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He’d woken up that morning from another strange dream. Déjà vu. He turned to look at Kitty, but she was dead to the world, her sharp face made somewhat softer without her dramatic makeup.
They happened sometimes. Not often. But enough that his spine tingled with the knowledge.
Today was another day he’d lived through before.
On the bus to work, Croydon rolled by, all red brick and smoke; young mothers with their hair in scrunchies pushed prams full of kicking and screaming children. Pearl hadn’t been like that, Colin thought mildly. She was a child of few words. Took after her father.
He’d chosen the bus, not because he usually rode it to work, but because he knew with a strange certainty that last time – this day last time, July fifteenth some millenia before or after or through some time warp in between – he had, and that needed to change. It had been the wrong decision.
When he’d tried to leave the house to head for the station, his body slowed to a halt. Numbly, in the middle of the street, he stood with two decisions held before him.
CHOOSE: (A) TAKE UNDERGROUND. (B) TAKE BUS.
Underground. Obviously. He always took the underground.
So why was he here, now, sat on a mouldy old peach-coloured seat on the number 52?
A tie-clad teenage boy turned around and stared at him, hard. Colin stared back coolly, well aware of the figure he cut. He played up to the stereotype of the so-called geeky game developer – the wide aviator glasses, his t-shirts with obscure band logos on, deliberately evasive – and played up to his unconventional good looks. Why not bleach your hair so blond your scalp burns for days afterwards, then rake a clawed hand through it with gel enough times to look vaguely hedgehog-like? It wasn’t like sticking to a so-called normal look was going to do him any favours. His normal brown hair didn’t make him Prince Charming. Might as well say fuck it and make yourself a little bit different so at least when people stared, they stared for reasons you concocted, not because of your perma-inquisitive eyebrows.
This kid needed to fuck off, though.
Questioning his decision to go by bus had Colin questioning a lot of things as the city whipped by. Why, exactly, was he still working for that weasel Mohan Thakur, when he could easily start up his own game company? He was Tuckersoft’s golden goose, their breadwinner. He’d gotten five stars from that jowly kid on TV for his last three games. His pay packet was nothing to sniff at, but he knew he could quite easily cut a better deal if he went solo. He’d set up offices somewhere a lot less fancy, for starters, to save on overheads, because Thakur liked being in central London despite it eating up so much company money.
What’s gotten into you? he thought to himself. He was a chilled-out guy, usually; his old man used to sardonically refer to him as horizontal. Since when did he give a shit about any of this? He was doing what he wanted to do for a living, wasn’t he?
He got off the bus and headed to the Tuckersoft offices, still worming away, concerned at his own concern. Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Relax single cassette was in his backpack; he vowed to listen to it as he worked that morning. Fucking relax, man.
*
‘Colin’, said Mohan’s voice excitedly, ‘this is Stefan.’
Knee-deep in code and irritated at being disturbed, Colin unplugged in a haze. He wasn’t in the mood for interruptions; less still in the mood for playing babysitter to some new kid. But a lot of Tuckersoft workers came in having already known his name. He wasn’t too humble to admit to himself that he was a notorious name.
With his tongue, he slid his cigarette to the side of his mouth in one motion and stuck out his hand. ‘Alright?’
And then he got a good look at the kid and realised: ah. That’s why.
That’s why I’m still working at Tuckersoft.
That’s why I’m still here.
To meet you.
It was like all the colours in the room amplified. Like everything had gone fish-eye lensed. Like a huge epiphany had smacked Colin straight between the eyes and made his head spin. He didn’t think the Prime Minister herself walking through Tuckersoft’s doors could have made a bigger impact. Sod that – it was like he’d seen someone he’d believed to be dead for years stood right there in the flesh. His heart rate picked up and he felt a little nauseous. Whatever it was that was important about this kid – and he was a kid, despite being a twenty-something, all toothy nervous grin and floppy hair, wild in the eyes to meet his idol – it was the reason Colin hadn’t felt himself today. The reason he’d had to choose his mode of transportation to work instead of moving on autopilot. Stefan Butler.
Wait. Had Mohan even said his surname?
Of course Colin betrayed none of his emotions outwardly; he never did. He held his shit together – just about – and gave an aloof smile, lightly asking, ‘Have we met before?’
Stefan’s smile faltered. ‘I don’t think so.’
We have, Stefan, Colin thought to himself as Mohan ushered him away to give him the tour. He stared at the kid’s back after they’d retreated further into the offices. And I’m about to find out just why that is.
*
The TV set was blaring, colouring the room with its iridescent flickering. Pearl was asleep; he and Kitty were sat watching another horrible episode of Coronation Street. Rather, Kitty was watching it; for all her punk attire and attitude, she wasn’t enlightened enough not to sink to the levels of the British masses by watching the same benign crap they did. Colin hated it, but he liked curling up on the sofa with her as she watched it, chewing her hair during the tense moments.
Deidre Barlow was shouting at another lady when Colin said, ‘Got a new guy at work.’
‘Shh,’ said Kitty, her eyes focused on the screen.
Colin untangled himself. ‘I’m going to bed.’
‘No, no,’ Kitty backtracked, putting his arm back around her. ‘Stay. Tell me about him.’
Colin paused. He didn’t know how much to reveal. But what, apart from his insane reaction to Stefan, did he have to reveal? ‘He’s called Stefan. He’s working for Tuckersoft, but he’ll mostly be working from home. Had to convince Thakur to keep him on, stick my oar in, tell him it was all part of the genius. Think he bought it.’
‘Uh-huh.’ He was losing her to the on-screen argument already. He had to stick to the juicy parts.
‘He’s cute,’ Colin said sagely.
Kitty looked at him wryly. She knew about his preferences. Plural. ‘Oh yeah?’
Colin nodded. He had found Stefan attractive, in an endearing way – being hero-worshipped was always something of a turn-on – but also, he supposed, physically. He usually liked his men broad and bawdy, the jock-type with no traces of effeminacy, just a plain bread-and-butter man. Kitty still teased him every time David Hasslehoff came on TV.
Stefan was more of the angelic type. Soft. Beautiful, even. Colin had watched his slim hands pick up and handle the copy of Bandersnatch with more than clinical detachment.
‘Yeah,’ Colin replied, knowing she liked hearing this. ‘I think you’d like him, actually. Your type.’
Kitty purred. ‘Maybe you should invite him round sometime.’
‘Maybe.’
This conversation must have turned over in her mind throughout the episode of Coronation Street; after the end music rolled in, Kitty pulled him into a deep, long kiss.
‘Now we can go to bed,’ she said and pulled him up.
An unease settled into Colin’s stomach, even as his dick perked up at the change of tone. His body was horny, already ready to have sex with his girlfriend, smiling back at her as they backed up into the bedroom, but once he got there he had a familiar and awful realisation.
Two options presented themselves before him.
CHOOSE: (A) HAVE SEX. (B) DON’T HAVE SEX.
‘So, come on, then,’ Kitty said, taking off her jumper in one swift motion. She had her black bra on. Her tits looked fantastic. ‘What are you waiting for?’
The déjà vu descended. Colin knew what he picked last time. He couldn’t pick the same thing twice.
It took Kitty a long time to fall asleep, but Colin could finally relax when she did. He could feel her tension from the inches that separated them; they’d almost had a blazing row when he’d told her he was too tired to fuck. Too tired? From what? You sit at a desk all day! Her cheeks went as red as her hair. Colin felt sort of guilty, especially since he was undeniably horny himself, and every base urge he had was telling him he was a fucking moron for turning down this opportunity.
Relax. Don’t do it. When you wanna go do it.
Relax. Don’t do it.
When you wanna come.
Colin did wanna come.
Stealthily, he gripped his cock and gently began to rub himself. He didn’t want the friction of the sheets to wake Kitty, so he was tense with the effort of getting this over quickly.
He almost groaned when he was presented with his final option of the day.
CHOOSE: (A) THINK ABOUT KITTY. (B) THINK ABOUT STEFAN.
He blushed, hard, even though there was no one around to see - and it took a lot to make Colin Ritman blush. The shame of it all made it more exciting. To his dismay, it wasn’t a choice he had to think about for longer than three seconds.
Slim, soft hands. Thick dark hair that would be heaven to tightly fist. Pale skin, just itching to be clawed.
And an absolute certainty that this guy – who couldn’t be more than a year or two younger than Colin – was a virgin. He’d have to break him in like a young thoroughbred.
Colin’s orgasm was swift and glittering.
The weeks at Tuckersoft passed. Colin missed Stefan. Though he’d only known him for a single day, it felt like he was holding his breath until he saw him again. The déjà vu hadn’t happened since; each time he woke up, ready to take the train, zero options floating before his eyes as usual, he knew he wouldn’t be seeing him that day.
Metl Hedd got five stars. Colin was proud – this one had been a real tricky bastard – but he wasn’t surprised.
He knew Stefan would be watching at home. Colin wondered who he lived with. Hoped he didn’t live by himself.
‘He’s done it again!’ big Mohan chortled the following morning, slapping him on the back as soon as he walked through the door. ‘Here he is! The five-star man! Anything I can get you, my good sir? Some roll-ups? A Twix?’
‘Yeah,’ Colin quipped drily. ‘A raise.’
Mohan gave a big laugh, then sent the intern off to the shop next door. The pencil-moustachioed kid came back and promptly handed Colin a multipack of Twix bars.
*
Just when Colin was ready to abandon all hope of seeing him again, one bright Sunday morning changed it all.
Kitty had been out last night, raving with her girlfriends like she’d done before the pregnancy. Colin knew a small part of her resented motherhood for making her that little bit tamer, their prawn-fingered little miracle forcing her to ditch the booze and the fags and the pills. He always jumped at any opportunity to stay in with Pearl, just him and her, because it satisfied Kitty for the next few weeks if she got her party on once in a while.
Their relationship was strange. Wordless. They’d met in a club, liked each other’s bizarre looks at first glance, then dated for a few brief months.
Then they forgot a condom, once. And that was that: flat deposit. Curtain shopping in BHS. Lugging their huge record collections from their parent’s houses to dump, unorganised, in their living room. Colin remembered looking around his slightly scruffy apartment next to his heavily pregnant girlfriend, wondering, with part amusement, part despair, if this was his life for good.
She was feisty, which he liked. Colin preferred his women fiery and his men tame. Where he himself stood, exactly, he didn’t know; somewhere in the middle. Reserved yet bubbling with intensity. Cool yet acidic. Colin was plastered with signs that said don’t tread on me, and so most people, wisely, didn’t.
But some people went further than treading – they touched. Lightly. And then he melted like butter in a pan.
So Sunday’s dawn cracked like an egg yolk, and the whole of Croyden was as silent as the dead. Colin checked in on Pearl at about seven a.m.; there she was, sound asleep in her pink babygrow. His heart suddenly swelled with adoration, the likes of which he could barely comprehend.
Giddy with paternal love, he walked back into the kitchen in his pinstripe dressing gown, wondering absently what he could eat.
And then –
CHOOSE: (A) WEETABIX. (B) TOAST.
Colin’s heart rate picked up. Finally.
(Toast, of course).
He milled around the apartment most of the day, wondering when he was going to see him. No more options floated before his eyes; nothing about this unspectacular day was remotely familiar to him. He cooed Pearl in his arms when she grew squirmy with wind; changed her nappies; fed her; put her back to bed for a nap just before midday and stuck on his favourite Depeche Mode LP, playing it full blast through his headphones.
He was suddenly really craving a Vimto. In the kitchen, he pulled the fridge door open and found they were out of it.
‘Kit?’ he called through to the bedroom. A loud groan was her retort.
‘We got any Vimto left?’
‘Nope,’ she replied, voice hoarse. ‘Now stop shouting, I’m going back to sleep.’
Colin mulled over the fridge for a moment longer, when the eggs and the cheese and the Dairy Milk all became obscured by his second option of the day:
CHOOSE: (A) BUY VIMTO. (B) MAKE TEA INSTEAD.
Even if Colin hadn’t been craving it, he’d have chosen A. He was about to see Stefan, and he knew it.
He threw on his red denim jacket in a rush, grabbed his keys and wallet and stuck his head round the bedroom door. ‘Off to the shop, Kit. Won’t be long.’
Kitty looked at him from beneath the sheets, bleary-eyed. He was panting. ‘Bloody hell, you really want some Vimto, don’t you.’
Colin nodded. ‘Don’t forget butter!’ she shouted after him as he slammed the door.
He took a left at the end of the road, instead of a right, the direction of the corner shop. He usually went right, of course, so obviously he had to make inverse decisions today.
Something, some force bigger than him, made him feel good about that decision.
When he rounded the corner of Jameson Street, not far from his old therapy clinic, he felt the brush of fate’s fingertips. He slowed his walk.
Stefan ran into his eyeline, and he stopped dead. ‘Colin.’
Colin didn’t act surprised. He wanted to impress this kid; make him think he was cool as a cucumber twenty-four seven. Horizontal. ‘Alright?’
Stefan only looked at him the way a child looks at a sky full of stars. God, he looked terrible, Colin thought. Deep-set lavender eye bags hung from his eyes. He was jittery, he looked thinner. And where had he come from, just now? Why was he all alone? He looked like a frightened rabbit. Colin could see beads of sweat from his brow. He didn’t look none to clean, either, to be honest.
Colin mulled it over in his head and decided this didn’t much affect his attraction to him.
‘I’m having some trouble,’ said Stefan falteringly. ‘With Bandersnatch.’
Bandersnatch? Was this what it was all about, fucking Bandersnatch?
‘Right,’ Colin said slowly.
‘It’s just not – piecing together – I can’t get it to work right,’ Stefan said, wringing his hands. ‘I’ve been trying and trying and…’
Poor boy, Colin thought. All holed up in his room, coding alone, day in and day out. Colin wondered how much sun the kid got, let alone social interaction. It’d drive anyone bonkers.
‘You’re in the hole,’ he said smartly. ‘You got anywhere to be this afternoon?’
Stefan shook his head.
‘Follow me,’ Colin said.
Stefan hesitated and looked back towards the therapy clinic. Something clicked in Colin’s mind; wondered who Stefan had just upped and ran from. But that was none of his business.
Colin promptly stopped craving Vimto as soon as they circled back to the flat. Stefan shuffled along next to him, occasionally biting his fingernails, preoccupied with his demons.
Absently, as they passed the big, ugly blocks of grey flats, Colin wondered whether he was going to have to save Stefan, and from what.
‘How are you?’ Stefan asked, suddenly, as they ascended the stairwell of Colin’s block.
Colin gave a small smile. ‘Oh, you know.’
‘I don’t, actually,’ Stefan admitted. ‘We only met the once.’
Colin nodded sagely. ‘Ah, yes.’ He added a cryptic, ‘or did we?’
This simple teasing comment produced a look of despair in Stefan’s eyes; wildly, he looked to Colin to see how serious he was being.
Colin knew he should wink, give some clear indication that he was talking shit, but he didn’t. He stared back at Stefan as they climbed the second flight of stairs. Partly to freak him out a little – he always got off from freaking people out, a little bit – and partly because he himself felt like they had indeed met before.
‘I saw Metl Hedd got five stars,’ Stefan said, a little sullenly.
Colin allowed himself a grin. ‘Yeah, was pleased with that one.’
‘It’s so weird to see – on television – like, your stuff getting reviewed. I saw you working on that. And now it’s in the shops, and getting talked about, and stuff. I –’ Stefan stopped, embarrassed, his face flushing hard. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I must sound like a massive tool.’
Colin looked at him coolly, not betraying how cute it was to be gushed about in real time by a guy he was very viscerally interested in. ‘Nah, mate, it’s nothing. But you might want to shut up before I can’t fit my head through the front door.’
He let them into the apartment. Kitty was now up and dressed, last night’s makeup still painted on her face like a jester’s. After Colin introduced her – and ‘daddy’s little miracle’ – he threw her an offhand comment as Stefan wondered around his apartment, saucer-eyed. ‘Stefan’s in the hole, Kit.’
‘Is he?’ she purred, and he knew what she was thinking just there and then: that same voice she’d used when she suggested he bring him back some time. He caught her eye through the hallway; she approved. Smiled like a Cheshire cat. ‘You gonna get him out?’
Colin smirked. Before he closed the living room door, Kitty gave him a simple, one-motion nod.
Stefan perched on Colin’s ratty sofa, looking like he’d entered another planet. Poor guy.
Colin wasted no time and dug around for the joint that he knew was around here somewhere. Took the lighter from his back pocket and deftly lit it. He watched Stefan go from awed to afraid as he took a drag.
‘This’ll help,’ he explained as the room filled with smoke.
Stefan gave him a look of doubt.
‘You don’t have to take it,’ Colin said patiently. ‘It’s up to you. Entirely your choice.’
He could almost see the two choices lighting up in front of Stefan’s eyes.
What was this about? Well, really, he wanted to wind the kid down a bit, let him let loose – if anyone in the world needed to smoke some weed, it was Stefan Butler – but a selfish, buried part of him also knew that it wasn’t entirely about that. Colin wanted to see where a Stefan without inhibitions would lead to.
Finally he gave a tight nod and reached for the joint. Colin passed it, trying not to betray his pleasure.
As Stefan’s plume of smoke whirled around the room, Colin’s eyes widened. Text began to shift before his eyes. Not again, not again…
CHOOSE: (A) TAKE ACID. (B) KISS STEFAN.
Colin’s stomach dropped.
Why wasn’t there an option for (C): Just keep smoking this joint and stay blissed out?
Colin Ritman wasn’t a shy man, but he had been a cripplingly shy boy. It was a past that he didn’t like to return to, if he could help it. He’d cultivated this persona very carefully, opting for aloofness over eagerness, apathy over empathy, smirks over smiles. He hadn’t always been like that. He remembered his school days; he’d been a spiky-haired little maths wizard, bespectacled, his backpack almost larger than himself. He wasn’t bullied – he was too invisible to be bullied – but he was certainly mocked by the bigger, tougher kids that he knew damn well only shared around five brain cells between them. Shoulder-barges as he walked down the corridor. Fake sick notes to get himself out of P.E. so he could sit in the library, his little nose buried in Lord of the Rings. He wasn’t cool then, and his coolness now was in niche circles: he still sidestepped anyone in a football t-shirt, avoided loud, rowdy pubs, and could mimic breezy man-to-man talk with cab drivers and dentists and waiters for a maximum of five to ten minutes. Otherwise, he was still, deep down, that sweet nerdy child that didn’t want to be looked too closely by anyone at all costs.
So as much as he wanted Stefan – that yearning hero-worship Stefan had for him borderline erotic, making him itch with the urge to make his eyes grow even wider – just a simple touch, Colin thought, would make the guy’s head burst, so what would happen if he, say, sucked him off – he couldn’t go in for the kiss right now. His confident persona wavered in the face of fear.
Acid it was, then.
Colin reached for the pot he kept the acid tabs in when he experienced a strange feeling snaking through his stomach. Déjà vu. His hands shimmered before him. The vinyl playing on the record player felt like it was echoing twofold around them.
I always feel like / somebody’s watching me
(And I have no privacy)
‘Colin,’ asked Stefan, nervously. ‘Everything okay?’
He had picked (A) TAKE ACID last time. And the time before that. Possibly even the time before that, too.
How did he know this? What ‘last time?’
Rockwell continued to loop round and round the needle in a sinister circle.
I always feel like / somebody’s watching me
(Who’s playing tricks on me?)
How many times had they done this dance? How many times, when faced with the options, had Colin picked (A) TAKE ACID? Had it been every time?
Just what exactly happened when the two of them took it, anyway? Colin shuddered at the thought.
‘Seriously,’ Stefan said, sounding like he was starting to panic, ‘what’s wrong?’
He had to break the cycle. Do the thing Colin Ritman, in this universe – in every universe – didn’t want to do. Correction: was too afraid to do.
He took another deep drag on the joint and stood up.
(B) KISS STEFAN. That’s what I choose, you sick fucks. Is that alright now? Is everyone getting what they want? I hope whoever it is that’s watching gets a real kick out of this.
‘I’m fine,’ Colin said smoothly, running a hand through his hair and flashing an uncharacteristic smile. ‘The weed, ah, sometimes knocks me back a bit.’
Stefan nodded slowly like one of those dashboard nodding dogs. ‘I feel fine,’ he admitted quietly, a little proud.
Colin went over to sit next to him, passed him the joint again. ‘Well, then, you must be a natural,’ he said softly.
Stefan took another drag with an uncertain two fingers. It was beginning to get dark outside. London slowly turned her lights on.
Colin sat and pondered how to approach this whole thing. Turning to Stefan, he was about to ask a polite, but quite on-the-nose, so, which way do you swing, anyway, Stefan? when suddenly he felt a hot, uncertain hand on his knee.
Colin looked down, eyebrows cocked. Stefan withdrew the hand instantly.
‘Oh my god,’ he moaned, covering his eyes. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry – I –’
Well, Colin mused, this was about to make things a bit easier.
Stefan was beside himself. ‘I should probably leave, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable – I know you have a baby – and K-Kitty –’
Just to shut him up - or calm him down – Colin leaned forward and kissed him squarely on the mouth. Stefan, shocked initially, froze in fear. Eventually he began to relax, opened his mouth a little to deepen the kiss.
The kiss was supposed to shock Stefan, but it was Colin who felt the jolt of desire zip straight through him from his lips to his very core. He’d underestimated his desire for this gorgeous idiot, this baby-bird-like sapling who was quite clearly in desperate need of getting fucked. Getting fucked by Colin.
Colin let his hands run along Stefan’s jaw, cupping his chin possessively. Just because it pleased him, he tested the waters by lightly pressing his thumb on Stefan’s throat.
Stefan arched towards him instinctively, and the flames in Colin’s stomach crackled and grew.
Unexpectedly, Stefan pulled away for a moment, panting, his mouth agape and wet. ‘Oh.’
Colin smirked. He didn’t really feel like smirking, but he didn’t know what else to do.
Stefan was so close to Colin’s face; he raked his eyes up and down it, from shock of hair to small nose to lips to eyes. Greedy. ‘I like boys,’ he said in a rush.
Colin snorted. ‘I’d worked that out for myself somehow.’ He added, just to clear the air, ‘Me too. I’m…I guess you would say I’m bisexual.’ As an afterthought: ‘And Kitty knows. And she’s fine with me and you, you know. She kind of fancies the pants off you herself.’
Stefan nodded, saucer-eyed. ‘I think…’ he said slowly. Swallowed once. ‘I think I just like. Boys.’
Colin took off his t-shirt in one sweeping movement. ‘More power to you, mate.’
Stefan gave an uncertain giggle. He took off his jumper uneasily, then presented himself to Colin with a boldness Colin hadn’t seen him display thus far, about anything. It was endearing, impressive even. Colin hoped absently that one day they could live in a world where people cared less about labels, where two men could enjoy themselves like this without fear of the government, or nosey neighbours, or societal judgements. Just two people. Two bodies. Four hands that raked over one another, veins standing out from the rise of blood pressure they were both experiencing from the drugs and each other both.
Perhaps, he mused, option B was the route down that path. He very much doubted it.
On the sofa, Colin pushed Stefan down onto his back, and Stefan went willingly. He grinded down onto Stefan’s crotch, and the younger man let out a small sound of exclamation, fisting his hair into Colin’s like Colin had always imagined. Colin himself was losing some of his trademark composure; he eagerly licked a great stripe from Colin’s collarbone to his jaw, then bit down, hard, on his shoulder, sucking a lovebite on that soft skin that haunted his mind.
‘God,’ Stefan whined, arching upwards, ‘Colin.’
‘Tomato tomato,’ Colin panted cockily, and directed Stefan’s hand from his hair to his face, wherein he stuck two of Stefan’s fingers into his own mouth and sucked eagerly.
Stefan gave a short, shallow inhale that let Colin know he was close.
‘You like that?’ Colin hissed, his hand running down Stefan’s wiry torso to his jeans waistband. ‘you want that, hm?’
Stefan only gasped again.
‘You do,’ Colin continued, ‘I know you do, you dirty bastard.’ He unbuttoned Stefan’s jeans and freed his cock. It had been straining to be freed and now it was, and it was there, nondescript and average but god it was Stefan’s so Colin wanted it, so he dipped down and took it eagerly into his mouth with an eagerness for oral sex he hadn’t felt since he could remember. Guiltily, he wondered when the last time he went down on Kitty was.
He wasn’t down there for long before Stefan came with a fragile moan, hipbones jutting like a staccato. Colin swallowed him down, relished the salty taste of him.
In the moments after he wondered what he must look like: wet-lipped and dewy, flushed with desire, eyes black like a shark.
Stefan lay back panting, letting the wave wash fully over him. Eventually, he sat up. ‘Okay,’ he said breathlessly, looking at Colin in the eyes. ‘What can I do?’
‘Sorry?’
‘You,’ Stefan said pointedly. ‘Need to be…finished.’
Colin looked down. His cock was straining desperately. He hadn’t really given it thought. ‘Oh,’ he said airily. ‘I can jack myself off right now, and make it quick. It’ll be alright.’
Stefan raised his eyebrows and shook his head. ‘I need to be taught,’ he said squarely, and Colin’s dick responded at these words. ‘If I’m going to be with other guys in the future…I need to know. Teach me.’
Teach me. Colin’s cock almost leaked at these words.
‘God,’ Colin almost whispered. ‘You have no idea what you do.’ Taking a deep breath, he said, ‘OK. Come here.’
Stefan crawled forwards. He unbuttoned Colin’s jeans uncertainly and almost jumped at the sight of his erect dick, hard and ready.
‘OK,’ Colin said, panting, incredibly aware that they were losing time. ‘Now – take it in your mouth. Just wet it. You don’t have to – go the whole way.’
Stefan obliged, taking Colin’s dick in his mouth and using his tongue to wet it with as much saliva as he could gather. Colin dug his nails into his fist to keep himself steady. ‘Good. Now you can –’ suck, he thought, but Stefan had already begun taking Colin into his mouth, uncertainly.
Colin thought he’d died. He thought back to (A) TAKE ACID. Why the fuck had he ever given that any thought?
Stefan’s blow job was tentative, but it was almost enough for Colin. He thought, just before he was about to cum, he’d test Stefan’s capabilities. He gently thrusted, downwards, deeply into Stefan’s throat, feeling the sides of his walls in once inexplicable motion.
Colin came with one blinding sensation, his orgasm ten times as glittering as the one he’d imagined with Stefan. He withdrew as Stefan coughed, and kissed the man before he could think twice about it, his own cum on his own lips but he didn’t think twice about it: he had the most sincere love for this man, this beautiful boy, and he needed to tell Kitty urgently that she was going to be seeing a lot more of him lately, whether she was involved in their sexual practices or not.
With the way that Stefan looked at Colin as they wrapped themselves around each other on the sofa, legs twisted and tangled together, Colin thought: not. Most likely, not.
*
Colin helped Stefan finish Bandersnatch. That was, at the end of the day, what it had been all about.
But it wasn’t too bad, either, that a good thirty years later, he could look back upon his life and mull over his choices. At each LGBTQ pride parade he saw on TV on in movies – he never attended, he was still Colin fucking Ritman at the end of the day, with an aloof reputation to uphold – his heart grew a little bit softer. Each rainbow flag he saw – and he saw them all the more frequently, on bags and wristbands and t-shirts – made him chirpy for the entire day. That’s me, he thought when he saw proud people waving their banners, singing their songs. That’s Stefan.
Kitty never minded that they never included her from then on.