Chapter Text
♪ I've been lookin' at you
Puttin' holes in your head
Alexandra Palace looked less like a palace that night than a fever with chandeliers.
Everything was light, sweat, camera flash, champagne foam, cigarette smoke caught in television beams, people laughing too loudly because microphones might be near, men shouting over each other because silence felt like death or just because alcohol did them dirty. The whole room had the feeling of something already halfway after, the ceremony only a formality before everyone was spilled into corridors, cars, hotel rooms, strangers’ bathrooms, the NME cover page of next morning.
Damon sat at one table.
Liam sat at another.
That should have been enough.
It had been enough for months, technically. Different tables, different bands, different dressing rooms, different labels, different reputations carefully built on being exactly the sort of young men who did not look across crowded rooms at each other like that.
But there he was.
Liam was zipped into a navy parka despite the indoor heat, collar up to his chin like armour, dark jeans, dark shoes, those ridiculous tiny oval sunglasses on his face though they were inside, though it was night, though it made him look like a boy trying to disappear and, in a juxtaposition, trying so eagerly to be seen. His hair had grown into a shaggy bowl around his head, not polished, not wild, just careless enough to seem deliberate. He looked dangerous in the way certain men looked dangerous when they were still young enough to think nothing could ever catch them.
Damon had been trying not to stare at him for twenty minutes.
He failed about every thirty seconds.
He had a beige Harrington jacket on, white T-shirt underneath with some faded print half-hidden by the zip, clean jeans, trainers that had already been stepped on by three drunk people and one record executive’s wife. His blond hair was a wreck from his own hands. Under the lights his face looked paler than usual, blue eyes too clear, too alive, too obvious every time he turned his head and found Liam already looking.
Not looking, to be fair.
They could not afford to look.
Just glancing, like a reflex. Like a match struck and blown out.
At first, months ago, Damon had told himself it was funny. Sick, maybe, but funny. It had started exactly the way things were allowed to start if you were young, famous, drunk and male enough to laugh everything off by morning.
A bathroom in a club. A hand on a shoulder that stayed too long. Liam’s mouth too close when he said something insulting Damon couldn’t even remember now. A kiss that was more collision than decision. Teeth. Coke on the back of someone’s hand. Damon laughing against him because it was mad. Liam saying, “Shut up,” like he was angry, except he kissed him again harder.
After that, it had happened in fragments. A lot of fragments.
They never dared called it a relationship. Never that. Not even an affair, because affairs suggested planning and guilt and rooms with curtains. This was worse. This was stairwells, toilets, cars waiting outside venues, hotel corridors at impossible hours. It was Liam turning up where he should not be and Damon letting him in. It was Damon saying, “This is fucking dumb,” while pulling him down by the front of his jacket. It was Liam pretending he only did it because he was out of his head, because he was bored, because Damon was there, because one thing had led to another, because whatever.
Because whatever had become a month.
Then two.
Then they stopped keeping track, days were running fast and they had to find ways to keep up.
Then something that felt less like a mistake and more like a secret object they kept passing between them, hot enough to burn through the skin.
Damon did not like the way his stomach moved when Liam laughed at his table.
He did not like the way Liam leaned back in his chair, chin lifted, sunglasses still on, one arm slung over the back of someone else’s seat, looking like he belonged to every loud, arrogant, wasted boy in the room except the one actually watching him.
He did not like wondering what Liam had taken.
He could always tell when Liam had taken something. Not exactly what, but the shape of it. Alcohol made him expansive and foul-mouthed and all hands. Speed sharpened him until he looked like he might start a fight with the wallpaper, until it wasn’t just a supposition and he did start a fight with whoever or whatever made him upset… or not, even. Coke made him brighter and meaner and too still around the eyes. E made him strange sometimes, softer in the wrong places, touch-starved, horny and furious about it.
Tonight, Liam looked all of them at once.
He looked like a lit fuse.
Damon had to look away.
Someone onstage said a name. Applause burst up in ragged pieces around the room. At his table somebody cheered, somebody booed, somebody knocked over a glass and cursed. Damon smiled because he was expected to smile. He clapped because cameras existed. His heart had gone stupidly fast, and it had nothing to do with the award.
Across the room, Liam did not clap at first.
He only looked at him.
Then, when Damon met his eyes, Liam slowly lifted both hands and gave three lazy claps, mouth twisting like he knew exactly what he was doing to him. His brother next to him, glared at his table too.
Damon hated, for a second, the fact that he clearly wanted Liam in a way that made hatred convenient.
♪ We've been talking for months
But never in the same room
And now I wanna approach ya
The thing was no one knew. That was the centre of it, the thrill and the terror, the dirty little engine. No one knew that Liam had often fallen asleep with his face pressed between Damon’s shoulder blades, once fully dressed except for his shoes, mumbling nonsense and refusing to let go when Damon tried to turn off the lamp. No one knew Damon had Liam’s number hidden under another name. No one knew Liam had called him from a hotel bathroom in Leeds at four in the morning and said nothing for nearly a minute before asking, voice low and wrecked, “You up?”
No one knew that Damon had started waiting for him.
That was the unforgivable part.
Sex could be blamed on anything. Drugs, booze, rivalry, boredom, lust, youth, stupidity, London, the music press, too many free drinks, too much applause, not enough sleep. Wanting could be disguised. Bodies could be shrugged off.
Waiting could not.
Waiting was intimate.
Liam looked away first this time, dragged into conversation by one of his mates, a man with a red face and a laugh like breaking glass. Damon watched him answer, watched him grin, watched him perform Liam: the sneer, the shoulders, the half-interested cruelty. It was perfect. Too perfect. It made Damon want to walk over and ruin it.
Instead, he picked up his drink.
Originally it was a gin and tonic, but the ice melted and the tonic was insufficient and now it was just sour and lukewarm and unhelpful.
“Christ, you’re wired,” said Alex beside him.
Damon blinked, then looked at him. Black fringe covering his eyes, lopsided big smile hanging off his face.
“You’ve been staring into space like you’ve seen God or a writ.”
Damon laughed, too late. “Both would be bad news.”
“Toilet?” Alex asked, leaning closer. “Got something.”
Of course, Alex got something. Damon almost said no.
Then he looked across the room again and saw Liam watching Alex James speaking into his ear.
That was all it took.
“Yeah,” Damon said. “All right.”
The bathroom was already a party of its own. Men in suits, boys in bands, television people, hangers-on, one actor Damon recognised but could not place, all elbows and pupils and laughter echoing off tile. The sinks were wet, mirrors fogged, someone had spilled champagne into a bin. A man was bent over a line by the far wall with another shielding him badly with his jacket.
Damon did what he did because everyone did it. That was the comfort of it. Nobody looked too closely if everybody was guilty of something.
Alex had a wrap. Damon had a key. They bent over it together, shoulders touching, ridiculous as schoolboys. The burn went up behind his eye and into his skull. The room snapped brighter. Every sound separated itself: tap drip, sniff, zip, laughter, a lighter striking, somebody saying, “Fucking hell, mate,” three times in a row.
Damon looked at himself in the mirror.
His pupils had become theatrical. His hair was worse. His mouth looked bitten, though it wasn’t yet.
He washed his hands for something to do.
When he came back out to the main room, the ceremony had moved on, but the night had loosened. People were half-standing now, switching tables, leaning into each other, not pretending as hard. There was a new humidity in the air. Everyone was waiting for permission to become worse.
Liam’s chair was empty.
Damon’s chest tightened before he could stop it.
Then he saw him near the bar, parka still zipped, sunglasses pushed up into his hair now, face turned sideways while some girl touched his sleeve. Liam was smiling at her in that infuriating way, mouth soft, eyes not. He said something. She laughed and leaned closer.
Damon felt it like a shove.
He told himself he had no right. That was the whole point. They had nothing. They were nothing. They were not even standing in the same story as far as the world was concerned.
Liam looked over the girl’s shoulder.
Straight at him.
There it was again. That flash. That private, ugly recognition.
Damon forgot the girl existed.
Liam said something to her, brief enough to be rude, and moved away before she finished answering. Not towards Damon. Never directly. He drifted along the edge of the room, stopped to speak to someone, laughed, drank from a glass that did not look like his, then disappeared behind a cluster of people near the corridor.
Damon stayed still.
He counted to ten.
He managed six.
Then he got up again and thankfully, no one of his lot found it sketchy.
He did not follow him. That was important. He did not follow him because men like them did not follow each other into corridors at televised award ceremonies. He simply stood, excused himself to no one in particular, crossed behind two tables, nodded to a journalist, laughed at something he did not hear, and went to the bathroom because he needed the bathroom. Again.
Casually.
Obviously.
His skin felt too tight. The coke had made every nerve into a wire, and every wire seemed to lead to Liam. He could feel the whole room behind him, every eye invented by paranoia. He imagined someone noticing. Someone knowing. Someone turning to someone else and saying, Look at that. Look where he’s going.
The corridor was cooler and dimmer, carpet swallowing the bass from the main hall. There were people everywhere and still somehow not enough people. Damon passed a woman crying into a compact mirror, two men arguing about a manager, someone kissing someone by a fire exit. He kept walking. The bathroom was a mess; he reached blindly the last stall.
The door swung open before he touched it.
Liam came out.
For one stupid second, they almost collided.
Liam stopped with his hand still on the door, and close up he was worse. His face was flushed over the cheekbones, eyes bright and too dark, lips parted like he had been breathing through his mouth. There was a faint white ghost at one nostril that he had either missed or not cared about. Damon wanted to touch it away. Then he imagined lick it away. A wave of pure heat warmed his low abdomen.
Neither of them moved.
“All right?” Liam said.
His voice was rough.
Damon’s mouth went dry. “Yeah. You?”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
It was pathetic. Months of hands and mouths and secrets, and this was what they had in a corridor. Two syllables each and a silence that nearly shook.
♪ Wish you'd just talk to me
I think you're getting closer
'Cause I've been getting nervous
Behind Damon, someone inside the bathroom shouted with laughter.
Liam glanced past him. “Busy?”
Damon’s eyes flicked over his face. “Bit.”
“You going in?”
“Was thinking about it.”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“You’re in the way.”
Liam smiled then. Not the public one. This was smaller and worse, quick as a blade. “Am I?”
Damon wanted to slam him into the wall. But also, Damon wanted to say, Are you thinking about me, because I am losing my mind, and I think you know, and I think you’re doing it on purpose.
Instead, he said, “Move, then.”
Liam did not move immediately. For half a second, their shoulders brushed. Nothing more. Fabric on fabric. But the pressure of it went through Damon like a hand closing around the back of his neck.
Then Liam stepped aside.
Damon went into the loo.
He made it three steps before Liam followed him back in.
Of course he did.
The second the lock slid into place, Liam said, “You’re fucking mental.”
Damon had him by the front of the parka before he’d finished the sentence.
“Yeah?” Damon said, too close to his mouth. “Then why did you follow me?”
Liam’s laugh came out wrong. Not a laugh, not really. A breath punched out of him, sharp and derisive and already losing the fight. “I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“I came for a piss.”
“You came back in after me.”
Liam’s jaw flexed. His sunglasses had slipped low on his nose, ridiculous and dark in the greenish bathroom light. Behind the lenses, his eyes were only a suggestion, but Damon could feel them on him. Mouth, throat, hair, hands. Liam looked at him like he wanted to bite through something.
“Move,” Liam said.
Damon did not move.
There was hardly room to. The stall was too small, too hot, smelling of bleach, smoke, alcohol, piss, expensive aftershave, and the chemical sweat of a hundred boys pretending not to be wrecked. The floor was sticky under Damon’s trainers. Outside, the bathroom lived its own filthy little life: taps running, doors banging, men laughing too loudly, someone sniffing hard, someone else groaning like he’d just seen God in a mirror.
Inside, Liam’s chest rose against the navy nylon of his parka.
Damon looked down at the zip done right up to his throat. “You dressed like you knew you’d need armour.”
Liam swallowed.
“Fuck off.”
Damon smiled and reached for the zip.
Liam caught his wrist. Fast. Hard.
Their eyes met.
That was the mistake. It always was. As long as they were joking, insulting, moving too quickly, they could pretend the desire was a kind of violence that had accidentally taken a sexual shape. But stillness made it worse. Stillness gave the whole thing a face.
Liam’s grip around his wrist tightened, then loosened.
Damon dragged the zip down.
Slowly.
The sound was obscene in the little stall, louder than it should have been. Tooth by tooth. Navy parka opening from his chin to his chest, exposing the dark shirt beneath, the pale line of his throat, the hot flush climbing up from his collar.
Liam looked like he might kill him.
Damon wanted him for it.
“You’ve been staring at me all night,” Damon said.
Liam’s mouth twitched. “You look like a twat.”
“You stared anyway.”
“Everyone stares at car crashes.”
Damon pushed the parka off one of his shoulders.
Liam let him.
That was what undid Damon. Not the banter. Not the drugs. Not the months of wanting him in flashes and fragments and rooms they could never admit to. It was the tiny, private surrender under Liam’s scowl. The way he let Damon undress him just enough, while pretending the decision had been stolen from him.
Damon kissed him.
Liam took half a second to respond and then responded like he hated the half-second. His hands slammed into Damon’s ribs, fisting in the Harrington, dragging him forward until their bodies knocked together. Damon’s back hit the opposite partition. Liam’s mouth opened under his, hot and bitter with drink, sharp with whatever he’d put up his nose, familiar enough now to make Damon’s stomach turn over with something dangerously close to affection.
Damon bit his bottom lip.
Liam made a sound.
It was quiet. Too quiet. A broken little thing caught behind his teeth.
Damon heard it anyway.
“Oh,” Damon breathed, smiling against him. “There you are.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
Liam did.
He kissed him harder, messier, one hand in Damon’s hair and the other already low on his waist, gripping, pulling, impatient. His sunglasses were between them, knocked crooked by Damon’s cheek. Damon tore them off his face and dropped them. They hit the floor with a plastic clatter.
“Careful,” Liam hissed.
“You’re wearing sunglasses in a toilet stall.”
“They’re expensive.”
“You’re unbearable.”
“And yet you’re here.”
Damon laughed, breathless. “Unfortunately.”
Liam shoved a hand under Damon’s t-shirt.
Damon stopped laughing.
His palm was hot, dry, rough because Liam did not have soft hands, sliding up over Damon’s stomach, spreading over his ribs. The touch was not delicate. Liam never touched delicately when he was scared. He grabbed, claimed, held on like he was trying to leave evidence on the bone. His fingers found Damon’s nipple, hardened already.
Damon sucked in a breath.
Liam watched his face change.
There was the satisfaction again. Immediate. Mean. Hungry.
“Sensitive, are we?” Liam murmured.
Damon caught his wrist and pinned it against his own chest beneath the T-shirt. “Don’t start acting clever. It doesn’t suit you.”
Liam smiled, sharp and beautiful. “You love it.”
Damon hated how close that landed to the truth.
♪ I followed you to the bathroom
But then I felt crazy
I'm feeling like I'm on fire
'Cause we've been keeping this a secret
And all your friends are still there
And I'm just wondering what they know
Outside, someone barked a laugh. A stall door slammed. The bathroom door swung open and let in a roar of distant applause from the ceremony, then shut again, swallowing them back into tile and echo and bass.
Liam glanced toward the door.
Damon saw the panic flicker across him.
It made him softer for half a second.
Then Liam ruined it by whispering, “We shouldn’t.”
“No,” Damon said.
“We really shouldn’t.”
“No.”
“We’re at the fucking Brits.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“My band’s out there.”
“So’s mine.”
“My brother is out there.”
“Yeah, I may have had a hint.”
“People will know.”
Damon looked at him. “Know what?”
Liam’s expression hardened instantly, but it was too late. The question had slipped under the armour.
Know that you followed me?
Know that you let me pull you in?
Know that you touch me like this when no one can see?
Know that when I look across a room, you look back?
Know that this stopped being an accident weeks ago?
Liam’s hand was still under Damon’s shirt, still pressed to his chest. Damon could feel the minute tremor in his fingers.
Damon leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth.
Not filthy. Not mocking.
Gentle.
Liam went very still.
Then he said, low, “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make it weird.”
Damon’s mouth brushed his cheek. “You mean make it honest?”
Liam grabbed him by the jaw and kissed him hard enough to hurt.
There it was again. Easier. Safer. The crash, the heat, the violence they could laugh about later if they had to. Damon let him have it. Let Liam push him back into the wall, let him take control for ten seconds, fifteen, twenty. Let him grind against him, fully clothed, the pressure sudden and shocking.
Damon gasped into his mouth.
Liam froze for one bright instant.
Then did it again.
Harder.
Damon’s head tipped back against the partition. “Fuck.”
Liam’s mouth went to his throat.
Damon almost laughed at the insanity of it. Liam, who would not look at him for more than three seconds across a ballroom, now mouthing at his neck like he wanted to eat him alive. Teeth grazed skin. Damon grabbed at his shoulders.
“No marks, you animal” he said.
Liam hummed against his throat.
“I mean it.”
Liam bit him.
Not hard enough to bruise badly, but hard enough that Damon’s whole body kicked.
“William.”
The name cracked between them.
Liam lifted his head.
His pupils were huge. His mouth was red. His hair had fallen forward, shaggy and damp at the temples. Without the sunglasses, there was nowhere for him to hide.
“Don’t call me that,” he said.
Damon’s hand slid into his hair. “You like it.”
Liam’s face twisted, furious because he did. “You’re full of yourself.”
“Yeah.”
“Always thinkin you know.”
“I know enough.”
Liam’s hand dropped between them.
Damon stopped breathing.
For a second, neither of them moved. Liam’s fingers rested at Damon’s belt, not doing anything yet, just there. A question disguised as arrogance.
Damon looked down, then back at his face.
Liam’s breath shuddered.
The belt came open too loudly. Damon winced and then laughed under his breath because it was absurd, all of it, the award ceremony, the noise outside, Liam’s parka half-off, his own jeans being opened by a man who would probably insult him in an interview in few hours.
“Something funny?” Liam muttered.
“You.”
Liam pulled the button open. “Careful.”
“Or what?”
The zip lowered.
Damon’s smile went thin.
Liam’s hand slipped inside, and the whole night narrowed to that touch.
Damon grabbed the partition with one hand and Liam’s shoulder with the other. His eyes shut before he could stop them. Liam made a soft, satisfied noise, almost a laugh, but not quite. His fingers were confident and clumsy at once, affected by drink and whatever else, too eager to be smooth. That made it worse. Better. More real.
“Look at you,” Liam said, voice low and rough. “All clever until someone touches you.”
Damon opened his eyes.
Liam was watching him like the ceremony, the people, the danger had all fallen away. Like this was the only award worth winning. Damon’s face under his hand. Damon trying not to make noise. Damon undone in a toilet stall because of him.
“You’re shaking,” Liam said.
“So are you.”
“I’m not.”
Damon reached between them and pressed his palm over the front of Liam’s jeans.
Liam’s mouth fell open.
“There,” Damon whispered. “Liar.”
Liam surged forward and kissed him again, swallowing whatever sound Damon made when Liam’s hand moved more deliberately. Damon touched him back, opening him with awkward fingers, both of them half-laughing once because there was no space, because Liam elbowed the wall, because Damon nearly knocked his own head against the toilet-roll holder.
Then Liam’s hand tightened and the laughter died.
The pleasure came in bright, dangerous pulses. Damon’s body was already too alive from the drugs, from the alcohol, from looking at Liam all night and being unable to touch him. Every stroke felt amplified, impossible, almost too much. Liam pressed his forehead to Damon’s shoulder, breathing hard through his nose, while Damon worked him in return, feeling him hot and hard in his hand, feeling Liam lose his rhythm every time Damon’s thumb moved just right.
“Fuck,” Liam breathed. “Fuck, Damon.”
Damon’s chest clenched.
His name in Liam’s mouth was almost worse than the touch.
He turned his face and kissed Liam’s temple, into his hair.
Liam jerked. “Don’t.”
Damon did it again.
Liam groaned, furious and helpless, and bit at Damon’s shoulder through the T-shirt.
“Mad,” he muttered. “You’re mad.”
“You followed me,” Damon said again, breath breaking.
Liam’s hand moved faster.
Damon’s knees nearly went.
“Say that again and I’ll leave.”
“I dare you.”
Liam lifted his head.
For a moment, they were nose to nose, both open, both wrecked, both too far gone to pretend convincingly.
“No,” Liam said, voice thin and vicious with need. “I won’t.”
Damon kissed him for that.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was true.
The pace turned frantic after that. Too much noise outside, too little time, too much body and heat and fear. Liam pushed his parka further off his shoulders, trapped by his own sleeves, and Damon laughed breathlessly until Liam shut him up with his mouth. Their hands worked between them, rough and desperate, jeans open, hips moving in short, needy jerks. It was adolescent and filthy and somehow more intimate than what they had done in beds.
Because there was no performance left.
Not really.
Liam was panting into his mouth. Damon could hear himself making these small, awful sounds he would have mocked in anyone else. They had to keep quiet. They both knew it. That made every swallowed moan feel worse. Liam pressed him harder into the wall as if he could force the sounds back into him with his body.
“Quiet,” Liam rasped.
“You be quiet.”
“You first.”
Damon laughed, then gasped, too loud.
Liam clapped the free hand over his mouth.
They stared at each other.
Damon’s eyes widened.
Liam’s hand stayed there, palm over his mouth, fingers along his cheek. Possessive. Panicked. Shaking.
Outside, two men came into the bathroom arguing about a producer. Footsteps. A tap. A sniff. Someone washing their hands for too long.
Liam did not move.
Damon breathed through his nose, mouth covered, body held against the partition by Liam’s weight and his hand and the impossible pressure between them. Liam kept stroking him with the other hand, slower now, crueller, watching Damon try not to fall apart.
Damon’s fingers tightened around Liam in retaliation.
Liam’s eyes fluttered.
“Bastard,” he whispered.
Damon smiled under his hand.
Liam removed it only to kiss him again, messy and silent, lips catching, teeth knocking. Their hands found the rhythm again, faster, less controlled. Damon could feel Liam getting close in the way his whole body changed: shoulders tight, breath uneven, mouth losing shape around every insult he could not quite form.
“Don’t stop,” Liam said.
It came out before he could dress it up.
Damon heard it.
Liam knew he heard it.
His face flushed darker with humiliation and need.
Damon’s voice was soft and wrecked. “Wasn’t going to.”
Liam swore and buried his face in Damon’s neck.
Damon held him there with one hand in his hair, the other still moving between them. The tenderness slipped in again without permission. Not gentle exactly, because nothing about them was gentle for long, but protective in its own deranged way. Liam hidden against him. Liam undone where no one could see. Liam trusting him with the ugliest, neediest, most human part of himself and probably hating him for it.
Damon felt his own orgasm building too fast, pulled up by the heat, the secrecy, the chemicals, the sound of Liam breathing his name once more against his skin like it had been forced out of him.
“Damon.”
“Yeah,” Damon whispered. “I’ve got you.”
Liam came first.
He bit down on Damon’s shoulder to keep quiet, body jerking hard against him, a muffled, broken sound trapped in the cotton of Damon’s shirt. Damon held him through it, stroking him until Liam’s hand spasmed around him in turn, rough and uncoordinated and perfect.
Damon lasted maybe five seconds after that.
His head hit the partition. His mouth opened soundlessly. Liam, still shaking, kissed him through it like he was trying to steal the evidence from his mouth. Damon came with a fractured breath, hips stuttering forward, one hand fisted in Liam’s hair hard enough that Liam hissed.
Then everything stopped.
Not the bathroom.
Never the bathroom. The bathroom kept going around them, obscene and indifferent. Men laughing. Water running. Music thumping through the walls. The ceremony bleeding into afterparty outside.
But inside the stall, for five seconds, there was only their breathing.
Damon’s forehead rested against Liam’s.
Their jeans were open. Liam’s parka hung off him like a defeated flag. Damon’s T-shirt was rucked up, jacket twisted, hair ruined. They were sweaty, sticky, high, and ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
Liam started laughing first.
Quietly. Breathlessly. Almost against his will.
Damon opened his eyes. “What?”
Liam shook his head. “You look fucking insane.”
Damon looked down at them both. “You’re one to talk.”
Liam laughed harder for half a second, then clapped a hand over his own mouth, eyes bright. The laugh changed something in Damon’s chest. It was young. Too young. It reminded him that Liam was not only danger and want and swagger. He was also this: a boy laughing silently in a toilet stall at an awards show with come on his hand and sunglasses on the floor.
Damon smiled.
Liam caught him smiling.
The laughter died.
There it was again.
The drop.
The thing underneath.
Damon reached for toilet paper because if he did not move, he might say something catastrophic. He cleaned his hand, then passed some to Liam without looking too directly at him. Liam took it with an awkward little nod, suddenly shy in the most infuriating way possible, as if he had not just had his tongue in Damon’s mouth and his hand down his jeans.
They sorted themselves in silence.
Belts. Zips. T-shirts. Jacket. Parka.
Liam bent, grabbed his sunglasses from the floor and Damon snapped them off him, then cleaned the glasses with the inside of his Harrington, and handed them back.
Liam stared at the gesture.
“Don’t,” he said quietly.
Damon’s stomach tightened. “What?”
Liam put the sunglasses on. “Don’t be nice.”
Damon huffed a laugh, but it hurt. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Good.”
“Would ruin your evening.”
“Would ruin my life.”
That landed too heavily.
They both felt it.
Outside, someone banged on the stall door. The bubble imploded.
“Oi! You dead in there?”
Liam snapped, “Fuck off!”
The man outside laughed. “All right, mate, Jesus.”
Damon pressed his lips together to stop himself laughing too.
Liam glared at him, but it had no strength left.
“You wait.”
“Sure, James Bond.”
“And stop looking at me like that when we go back.”
Damon leaned back against the partition. “Like what?”
Liam’s jaw tightened. “Like you know me.”
Damon looked at him for a long moment.
The lights outside flickered under the stall door. A cheer went up somewhere distant. The whole palace seemed to pulse around them, bright and drunk and stupid with history being made by children who thought they were men.
Damon wanted to say, I do know you.
Not all of you. Not enough. But I know this. I know the way you pretend to leave first because staying scares you. I know you kiss harder when you want to be held. I know you get cruel when you’re embarrassed. I know you followed me into this bathroom because you’d been looking at me all night and couldn’t stand it anymore.
Instead, he said, “Then stop letting me.”
Liam looked at him.
For a second, Damon thought he might kiss him again.
For a second, he thought Liam might say something true and awful and irreversible.
Then Liam’s face closed.
“Wait two minutes,” he said.
Damon shrugged. Liam’s eyes lingered a second too much on his face. He looked drawn by a firm hand. His nose was perfect, unfairly placed in the middle of one of the most gorgeous faces he’d ever seen. For a second, they both got lost in there, Damon wanted badly to shove off Liam’s sunglasses again just to look at him in the eyes. Just to see his eyes again.
“Liam.”
Liam snapped back on earth. In a toilet loo. Inside Alexandra’s Palace. At the fucking Brit Awards.
Damon stepped closer. “Were you?”
Liam did not pretend not to understand, he just took time. His hand was on the lock. His head was slightly bowed. Armour restored badly, with cracks showing everywhere.
“Was I what?”
“Thinking about me.”
Liam laughed under his breath. “You need compliments now?”
“Maybe.”
Liam turned his head just enough for Damon to see the line of his mouth.
“All night,” he said.
Damon went still.
Liam’s voice dropped lower.
“Every time I looked away, I was still thinking about you. Happy?”
Damon wanted to pull him back. He wanted to ask how often. He wanted to say me too, all the time, idiot, constantly, in rooms, in cars, in interviews, with girls, with friends, with people saying your name like it means the same thing to them. He wanted to say something insane enough to match the night.
Liam run away before he could see Damon’s wide smile, his damned crooked teeth showing a bit. Damon stood alone in the stall, heart still trying to break through his ribs, body cooling too fast now that Liam was gone. He listened to the tap run. Listened to Liam say something rude to someone by the sinks. Listened to the bathroom door open and close.
Two minutes, Liam had said.
Damon gave him three.
When he finally stepped out, he washed his hands, fixed his hair badly, looked at himself in the mirror and almost laughed like a lunatic. He looked exactly like Alex had accused him of looking: mental. Pale, flushed, pupils blown, mouth bitten red, shoulder aching where Liam had used his teeth to keep quiet.
He touched the spot through his shirt.
Then he stopped, because the tenderness of that gesture made him feel stupid. He pulled out of his jacket what remained of a baggy, managing to assemble a line just to sort himself a bit out.
Back in the ballroom, the ceremony was already dissolving. People were standing, shouting, hugging, disappearing. Champagne moved through the room like floodwater. Cameras flashed. Somebody had won something that would matter tomorrow and not matter in ten years. Somebody was giving a speech no one was listening to. The afterparty had begun before the show had officially ended.
Damon returned to his table. He missed the last exhibition, no one looked like they cared. He didn’t miss anything lifechanging.
Graham looked wasted, slumping uncoordinated on a chair, looking at him exactly like your drunk best friend would look at you when you’re keeping a secret from them. Or Damon had just become extremely paranoid.
Alex squinted at him. “You look worse.”
Damon picked up his drink. “Bathroom was busy.”
“I can imagine. You mean girls’ bathroom perhaps? Needed powder on your pretty nose?”
Damon smiled. This narrative was funnier. Then he drank.
Across the room, Liam was back in his seat.
Parka zipped to his throat. Sunglasses on. Hair still slightly wrong if you knew where to look. He was laughing at something one of his friends said, or pretending to. He looked untouchable again.
Almost.
Then his hand lifted to his mouth.
Just briefly.
Two fingers pressed against his lower lip, as if checking whether Damon was still there.
Damon watched.
Liam turned his head.
Their eyes met across the wreckage of the room.
Not long. No, very briefly and fugitively. But clearly enough for Damon to feel the locked stall again. Liam’s hand over his mouth. Liam saying all night. Liam breaking against him with his teeth in his shoulder. Liam leaving first because he had to, not because he wanted to.
Damon raised his glass a fraction.
Liam’s mouth twitched.
Then someone at his table pulled him into conversation, and the look was gone.
The lights flashed white. The crowd roared. The future of British music stumbled beautifully toward the bar.
Damon sat there with Liam still under his skin, and understood, with the chemical clarity of a terrible idea, that whatever this had been at the start, whatever excuse they had used for it, it was not just sex anymore.
It was definitely worse.
People were dissolving, addresses were being given, party, numbers, taxi and private cars waiting. Crowd and noises all around, flashes and camera and shouting and another champagne bottle popping and Damon’s head spinning.
Everyone moved to the crowd like a tidal wave, keeping going.
In the semi dark of lower lights and the shadow of the spotlights still on, a buzzing presence behind him suggested Damon the night was not over yet and he did not imagine the frantic bathroom encounter. Or neither the last couple of months.
♪ Talk to me in your own made up language
Doesn't matter if I understand it
Talk right in my ear
Tell me your secrets and fears
Once you talk to me, I'll talk to you
And say, "Hey, let's get out of here"
“You’re obsessed with me.” Damon says, without even turning back.
Liam laughed, in a way that sounded out of his character, “Die.”
Damon grinned to no one in particular, “Shall we go back to my place?”