Confide/ant - 8. Chapter 8

“Hey there, rock star.” Hrishi is waiting by the door; hands in the front pockets of his chinos, looking to me like sex on a stick. “That was a great show.”

“Hey, thanks.”

Most people left an hour ago. A few stragglers were being shepherded in the direction of homes, buses, and trains by the Starfish guys once we turned up the lights. We organised our opening group to help clean up and sweep the floor whilst we packed up our gear. It always takes way longer than everyone thinks it does to break down a drum kit, pack and stow three guitars, wind up all the leads, pedals, amps, and extension cables. I’m just thankful we don’t have to deal with the lighting. Leon deals with his own microphone and stand, and we load the gear up into Jerome’s dad’s van. He’s very much the coolest of all our parents and doesn’t ever seem to mind driving our stuff around and letting Jerome take off afterwards. Some people are happy to simply chuck all their gear together after the end of a show, but it always leads to a headache later on when you have to spend a Sunday afternoon dealing with tangles and checking you haven’t broken anything.

Hrishi has waited for me, and I can’t help but smile as I go back into the brewery to get my guitar.

“I’mma bounce.”

“Dude….” Leon claps me hard on the shoulder with a broad grin. “We killed it tonight.”

“You killed it.”

Leon sips his third beer with a smug little grin.

“Thanks. But you fucking murdered them with that new riff in ‘Dukes’. It was glorious.” Leon offers me his drink, but I shake my head gently. “I’m gonna get us some really good gigs off this new material bud. You wait and see.”

“Bye, Leon, be good now.”

“Am I ever anything else?”

My best friend gives me a look, and I know that in eight hours he’s going to be hung over, or still wasted, and probably sweeping some pretty little thing off her feet.

Hrishi is still there, unmoved, when I emerge.

“Hey, beautiful.” My voice is low and soft, and I can hardly believe I said that to him in public. Hrishi bites his lower lip and blushes in the street light: I love that I can have such an effect on him. “Come home with me?”

“OK.”

I only had one beer, and it was hours ago, but I drive carefully with Hrishi in the passenger seat and the Gibson in the back. My guitars usually ride upfront, and though beautiful; they are far less distracting than Hrishi is, sitting there with his seatbelt on, looking prim and proper, and far too neat to have just been at one of our gigs. His hair is still perfect. I want to ruin him.

We don’t talk as I take my guitar from the back seat - I don’t mind leaving my Marshall amp in the back until tomorrow - and let us both into the east wing of the house. Hrishi wanders into my room like it’s the most natural place for him to be, and I’m incredibly glad to have stood in the kitchen this morning and listened to my parents explaining they would both be away for the weekend on separate trips. Granted, they didn’t actually tell me. Instead, they shouted at each other about how unfair it was on me to be left alone, each blaming the other for being unwilling to reschedule. Afterwards, I received texts from both of them, though neither apologised. I have the house to myself until Tuesday, and we don’t have college next week.

I hang the Gibson on the wall, but I don’t turn around. Hrishi is there, warm and solid behind me, and I can’t move as he runs his fingers down my spine.

“Take off your clothes.”

Every syllable is a command, and I’m helpless to resist him. I peel out of my shirt glad Hrishi can’t see the deep blush spreading across my cheeks and down my neck. I shouldn’t want him the way I do, he’s a nerdy little guy after all, but already I’m stiff as the mahogany neck of the Gibson.

“Good boy.”

Hrishi’s voice is a purr as I bend to take off my boots and socks. His palm curves around my arse, and I shiver involuntarily, straightening up quickly.

“Keep going.”

“Hrishi….”

“Don’t turn around,” he instructs me, “I want to look at you.”

My breath catches in my chest, my heartbeat loud as a bass drum in my ears, and the sound of my zipper is deafening in the silence punctuated only by our breathing. I push my jeans down, I’m not wearing any underwear, of course, and I hear Hrishi’s stifled groan of desire as my arse is exposed to him. I hunch my shoulders as I kick the denim away, and stand there, still facing the Gibson, buck naked, looking down at the hard length of my cock waving at me in excited anticipation.

“Put your hands on the wall.”

I do it, my knees quivering. I don’t know what he wants, though my experience of gay porn gives a particular focus to the possibilities. I’m only slightly terrified, but I also know I’ll do basically anything he says. I wish I didn’t.

“Your fucking beautiful, Marty.”

He runs his hand from the back of my neck down my spine and gropes my butt. I’m sure I’m not imagining his murmur of appreciation.

“I want you.”

“I’m not ready.” I fight my Adam’s apple to get the words out, but Hrishi just growls against my skin. “I’m serious.”

“I know.”

He sinks his teeth into my shoulder and I thump the plasterboard softly, my forehead pressed against the fret-board of the Gibson.

“You just have to trust me.”

“OK.”

I am immobile as Hrishi loops his arms up under mine and massages my chest. He knows my body well enough by now, rolls my nipples between thumb and forefinger making my dick twitch and bob with every sensation, and I have to bite my own lip to keep from moaning. In my head, I sound wanton and sluttish, and I don’t like how he can have such an effect on me.

“Don’t you dare hold back on me, Marty.”

His words join his hands, his fingernails scraping down my abs and wrapping around my cock. He jacks me slowly, tortuously slowly, and fondles my balls with his slender, dexterous fingers. Unlike me, he’s not tall enough to look over my shoulder, far from it, but I can feel his eyes travelling over my back, my thighs, and my arse.

“Gods, you’re sexy.”

“Ungh….”

“Oh, there’s a good boy.”

He speeds up, pulling on me tightly before rolling my foreskin back to expose the purplish head. When he touches my slit, pressing up under my balls at the same time, I want to scream with unexpected pleasure.

“C’mon, rock star, you can do better than that.”

“Hrishi!” I pant, trying to keep the whine out of my voice. “Please!”

“Please what, rock star?”

“Oh god!” My forearms are braced against the wall, panting, my breath fogging the polished body of the Gibson. I’m shaking all over, my thighs feel like they’re going to give out any second, and Hrishi is still just working over my cock in this unhurried manner which makes me want to scream. I want to come, really badly, but I can’t ask him, and I certainly won’t beg.

“You’re really hot.” Hrishi’s lips graze my skin as he speaks. “I fucking love touching your body, and you taste so damn good too. Love it when you moan for me.”

“Nnnngh!”

“Go on, rock star, moan for me.”

“Ahhh!”

“Better. Again.”

His hands are moving fast, and I am hyper-aware of the weight and warmth of him behind me, the ridge of his erection pressing into the cleft of my butt. I want to kiss him, but I can’t move.

“Marty….”

“Please.” I can’t resist him any longer; it’s too hard. “Ahh… please, Hrishi. I wanna come for you.”

“Oh yeah….”

I have no idea where the last part of my sentence came from, but I don’t care, because Hrishi changes the motion of his hands, and suddenly I’m teetering right on the knife-edge of my orgasm. Hrishi is gnawing at my shoulder blade, and his voice commands every cell in my body when he speaks.

“Come.”

“Ahh! Fuuuuck!” I watch as my cock spurts over the wall and the indigo body of my Gibson. I’ve never seen myself look so desperately sexy and out of control.

“Good boy.”

Hrishi keeps moving his hand over me: slow; erotic; incredible. He’s making it really hard to stand up.

“Stay right there.”

The rustle of him taking off his clothes makes me nervous, but his hand returns to massaging my genitals quickly, and the aftershocks of pleasure are good.

“Fuck, Marty. I want you so badly.”

Hrishi rubs himself between my cheeks. He’s so hard and so warm, and his cock is slick with his precum, sliding up and down against my arse. I’m seriously turned on, and already I’m getting hard again. Hrishi’s chuckle of pleasure is loud against my spine.

“Oh, Marty….”

He speeds up, humping my backside, jerking me off, and his free hand clamps down over my heart, pulling the two of us together.

“Yesssss!”

“Oh fuck!”

Hrishi snarls wordlessly and becomes tense and still as he comes against my back. His cum is hot on my skin, his cock nestled in my crack as he continues to twitch and shoot.

“Yeah….” Hrishi sounds smug and sated. “Turn round.” His smile sends shivers up my spine. “Touch yourself.”

It takes about twenty seconds and then I’m coming again, my orgasm almost painful, my cum this time is thin and splatters over my belly. Hrishi looks incredibly proud, and doesn’t even bother to fully undress before he simply collapses against me and cuddles up to my chest. His shirt will be stained.

“You’re damn good with that guitar, Marty.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh, and sexy as hell.”

I grin; catch his jaw with one and hand and dive into his lips. He opens up for my tongue, and we melt together. He tastes like cheap lemonade and the grimy salt-sweat of the gig, and I can’t get enough. We end up on the bed, dishevelled and wrapped up in each other, and I’ve no idea how long it is before we come up for air. My stomach grumbles insanely loudly.

“I could eat,” Hrishi offers with a grin.

“Yeah?” It occurs to me I’ve never watched him eat anything before. “What do you want?”

“Besides you?” Hrishi reaches out and palms my soft penis as I stand up; his smile is wicked. “You gonna cook?”

“Ha! The only thing I can make is cheese toasties. I’ll order in; what’ll it be?”

“Anything but Indian.”

I leave him and vanish into the bathroom, clean up with a thirty second shower and dial my favourite Hungarian restaurant from my mobile. I have no idea if there’s anything Hrishi doesn’t eat, but the specials involve various combinations of salami, black olives, goat’s cheese, and smoked salmon, so I order three different làngos and pudding, which is way more than we’re going to be able to eat, then dry my hair. I grin at my reflection, because I look smug and happy, and though Bayley is always on at me about styling my hair, I kind of like the soft way my blue fringe falls in my face. I wonder if I should get dressed. Is it unseemly to wander around nude after having excellent… well, not sex, but sexy stuff, with your… well, not boyfriend? Dammit.

I grab a pair of sweats and head out of the bathroom scrolling through the pictures the Starfish guys have tweeted of our gig. It’s not like anyone outside of our town and the surrounding villages will probably see them, but there are a couple of great ones of me and Leon especially: the light bouncing off our guitars. I send them to him, because he’ll never bother to check himself.

“You’d better not be wearing boxer’s under there.”

Hrishi voice sends a chill up my spine.

“I ain’t. We’re eating Hungarian. What is it with you and your aversion to underwear anyway?” I glance up from my phone and then drop the damn thing on my foot. “What are you doing?”

“I got comfy.”

Hrishi’s clothes are folded neatly in a square pile by the foot of my bed, and he is lying on the duvet as though my bed is a throne. He has my journal in one hand.

“And I don’t have a problem with my underwear.” Hrishi arches an eyebrow at me over the top of my private journal. “I just like you to be easy access.”

“You can’t read that.” I lean across him to grab my journal, but damn the boy is quick like a fox. “Hrishi! I’m serious.”

“You write some good songs. Or lyrics. Whatever. You played this one tonight, right?”

He has the page open at Black Eyed Boy, but he’s already been thumbing through a half dozen other pages, things no one is supposed to see, possibly ever. Anyone who thinks every lyric has potential to go places is either a moron or totally uneducated.

“Yeah. Gimmie that!” This time I succeed in snatching the journal off him. “I said you can’t read that. It’s private.”

“Really? Then why are you letting that jerk friend of yours sing it to a hundred people in a disused basement?”

“Lay off Leon.”

“Only when he lays off me,” Hrishi snaps back.

I grit my teeth, trying not to reply. We’ve gone from enjoying each other to biting at each other’s throats in ten seconds flat.

“You know....” Hrishi sits up, folding his legs underneath himself neatly, and I can’t help but stare at the dark shapes of his cock and balls between his thighs. I love his thighs. “If you worked this hard on your computing assignments, your grades wouldn’t be so abysmally poor.”

“Sure, because you could write a decent song, could you?”

“Wouldn’t need to,” Hrishi replies smarmily, “I’m smart enough to make a computer program which could write one for me.”

I sneer at him.

“Oh yeah, because that would give you a song with soul and emotion would it?”

Hrishi snatches up my journal and waves it at me like it’s on fire. I dread to think what else he’s been reading in there.

“You call this ‘soul and emotion’ do you? It’s so much generic angsty teenage bullshit. There are a thousand other shit songs which all say the same thing.”

His voice takes on a mocking tone I’ve not heard him use on me before, even when my grasp of programming concepts has been poor. “Oh woe is me, my life is so hard, and I’ve nobody to talk to, and my parents are dicks.”

“You know fuck all about my parents,” I snarl. I clench a fist, wanting to hit something and Hrishi notices.

“Don’t even think about it.”

I punch the wall. It’s a stupid, immature thing to do, but I feel much better for half a second before pain shoots up my arm. I think I might have cracked a knuckle. I breath hard for a while focusing on my pain. Hrishi makes no move towards me, just sits on my bed and watches me wince like he’s king of the damn world or something.

“Why do you think I’ve never introduced you to my parents?” I say eventually.

He doesn’t even pause in his reply.

“Because you’re scared they’ll smell the gay coming off me before I even open my mouth, you’re terrified of them finding out, and you’re ashamed to be with me.”

Only two of these things are even remotely true, but Hrishi doesn’t pause long enough to give me time to say anything.

“I’m fine with being your dirty little secret, Marty, but don’t you pretend I’m anything else. You sneak me in here like we’re back in colonial times and someone might lash you for being caught with the little Indian peasant.” He scoffs, “maybe your parents will mistake me for the pool boy.”

I don’t even have the brain-space to point out we don’t have a pool, because I launch at him, grab his upper arms and pin Hrishi to the wall. I’ve lifted him from the floor enough that he’s having to keep his balance on tiptoes. Bastard doesn’t even look scared.

“I’ve never introduced you to my parents because I’m ashamed to be related to them!” I snap. I can’t ever remember feeling so angry.

Not for the first time, I wonder if Hrishi has some special way of seeing into my head, because there’s nothing he can say which will help. Instead, he leans forward, kisses me hard, like we’re having a fight - and we are - and within seconds his hands are pushing at my sweats and grabbing my abs. I hold him tight for a second, resisting, then my body caves, and we’re all over each other in desperation. He has our cocks aligned in his hand within moments, jerking us off together. I pant, hardly believing I’m up for my third orgasm inside an hour; finding the soft skin of his shoulder with my mouth, I chew on him until we’re both moments from orgasm.

Hrishi snarls wordlessly. I cry out, a high pitched whimper I never knew I could make, and we both sink against the wall then slide down to slump on my bedroom floor in a tangle of limbs.

“Seriously though,” Hrishi’s laboured breath gives him away, but he rejoins our conversation as though getting off was purely punctuation, “don’t you have other friends you talk to about any of this?”

I blink through what he said and find myself smiling.

“What?” He frowns at me.

“We’re friends now?”

“You have my cum on your skin, I’m fairly certain that qualifies.” He shrugs, like this doesn’t matter. “Sure, we’re friends.”

I suppose it should make me happy, but for a while I’ve been thinking of what we have as more than that.

“Just friends?”

He glowers at me.

“Fucking hell, Marty, this might be the first real conversation we’ve ever had, and you want me to declare my undying love for you? Piss off.”

I extract myself from his body and tuck my dick back into my sweats. I’m going to wish later I’d taken the time to clean up properly, but I hate feeling exposed when he talks to me like that. He’s so bloody confident, and I wish I felt stronger in his presence. I don’t want to ask the question, but it’s there in my mouth, and I can’t not.

“Are you screwing other people?”

“Now? No. Are you?”

I didn’t miss his qualifier.

“Have you, before?”

“Yes.” A single word thrown away, as though it doesn’t matter. “You’ve not, I take it?”

“No.” The admission makes me feel almost shy.

There is a long pause during which all I can feel is my heartbeat echoing his pulse everywhere our skin touches.

“Marty….” his voice has gone all soft and gentle, and I can’t stand it. I jump to my feet just as the buzzer for the gate goes on my phone. It’s perfect damn timing.

“We’re not done with this,” I hiss at him as I buzz the delivery guy through the gate, grab my hoodie and pad outside to collect our dinner. I thought when I ordered it we would sit on my bed or on the couch, talk and laugh, chat about the gig and trade delicious spicy kisses, but now I’ve no idea. When I return, Hrishi is still naked, as though such a thing is perfectly normal, and I wonder how someone who gets bullied on a regular basis at college is so confident in his skin. He’s got my journal open in his lap again, and I know the shape of the lyrics to my newest favourite song. The first version I wrote in a mess of scribblings and crossed out sections, but the title was always the same, and has been doodled on and over embellished.

“You’d better not be writing about me, Marty.”

“What if I am?” Taking my journal from him at this point seems to be rather useless, so I just drop the food on the coffee table and start unpacking it. Everything smells heavenly. “You don’t get a say in what I do with my professional life.”

“Music is your professional life?” Hrishi’s tone is so fucking patronising I want to hit something, again.

“You know what? Fuck you. Just because I can’t write an algorithm which isn’t full of bugs, or make a program which actually fucking builds, does not make me stupid or less successful than you. One day there’s gonna be people singing along to my words on the damn radio.”

“So, I’m just a nerdy plaything?”

Hrishi’s words should sound self-pitying, but they don’t. His dark eyes are full of fire, and I don’t want to touch him. I might get burnt.

“Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“I could put other things in there,” he replies suggestively.

I gape at him in shock.

“Just… just come over here and eat will you?” I collapse on the sofa. “I’m fucking exhausted.”

“Or exhausted from fucking?”

I want to hate him, but I don’t feel anything but warm relief as he settles himself half in my lap.

“We’re not fucking.” Sometimes the obvious needs to be stated.

“Not yet, rock star.”