When he puts it like that, the sarcastic bastard… “Shit. I mean, I don’t know, personally…” I turn to Tanya. “Is Dan OK?”
“Home safe,” she assures me. “Did say he might not wait up.”
That’s something. “What now?” I ask the room in general.
“Mm. What’s your living arrangement? Secure block of flats with a caretaker? Good start. Right, I think we’ll get one of the chaps from the Protection team to run you home, check the place out and give you some advice. Check under your car before using it, don’t have parcels delivered to home, check for grease marks on packaging… You’re nodding, like you know all this already?”
I assure Bob, “Like you noticed, I grew up in Northern Ireland. During the Troubles, that stuff was just our routine. My uncle Kevin’s car got blown up once. Shame they didn’t get him, too, the wanker… More recently, I ended up advising a few friends here. They’re just biologists, but the animal rights people were threatening their workplaces, so they got the same safety lecture. One of their colleagues’ cars went boom, too. I think a bunch of them were offering their cars up, hoping to claim on the insurance!” I shrug. “Practically normal, innit? Makes a change from being thumped for being queer.”
Josh tenses at the word. The whole interview hedged round the subject, so I suppose he hadn’t had to think about me being bent. When I point at the sheets of my previous, and point out that half of it wouldn’t exist if I were straight, he’s awkward. Feeling guilty, even though he wasn’t old enough to be involved. I’ve expanded his mind slightly. Good.
We head out of the room, Josh doing the honours with the DIR and stopping recording. Bob shakes my hand and tells me, “For the love of God, please stay totally on the right side of the law until your evidence is given! And just keep aware of your surroundings. Good luck, mate.”
Tanya and I follow Josh to the custody suite, where I’m officially de-arrested and reunited with my belongings. Then a bit of a wait until the Protection guys arrive. I call up Dan.
“About me, love? Well, there’s the good news and there’s the bad news. I’m not being charged with anything…”
He thinks I’m having him on, until I arrive home with two police who insist on entering the flat. They give us a pile of advice, about changing routes home, no deliveries to the flat, and in particular, alerting the team pronto if we notice anything weird.
“Strewth.” Dan kicks the kitchen island, in a rare physical show of his emotions. “People pissed off with you again. The kinds of people who kill. Great. So much for the end of the Troubles; here we go again. Fuck.”
“Oh, come on! It’s not like anyone’s going to outright assassinate me! That would be way too bloody obvious. This is just low-level, token attempts at intimidation. Put us on edge.” I don’t mention the recent break-in at work, which didn’t take anything important. “Just tedious. If they have a brain, which they must, they’ll realise there’s at least a dozen copies of the evidence. And all my notes are backed up all over.”
Dan makes me promise to record my entire planned statement tomorrow, just in case. Then he sighs. “Almost like being back in the Army, really.” Dan didn’t have a great time as a young soldier, especially his tour in Northern Ireland.
“Nah,” I tell him. “This time the arsy Irish lad is on your side.” I blow him a kiss and squeeze his arse, which makes him smile. “And I doubt this lot are remotely as organised or vicious as the IRA. Not as many supporters, for sure.”
Forget all that. I stand up in front of him, put my hands up round his head, and pull him down for a kiss. “Nostalgia’s always a bit shit, innit? Forget that. There’s always been cunts wanting people like us dead. Irish Republicans: British Army. Queers. Londoners. Nothing’s changed, really.” I add, dryly, “Set the alert back up to ‘Nice Cup of Tea’.”
Dan manages a weak laugh. Back when the 7/7 bombs hit London in 2005, there were memes all over, taking the piss out of all the online concern and their ‘thoughts and prayers’ and shit. For once, overusing the cringey ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ mantra was acceptable. I had to take back roads to the office for a couple weeks, until they cleared up the mess round Liverpool Street.
“You’re right,” Dan sighs. “Well, lucky I’ve kept up my football, in case I need to kick any fuckwits in the nads. I don’t carry a narwhal tusk about with me, but my key-ring will probably do.”
He’s referring to a guy who failed to blow up Glasgow Airport and himself, who was set upon by Glaswegian baggage handlers. It led to the classic headline, ‘I kicked burning terrorist so hard in balls I tore a tendon in my foot.’ Similarly, when a knifeman went radge at an event nearby a few years ago, he got attacked with anything at hand. Like a narwhal tusk decorating the wall. “You just do what you need to. Be London Pint Guy.” The previous attack around London Bridge was a bomb, so people ran away – whilst carefully holding their beer glasses level! There’s a classic photo. Booze prices scare us way more than any crime or terrorism, in these islands.
I shake myself. “Where were we, before the stalkers started taking really unflattering photos of me and my cock? You’re lucky. You weren’t in focus, in any of them.”
“They showed you photos of us?” Dan chuckles. “Is that how they identified you, from your cock? Ha! That’s what you get for being the biggest slag in south London…”
He’s winding me up, knowing it turns me on. “Yup. Sitting there, me and my brief trying to keep a straight face, the two plods trying to only look at my face in the first pic, not at the ones with my dick on display… Trust me, they were terrible, compared to when you take photos and produce actual art.”
“You didn’t have to do a cock ID parade?” He daydreams happily, imagining it.
“Sadly, not. I bet you’d have liked that! Five men all looking like me, all showing off? Oh, you’d love that! I know, you don’t fancy other guys that often, but if they all had to look or act like me? Mm? You so would… Slag yourself, toy-boy!” Sometimes it’s fun to remind him he’s ten years younger than me.
“Mm. I might have had to taste them all, to be on the safe side.”
That’s a pleasant visual. “Show me. Like you did earlier.”
We both flick a look at the windows and check the heavy curtains are shut. Our first-floor flat overlooks a churchyard across the street, so there’s usually no-one there at night, but you know how lit-up rooms show off everything, once it’s dark.
He pulls me to our hallway, pushes me against the wall. “Here we go again. I’m gonna reward you proper.” He’s already on his knees. “Yeah. God, look at that!” My cock’s nothing special, except it’s stiff and now in his hands, and he loves it. And, yeah, he’s got good at going down on me over the years.
I’m leaning on the wall, seeing as my legs have got a bit weak. Dan looks up at me, grinning as much as he can with my penis in his mouth. He pushes my clothes down and holds me round the hips, strong enough to control me.