Page 3 of Electric Boy

He only ever followed him home twice. Three times at the most.

If he went by his flat some nights, some non-pub nights, just to watch the boy as he strummed a roughly gaffer-taped acoustic guitar, or sat bathed in the anaemic blue glow of his television screen, well, that was just to ensure his continued well-being.

* * *

But on this night, this particular night, Michael had already been watching his boy for hours.

It had been a long and unusual night. It had begun like any other Friday evening. It was a girlfriend night, and Michael had been able to tell as soon as the girl walked in that it was going to be a row night. They’d been arguing already, it seemed, and the same argument had spilled into the pub. This had to be one of the worst fights he’d ever seen them have. She’d been shouting so loudly that even Michael, across the pub, had been able to catch snippets.

“-- always throwing me over for --”

“-- got you wrapped around his finger --”

“-- then why don’t you marry him!”

At that point, she’d taken his drink from him and smashed it on the floor. The bartender didn’t even have to ask her to leave. She’d stormed out like a hurricane; long, black coat swirling about her like thunderclouds.

The young man had ordered another drink and gotten down to the serious business of getting as pissed out of his mind as he could reasonably manage.

Much to Michael’s surprise, one of the boy’s friends -- the tall one -- made an appearance, clearly there to offer comfort. He had that concerned look about him, and the gingerly manner of a man trying to approach a frightened, wounded animal. But then Michael watched as the two friends proceeded to have their own row, something he’d never see them do before. Things escalated until at last the tall man had had enough and, throwing up his hands, left in a similar, if not as showy, huff as the girlfriend had.

This was when the boy’s dark mood had worsened considerably, and his drinking took a dramatic shift from excess to danger. Michael watched from his dark corner as the boy downed pint after pint. When he stood to go to the toilets, his legs could barely carry him. Michael knew without a doubt this would be a night to clandestinely escort him home. He finished his own drink and shrugged on his coat to ensure he was ready for the boy’s exit.

The young punk returned from the toilets and tried to don the heavy parka he’d recently taken to wearing since winter had begun in earnest. He was so out of it that he couldn’t even find the armholes and kept going around in a circle trying to reach them. Michael began a silent debate with himself on whether or not to break through the invisible barrier that separated them in order to help the poor young man just get his fucking coat on. There was a reason he’d put up this barrier between them. And it wasn’t just because the boy had a girlfriend.

But with his moment’s hesitation, his opportunity vanished. The bartender had taken pity on the young man and rounded the bar to help him into his ridiculously oversized parka. They had a brief conversation, one likely about the boy’s ability to get himself home, but the boy blew a raspberry at him and stalked off, legs crossing in front of each other like a foal’s. Michael sucked in a breath. There was no chance that man was getting home on his own.

After the doors had closed behind him, Michael gave himself a beat so as not to be overly obvious, then left the safety of his dark little booth and followed the young man out. As the frigid air and light drizzle hit him, he came up short, seeing no sign of the boy. He started up the street, intent on looking for him, when a flash in the narrow alley beside the pub caught his eye.

A lighter was trying and failing to flick to life in the damp evening air. “Little bugger,” a voice slurred.

Michael stepped into the alley and as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could make out the white oval of the familiar face. A cigarette clung to his lips, getting soggier by the second. It took him a moment, but the boy finally noticed him, turning eyes on Michael as big and bright as car headlights. “You got a light?”

Michael opened his mouth to reply but the words that tripped on his tongue fell away. For all that he felt he knew this person as well as a friend, a lover, a family member -- for all the wealth of emotion and passion invested in him… He didn’t know him. This moment, this defining moment, would change all that. He wasn’t sure he wanted it to change. After all, what good could come from someone like this boy knowing someone like Michael?

He wordlessly retrieved his lighter from his coat, the words still trapped like fluttering birds in his throat. He flicked the flame into being, sputtering under the shelter of his board palm, and the young man leaned forwards. The flame reflected like two burning pinpricks in his enormous eyes. He sucked in a lungful of smoke as the cigarette caught, then grinned blearily up at Michael. “Cheers,” he said. And he promptly fell unconscious, his cheek scraping against the brick wall as he sank bonelessly to the filthy ground.

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.