fingers on the pattern of red and black symbols. “You sound like you’re still in the school playground, dear boy.”

“And you sound like some sixth-form public school faggot!” Andi snapped back. His tousled hair fell over his forehead in a truly boyish look. His face was red and his eyelashes damp. “You came from the same shithole council estate that we all did, so don’t try that fake, upper-class pretension on me.”

Piers’ eyes had that familiar – and dangerous - glint to them. “If I’m sixth-form, then what are you, cute thing? Barely out of short trousers and still carrying your pencil case? Isn’t the age thing exactly what you enjoy so much? Maybe I misheard that whimper of ‘fuck me, sir, please’, when I took my belt to you last night-”

Andi pushed his chair back, abruptly, and slammed his hands on the table. Piers curled his plump, well-shaped upper lip in a sneer.

Looked like the right time for intervention. I stepped out of the kitchen where I’d been listening in, an opened bottle of wine in each hand. The two heads swivelled around to face me, startled.

“White or red?” I called, cheerily.


*


I’ve known them both for a long time. I was in the same class as Andi at school, though we didn’t know much about each other then. Like the fact that we both lusted after boys, to the extent that our minds were full of the guilty, greedy cravings from morning until night; like the fact that neither of us was going to do particularly well at school when we spent most of our teenage leisure time smoking, drinking cheap cider, and looking for older, more experienced boys to play with our pricks.

I managed to cling on to my education by the skin of my teeth and go to college, but everyone knew that Andi had been expelled at sixteen for fucking - not just behind the school bike shed but in it, and in front of it, too, and unfortunately, just at the moment that the caretaker was doing his rounds.

And he’d been fucking a boy, too. I remember secretly admiring his bravery. Oh, and feeling insanely jealous, too, that someone was getting it.

I met up with Andi a couple of years later, in a city club, where the house music was too loud, and that night’s entertainment barely legal. I’d been offered a blowjob in the toilets – I’d even considered taking the thin, spotty youth up on it, I was so bored – but then Andi had come in after me, laughing and drunk and singing – badly – a chorus from the school song, and we recognised each other. Spotty Youth went off to seek sustenance elsewhere, and Andi and I had one of those conversations when you half know each other, and are half reminiscing. He was very amusing - it was fun.

He told me he had a boyfriend – was living with him, albeit on and off - in a flat not far from my own. Small world, eh? Boyfriend’s name was Piers – he’d been to another school, wasn’t one of our group, no, I wouldn’t know him. Andi insisted he was very happy with Piers; they’d been together for years; Piers had been the making of him. I learned that, on that inauspicious night at the school when Andi’s extra-curricular activities had been discovered, it had been Piers with his cock up Andi’s ass. Piers had been the taking of him, too, it seemed.

Piers was at the club that night, too, and I soon decided what I thought he was. Older – more confident – more arrogant. I’d never seen him around before, but then I’d left for college as soon as I could – and anyway, I doubted I’d have been part of his clique. He was lean and dark and well groomed, as my Mum used to describe it. He wore it all like a designer brand. He was witty and sexy and greedy, and his eyes followed Andi like a predator’s.

I met up with them a couple more times after that – we had similar music taste; there were a couple of parties at mutual friends’ houses. They were good company, and they seemed to like my humour – I was a foil for them, I suppose. We started to play cards on a Friday night together, then go out clubbing or drinking. I got used to being around their flat, almost as familiar as my own.

We were an unusual mix of friends, but it seemed to work well.

These things often do, right?



*


I followed Andi back into the kitchen, having left Piers with one of the bottles of wine and a glass that he filled and drained rather too quickly.

“He didn’t mean it,” I said. I said that a lot, to Andi. “He’s drunk again. He’s just being a dickhead as usual.”

Andi looked up at me through lashes that were way too long for a boy. He looked a lot younger when he did that. “I should tell him to fuck off, right? Like he tells me, at least once a month?”

I grimaced. “No. You love each other, right?” The word felt awkward on my tongue. “He’s just showing off, Andi. Likes to think he’s better than you – well, than both of us. It’s an age thing.” I tried a rueful smile, so he’d know I was joking, trying to defuse the earlier comments.

He frowned. “He thinks I’m still a boy. Just because he did the university thing and I… didn’t. But I’ve been out at work longer than he has, you know?”

“I know,” I said,

He ran a hand through his curls. “I pay my way in the flat, and for the car, too. He just seems stuck in the schooldays – when we met. How I was, then.” He looked very flushed. “But we’ve all moved on. He should see me as more of an equal. Those days are gone, right?”

“Right,” I said.

He glanced at me again. His eyes narrowed. “The sex thing… what he said…?”

I shrugged. The kitchen was never a large room, but at that moment it felt overheated and very cramped. “What you do together is your own thing. Doesn’t bother me.”

“It’s just a game. He likes to play the school game when we fuck.” He sounded wistful: he wasn’t really talking to me. I winced at his wide-eyed bluntness. I knew about sex games - about role play. He didn’t need to elaborate.

He smiled at me, then, watching me struggle to show the appropriate expression on my face. “I’m OK now. Thanks for listening, but let’s go back in and finish the game. Where’s that wine?”

I drew a deep breath. He looked impossibly cheerful again, his personal weather vane swung back to sunny after a fierce but swift squall.

“It’s your deal, anyway,” he continued. “He’ll never cheat on your deal, like he does on mine.” When I started to smile back, he brushed his fingers over mine. “You’re a good friend, Charlie,” he said. He ran his hand through his hair again, turned around, and left me standing there alone in the kitchen.


*


A good friend, he’d said.

I liked Andi a lot. I’d barely noticed him as a boy at school, but it was a different matter now he was a young man. He was fun, always friendly, and – let’s be honest - physically very attractive. He touched people a lot – hugged them, kissed me quite often. I liked the attention, too. Most of my friends didn’t venture past a mock punch on the shoulder. And I hadn’t been out with anyone on a regular basis for nearly a year.

The excuses were easily found; less easily justified. Should a friend have fucked him, just because he offered?

The first time had been on a similar night, when I’d been round at their flat for our usual weekly poker session. Piers had done his all-too-familiar impression of Cruel Bastard, provoking another god-awful argument. Something about Andi sounding as camp as a Butlins compere and pouting like the child he obviously was. Piers made a career out of superciliousness. He had no inhibitions about displaying his temper in front of me, either. After consigning a couple of plates to a pile of smashed shards and making the glassware rattle with his shouting, he swept out of the flat in a truly monstrous strop.

I comforted Andi as he hiccupped great sobs against my shoulder. He was slim and easily held, and made me feel far more comfortable with the role of sympathetic ear than I’d imagined. I patted his back like I thought I should, and he pressed against me even more tightly. I couldn’t fail to feel his cock rubbing against my thigh, pouched loosely under his sweat pants.

“He’s a bastard,” he sobbed against me. His lips were wet and brushed against my chin. “Sometimes I’m scared of him, you know?”

I didn’t know. “Andi?” I gripped him a little tighter. “Look, if there’s a problem, if he gets violent with you -”

Andi sighed. “It’s fine. He won’t. But he hurts me in so many other ways. You understand me so much better, Charlie. You’re sensitive… I can talk to you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t something I’d put on my CV; wasn’t something I’d been accused of before. I held him a little more gratefully.

“I fancy you, too, you know?”

It was such a stupid phrase. I don’t expect either of us had used it since school days. In Andi’s husky, young man’s voice it sounded far more adult; far more promising.

I just stared at him. I must have looked like an idiot. The other clichéd phrases ran through my mind – you’re with Piers. We’re just friends. It’s not right.

“Charlie…” He was cajoling. His eyes were pleading: still moist from his tearfulness. I didn’t know if the rubbing against me was deliberate, but my own cock was responding painfully inside my jeans. He looked tired and distressed and in need of support of some kind. “I want it, Charlie. I need you.”

It happened: that’s all I can say. The kissing got messy and hot, and I pushed him down on to the couch, his gasps soft and encouraging in my ear. He peeled his tee shirt over his head. I pulled down his sweat pants and grasped his cock, squeezing it.

“Condom,” he hissed. He pressed the packet into my hand and my fingers fumbled with opening it. “Fuck me, Charlie, please. Don’t be gentle. Do me, hard. Make me feel good again.”

I pushed my jeans down my legs so fast that I snapped the button off. He opened his legs around me and tilted his hips so that I could push into him. He wailed, a thin, childish sound, and it was impossibly stimulating. I thrust much too hard, much too fast. Came in less than a minute, too. I wasn’t proud of my performance, but it had been a while since I’d had any sex at all, apart from jerking off. Andi clutched at me, pulling me in and out of him for a few more thrusts, until I started to soften and the condom was rolling up uncomfortably around me. He pushed me back so that I slid out, then he fell back on to the cushions and started vigorously pumping himself.

I sat back and watched him. He was flushed all over, his bare skin pale and glossy with sweat. The curls around his groin had an auburn tint. His hips jerked and his cock slicked up and down in his fist, and he came with a soft, sibilant moan, tears leaking out of his eyes. He was fascinating.

And all the time, he was watching me watch.

Afterwards, he kissed me a little sloppily, and pulled his clothes back on. Then Piers was ringing the doorbell in a more contrite mood, asking if he could come back in. Andi and I never really talked about what we’d done, or what it meant. It didn’t seem to bother him, either way.

We fucked quite often after that. And we didn’t seem to need Piers to produce his verbal abuse for Andi to seek my comfort. Don’t get me wrong, the arguments still happened, but so did the fucking, and not always as cause and effect.

He just had to ask me.


*


We finished the poker hand this evening without further incident. Piers won, but then he usually did. Despite being a very stormy character, his poker face was the best I’d ever played against. Both bottles of wine had been drunk, and Andi offered to go down to the off licence for more.

After he left the flat, Piers and I sat for a few moments in silence.

“You don’t have to be so aggressive towards him,” I said, finally. “He takes it very seriously.”

Piers made a soft, grunting noise. “And I don’t?”

I bit my lip. Sometimes it was difficult to gauge his mood and I was wary of saying the wrong thing. Not that I hadn’t done that before. “He’s not a kid.” I felt ridiculous, talking about a man the same age as me. “He thinks you treat him like one.”

Piers sighed. He leant back in his chair, one of his long legs balanced on top of the other. He wore a tight white vest, loose, low-slung jeans and was barefoot. A designer casual look; a sloppy elegance. "You know how Andi can be," he said. "He asks for it. You see that as clearly as I do."

I frowned. "I know how you both can be. It pisses me off, sometimes."

Piers stared at me. “You’re a good friend, Charlie, you know that?”

I’d heard that already, tonight. I kept my thoughts about it to myself. “I just want the two of you to sort it out calmly, properly. You should both be contributing to this relationship – you both have expectations of each other. Every time you push him so far, there’s a scene. Why do you do it? There’s no point in arguing – in spoiling the evening.”

Piers was watching me closely. “Maybe that’s what you think.” His voice was a lazy, provocative drawl.

“Christ,” I swore. I could feel the anger rising: he did this deliberately. “Seems to me you’re the one behaves like a kid. This stupid couldn’t-care-less attitude, the snide comments, the temper tantrums. This is real life, not one of your fucking bedroom games.”

“Very witty, Charlie.” He was openly grinning, now. “But for your information, I’m well aware Andi’s not a kid. I’m well aware what he expects from me – what I contribute to our relationship. And also how far I can push him.”

I glared back. I felt very hot. “You can be such a bastard, Piers.”

He nodded. He didn’t seem at all offended. In fact, he smiled even more broadly. “But that’s what you like, isn’t it?”

He wasn’t talking about Andi anymore, or my half-hearted defence of his partner. He was talking about the way I viewed him, Piers, and the names I’d called him plenty of times before. And not just during a game of cards. There’d been times he gripped me so hard that that he marked my skin – times that I’d bitten at him in fury – times that we’d both groaned aloud and forced sweaty, reluctant response out of the other’s resistance. Times that our bodies met, naked and aggressive and swollen with illicit excitement.

Because I’d been fucking him, too.