Chapter Six Bad Reputation
Chapter six
Bad Reputation
Present day
“Mum said I need to join a club. Do more than study. Make friends .” Mel dragged Aaron through the double doors leading to the sports centre where various stalls had taken over the double basketball courts to showcase what the Student’s Union offered in the way of extracurricular clubs and societies. “Bet your mum says the same, right?”
“Not so much.”
Mel had latched onto him all week. Now Friday, the end of the first week of classes, she’d come with him to check out the Fresher’s Fair after their second lecture with Dr Kenneth Lyons. Aaron had sat at the back this time. Unable to make eye contact. The last few days, he’d felt hollow. More scooped out than normal. It was strange how a man he’d only known from scraps of relentless research a week ago could make him feel as if he’d clawed out his insides and kept them in a glass jar by his bed.
He wanted them back.
Sweeping his eyes across the rows of stalls, he followed Mel through the swarm of eager freshers. Stalls adorned with vibrant banners and the enthusiastic faces of society members were a blur of colours and shapes Aaron had little to zero interest in. He didn’t want to join a club, even if Jervine had told him to. What the fuck was he gonna join? He stopped at the Pole and Aerial society, a couple of flexible girls demonstrating pole dancing moves. Huh . Maybe he could give that a go.
“My sister joined so many clubs at uni, my mum says that’s what got her the job at KPMG.” Mel took a leaflet from the Salsa society, a couple dancing behind the desk. “Do you have any siblings?”
“Uh…” Aaron flinched at the raucous noise coming from the other side of the hall, the men’s football and rugby teams doing some standoff. At least three of the lads queuing to sign up for the team were in his Halls of Residence. And they were knobs. “Only child.” Said his file.
He could confide in Mel that he’d been in care. That the siblings he had were other children with destructive home lives. But he wasn’t there with her yet. Because as soon as he mentioned the careleaver status, a ton more questions stacked up and Aaron could get tripped up. Or more likely, he’d shut off and Mel would assume he was lying, and their newfound friendship would cease to flourish.
She smoked, so Aaron had a use for her.
Plus, she was all right.
They moved along, shuffling through a horde of people around the Islamic Society desk. Aaron tried to squeeze through, but a bloke squirming out the other way rammed his shoulder.
“Sorry!” The bloke held up his hands in surrender, as if he was expecting to get a pounding. “Hey, I know you.”
Aaron doubted that.
“I’m your next-door neighbour.” Bloke held out his hand. “Rahul.”
That could well be true. Aaron hadn’t been the social butterfly with his hall mates. There were ten lads all living on the bottom floor of his block, sharing a kitchen and two bathrooms. Many of them had partied in each other’s rooms since Monday. Aaron had kept his door shut. He missed Inferno. Missed dancing. But the uni bar was full of wankers, and the union club was full of melts.
“Aaron.” Aaron shook his hand.
“I know.” Rahul smiled, brown eyes sparking. He chuckled, self-consciously, red tint glowing on his cheeks.
“Aaron!” Mel’s voice cut over the unrest as she beckoned him over to a stall painted with rainbows, the pride flag waving behind it.
“I better…” Aaron pointed, assuming as soon as Rahul saw him head over to the LGBT society desk after him having signed up for the Islamic society, he’d realise they weren’t such a good match.
“Oh. Yeah. Of course. Go ahead!” Rahul stepped aside, waving his hands at the rainbow stall a little too overzealously. “See you at home!” He snorted.
Aaron would have rolled his eyes, but the kid had a warmth about him, tugging on the better nature he didn’t know he had. So he smiled, then squirmed through to meet Mel at the desk, colourful pamphlets spread out like a peacock’s tail. Mel was already writing her name and email on the tablet a bloke behind the desk held out to her.
“Sign up to this one, at least,” Mel called to him over her shoulder.
Aaron had no intention of it.
“I have to agree with her.” The bloke behind the desk raked his gaze up and down Aaron.
No doubt which letter this one identified as. His tight white tee with the pride flag emblem on his left chest gave much of it away, but also his invasive loiter over Aaron. Bloke was decent looking. Definitely made use of the gym complex on campus, and his hazelnut hair styled with highlights, designer stubble cut just so, and his jeans framing a decent arse said he looked after himself damn well.
Aaron hadn’t ever been interested in the unsullied.
He much preferred damaged in transit.
“Nice hair.” Bloke took the tablet back and Aaron assumed he was complimenting him and not Mel on her jet black twisted bunches. “Taylor, I’m the chairman. Third year here. Second year on the course.” He winced through his radiant smile, an accent suggesting he was from the northern end of the country. “Failed my first year. Advice to you, don’t go out too much.”
“What course are you doing?” Mel asked.
“Journalism and Digital Media. I know, I know, how can I fail that?” He lowered his voice, leaning forward, bearing his eyes into Aaron. “By drinking. Dancing. Dating.” He held out the tablet to Aaron. “Not to be too bold, but I’m sensing you belong to us, whether you sign up or not.”
“Cause I have gay written on my forehead?”
“No.” Taylor tilted his neck. “Maybe I’m just hoping. Although if you want to know what gave it away.” He pointed at the symbol on Aaron’s neck that had, thankfully, cleared of the bruising. “Nice tatt. If you’re trying to remain ambiguous, that doesn’t help.”
“It’s Mars.”
“It’s also masculine.”
“As am I.”
“I can see.” Taylor bit his lip. He waggled the tablet. “So, are you signing up?”
“What am I signing up for?” Orgies?
“We arrange trips to LGBT friendly bars. Organise gay nights at the union. Protest for better rights for the trans community. Run rallies. Demonstrations. Organise the UofR Pride festival. And if there’s anything we don’t do that you’d like us to, we’ll do it.”
“Really?” Aaron arched an eyebrow.
“Name it.”
God, he was a flirt.
“I’ll think about it.” Not too hard, though.
“How about you just give me your Insta instead, then?” Taylor winked. “Let me convince you privately.”
“Don’t peak too soon, you might get a better offer come along in a minute.”
Taylor laughed, clutching the tablet to his chest. “Been at this desk since Monday, and no one has got my attention like you have in the last three years.”
Aaron picked up one of the rainbow heart lollipops from the pot on the desk, ripped off the wrapper, and popped it in his mouth. “I bite.”
“Don’t doubt it.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Aaron shuffled away with Mel tailing after.
“He was so into you!” She looped her arm through his. “And damn fucking hot.”
Aaron shrugged, and they meandered around the rest of the fair, Mel signing up for this, that and the other.
“Oh my god, they have a LARPing society!” She pulled on his arm. “Come on, you can’t tell me you’ve never role played? Been an elf or something.”
Aaron laughed. “Not me, but someone I know back home was an elf once. Scored from it too.” But as he played a role every day, he didn’t need to do it in his spare time. Wearing the mask the authorities gave him wore him down enough.
“Shame, bet you’d make a kick-arse sorcerer or something with your hair.”
Aaron ran a hand through it. “Go on, I know you wanna sign up.”
Mel did. And Aaron eventually put his name down for the Pole Dancing Society. Mostly to appease Jervine and also because he quite fancied seeing if he could actually do it, plus he wanted to get the hell out of there before Mel made him sign up to the Extreme Ironing Society just so she could fulfil her goal of having Aaron enjoy the student experience. At least it meant they got to leave the basketball hall, which brought them out into the Sports Centre reception.
“Oh my god, look!” Mel clamped her arm with his, tightening their unit. “It’s Dr Lyons!” She pointed to the large windows looking in on the gym.
Aaron’s heart defied him by beating. Hard. Kenny was sprinting on the treadmill, sweat dripping from every pore, shorts and vest clammy and baggy, allowing Aaron to feast on a mature body scattered with dark hair. Kenny was a beast. And Aaron had a thing for monsters. But he slowed his pace, ripped a towel from the machine and wiped his face, signifying the end to his workout and Aaron’s feasting.
“Let’s go.” Aaron pulled Mel toward the turnstiles.
“Wait, I want to get one of these smoothies.” She unlinked her arm and joined the queue for the café, leaving Aaron right there as Kenny exited the gymnasium and meandered into the reception.
There wasn’t anywhere he could hide. His fucking hair was a beacon. He’d dye it back blond tomorrow. Or shave it all off. Okay, that might not help him blend in, but nor did the raucous rugby lads bounding out from the basketball hall and causing Kenny to glance his way.
For a heartbeat, there was nothing else. No fair. No rugby lads. No cafeteria whizzing up smoothie concoctions to give the students their five-a-day. It was just two souls entangling the same orbit as they’d done that night in Inferno. Locked in a fight they both lost days ago. Probably years ago.
Kenny stalled. Aaron didn’t move either and the impulse to tug on that invisible thread that had bound them together Saturday night was overwhelming. But he wrestled it down with the smidgen of restraint lurking beneath his skin.
“Hey, Dr Lyons!” Mel slurped on her drink, waving at him and dragging Aaron over.
Aaron would kill her.
With his bare hands.
“Great lecture, today. You a member of the gym here, then?”
“It helps to keep the body active to appease the mind.” Kenny took a drink from his water bottle. “You should try it.”
Mel grimaced. “I only run when I’m being chased.”
“Who says you’re not?” Kenny wiped his face with his towel.
Dark. Aaron might have just fallen in love.
“You signing up to the clubs?” Kenny spoke to Mel, but Aaron could see him struggling to keep his focus on her.
“We did. I signed up for about twenty. Aaron’s gonna be a pole dancer.”
That got him looking. “Pole dancing?”
Aaron shrugged. “Something to fall back on if the porn career doesn’t work out.”
“Can see why you needed all those A’s in your A Levels with that sort of career trajectory.” He took a swig from his bottle and his eyes drifted to Aaron’s neck. The Mars symbol. Now devoid of the bruise that had been there at the beginning of the week. He lingered on it and if he hadn’t been drinking, Aaron was sure he’d be drooling. “Enjoy your weekend.”
He went to leave, but another bloke came out of the gym, chasing after him, old enough to be staff, and Aaron and Mel hovered away but Aaron’s heightened senses had him listening.
“Ken! Wait!” Bloke stopped, handing him a scrunched up piece of paper. “Heather will meet you at the Jobber’s Rest at eight. She’ll be wearing red. Said you’ll wear a blue shirt. You got a blue shirt, right?”
“Yes, but, Jesus, Dom, I’m not sure about this blind date thing anymore.”
“You were cool with it last week. She’s nice. Really nice. You’ll like her. And if you don’t, the steak and triple cooked chips are enough to leave the house for, anyway.” Bloke tapped the back of his hand on Kenny’s chest. “But you will like her.”
Kenny took a long swig from his bottle, as if contemplating his next move, and Aaron watched his throat gulp as he glanced at Aaron, their eyes locking. Something flashed between them, but Kenny tore his gaze away just as violently as it had met Aaron’s. Then, without a word, he strode toward the door, his exit punctuated by the heavy thud of it slamming shut behind him.
Aaron stood frozen, breath shallow, the air shifting in Kenny’s absence and a strange, foreign pressure seized his chest, coiling tighter with each breath. He curled his hands into fists, trembling with a need for release, for some form of violent outlet, and he cursed himself for biting his nails to the quick. There was no satisfying pain from digging into his palms. What the hell was this? The intensity clawed at him, twisting his thoughts, the desire not to quell the storm, but let it rage, overwhelming.
Was this… jealousy ?
For years, he’d wondered if he were normal for not having the same emotions as others. He could recall having had love ripped away so callously. Could remember how losing his mother had felt as though he were being torn limb from limb. Remembered the following years wishing, hoping, begging and pleading for her to return. He’d grazed his throat and damaged his voice from screaming for her night after night, not being able to sleep without her singing, without her special medicine, without her all-consuming love for him. After being told to shut up more times than he could remember, being beaten into submission, being told he was ugly over and over, he’d grown layers and layers of protection, preventing anything from leaking through to his cold, dead heart. He’d died the day they changed his name, believing that would change his fate.
How could one man, one encounter in a club, cause a crack in his armour?
He hated it.
Hated him .
“Fancy coming to the uni bar tonight?” Mel asked as they made their way out of the sports centre.
“Thought you hated the bar.”
“I do, but…” She shrugged. “Lottie’s going.”
Lottie. The girl Mel had a crush on.
“So go, then.”
“Come with me.”
“I’ll think about it.”
He had a lot to think about. Too much. But there wasn’t any room between thoughts of Dr Kenneth Lyons fucking a woman named Heather .
Would he call her ‘good girl’? Would he fuck her in a backroom? Would he look at her with those intense eyes as he came down her throat?
Mel squeed, then hugged him, which was the most amount of human contact he’d had since Dr Kenneth Lyons had made him come. And it had been a long time before then, too. She then ran off toward her halls and Aaron made his way to his own block.
As he let himself in the communal entrance and onto his floor, the scent of curry prickled his tastebuds. His stomach growled, and he peered in through the communal kitchen where Rahul was stirring through the contents of a large pan, as had been the norm all week. Aaron had been salivating over it while eating his Smash and baked beans.
“Aaron, hi!” He grinned. “Sign up for anything?”
“Pole dancing.”
Rahul flinched as if he hadn’t expected that, then turned back to the curry before shooting a timid look over his shoulder. “Uh…this isn’t bothering you, is it?”
“What? Your cooking?”
“The smell. My mum’s daal recipe can be a bit much. The other lads have had a moan.” He jutted his chin toward the communal corridor where all the rooms faced each other, the kitchen combining them all. “Stops me feeling a bit homesick when I cook, y’know?”
He wouldn’t know. He’d never had a home to be sick from. Well, he had, but he’d long passed the vomiting stages of missing it. Now he was numb and bitter.
“It’s fucking beautiful, mate. Wouldn’t worry about those tossers. All they know how to cook is a microwave meal.” Aaron slipped out of his denim jacket, tucking it under his folded arms, beneath a thin plain white tee Aaron was sure was see-through. “And they even fuck that up.”
Rahul breathed through a laugh and glanced over his shoulder at Aaron. All the way at Aaron. Lingering over him from top to toe. The way Taylor at the LGBT desk had done earlier. The way all the men in Inferno looked at him. How Dr Kenneth Lyons had looked at him over the sea of gyrating bodies. As if he wanted to eat him. But Rahul’s self-consciousness and na?ve oblivion to it allowed Aaron to let him look. Maybe it was the pole dancing comment? Rahul was imagining him doing it. Then, as if he hadn’t realised what he was doing, Rahul stopped, swallowed sharply, blowing out breath from rounded lips, then closed his eyes and turned back to his food.
Aaron cocked his head. Maybe there was another way to relieve his pent-up aggression. “They giving you a hard time? The other lads?”
“No.” Rahul lied. “No, they’re just…well, I get it. But they are loud. And they drink. A lot.”
“Some blokes like to fill up the space with noise. They’re too afraid to be alone with their own thoughts. ‘Cause then they might actually have one.”
Rahul chuckled.
“You don’t drink?” Aaron leaned on the doorframe, clutching his jacket in his folded arms.
“No. It’s against my religion. Muslim.”
“What else is Islam against?” Aaron was pretty sure it would be against him.
Rahul didn’t answer. Because he was no doubt thinking the same thing. Stirring the ladle in the fragrant, spicy concoction, he glanced over his shoulder, changing the subject. “Do you want some of this? I’ve made enough for an army.”
Rahul wasn’t the type of bloke Aaron used to get off when he was feeling as he was then—bubbling. He was way too sweet and innocent. Aaron would ruin him. Forever . But thoughts of Kenny on a date with a dirty blonde had Aaron pulling out a chair at the round table in the middle of the kitchen, draping his jacket over the backrest and sitting. “Yeah. Thanks.”
The way to a man’s heart was, as they say, through his stomach.
He smiled his most dashing of smiles, and Rahul blushed. Despite many people telling Aaron over the years how ugly he was, he was certain they were referring to what was on the inside, because on the outside, he was magnetic . Even to a man who had to swear to his almighty that he didn’t have degrading thoughts about.
Except he did. It was obvious.
“What are you studying?” Rahul asked as he plated up the meal for two.
“Forensic Psychology.”
“Wow. So, you’re gonna, like, read minds?”
“That’s the plan. Starting with my own.”
Rahul handed him a bowl of daal and sat, a homemade naan bread between them. “Must be fascinating stuff, the human mind. Getting inside it.”
“It’s the most complex structure in the universe.”
“Ha. I’ll bet. Way more than anything I’ll construct in my engineering degree.”
“Many of us don’t even understand our own thoughts.” Aaron tore off a bit of naan and swiped it through the daal. He took a bite and hummed. “This is banging, mate. Compliments to your mum.”
Rahul smiled. “She’s a great cook.”
“You miss home?”
“Yes.” He bowed his head as if masking a lie.
Yeah, he missed home but…
“Nice to have a bit of freedom, though, right?” Aaron ripped off more bread, slathering it in his food. “Like, my mum would kill me if I’d dyed my hair this colour at home. So it’s sorta nice to just…be myself. My real self. Experiment, a little.”
God, he was good at lying.
Although, was he lying? How would his mum feel about his hair? He’d not visited her. He’d been allowed to make that decision for himself since aged sixteen, but never really wanted to take that step. Perhaps he wanted to still cling to his own version of her. The mother. And not the monster.
“It suits you,” Rahul said, tilting his neck. “The hair.”
Aaron smiled, running his fingers through it and pretending it was the best compliment he’d ever had by making his cheeks blush. When, in all honesty, the best compliment he’d ever had was “Good boy. You’re good at that.”
“So, what do you plan to do with engineering?”
“Get a job. With my dad.”
“Yeah? Family business?” Aaron knew all about those .
“Yeah.”
“Don’t want to branch out on your own?”
Rahul didn’t answer right away, using the time to lap up the dinner. “What do your parents want you to do?”
“Mine?” Aaron sat back in the chair. “They’re letting me choose my own path.” Because they didn’t have a say. Not anymore.
“And they don’t mind that you’re…” Rahul waved his fork, trying to find the right words. “LGBTQ+?”
Aaron snorted at the use of the full inclusion. It was cute. As if Rahul had never said the word ‘gay’ in his life. “I’m gay.”
“Oh.” Rahul blushed. “Yeah. Okay. That’s fine. Cool. Excellent.”
Aaron cocked his head. “Are you?”
“Me?” Rahul stared at his plate. “I’ll be getting married after my degree.”
“To a woman?”
“Of course.”
“You can marry a man.”
Rahul bristled. “ I can’t.”
“Because you don’t want to or someone else doesn’t want you to?” Like Allah?
Rahul stared across at Aaron as if wanting so very much for Aaron to hug him. Or rage for him. But he was the pillar of restraint made from human engineering. A perfect specimen of obedience . He wouldn’t stray from the path his parents had laid out for him and fall onto the grubby soil where Aaron lay.
“It isn’t something my parents believe in,” Rahul said.
Aaron held out his arms. “Right here, buddy. Right fucking here.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
The main door to the communal flat opened and in bundled a group of the sporty lads, disrupting the quiet ambiance and Aaron’s chance to convince Rahul he deserved to find his own path.
“Aww, romantic meal for two?” Archie, the larger of the bunch, said as they all burst into the kitchen.
Aaron only knew his name because he’d heard the lads, lads, lads all chanting it when he’d chugged a beer from a pint-sized can in the kitchen when Aaron had been lying in bed wondering how long it would take to walk to where Dr Kenneth Lyons lived.
His mates all cackled behind him, following him like flies around a corpse, interrupting Aaron’s first decent meal in he couldn’t remember how long by clanging open cupboards, cracking open beer cans, crunching through crisps, ready to start their Friday night.
Rahul bowed his head. Another perfect display of subordination. Aaron sat back, sharp, dead eyes on the lads. He caught Archie’s eye in challenge. A big bloke, he’d probably been the King of his previous school. Fucked the popular girls. Probably got one pregnant and paid for her to have an abortion.
“Fucking stinks in here,” Archie spat and grimaced, then slammed back his beer and belched.
Rahul ducked his head farther, hands clasped together in his lap as if in prayer, and he left his meal untouched. It was a good meal. It deserved to be eaten. Savoured. Aaron could almost understand him wanting to please his mum by fulfilling her dreams because she’d fed him such delicious delights all his life.
Aaron’s mum had fed him different things.
Made him a different kind of regimented soldier.
Dream a little dream….
Scraping back his seat, Aaron stood. When he had to talk about this later, when he had to explain his actions, he’d blame Kenny. How fucking dare he go on a date! How fucking dare he pretend their encounter hadn’t unleashed this cataclysmic shift in both of their existences. And how very, fucking dare he make Aaron feel for the first time in years, then expect him to cope with the storm, the unhinged swirling sensations raging through him when in the real world. He shouldn’t have let him out of that dark room. He was a savage animal, forced from his mother into captivity, then fed, watered and tempered by his captors. But Kenny had uncaged him. Whether he meant to, he had. Let him loose. Thrown him into the wild to fend for himself. No one could blame him for what happened next.
You can’t blame a beast for ripping apart the prey they feed him with.
It was inevitable.
Two steps, and he squirmed between two of the lads. “Excuse me.”
“Watch it, bender .”
Aaron sighed. Oh dear. Archie had just sealed his fate with that slur. To be honest, he’d met his destiny when he’d been born a massive prick. Aaron was just going to dish it out. He reached for the cupboard above him, yanked it open with the all the force of his parentage and smashed it into Archie’s face. Hard . The door ripped from its hinges, and Archie toppled back, collapsing into his mates who then dropped him on the floor and he writhed around as he would on the football pitch if someone so much as looked at him, clutching his bloodied and broken nose.
Aaron grabbed a pot of salt from the cupboard, returned to his seat, seasoned his daal, then picked up his fork. He ate.
“Eat up.” He pointed to Rahul’s plate. “That’ll go cold.”