Chapter One
The thing about Louis Vuitton luggage is that it makes you look like a prick.
Particularly when you’d fully committed, as Lex had.
He hadn’t realised this until he caught his reflection in the polished steel side of the baggage carousel at Narita.
He had a matching tracksuit, matching bags, monogrammed everything.
He looked like a bloody footballer’s wife.
Like the kind of person his nan would have pointed at in the airport and said, loudly, within earshot, money can’t buy taste, Alexander.
She’d have been right. But he’d clawed his way out of Barking by bloodying his knuckles and having his face smashed in, so he was allowed to get a thrill out of owning something this expensive. Even if it did make him look like an absolute bellend.
He hauled both bags off the carousel and stacked them neatly on a trolley that had Japanese instructions he couldn’t read and a wonky left wheel.
A volunteer in a blue polo and a lanyard was already trying to wave him along towards the athlete processing area, but Lex rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, and took his time about it, because he’d been on a plane for fourteen hours and he’d had enough of being herded and packed in like livestock.
A sharp scraping pulled his attention three carousels over, where some bloke was being dragged sideways by his own luggage.
It was an actual fucking trunk. The kind of thing you saw in period dramas when someone was being shipped off to the colonies; massive, clearly ancient, and leather-strapped.
It had come round the bend of the conveyor belt at an unfortunate angle.
The blonde had got a grip on one handle, barely, and now the belt was carrying him sideways.
His feet were sliding on the polished floor. He was red in the face and still refused to let go, which meant whatever was in that trunk was worth more to him than his shoulder. He looked thirty seconds away from popping something vital, and nobody around him was doing a thing about it.
Lex left his trolley and crossed the hall in four strides. “Right,” he said, stepping in behind the blonde and getting both hands on the trunk. “Get your stick arms out of the fucking way before they snap.”
The blonde let go and whipped around, brows drawn tight. A flush burned high across his cheekbones. Lex put a hand on his shoulder, and moved him aside so he could haul the trunk off the belt in one clean motion. It was far heavier than it looked. He set it down with a thud that echoed.
“Jesus Christ,” Lex said, rolling his wrists. “What’ve you got in there? A body? Because I’m not helping you bury it when we’ve only just met. You’ve got to buy me at least a couple of drinks first.”
The blonde’s lip curled, his grey eyes narrowing to slits.
He was the kind of stunning that made Lex’s brain go momentarily quiet, which usually only happened when someone hit him very hard in the temple. The pretty little thing was all sharp cheekbones and pale grey eyes. A Nordic blonde, with the slightly nervy, rangy look of a greyhound.
“You alright?” Lex asked.
The blonde straightened his cuffs and said, “Perfectly. Thank you,” in a clipped tone.
“No worries,” Lex said, and then, because he was incapable of leaving a silence unfilled, added: “That thing needs wheels, mate. Or possibly a team of sherpas.”
The blonde’s chin lifted. “It has wheels. They’re retractable.”
He bent down, tugged a lever on the side of the trunk, and one wheel dropped. The other didn’t. He tugged again, harder. Lex watched him wrestle with it for about five seconds before the second-hand embarrassment became physically unbearable.
“Move,” Lex said, crouching beside him and smacking the heel of his hand against the stuck mechanism until the second wheel popped out. “There you go. Good as new. Lovely system.”
The volunteer in the blue polo was waving at them again, more frantically now, pointing toward the exit.
Lex considered being deliberately obtuse about it, but the Japanese took their punctuality seriously, and he was a guest in their country.
So Lex grabbed his trolley, jerked his chin at the blonde, and set off before she could come over and start having extremely polite words with them.
“Didn’t see you on the plane,” Lex said. “And I was up and down the aisle half the flight. Can’t sit still for fourteen hours. My knees were up round my ears, even in business class.”
“That must have been annoying,” the blonde said, not looking at him.
“Yeah, it was. Tiny seats. Criminal, really. You’d think they’d sort out the legroom for—”
“I meant for the people around you.”
Lex barked out a surprised laugh. “Alright. You’re mouthy. I like that.”
The blonde said nothing, but the tips of his ears went faintly pink, which pleased Lex.
They walked. Lex watched him from the corner of his eye, trying to match his body to his sport.
He was too narrow in the thighs to be a sprinter.
He couldn’t be a swimmer with those shoulders.
He moved like all his power ran through his core rather than his limbs, all light on his feet.
Then of course, there was that tiny bubble of an arse on him that Lex wanted to knead under both hands, and then smack pink as he absolutely ruined him.
“You a runner?” he asked.
“No.”
“Fencer, maybe?” Lex squinted at him appraisingly. “Some poncey sport, definitely. You’ve got that look.”
The blonde’s jaw tightened. It was subtle, a flicker of tension along the hinge, there and gone, but Lex caught it because catching micro-movements was how he’d stayed upright for twelve professional fights.
“Eventing,” the blonde said.
Lex waited for the rest of the sentence. It didn’t come. “What the fuck is eventing?”
The blonde turned his head and gave Lex a slow, withering once-over that started at his trainers and ended right on his crooked nose. “It’s a three-day equestrian competition. I do dressage, cross-country, and show jumping.”
“So the horse does all the work.”
The blonde’s eyes went flat and pale, his posture locked, and for a single, glorious second, Lex thought the man might actually hit him, which would have been the most exciting thing to happen in this airport since the trunk incident.
He didn’t, of course. He was far too well-bred for that. Instead, he looked away and said nothing.
Lex grinned. “Alright, alright, I’m sure the horse is very talented but is still glad you’re along for the ride.
Don’t get huffy.” He glanced down at the trunk, which was now rolling obediently on its retractable wheels, and read the stamped leather tag on the handle.
The lettering was old, faded gold on dark leather.
“Barnaby,” Lex said aloud, sounding it out. “Fitznorman—” He squinted. “Bitchster?”
“Bicester.” The correction was immediate, automatic, as though it were delivered often throughout his life. “BISS-TER. Like the town.”
“Do you own the town?”
Barnaby said nothing.
“You look the type. You look like you grew up in a big fucking house. On a bit of land, with a village named after your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.”
Still nothing. Barnaby’s face had gone perfectly, immaculately blank.
They reached the coaches in silence. A row of white buses idled at the kerb with TOKYO 2022 plastered on the side in blue and red, and a woman with a clipboard and a lanyard was directing athletes towards the correct vehicle.
Lex’s trolley went to the luggage handlers. Barnaby’s trunk went to the luggage handlers. The battered leather case and the pristine Louis Vuitton bags were loaded side by side into the belly of the same bus.
Barnaby boarded without looking back at him.
Lex watched him go. Halfway up the aisle, Barnaby produced a pair of enormous over-ear headphones from his backpack. The kind that said: I am no longer available for conversation, and settled them over his hair, effectively armouring himself against further social interaction with Lex.
He took a window seat and very deliberately placed his backpack on the aisle seat next to him.
Lex climbed on after him, dropped into a seat three rows back, and stretched his legs into the aisle because there was never enough room. He pulled out his mobile and opened his group chat The Tokyo Tumble Tally:
just met the poshest man alive. eventing. asked me if i was annoying on the plane. I’m pretty sure he owns a town
Darius replied in four seconds: shag him
Mick: what’s eventing
Darius: shag the horseboy
Lex locked his mobile and looked up the aisle. Three rows ahead, Barnaby Fitznorman-Bicester sat perfectly still, headphones on, a small and deliberate fortress of silence in a bus full of athletes who were already shouting excitedly across the aisle at each other.