Chapter Three Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
Michael was making breakfast for two. He couldn’t remember ever having cooked breakfast for two people before.
Certainly it wouldn’t have been in this kitchen.
The kitchen, like the rest of his flat, was immaculate and painfully modern, all neo-art deco in dusty pinks and vivid whites.
The hob was first-class, sufficient to cook a banquet on let alone a fry-up for two young men.
The oven, the slim copper tap, the pot-filler, everything in the kitchen had been chosen for its modern aesthetic, its high-end luxury, and its astronomical price tag.
But he had only ever used the kitchen and its accoutrements to create the sort of healthy aberrations designed to maintain an Adonis-like physique and little else.
That meant spinach and blueberry shakes, muesli protein bars, boiled chicken, salmon salad.
If it tasted as bad as it looked and had negative carbohydrates, then it was on Michael’s inscrutable diet.
Today, however, he was taking a temporary reprieve from his usual stringent eating habits in order to cook up a creation he knew to be the ultimate cure for a horrendous hangover.
It would be a meal, he was sure, that would be much more to his guest’s tastes than a bowl of granola and a celery juice.
And certainly it would be worth the effort to have left the flat earlier in the early morning hours to nip down to the corner shop and procure the ingredients.
While the beans baked, he brought a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin to the guest in question.
Michael’s sofa was, unsurprisingly, immaculate, art deco, and pristine -- or it had been that way until a slightly muddy young man had spent the night on it.
Michael had seen his guest sleeping before, on the occasions when he’d watched him outside of his flat.
It was an entirely different experience to watch him sleep in Michael’s flat, on Michael’s sofa, so close that Michael could make out the individual dark eyelashes that splayed over the sleeper’s high cheekbones and the slight twitching of his angular eyebrows beneath his choppily cut fringe.
It had taken some doing to carry a mostly unconscious young man five streets back to his flat.
Even if he was lighter than your average bloke, and Michael considerably stronger than most -- well, ten-odd stone did still get heavy after a while.
Michael had pulled off his guest’s boots and undone his parka, letting him crash on his sofa with only the slightest regret about the inevitable cleaning bill.
He’d laid a blanket over him and placed the bin near his head, in case.
He’d sat himself in the armchair beside him then and watched.
He couldn’t say for how long he stayed there to look, but by the time he caught himself nodding off Michael had decided to call it a night.
He sat in that same armchair now, stealing himself to wake his guest. Last night, he had debated whether to take the boy back to his own flat.
How simple it would have been to fish the key out of his pocket and chuck him onto that same ratty sofa he’d seen him fall asleep on countless times.
If he was as pissed as he looked, the lad would’ve woken up none the wiser, thinking he’d returned home in a drunken stupor.
But there was Michael’s nagging doubt about how much he might recall.
Might he remember Michael? Might he wonder in the morning how it was that a stranger had known where he lived?
Or were these all excuses Michael was inventing for himself to justify bringing him into his home?
He took a deep breath, went over in his mind for the hundredth time what he was going to say, and then gave the boy’s bony shoulder a light shake.
The boy groaned and burrowed deeper beneath the blanket Michael had laid over him, his hair poking out from the top like the ruffled feathers of a crow.
Michael shook him again, with just a tad more force this time, and cleared his throat loudly.
“Howzzit…” Came a muffled, slurred voice from beneath the blanket.
“Good morning,” said Michael, in a voice that sounded foreign and authoritative. He cleared his throat again, this time in an attempt to locate his real voice. “Hi,” he tried again.
There were suddenly two big, confused eyes peering out at him from over the hem of the blanket. Their gaze slid past Michael’s form to take in the rest of the flat, then squinted painfully at the bright, white morning light streaming in through the bank of windows.
Michael held out the glass of water and shook the aspirin bottle. “These might help. You had a rough one last night.”
The young man propped himself up on one elbow and accepted them both, still eyeing Michael with blank bewilderment. “Cheers,” he said softly, echoing his words from last night. Michael rose and headed for the kitchen, lest his face betray the well of emotion he suddenly felt.
He had remodelled the kitchen to be an open floor plan and so could easily see into the living room beyond the breakfast bar from the hob where he stood frying eggs.
He watched out of the corner of his eye as the young man took two aspirin and drank them down with the entire glass of water, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he was done.
He sat up and drew the blanket tightly around his shoulders, his gaze turned inward and brow drawn.
“Sorry, mate,” he called out to Michael, sounding genuinely apologetic. “But I was off my head last night. I don’t remember a thing. You’re gonna think this is mental but… I don’t even remember meeting you.”
Good, Michael thought while plating the fry-up onto two emerald-green dishes.
“Don’t worry about it. To be fair, we didn’t really have a chance to introduce ourselves.
” He sauntered back around the breakfast bar into the living room and placed the plates on the glass coffee table in front of him.
The boy looked at him expectantly, eager to hear the tale.
“You were quite the bit worse for wear.” Michael lowered himself into the armchair and pulling one of the plates close.
“You and some man got yourselves into a row. If I hadn’t stepped between the two of you in that alley, I daresay he would’ve beaten the daylights out of you. ”
“The alley,” the young man muttered, his gaze going distant as his hand went subconsciously to his cheek where a faint scrape marred the otherwise unblemished porcelain skin.
But the far-off look soon passed, like a cloud from the sun, and a cheerful grin bloomed on his face.
“Sounds like you were a right hero, saving my life and all.”
Michael smiled as the boy tucked into his breakfast with gusto, barely stopping to breathe.
“I wouldn’t go as far as to say that. I ended up having to bring you back to my flat -- I hope you don’t mind. I couldn’t get you to tell me your address and I didn’t want to leave you in that alley to freeze to death.”
“Aw, now you really didn’t have to do that,” his guest said through a mouthful of beans and toast, but he was beaming.
“You’re a diamond. You saved my life. You did,” he insisted when Michael just smiled and shook his head.
“I’d have passed out and been mugged by tramps.
They’d have taken my parka and I’d have ended up like an ice lolly, eaten by urban foxes.
They’d have been mad for me. A Julian ice lolly?
You joking? I’d be delicious. I’d fancy eating me myself.
That’s me, by the way. I’m Julian. Nice to meet you. ”
He stuck out his hand for Michael to shake, the hand all long slender fingers and bony knuckles.
Michael could barely keep up with his spiraling train of thought, the way the boy’s mouth seemed to work without the aid of his brain.
There was something breathless about him, like a car speeding down the motorway with a broken accelerator.
Michael’s fingers closed around Julian’s -- Julian, his boy was Julian -- and he shivered at the feel of the cool, dry palm against his own.
“Michael.”
“Cheers, Michael.” He grinned, then shovelled more food into his mouth as if he hadn’t eaten in days.
Judging by his skinny frame, he might not have.
“Thanks for letting me stay. Sorry about your couch. I think I’ve made a right mess of it.
It’s so nice. Everything here is nice. Are we still in Hoxton? ”
“We are.” Michael took a bite out of a sausage and felt grease dribble into his mouth.
He held back a moan of ecstasy. He hadn’t eaten a sausage in months.
Maybe even years. He’d have to run three extra miles just to work it off, but it was worth it.
Worth it in the same way that having Julian -- Julian -- sleep on his sofa was worth it, even though he’d need to have it shampooed.
“That’s mental. I’ve never seen anywhere as posh as this in Hoxton before.”
“Thank you. I’ve spent a great deal of money remodelling it.”
Julian’s fork paused on one of its repeated journeys to his mouth. “Why spend money on a place in Hoxton? You could just move to Knightsbridge or West Brompton or whatever.”
“Well, I own the block of flats.”
The egg fell off Julian’s fork, his blue eyes bulging. “You own the block of flats? You a lord or something? A duke? Reckon you’re too handsome to be royalty. You don’t have that inbred look about you.”
Michael laughed, pushing his glasses up his nose bashfully. Handsome. He filed that away for later. “The block of flats was a gift from my parents. I’m just a writer. A crime writer, to be precise.”
“Crime writer? Like for a newspaper or something?”
“Novels, actually. True crime.” He gestured behind himself to a slender, metallic bookshelf stacked floor to ceiling with paperback volumes of varying dark hues and blocky titles. “These. I research criminals, get into their minds, their psyches, and flesh out their stories.”
“Now I really feel like a knob. You’re some brilliant writer with a mansion and I’m a wanker working in a record shop, playing in a band on weekends.
” He did in fact look a bit abashed as he sopped up the final bite of his beans with the last triangle of toast. “And a writer who cooks brilliant, at that. There nothing you can’t do?
” His little dark mood had quickly blipped out of existence and melted back into his general brightness.
When Julian smiled at him like that, Michael’s hands itched to reach for him. Instead, Michael speared one of his egg yolks and watched it bleed yellow across the deep-green ceramic. “I can’t sing or play an instrument. You’ve outdone me there, I’m afraid.”
“I’d reckon you don’t get outdone much.”
His eyes lingered on Michael’s, unbroken and unblinking. There was a spot of egg in the corner of his mouth. The pink tip of Julian’s tongue darted out to lick it.
“No. I don’t.”
Was this really the same boy he’d spent months observing? If he lost focus for even a second, he could believe it had been the other way around.
All too soon, he found himself standing with Julian in his flat’s doorway.
Julian shrugged on his parka, now without struggle.
His slight form was swallowed up inside it, as if devoured by some great beast. The image of Julian being devoured by a massive urban fox sprang to Michael’s mind and he chuckled.
Julian pushed his hood back and grinned up at Michael.
Michael liked the fact that he now knew there was a slight gap between Julian’s front teeth.
It gave his already youthful face a cheeky, boyish appearance.
“All right, Julian.” Saying his name out loud for the first time felt thrilling, illicit. It made his pulse skip. “You be careful. Drinking that much on your own isn’t safe. Promise me you’ll take care.”
“All right, Mum.” He rolled his eyes playfully.
He made as if to walk out the open door but then hesitated, brightness fading to a fizzing uncertainty.
His fingers fidgeted in his overlong sleeves.
“Listen, you wouldn’t want to grab a pint or something, would you?
You know, as like, repayment. For saving my life and all.
And seeing as I shouldn’t be drinking on my own and all.
” He took his bottom lip between his teeth to keep from fumbling his words any further.
Michael caught his gasp only at the last second, covering it with a cough. A drink. A date.
Something dark and dangerous that usually lurked in the far reaches of his psyche, safely out of reach, reared its ugly head and fueled him with the passion that he tried to suppress.
The pulsing, throbbing passion that carried him away with it and threatened to consume him whole.
The same darkness that had propelled him to bring Julian into his home instead of returning him to the safety of his flat.
The same darkness that had once caused such terrible tragedy.
“Nah, you’re right. It was stupid,” Julian muttered, pushing his fringe restlessly off his forehead. “I’ll just go, shall I?”
Michael snapped out of his dark reverie.
“No, no,” he said hastily, touching Julian’s shoulder without thinking.
He could hardly feel anything beneath the thick layers of padding, but his heart still contracted at the contact, the pulsing in his veins throbbing all the harder.
“I think I’d like that. Why don’t you ring me sometime? ”
Michael produced a crimson business card from his trouser pocket.
He held it out to Julian between two fingers.
The young man looked at it with the same sort of wide-eyed fascination as when Michael had told him he owned the block of flats.
It was the look children got when they peered inside toyshop windows.
He took it and read over the little golden letters and numbers, mouthing the name “M.H. Chapel” as if practising their shape.
When Julian looked up at him again, he beamed bright enough to blind.
“Cheers, Michael.”