Smoking Hot Ch. 14

"Well... He's not just my flatmate, OK?"

He's bloody shaking. Forget not doing public displays of affection - I step over to him to hold his hand, which at least gets his mum going "Oh! I see!"

I was going to leave it there, but he grabs me into a huge hug, him pushing himself into my arms.

What else can I do but hold him?

His mum steps out onto the landing. "John?"

Jenny comes up instead, having finished her make-up and all. Lovely short skirt with her heels, shimmery top. She's gorgeous and it's definitely good that she's engaged; I'd be throwing myself at her otherwise, not just because I've never done siblings. Now there's a secret I'll take to my grave! "What's up?"

"Did you know about this?"

"What?" She's looked in the room, clocked us and folds her arms.

"Your brother and his..."

"Boyfriend? Eh, 'partner' is probably better. 'Boyfriend' sounds a bit twee once you're thirty. What d'you reckon, Adrian? Oi, Dan, stop clinging to him like you're in a shipwreck! You look like a daft barnacle. Taxi's coming in half an hour! Go on, get your glad rags on."

I like her.

His mum is looking at me like she's been betrayed. She holds it together, saying nothing, then there's a tight-lipped, "I'd best explain to your father. Daniel, you'll be sleeping in your room tonight, won't you?"

It's not a question. He doesn't say anything, again. Only when his mum goes back downstairs does he raise his chin from my ear, and he kisses me as if his life depended on it.

Until we're interrupted by Jenny. "Dan, bab! Easy, tiger! Mom will be fine in a bit, let her just get used to it. Same with Dad. Oh love! Don't get bawling. I know they're old-fashioned, but give them a bit, eh?"

"Why do I have to do all the fuckin' givin'?", he snaps back.

"Cos it's my birthday and I say so. Stop your whinging, kid; you get changed, now."

"My bag's downstairs."

"Isn't, I brought it up. I'm bringing it in here. Looks like you might need your chap - sorry, Adrian, don't mean to talk about you like you're not there! I'll go calm the 'rents down, but shouldn't be too difficult - they were both saying what a nice bloke you were, a bit ago. You've got fifteen minutes. Ta-ra a bit."

She launches into a run back downstairs when we all hear Dad expostulating, "Blooming Ada! That chap's a poof? Well, I'll go to the foot of our stairs!"

There's some sort of frantic discussion going on. It doesn't sound like we're going to get our heads bashed in at all imminently, so I poke Dan to get his good T-shirt on.

The biggest threat to us right now is clearly Jenny.

"Come on, love. You said yourself, they're nice. They've not had ten minutes to mourn their hypothetical daughter-in-law, yet."

"They don't deserve you," he growls, but once we're spruced up he lets me hold his hand and lead him downstairs.

Jenny is still looking daggers all round, arms akimbo. Mr Johnstone steps up to me.

He puts out his hand, a bit stiffly. "Adrian? I hear you're stepping out with my son." He stops, seemingly lost for words.

"That's right. I'm a lucky man. You must be very proud of him."

The man seems even more embarrassed, if anything. "Eh, he's OK." The taxi pulls up and honks. "Right, in a bit, all of you. Try not to wake us when you come in. Ta-ra."

Jenny shoves us out to the waiting cab.

Dan nigh on collapses into the back seat. It's a black cab, so he's between us.

"Well, that went all right, didn't it?", she says with satisfaction.

Dan's all like 'whaa?'

"Serious, though! You saw Dad, all shaking hands with your Adrian. He was just gearing up to do the 'you treat my son right' bit, when the cab came."

"Do any of your friends' folks have queer family?" I ask her. "That they could talk to?"

"Like the moms in Queer As Folk? I honestly don't know if that would help or not!" She fakes a Mancunian accent. "'Anne, try not to think about them bumming and you'll be fine.' For real, let them get used to you being around, just holding hands a bit, and in six months' time Mom would swing for you and Dad'll be threatening any tutting neighbours with a shovel." Jenny sighs at us. "It's not like they were that much better meeting any of my blokes, you know. 'Specially Dad. A man who's shoving his dick into his little girl..."

"Suppose so," Dan mutters.

"You know so. Don't get a cob on, we're going to eat and drink then dance the night away. Course, you survived my parents, now you just need to deal with Janice..."

"Who the fuck's Janice?"

Dan is sighing but now laughing, too. Jenny explains.

"She's one of my besties from school. Me, Tracey, Janice. Once Dan hit about sixteen and started washing regularly and all, she really fancied him... She's been getting her hopes up again since he split up with that Louise."

"Didn't you tell her why we split up?"

"Course I did. But that don't stop her hoping! She had a bad break-up a couple months ago, so she's probably going to get trollied tonight, just warning you..."

"Who else is coming?" She reels off a list of names. A dozen girls, a 'couple or three' mates of her Matt, four boyfriends of the girlies. "I think Matt's friends are both single and on the lookout..."

I vow to shove this Janice towards them. Vigorously.

The bar's lively. Reserved area for us all at the back, buffet set out. There's bottles of white wine open and some jugs of lurid cocktail. Jenny introduces us to some of her newer friends as her 'kid brother' and 'Adrian from London', letting us choose how to deal with the situation. Dan's gripping my hand again, which should be enough to clue them in. He soon lets go to reach the sausage rolls, so I'll go to the bar to get him a beer. I offer to get a round in, which obviously endears me to her Matt and a couple of the other lads who aren't cocktail fans. More importantly, I order myself a tonic water with ice and lemon and a poncy wee umbrella, which I swear to all concerned is a G&T.

This evening should be OK now. Even tomorrow morning. As long as I stay reasonably sober. Which I'm defining as 'able to walk, and noticeably less sozzled than everyone else.'

I return to the table to whoops from the girls' end.

"Well, hello!"

"Here he is - the man who's stolen our Daniel!"

"Get over yourself Janice - you were clearly never in the running!"

"Hello darling, and aren't you gorgeous?"

Oh, god. It's a bunch of fag hags. I feel a bit like Jesus with his fawning disciples... actually, let's not think about that metaphor too much. I nod and smile, and of course they love my accent. One of the brighter ones asks if I met Dan when he was serving 'over there', so I have to confess to the on-line dating and thank Jenny for giving Dan stop-smoking advice. Turns out two of them are Jenny's colleagues, so there's more whoops and cheers when I confirm I really have quit, three months now.

"We'll keep an eye on you. No relapsing when you get drunk," one warns.

Dan catches my eye and pisses himself laughing.

He's relaxing. It's an evening of drinking and dancing. We're going to be fine.

I stuff in as much food as I can before we're dragged off to the local less-divey nightclub, the one that actually keeps out under-18s and knives but otherwise is a local club for all of south-east Birmingham. Mass-market music, cheapish booze, mix of gay and straight, naff as hell and I don't care.

I've kept it down to one and a half real G&Ts - the other half went to a pot plant - so I'm still with it. So's Matt and his friends, while Dan moved onto the sangria and is joining the women in getting right raucous. Why not.

I get through a couple vodka and tonics in the club, interspersed with more plain tonic whenever I'm buying. The beer is served in plastic glasses, so I sneak Dan an alcohol-free one to slow down his attempts to get legless. But, even better than that for keeping him from getting shit-faced, is the dance floor.

All he has to do is stand there, raise his arms and shimmy his hips, and he'd have an appreciative audience. But he wants me next to him, to touch up and flirt with, and I'm happy to oblige. It slightly reduces the number of drunk birds coming up to pinch his arse - I'm swear I'm slapping them away like Whack-a-Mole.

The music improves, or gets back to the Eighties; same difference. We're both putting more energy into it now, bouncing along to Come On Eileen, grabbing the others round the shoulders for a crazed Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, and fuck it, I'm feeling him up during Whitney's I Wanna Dance With Somebody. "Somebody who loooooves me!" Dan howls in my ear.

I don't know if someone's had a word with the DJ, but we get It's Raining Men, followed by Frankie's Relax! and then Soft Cell doing Tainted Love, the queerest song ever. Dan holds me tight, gazing into my eyes as he thrusts his pelvis at mine on the beat. It gets me hard in my tight jeans, and he knows it.

The song ends, and he pulls me off the dance floor. I assume he wants the bar. He does get a pint of tap water from the hydration station - good thing they have that, I've seen some pills changing hands - then drags me along a black-painted plywood corridor towards the gents. Half way down, he half pushes me, half falls on me, so I'm back against the wall being kissed and groped, all enthusiastic like he'd just pulled some top talent.

We're far from the only couple making out - it's nearly midnight on a Saturday night, after all, so I fulfil my end of the deal with gusto, until he motions his head towards the toilets.

"Are you serious? This isn't a gay club!"

"Deadly. That's why we'll go in a cubicle," he giggles. "Nobody ever notices." He lets go my arm as we stroll in, like any other pissed-up lads needing a slash, but then as soon as a cubicle becomes free, Dan shoves me in it then sidles in himself. He's right that no-one was paying attention, all the guys just wanting to get back to the bar or the floor.

"Thought you said you didn't do cottaging?"

"It's not cottaging if you bring your own bloke! Just because I don't do total strangers - scrap that, I don't do guys I haven't at least stared at for thirty seconds..."

I break his drunken lips off mine again. "You sure you want it in a toilet?"

His plastered leer is the sexiest I've seen on him. "I want it right here, right now!"

He's fumbling unbuckling my belt, succeeds, drops to his knees, finds my stiffening cock and helps it out of my pants and its snug wee sleeping bag.

You know what? I'm not arguing with him. No-one's going to hear above the racket, and he's got my cock in his hand. If needed, I'll pretend when we leave that he was being sick.

It's a fucking nightclub. People fuck.

I get his prick out, all ready for action, do the honours with the rubber for him, make use of that sachet of lube I've kept in my pocket for ages, and I bend over, clutching the pipe going up to the toilet cistern. Someone stumbles drunkenly onto the partition wall, making it all shake and rattle, and there's yelling outside.

Given that I'm not sure I could even get it up inside his respectable parents' house, I'm glad he's taking me here. On his home turf, as it were.

Fuck all that; I'm just glad he's riding me right here, right now, his eager body behind mine, his arms round my chest, wanting me, hard for me, filling me. He's hammered, but not so much he can't hammer me in the right place.

He squeezes my cock painfully as he comes, and I moan, unable to stay quiet. Then he pulls out, chucks the rubber down the bog, and taps me recklessly on the face. "Shush, you. Gotta be quiet! You stay quiet, now," he slurs, much louder than I'd been. He falls to the floor again, clambers up to a kneeling position, and sinks my cock into his mouth as I'm forced against the cubicle wall.

Shambolic but effective. Hot as hell.

I decide any moaning noises can be explained away as him being unwell, and don't hold back. It's like many of my sordid encounters, only it's not the surroundings that matter, it's who you're doing it with. He's not some hyped-up cunt grabbing me as the easiest-looking tart around, nor some random I'd clocked the cock of, decided I wanted, then had to deal with their self-loathing, after.

This, being with him, wanting to be with him, him wanting me - it's totally different.

Romantic, even. Even if the smell of piss, urinal blocks and beer is the same as the scuzziest gay gents in the land. I inhale and enjoy his tongue curling round my cock head, lips tickling my tip. It's too soon when I can't hold off any more, a powerful jet filling his talented wee mouth.

Dan manages to stand up, looking all pleased with himself. He whips off his T-shirt to wipe off his face and my crotch, then falls into me again. I'm glad these cubicle walls were solidly built. "I love you, I do."

"I love you too," I tell him fondly. Sure, it's the alcohol talking. But... maybe it's not just that. Whatever the feeling, I'm happy to give it back to him. And more.

I realise I'm a bit tipsy too after I wrestle Dan out the cubicle, exclaiming extra loudly, "D'ye feel better now, after you've chundered?" But no-one cares two guys have emerged. One man just pushes past in his haste to get to the bog.

Out in the corridor, I let him stand up straight, no longer needing to fake being pissed as a newt, though he's a bit wobbly. I suppose I have just been responsible for the loss of his life force, as it were. I tuck his T-shirt under his belt and get him back to the dance floor, running a gauntlet of wolf-whistling women. Course, being a mainly straight club, topless men aren't really a thing. Maybe he'll start a trend. It's clearly not just me thinking he's hot as, with sweat dripping off his hair, his dark blue tattoo contrasting with all that pale skin...

"Aw right, our Dan?" Jenny's got him now. She and her mates are cheerful lairy drunks, which is a lot better than the alternatives. Dan's grinning like anything, dancing more than any of them. I go get more pop - Kaliber for him, tonic for me. If you're too pissed to tell you're drinking fucking Kaliber, you need it. Especially as some of the girls are passing bottles of white wine around, now, and he's joining in merrily.

It reaches the shouting-out time of the evening. "Let's all give it up for Sharon and Mikey who've got engaged tonight!" bawls the DJ. "And a happy birthday to Jenny, who's thirty today, with love from Matt!"

Oh, the shrieks in my ears! I'll be deaf this week. And now, the slightly slower songs, for anyone who's pulled to have a smoochy dance, for everyone else to deny it's that kinda song.

It's that Dirty Dancing one. Dan knows all the words, must have absorbed them from his sister and friends watching it on repeat. Laura and Linz forced me to sit through the film a couple times. The second would have driven any man to drink.

But this time, Dan's singing it to me, running his hands up and down my body, swinging me around. My opinion of the song will be for ever altered. It's not Patrick Swayze's hairy chest I'll be thinking of, that's for sure.

We get to the fast bit, him twirling me around, and just as well I'm the more upstanding one right now. He steps back, grins, nods his head.

Oh, shit.

That bit. With a thousand Brummies watching. Though really, they aren't; only Jenny's mates. Even so. I'm not gonna look chicken.

I run up to him, leap, hands on his shoulders as he tries to lift me above his head. He fails, obviously, but the ladies all lean in to hold him and my legs up and stop us both from falling over. I hang on round his neck, loop my legs round his hips once I've wrestled myself out of the women's clutches - thank fuck for those gym exercises he forced me into - and snog his bloody face off, our fan club cheering all the while.

I'm incredibly relieved to land safe on the floor at the end of the song!

"Aw, he's blushing!" bloody Janice shrieks.

Last song, and I've got Dan on one arm, Matt holding him up on the far side, Tracey on my other shoulder, and we're all kicking our legs calling out the words to New York, New York, all love and peace with the world, that is until the lights come up enough for people to check their beer goggles, scramble for their belongings, and fight in the queues for cabs or kebabs.

Matt is dragging Jenny and some of the lads out for a balti, but I don't think Dan could stay awake for curry at this time of night. No matter - Jenny shoves us in a minicab with Tracey and Janice - I guess they must live nearby.

"Great night, wasn't it like," Janice yells.

"Bostin'," Dan agrees, between her and him. Tracey's slumped in the front of the car.

"Had a good night, Adrian? Meeting us all, like? Not too scary, us lot?"

"Aye, been great. Magic. Then, because I know she'll get it, "I didn't do the lift..."

I think she's going to piss herself, she's laughing so much. She's all right, I think.

"Next time," Dan promises. "We'll have to practise. For Jen's wedding," he slurs.

Fucking hell.

We get back to the Johnstones', and extract Tracey from the car with what proves to be necessary violence, just before she pukes in a neighbour's flowerbed. Then it turns out Janice actually lives miles away and doesn't know where Tracey's new place is, even if Trace were sentient enough to find it.

Dan rolls his eyes. "You'd best come in, then."

"Ooh, we'll be in the guest room," Tracey squeals.

"You fucking won't. My old room, there's a pull-out. You two are in there." Don't think I've ever heard him speak so firmly.

As we assist Tracey up the stairs, Janice's help being her trying to keep her hand over Tracey's gob to shut her up, I realise this is probably all Jenny's cunning plan. We can't be blamed for sharing a bed if damsels in distress need the other room, can we now?

I dismiss any thought of Dan sleeping on the sofa. We set up the second bed in his childhood bedroom, put towels round the floor, and Dan dispatches me to fetch glasses of water from the kitchen and paracetamol from the bathroom cabinet.

I'm just bringing two plastic beakers to the girls when his mum stumbles out of the parental bedroom. "What on Earth...?"

"I'm terribly sorry if they disturbed you, Mrs Johnstone. I believe you know Jenny's friends, Tracey and Janice? Tracey's been taken a bit poorly and didn't seem able to get back to hers, so Janice brought her in here. I think she's asleep now." Soothing, respectable voice, as smooth and Irish as can be when simultaneously aiming for posh. She can rest assured I've got it all in hand.

"Oh, little Tracey? Bless her. You don't need anything? No? Good night, then, dear."

I guess it will take her until morning to translate what I said into 'Tracey's fucking legless'!

I wait until the mum's safe back in bed before fetching Dan into my room.

Finally, just the two of us.

"How about you?" I ask.

It's a sleepy grin. He's adorable when he's wasted. "Like, never better. You survived."

"I like Jenny." I don't say, 'she's really like you'. "And Matt and even the scary girlies."

"Good. You'll have to decide soon which would be better to go on - the stag do or her hen night..."

Oh my fucking god, he's serious...

On the other hand, I'll be with Dan either way.

"I think there's a paintball battle to start with."

"In that case, you're on."

"Mm. Just one more favour before I collapse..." His hands start roaming.

"You sure? What happened to 'hell would freeze over before you have sex with your parents in the next room'?"

He blinks, all innocent at me, sleepy and tipsy. "You've had a bit of practice at being quiet, haven't you now, tonight?"

The next ten minutes gives me more. I pretty much crash out from the exhausting day, flopping over some pillows, face burrowed in one of them, while Dan crawls under the duvet of plausible deniability and buries himself in my arse. Sleepy, easy sex that ripples gently through me, resulting in us both dozing for a few minutes, after.