Peach & Cream There's a minor commotion going on over by the backstage entrance. The manager, Dave something, a heavy middle-aged guy with greasy hair and more tattoos than clean skin, is shoving someone back and saying, "get the fuck out - no fucking way, kid. What are you doing here? If you're twenty-one, I'm the fucking queen of England--" and Billy sees a glimpse of someone young and tall and pretty behind Dave's stout form. A kid - and yeah, no way he's twenty-one, Dave's right - with his hair in a ridiculous, sand-coloured afro that hugs his skull like a fluffy helmet, and a face that's both guileless and arrogant. He seems very sure of his right to be where he is, so he's either very rich or very well wandered in the ways of backstage hustling. A would-be groupie, maybe, some good, middle-class kid with good skin and a taste for rebellion.
He reminds Billy of the kids that flocked to the Hard Core Logo gigs, the ones with a low-grade malcontent brewing inside, but no cause or outlet, the ones with good homes and good grades and no reason in the world to be pissed off at the world, but who were drawn to the punk scene because it fascinated them and seemed more real than their lives. Billy was one of them once, but he was younger, a lot younger, and he didn't just visit the scene, he stuck like a fly in treacle.
He gets up and stands next to Dave. Dave looks at him. Dave is an expat Canadian like Billy, someone who remembers the Logo, someone who remembers the good old days. The name Billy Tallent still means something to him, and with a shrug and a lifted eyebrow, he leaves.
Billy turns to the kid. Pins him with his eyes. He's pretty, very pretty, built like a young oak, with plenty of gym-built muscle under the tight tee. He looks too clean and wholesome for this place, with his white teeth and toned body. There's something vaguely familiar about him, but not familiar enough to place. Billy figures he looks like someone famous and leaves it at that.
"Cool show," the kid says and smiles. He's got a cover boy smile, broad and dazzlingly white. "You rock, dude."
Platitudes, sure, but it feels fucking good to hear them, even after all these years. The ego never stops thirsting for strokes.
"Cheers," Billy says. "Wanna beer?"
"Sure."
He looks the kid over, slowly and deliberately, and there's a second where he seems to shrink back in confusion, but then his eyes clear and the smile returns with increased wattage. Looking good - seems like they're on the same page.
He can't think of a single thing to say, but that seems okay. The kid drinks his beer and leans against the wall with boneless ease. He's wearing tight, artfully worn jeans that probably cost more than Billy's entire wardrobe. Billy's lived in LA long enough to know designer wear when he sees it.
He takes a step forward, and the kid doesn't flinch back. The smile stays.
Billy briefly wonders where the rest of the band is - probably getting wasted in the bar. Another band is playing, some local punk outfit with a sound that's all fake rage and put-on heroin chic. Joe would have ragged them mercilessly, but Billy can't bring himself to care.
He crowds the kid, traps him between his body and the dingy, graffiti-ed wall. Now the smile falters a little, but there's no fear or hostility there in the kid's face, just a half-knowing, half-dog-dare tightness in his eyes.
Billy shrugs to loosen that muscle in his shoulder that always seizes up after a gig these days - he's getting on, time to face it - and leans in to press his mouth against the tight tendon on the kid's clean, smooth-skinned neck. He smells expensive after-shave and hears, over the muted din of the band, the bright clink of the half-empty beer bottle hit the floor.
"Oh--" the kid mumbles, and Billy touches his side, strokes the hard muscles of his stomach. He's stiff like a board, but doesn't fidget or push back, so Billy licks his neck and his clean-shaven jaw, and slides his hand down. There's a sharp, harsh gasp, and Billy takes that as an affirmation. This is a good catch, this boy, clean and healthy and nothing much like the usual skankheads Billy has a tendency to hook up with.
The kid is relaxing, slouching against the wall, his head thrown back a little, his hands light and tentative on Billy's shoulders. Billy rubs him slowly, pushing his hips forward, trapping his hand between their bodies. The kid gasps and bucks and Billy lifts his head and kisses his open mouth sloppily. He's not a smoker, such a clean boy - he tastes sweet under the faint bitterness of beer.
"I'm going to suck your cock," Billy whispers into his mouth, and a shiver of anticipation runs between them, through both their bodies, a small shimmy of response, and then he lets go of the kid's sweet, wet mouth and drops to his knees, ignoring the creak and whine of his joints. He tears open the fly on those expensive designer jeans, pushes them down over narrow hips, liking the way the muscles of the kid's belly and groin and thighs flex and jump under his ungentle fingers. Short work of the underwear - designer label on that, too - and he's free to open his mouth and slide his lips over the kid's dick, wet and slick and hard and yeah, yeah, he still likes it, even though his knees hurt, he likes it, likes the pain, even, but mostly he likes the feeling of taking what's offered and matching it, and he savours the salty-bitter taste filling his mouth, the earthy-musky smell filling his nose, the small, choked gasps of the kid trying to be quiet and not quite making it. Billy's sucked a lot of cock, but this is good, this is one he'll remember. He wonders, with wry detachment, whether this boy has ever had his dick licked by someone twice his age before. Or by someone who really knew what they were doing, for that matter.
The sounds are getting desperate and urgent up there, and Billy feels hesitant hands on his head and knows the kid wants to give in and just thrust and buck and go nuts, and also that he won't, because he was probably raised to respect the mouth that sucks him, or whateverthefuck. That's not what Billy wants, though, no room for good manners here, so he pulls back and says, over the small whimper of disappointment, "for fuck's sake, kid, I won't break. Let it go," and dives back in. And there, the hands tighten in his hair and he relaxes his throat muscles - there it is, thrust and slide, the beat of blunt meat against his gullet, and he can take all this, it's been longer than he can remember since this sort of thing made him gag or choke, he can take it and like it, and he leaves one hand where it is, clutching bruisingly hard on the hard ridge of the kid's hipbone and slides the other one down to unbuckle his own loose, worn jeans and stroke and tease and bring up the rush hiding in his lower belly, bring it where it's dying to go.
More whimpers, growing into moans, and he vaguely registers that some of them might be his own. Rhythmless jerks into his mouth, and he strokes himself harder, matching the ragged pace, and there - there it is. He loves the taste of come, needs it, doesn't get it enough, and he's struck with a deep, bone-deep memory of sucking Joe off in the back of a parked van, somewhere in Vancouver, ages ago - early eighties? - back when his knees didn't ache like this and his shoulder didn't cramp from playing unless he'd been working it for fifteen hours straight or so. Joe was a lot less clean and peachy-creamy than this nameless boy, and he never tried to be quiet - he always howled and swore when he came like it was a goddamn offence to have to finish - but the taste of semen is pretty much the same, and Billy's orgasm is painful and bites deep and he thinks he might have cried if he'd been a little more drunk.
He releases the boy and sinks back on his heels. The kid's knees buckle and there he is, next to Billy, flushed and slack-jawed and so decadently pretty that Billy wonders where he comes from, where they make people like him.
They catch their respective breaths, Billy a little slower than the kid. He pulls his sticky hand out of his sodden jeans and buttons up again. The kid pulls up his pants and tucks himself back in with trembling fingers. He looks a little shell-shocked still, but the afterglow is colouring his cheeks and giving his eyes a bright, glazed sheen. The corners of his mouth are curling up.
There's a noise from somewhere up above their heads, and they both look up, Billy angrily, the kid guiltily. There's a man standing in the door, a shortish, compact guy with a pointy, goateed face like a pissed-off elf, spiky black hair and angry-sad black eyes. He's staring at them with barely checked hostility, and Billy thinks, uh-oh, boyfriend, but he's too orgasm-languid to give a fuck, and the guy isn't doing anything, just staring like he's never seen anything like this before. The fuck-you imp in Billy comes out to play, and he reaches out and grabs a handful of the kid's wayward curls and pulls him closer, pulls his blushing, sex-slack face to his and kisses him, open-mouthed and wet-warm, a show for the pissed-off boyfriend.
And then he pushes the kid away and gets up without wincing. Walks out, pushing past the guy with a smug grin and a nod. He closes the door behind him and thinks about how Joe would have fucking loved to stay behind and pick a fight. How he can't be bothered and how that's maybe why he's alive and Joe isn't. He grins and walks down to the bar to get some more beer.
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