Gagging Order I, chapters 1-5

Chapter One

At exactly 8:15am, Jonny woke up to the sound of what sounded like a very large truck putting on its brakes just outside his bedroom window. He sat up, the summer blanket slipping off his head and pooling in his lap as he rubbed sleep from his eyes, mumbling groggily to himself as he swung his legs off the edge of his bed and felt the cool floor under his feet. Slowly, he made his way to his front bedroom window, facing down onto the street below where he saw a large white moving truck, its back pulled up and ramp lowered onto the pavement. An older gentlemen walking his dog had paused, standing on the sidewalk opposite the empty house, watching as two men in blue suits pulled a couch from the back of the truck. Jonny leaned into the window sill, head in his hands as he watched them place the couch, wrapped in a thin plastic sheet, on the front lawn and look around at their surroundings. It was then an odd looking blue car pulled up in front of the moving truck, its engine sputtering out and the driver’s side door opening.

Jonny’s mum called from the kitchen.

With a sigh, he ran a hand through his sleep-messed hair and pulled open his bedroom door just as his brother was about to knock.

“Breakfast is ready,” Colin said, already dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. “Mum’s going to church at nine, if you want to go.”

Jonny scrunched his nose and pushed past his older brother, “Why would I want to get brainwashed with the rest of this bloody neighborhood?”

“I don’t know, Jonathan. It’s the anniversary of…” he hesitated, clearing his throat. “Well, you know. Mum would appreciate it if –”

“She knows how I feel about church,” Jonny snapped. Colin blinked and followed him down the stairs.

“Alright, whatever. You don’t need to be such a hormonal brat about it, I was just saying. Dad would have - ”

“Dad is not here, Colin,” Jonny rounded on him, whispering. “Don’t say he would have wanted me to go, because you don’t know, do you? No, you don’t. Neither does mum. Besides, I have a report due tomorrow. I need to go to the library to get some books. You’re welcome to come with me, unless you’d rather sit in some over-heated wooden box and listen to some pervert talk about ‘God’.”

Colin frowned, but didn’t say a word as the two of them sat down together at the kitchen table, their mum bustling around the room to put food on their plates and placing them in front of them. Jonny at seventeen was difficult to get along with. He argued and stomped off to his room to listen to his music more often than he ever had before. He and Colin argued with raised voices to the point where they almost became physical if it weren’t for their mum stepping between them. Jonny skipped classes, ran out from the house when he was angry (which was happening a lot) and Colin always had to go fetch him from the park and bring him home for dinner. They used to talk so easily, the two of them, and rarely argued. Now, things were different and Colin wasn’t quite sure why. Jonny wolfed down his breakfast and asked to be excused almost instantly, pushing his chair out and darting back up stairs. Mrs Greenwood sighed and picked the empty plate off the table, putting it in the sink.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into that boy,” she muttered to herself. Colin watched her a little sadly.

“Do you need help with that, mum?”

“I’ve got it, dear. Thank you. Do you know what’s wrong with your brother?”

Colin shrugged, “I don’t know. He doesn’t really have many friends.”

Mrs Greenwood sighed again, looking out the window above the kitchen sink. She stopped cleaning the dishes, letting the pan she was attacking sink back into the bubbles. “There’s a moving truck outside.”

“Yeah,” Colin nodded. “I saw it a few minutes ago. I wonder who’s moving in?”

“A man, by the looks of it.”

Mrs Greenwood went back to her scrubbing.

---

Jonny managed to slip out the backdoor without being seen, backpack thrown over his shoulders. Pulling his tape player from a ripped pocket on the front of his bag, he puts the headphones over his ears and ducks his head as he walks past the moving truck, then men sitting on the edge of it sipping coffee from paper cups. They pay no attention to him as he makes his way down the street, routing through his jeans for his lighter, cigarette already perched between his lips.

He knew he was acting out, that he wasn’t the same boy he was a few months ago. Colin’s sad eyes and his mother’s tsking constantly reminded him of this. He closed his eyes as he exhaled a breath of grey smoke, his head swimming. He wanted to be happy, he tried to be happy – for them, and for himself. Something wasn’t letting him, though. Whether it was the harsh words he often received from his peers, or the thoughts that tormented him at night while he tried to sleep, laying out for him a choice he wasn’t quite sure if he was ready to make yet, he didn’t know. This had all started when that sniveling cunt, Jonas, called him a fag in front of his whole class, and without thinking Jonny had replied “So what if I am?” That won him a black eye and a bloody nose and a trip to the office, not to mention the conflicting thoughts that soon came afterwards. What if he’s right?

The library was almost empty when he arrived, throwing his bag into a nearby chair as he moved towards the shelves of books, dropping to his knees to root through the ones on the bottom first. He was doing a paper on the Ondes Martenot and the Theremin, and the music history books his highschool offered severely lacked any information on either instrument. His music teacher had brought in a piece for the class to listen to, and while the other students had spent the time doodling on their desks or passing notes back and forth, Jonny had become immersed in the sound and immediately went home afterwards to gather more music on his computer, though ended up disappointed when he couldn’t find anything.

After only a few minutes of searching he found a large book of information on instruments, and pulled it down from the shelf. Sitting cross-legged on the dusty carpet he flipped through the pages, reading small bits of information and smiling when he came to a page with a picture of the ondes.

“What are you doing, Greenwood?” a voice called behind him. He felt his cheeks burn and he tried to ignore it, flipping the page of the book in his lap and reading on. Footsteps came up behind him and stopped directly at his back, a shadow of a teenaged boy falling over him.

“I asked you what you were doing, Greenwood.”

“I heard you, Jonas, I’m just choosing to ignore you,” Jonny mumbled. The boy reached down and plucked the book from his hands.

“A History of Musical Instruments, what kind of gay book is that?”

“A gay book for a gay student,” Jonny flashed him a wicked grin and grabbed the book from his hands, standing up from his spot and wobbling a little on his feet. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d love to sit around and chat about what you, of all people, are doing in a library, of all places, but I have to go back to my gay home and finish my gay paper for my gay class tomorrow.”

“Are you giving me lip?” Jonas asked, sounding offended. He was only slightly taller than Jonny, with a stronger build from playing football and tackling his mates in the field. Jonny arched an eyebrow, challenging.

“Would you like me to?”

“Don’t get all gay on me, Greenwood.”

“There’s other words you can use besides ‘gay’, you know. Try, homosexual, it’s a lot nicer,” Jonny informed him, pushing past and grabbing his bag off the chair before Jonas had a chance to respond. Though he meant to stay most of the day to get as much research done as possible, he didn’t want to wait around for Jonas to get angry and decide Jonny was the perfect target to take out his frustrations on. He left the library with only the one book, shoving it into his backpack and cursing under his breath. He knew he shouldn’t let them get to him, but today he was too tired to put in the effort it took to ignore his taunts and his idiocy. Jonny kicked at a pebble and watched as it rolled down the road, bouncing off the tire of a parked car. He was far too good for this, he thought. He shouldn’t have to put up with this.

The moving truck was still parked outside when he arrived home. The movers had gone back to work, taking boxes into the front door of the house or placing them outside on the lawn, wherever the new owner wanted them. Jonny looked around for them curiously and finally spotted him, taking a smaller box out from the backseat of his car and diving back in for another one. He was alone, Jonny noticed. He was short, thin with messy, sandy hair that reminded him of a baby bird's feathers, mis-matched eyes and pointed cheekbones. The man emerged from his car again, another box in hand and he rummaged through it, letting out an audible sigh when he couldn’t find what he was looking for.

“Mr Yorke?” one of the movers asked, struggling to keep a chair up-right. “Where do you want this?”

The man addressed as Mr Yorke turned around and one of the boxes slid off the roof of his car onto the ground.

“Shit, uhm. Just, just put it with the couch, I guess,” he said, bending down to pick up the objects that were now strewn over the pavement. Jonny heard him muttering under his breath as he gathered up pencils and bits of paper, throwing them into the second box still planted firmly in place. Jonny started to walk again, hands shoved deeply into his pockets, eyes still on the car when the man stood up again and noticed him looking. Mr Yorke gave a wary smile and waved, but Jonny ignored him, still angry about what happened at the library. Mis-matched eyes watched curiously as he stomped up the front steps of the porch and slammed the front door behind him.

---

Jonny was already used by now to the use of his room as a fortress, the only place in the world where no one could bother him. His records were the thick walls that no enemy could penetrate and his guitar- a deadly weapon to hide behind that could protect him from whoever was lurking outside his citadel to get him. No one could go near him in his room as he slouched behind his guitar, no one could throw insults at him or make him face truths that he was not yet interested to unveil.

It was early evening when Jonny decided to leave his fortress in order to get something to eat, but when he passed by the window something immediately caused his eye. It was standing on the front lawn of the house across from his, small and battered, looking as if it has seen better days and Jonny felt an odd ache in his heart as he watched the old Upright piano that just moved in next to him, because it looked as thought someone was actually playing it, tormenting himself with it through long sleepless nights.

Jonny could tell all of this just by looking at that piano because it was different than all of the other ones he usually saw, in the music shop or at his friends houses, the pianos always had this halo around them and they almost looked as if they have never been touched. But Jonny could tell, the second he laid his eyes upon the upright piano (that had...a portrait glued to it?) that it was everything but not-touched, it gave him a different feeling than all of those pianos he usually came across, it made him want to play.

A rush of chill ran through his spine as his eyes caught the little man again who was looking exhausted as he leaned against the front door, only this time he felt like he already knew something about him and in a strange way he wanted to know more.

---

A few days later, Colin found his brother sitting outside the school, alone. He had only gone for a walk to get out of the house, but as he passed the highschool he saw a familiar figure perched on a rock, headphones over his ears and a notebook spread across his lap. Colin watched him scribble words down, only to rip the page out and shove it in his bag roughly. Even from a distance he could feel his brother’s frustration.

He wasn’t even angry at the fact that Jonny should have been in class instead of moping around outdoors. Instead, his heart went out to him and he hesitated a few moments, watching and wondering what to do before he made his presence known, clearing his throat and stepping next to his brother.

“What?” he snapped. Colin assumed it was because his music was so loud that he couldn’t hear himself talk. Certainly not because Jonny currently loathed his older brother. Definitely not that.

“Just. Uh,” Colin fidgeted. “I, er –”

Jonny arched an eyebrow, looking sour.

“I came to pick you up,” Colin improvised. “To, uh. Buy you some new records. How about that?”

“It’s fine,” Jonny began to gather his things together, tossing loose pens back into his bag and shoving his notebook roughly inside. “I’m not feeling well, anyway. I’m just going to go home.”

“Are you sure?” Colin asked as he started to walk away. “I’ll buy.” He gave himself a swift mental kick, but managed to catch his brother’s interest and the younger boy stopped in his tracks.

“Anything?”

Another mental kick. Colin physically cringed.

“Sure.”

For the first time in weeks, Jonny’s face lit up n a smile and he turned back on his heels to join his brother.

Thankfully, and to Colin’s surprise, Jonny let him off easily. He searched through the records for ages, the pads of his fingers collecting dust from the plastic, but in the end he only came up with one album he really wanted. Colin couldn’t hold back a laugh when Jonny handed it to him.

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, really?”

Jonny shrugged. “Mum gave ours away after dad died, remember? He used to play it for us when we were little.”

Colin remembered, quite fondly. He tucked the album under his arm and gave the younger boy’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze as they made their way to the cash.

“Hey, er, Jonny?” Colin stopped him once they made their purchases and were standing outside the store. “If you ever need to…er, you know. Talk. About anything, you know I’m here, yeah?”

Jonny blinked and shuffled awkwardly, “Er. Okay, Coz. Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Colin nodded, shifting the weight of the bag into his other hand. “Right, well. Don’t tell mum I took you out of class today, alright?”

“But you didn’t,” Jonny frowned. “I was –”

“Yeah, yeah. Just get in the car, Jon,” colin tossed him a grin and the other boy rolled his eyes, stepping off the curb to cross the street.

Jonny, with the air conditioning blowing on his face and his head pressed against the passenger window, made a list in his mind of things that made him happy. Music was at the top, of course. He decided it was best for that to include writing, listening, playing, and feeling music, so as to keep the list from growing too long.

After that, things became hazy. Difficult. He liked the smell of fresh cut grass and drinking from the hose. He liked curling up in bed with a cup of tea and a book during snow storms, his blankets cocooning him from the mere thought of the cold outside. But none of those things really made him stupidly, heel-tappingly happy.

Colin turned the air down and Jonny sighed, closing his eyes and enjoying the feel of the cool glass against his skin. When his eyes opened again, the car was driving past the familiar row of houses that would eventually lead them to their own, and Jonny felt something in his stomach tighten when he saw the unmistakable tiny figure of their neighbor on his front lawn.

“What is that man doing?” Colin muttered, giving him a hard glance as he flicked the car’s turn signal on to pull into the driveway. Their neighbor was moving around the yard, rubbish bag in hand as he bent down to pick things out of the grass, looking at them for a moment before tossing whatever they were into the bag. Jonny hadn’t had enough time to figure out what it was before they were pulling into the garage and Colin cut the engine off, immersing them in silence.

"Mum said she over-heard some of the woman talking about him in church the other day," Colin continued. "They ran him out of town, or something. He's really weird."

"Hmm," is all Jonny said, unbuckling his seatbelt. The other boy nodded to himself, nibbling on his bottom lip.

“Well, here’s your record, Jon,” he handed his bag to him, the sound of the plastic almost deafening against the quiet.

“Thanks,” Jonny took the bag from him and spilled out of the car, slamming the door harder than he meant to. In a blur he moved to the door of the house and within seconds he was gone, as if he had never been there at all. Colin stared dumbly at the steering wheel with his seat belt still fastened.

“Brat,” he muttered to himself, though he didn’t really mean it.

---

Every day that passed, it took Jonny a little longer to get to school, every day he walked a little slower, lingered on his way just a little longer. The first time he skipped a class it felt terribly wrong, just like the feeling you get when you go trough someones drawers without permission or when you smoke a cigarette all alone in the back yard. But when Jonny noticed how so much easier and better he felt not being in class rather than actually having to sit through it, he thought that something like that can't be all that wrong. It did make him feel so much better, after all.

So he did it again. And some other times as well. And it felt a little better each and every time until it seemed like the reasonable thing to do. Why would he want to sit in a room with people that threw aching words and objects at him when he couldn't even make out a single word of what the teacher was saying? it made no sense anymore.

Jonny liked being out on his own while everyone else were occupied with classes. He felt free to do whatever he really wanted, to be his dreamy self and not worry about any harmful eyes falling on him. It's not like he was throwing those hours for nothing, he used his time in a much better way, to his opinion anyway. He listened to music and wrote music and read books and sometimes he just stared into space and thought, thought for real about things that he usually tried avoiding and it was great because for once he was free to do what he really wanted.

And there was something else he did, a new habit of his. Nothing harmful or weird, but something that he found hard avoiding with every day that passed. It started when he heard the first strums of guitar coming out of the windows of the house next to his, he wasn't even supposed to be there at that moment, he was just coming home to pick up his recorder and accidentally heard them, weird sounds of a familiar instrument. He stopped walking and without noticing he found himself a little closer to the window with every strum of the instrument.

There was something so appealing about what he heard because of the simplicity of it. It was simple but almost...wrong, like things never really fell into place, like the patterns were never complete and Jonny was closing his eyes, trying to understand what it was exactly that made him stand in the middle of his street in the middle of the day where everyone could see him, in a time and place he wasn't even supposed to be. The music repeated itself over and over again to a point where Jonny could already see where his fingers would be to produce the exact same sounds and he shook his head and walked quickly, almost ran back into his own guitar, before he forgot.

And that's how Jonny's new neighbor had started giving him a new challenge almost every day without even realizing that he did. It became Jonny's little addiction, almost every day he found himself under the open window or in the back yard, closing his eyes and listening carefully, smiling to himself when he finally got it and then running back home to try it out, a little sigh of triumph escaping his lips every time he succeeded to repeat the melody. Sometimes he even developed it, played with it and tossed it around until it felt like it was his own.
It was his new little risky hobby that excited him and gave him pleasure and self assurance and endless enjoyment all at the same time and it almost hurt whenever he got there and there were no sounds coming out of his neighbors house.

Jonny didn't even know how to call this person because he had no sign on the door but he felt like they had some sort of a bond, a silent agreement of musicians that grew stronger with every new melody that fell on Jonny's ears. Until one day, the order of things was changed. One early noon, just when Jonny was ready to leave the back yard of his anonymous neighbor, he heard something that was both terrifying and intoxicating, something that nailed his legs into the ground and made his head light and stone heavy all at once.

As it turned out, the man not only had a guitar and some fingers, he also had a voice, an actual voice. Just like his melodies, his voice was simple and complicated at the same time, almost wrong in the complete nakedness of it. He sang words that were completely unknown in Jonny's comprehension, words that sometimes nearly connected, sometimes stung and sometimes were completely forgotten once they passed his ears. Instead of running back home that day, Jonny just walked. Instead of picking up his guitar he lit up a cigarette and set by the window in his room. He was looking for something, but he wasn't really sure what. For the first time, he felt odd about what he was doing, for the first time he knew this is how he was supposed to feel all along- like it was wrong, like he was intruding this man's privacy, like he should just stop altogether.

But he couldn't stop, not now after what he just heard.

Chapter Two

Colin heard rumors.

Jonny looked up from what he was doing to watch the neighbor's back door slide open and a tuft of sandy hair move around the yard, disappearing every few moments only to reappear again in some place else, some place farther or closer to the fence that separated the Greenwood yard from the Yorke yard. He could see through the slits in the wood that MrYorke was wearing a bathrobe, open at the front with a thin t-shirt and a pair of boxers underneath. He was picking up leaves from the grass that had fallen from the tree in Jonny's yard and landed in his.

Three of them were sitting together in their backyard at the picnic table, Jonny fingering the strings of his guitar and Colin smoking a cigarette, passing it to Ed who sat beside him. The two of them were pretending to help Colin study for his final exam, but really Ed had smuggled a dirty magazine into the Greenwood house via an old textbook and they had their noses buried in the pages. Jonny could see their blushing cheeks and broad grins peek out over the textbook as they commented on whatever pictures they were looking at, turning the book to show him. His nose wrinkled in disgust and he went back to the music, ignoring their playful teasing.

The neighbor's back door slid shut again and the sandy hair was gone.

Colin heard rumors, he was saying. He exhaled a stream of smoke. He heard rumors about their new neighbor.

“Where from?” Jonny asked, only half-interested. The song he was working on was particularly hard and he frowned in concentration, hair sweeping over the neck of the instrument in his lap. Ed cleared his throat.

“Mum,” Colin continued. “Some of the woman at her book club meetings say he’s a former lawyer, and that’s how he can afford living there without working. They say he had this big murder case he was working on and he let the guy get off scot-free for more money than you and I will ever see in our lifetime.”

Jonny huffed, “You really believe what a bunch of old bats think, Colin?”

Colin shrugged, taking the cigarette from Ed and letting it hang loosely in his lips. “I was just saying, Jonny. No one really knows, it could be anything.”

“Maybe he’s that murderer, the one who got off scot-free,” Ed quipped. “I bet you he is, Colin. That’s why he doesn’t have a job, he’s running from the law.”

“You guys are unbelievable,” Jonny muttered, rolling his eyes. Colin kicked him from under the table.

“Stop being such a downer all the time, you little brat. Or I’ll tell mum you’ve been skipping your history lessons.”

“I’ll tell mum you’re looking at dirty magazines instead of studying for your exam,” Jonny shot back and the other boy blushed. Ed grinned at the two of them, playing with his lighter absentmindedly, the flame flicking on and off in his hands. Jonny continued to play, ignoring their conversation entirely after that point and playing one of the songs he heard coming from Mr Yorke’s yard only a few days ago. Something soft and quiet but made his insides dance at the thought of the older man sitting down and writing out the notes for it, scribbling away and scratching out bits he thought were rubbish.

To Jonny, it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard, and to have those sounds come from his own guitar made his heart flutter with delight in the fact he could maybe, one day, share this with the man he knew nothing about.

---

The rumors only got worse at school. Colin he could at least tolerate, Colin was his brother and was only repeating things their mother had told him, but he was otherwise harmless. Jonny knew that his brother was just as curious as he was about the new neighbor next door, only Colin brushed it off like it was nothing and was able to continue on with his day while Jonny spent his waking hours day-dreaming about the sounds he heard leaking in through his bedroom window. About the voice, the soft, clear voice he’d hear mingling in with the sound of birds chirping and june bugs screeching in the grass.

The classrooms were overheated at the end of the year and students rolled up their shirts and loosened their ties, Jonny doing the same as he scribbled in the margin of his notebook, the notes to a new song he had heard Mr Yorke playing the evening before in his backyard, back against the trunk of a tree. There were words, Jonny assumed, but Mr Yorke had chosen to hum instead of sing that evening, and it did nothing to help the tightening feeling in Jonny’s stomach.

A rolled up ball of paper hit him in the back of the head and he spun around in his seat, coming out of his daze. It was Jonas, grinning wickedly a few seats behind him and the rest of the students with their eyes moving from him to Jonny, sitting silently and waiting for an explanation as to why he was being attacked with paper.

“I hear you got a new neighbor, Greenwood,” the boy sneered. “Crazy Old Yorke.”

“He’s not that old,” Jonny mumbled. “He’s younger than my mum.”

“Everyone is younger than your mum, Greenwood,” one of Jonas friends snuffled, buck teeth poking out over his bottom lip. Jonny rolled his eyes at his failed attempt at an insult. The teacher looked up at them but said nothing, turning the page of her novel and leaning back in her chair.

“You know what I heard?” Jonas said, poking a girl behind him. “Crazy Old Yorke was some Prime-Minister guy on an Island in the west, but he didn’t do his job so they deported him here to live by himself.”

“That’s not what I heard,” the girl shook her head. “I heard he’s part of a anarchist group and he plans on blowing up parliament.”

He couldn’t help but laugh, “Where do you guys get this shite?”

“Nuh-uh. He’s part of a witch cult. He sacrifices goats to the devil and drinks human blood.”

Jonny turned back in his seat, shaking his head at his classmates idiocy and picking up his pen to continue doodling when another ball hit him from behind. He slammed his pen down onto his desk and spun around again.

“What?” he snapped. The others giggled.

“You know what I think, Greenwood?” Jonas sneered. “I think that Yorke guy is some big old queer, just like you. And you’re just hoping he’s some perverted child molester so he’ll come in through your bedroom window and rape you in your sleep.”

In the blink of an eye Jonny had moved from his seat to the end of the room, knocking his chair backwards as he flew at the other boy only to receive a fist in the stomach, leaving him breathless for a moment and the two toppled onto the floor, Jonas pinning Jonny to the ground while the other students gathered in a circle and started chanting. Breath hot against his face, coming out in quick pants and legs on either side of his torso, holding him tightly in place caused him to feel a surge of energy and he glared up into the eyes hovering above him, baring his teeth. The teacher stood from her chair, shouting over the ruckus as Jonny kneed the other boy in the abdomen, causing him to buckle at the middle and groan in pain. Jonny kicked him off with some effort and rolled into a seated position just as a hand grabbed his shoulder and yanked him roughly off the floor. Another hand landed on Jonas and soon he was standing next to Jonny, wobbling slightly on spot as the teacher screeched at the others to be quiet, dragging the two boys out by their shirts and tossing them into the hall.

“Office, both of you!”

Jonny rubbed at his arm, glaring at the other boy and shoving him into the wall with his shoulder as he passed, Jonas coughing and pulling at his shirt.

“I’ll get you for that, Greenwood,” he wheezed. Jonny snorted defiantly and continued to walk down the hall, leaving him to limb his way to the office alone. Much to his relief, even as he passed by the office to the front doors leading outside with his shirt half out of his trousers and his tie hanging loosely around his neck, no one tried to stop him. He had no visible marks on him, and almost felt a pang of appreciation for the boy who taunted him when he found out he hadn’t reported that Jonny attacked him.

Almost.

---

Though the rumors at school were ridiculous, almost to the point that Jonny found them amusing (when they weren’t being sprouted from Jonas’s lips and had anything to do with Jonny himself), the ones he heard coming from his own mother were by far the most infuriating. They might not have been, Jonny thought, if it wasn’t for the way his mother said that word, the one he heard pointed at him so often that made his stomach lurch uneasily and his cheeks burn. Made him tug at his sleeves and pout under a curtain of dark hair.

The first time she said it, it caught him off guard. They were sitting around the table, the three of them. Colin was buttering a piece of bread to hand to Jonny and she was going on about their neighbor, how she saw him cutting the grass in the front of his yard but giving up half-way to go back inside, leaving the back of his lawn un-cut. Colin suggested he might have had to go somewhere and ran out of time but she shook her head, pouring a spoonful of gravy on his mashed potatoes.

“He doesn’t have a wife or a children, does he? Have you noticed?” she asked. Jonny bit back the urge to ask her why she even cared, it was none of her business. Instead he took a bite of the bread Colin gave him, letting his hand rest against his cheek.

“I don’t think so,” Colin shook his head. “I think it’s just him.”

“That’s very odd,” Mrs Greenwood hummed, her eyebrows furrowing. Jonny took a sip of his water and went back to his dinner. He tried to tune out their words, tried to think of something else when she said it, that word.

“Maybe he’s gay,” she said quietly, more to herself than to her sons. Jonny’s fork fell noisily on to his plate. Colin glanced at him, concerned.

“Are you alright, dear?” his mother asked, dark eyes on him. He blushed and cleared his throat.

“Er, fine mum. I think I got some parsley in my throat, is all,” and he flashed her a small grin, reaching for his water again to take a sip for effect. She and Colin shared an odd look before Colin ducked his eyes and squished his potatoes down with his fork.

Jonny wasn’t quite sure why the word was effecting him so much. He shouldn’t care what his mother thought of Mr Yorke. He shouldn’t care what the boys and girls in his class thought of him, either. Coming up with their ridiculous theories about why he moved into town instead of doing their homework. They all need lives, he thought bitterly to himself. They all needed lives so they’d stop picking on innocent people that didn’t deserve it. Like Mr Yorke.

Like Jonny.

He popped a carrot into his mouth and chewed.

“Ed was saying he’s a murderer,” Colin recalled. “Today when we were studying out back, we were reading up on law and he said it. Who’s to say he isn’t, though? He very well could be.”

Colin was making his “I’m Lying” face. Jonny knew it well, but their mother had been unable to detect it for the last couple of years. It had changed, very slightly, as Colin got older and she stopped paying as much attention to him. Jonny resisted the urge to inform him that he wasn’t studying at all, and instead rolled a pea over his plate.

“Did he, now?” Mrs Greenwood laughed lightly. “Ed has quite the imagination, doesn’t he? I don’t think he’s a murderer, Colin. He’s just very weird.”

“You don’t know that,” Jonny said suddenly, his head still ducked and eyes still resting on his plate. “Neither one of you know that. For all you know, he could have saved a baby from a burning building and got tired of all the attention. He could have helped old ladies cross the road. He could have fought in a war to help our country. Neither one of you know, but still you make up these bullshit, terrible rumors about him.”

“Language, Jonny,” his mother warned. He ignored her and pressed on.

“I doubt any of them are true, anyway,” he continued. “And even if they are, what business is it of ours? He’s not doing us any harm. He’s not coming over and meddling in our lives or preaching to us. If you ask me, I think he’s probably a really nice guy and you should be ashamed of yourselves for judging him before you know him.”

“What’s gotten into you, Jonny?” Mrs Greenwood asked, surprised. Jonny shook his head.

“Nothing, I’m just tired of listening to all this…shi – nonsense,” he corrected himself.

“Jon had a row with a boy at school,” Colin muttered and Jonny’s face paled.

“Colin!”

“What? You did!” his voice rose one octave higher in defense and Jonny kicked him under the table.

“Boys, enough!” Their mother shouted and Colin flung a pea at him. “Colin!”

“Sorry, mum.”

She turned to Jonny and he avoided her eyes. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” Colin said. She shot him a look and he quieted.

“Jonathan?”

“He was saying horrible things about me, mum. He was telling everyone that…he was lying to everyone about me in front of the whole class! I wasn’t just going to sit there and take it,” he blurted. Her eyes didn’t leave his face and he looked at his dinner for a distraction.

“Besides,” he continued. “He punched me first.”

“He punched you?” Mrs Greenwood gasped, bristling. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. It wasn’t hard,” Jonny shrugged.

“You should report him,” she told him and the boy shook his head.

“It’s fine, mum, really. He already got in trouble for it.”

“Oh,” she nodded, turning back to her own food. “Alright, then. Colin, dear, pass the butter.”

Mrs Greenwood was in the laundry room when the phone call came, pulling clothing from the dryer and folding them into the basket, pushing dark hair behind her ear as she went. Colin and Jonny were in the living room arguing – again – over which television show to watch first. She had to admit she was getting frustrated. They had never argued this much in the past. Colin had always been a little bit of a trouble-maker and pushed his luck with some of the bigger students in his university classes, but he was an adult now and there was really nothing she could do about it. Besides, Colin had Ed to keep him grounded. Ed was kind and polite and kept her son in line whenever he strayed too far away.

It was Jonny that was giving her trouble now. Jonny, who had always been so quiet and did as he was told without putting up a fuss, without even speaking a word was now ignoring her, or shouting at her, refusing to do his chores. Refusing to help out around the house even though he knew it was difficult for her to do everything on her own. He would swear at Colin when he was annoyed and stomp off to his room, slamming his door behind himself. He would pull his headphones over his ears and close his eyes to block out Mrs Greenwood's questions. She was even sure he had picked up Colin’s bad habit and started smoking. Odd days when the air was clear he’d come home with a cloud of smoke nestled away in his clothing and it would come out when she was doing the wash.

Despite all this, she had to admit that when one of Jonny’s teachers phoned her to discuss Jonny’s pro-longed absence, she was shocked. Both of her sons had always been exceptionally good at their schooling. They finished their papers on time and got good grades, and though Colin had skipped classes a few times in his later years, it never became a big enough issue that his teachers had to phone in about it.

“I was just wondering if you were aware that he’s been skipping class,” the man’s voice asked.

“No, I wasn’t,” she frowned, her eyes moving towards the living room where Colin and Jonny had settled on a nature show about hyenas. Colin had his nose buried in a book anyway, and Jonny was sprawled out on the couch with a leg propped up against the back.
“He’s going to have to come in for detention to make up for it, I’m afraid. If he doesn’t he’s not going to pass the class.”

She swallowed thickly, brushing more hair from her eyes. “Alright, I’ll talk to him. Thank you,” and she hung up the phone, anger threatening to boil over. Closing the dryer door she marched into the living room, taking the remote control from the coffee table and shutting off the television.

“I was watching that!” Jonny whined.

“Colin, could you go to your room, please? I need to speak with your brother,” she tried to keep her voice controlled and Colin tossed Jonny a quick glance before unfolding his legs and walking out of the room.

“What?” Jonny asked angrily when he had left and Mrs Greenwood sat at the opposite end of the couch. She sighed.

“That was your teacher on the phone, Jonny. He said you’ve been skipping classes.”

Jonny fidgeted uncomfortably, his eyes darting to the floor.

“Don’t lie to me, Jonathan. You look me in the eye and you tell me the truth,” she continued. “Now, have you been skipping classes?”
“No…”

“Then why did your teacher phone me to tell me that you haven’t been in class for the past few weeks?” she tried to keep her voice calm but it was getting louder as her anger grew. “You’re failing, Jonathan! You’re going to have to go in for detention to make up for it, because if you don’t you’re going to fail that class and have to take it over again.”

“It’s a stupid class, anyway!” Jonny argued, glaring at her. “It wasn’t my choice to take it, I don’t even need history! Why should I care about some old fat guy up in parliament? I don’t, and they have no right to make us sit through that shite.”

“Language!” she snapped. “And just because you don’t find the class interesting doesn’t mean you can’t go to it. You need this credit to get into university, Jonny.”

He mumbled, more to his knees than to her, “Maybe I don’t want to go into university.”

“We’ve discussed this before, Jon. You’re going to continue your education. Your father would have wanted it.”

Jonny’s eyes bore into hers and he spoke through bared teeth, “Dad would have wanted me to be happy. Don’t tell me he would have wanted me to go to university when it’s actually what you want. You have no right to control my life or tell me what to do!”
“I do when you’re living under my roof!” His mother shouted, instantly regretting it. She composed herself quickly and cleared her throat.

“I don’t want you skipping classes again, Jonny. You’re going to that detention. You’re going to make up for the classes you’ve missed and you’re going to graduate. Then we’ll talk about what you want to do after high school. But for now, I just want you to finish it.”

Jonny sighed, feeling there was no other way out of it other than to mumble, “Fine.”

“Good boy,” she smiled, tired. “And, maybe if you get a good grade after this, I’ll buy you something. How does that sound?”

“You’re bribing me?” Jonny smirked. She laughed, squeezing his knee.

“If that’s what it takes, yes.”

“I’ll pass, mum. I’ll make sure I do.”

“That’s what I want to hear. There’s clean clothes for you in the laundry room, I need to make a few phone calls,” and she got off the couch, straightening her shirt and turning back to her son. “Do your homework.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he waved her off and grabbed the remote control, turning the television back on as Colin crept down the stairs to see what all the shouting was about, nearly running into his mother.

“There are dishes in the sink that need cleaning, Colin,” she stated, picking the phone off the desk in the hallway and Colin glared at his brother, who poked his tongue out at him and grinned to himself in front of the television.

---

When Jonny woke the next morning, his brother was in the downstairs hallway pulling on his boots and tying the laces, cigarette positioned at his lips. He ran a hand through his sleep-messed hair and frowned at his brother struggling into his second boot, leaning against the wall for support and cursing when his cigarette fell to the floor.

“Where are you going so early?” Jonny asked, curious. Colin rolled his eyes.

“It’s almost ten, Jon. You slept in again,” he managed to get his boot on and bent over to pick his cigarette off the floor. “I’m going out with Ed, he found a car for sale he wants to buy and he needs me to look at it.”

Jonny snorted, “What do you know about cars? Other than they have wheels and windshield wipers.”

“A lot more than you know, that’s for sure,” Colin snapped back and Jonny sniffed. His brother pulled a cigarette lighter from his trousers and waved him good-bye before opening the door and disappearing into the daylight. Jonny turned on his heel and marched into the kitchen where Mrs Greenwood was bustling around in her work suit, cellphone pressed tightly against her ear.

“I’ll need someone to stop by the print shop before I get there, we need to pick up those copies before the meeting today,” she rushed, pulling a pen out of a cup from the top of the fridge and writing a note on a piece of paper. “I can’t do it, I’m going to be late enough as it is.”

Jonny opened the cupboard door and pulled out a bowl and a box of cereal, bringing them to the kitchen table before nudging his mum out of the pathway of the fridge, opening the door and taking the milk from the top shelf.

“We’ll need to get that projector fixed, too,” she tossed the pen a side and folded the piece of paper up, slipping it into her purse. Jonny took a swig from the orange juice container and she frowned, shaking her head at him. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and put the container back.

“Jonny, dear. Can you close the fridge please? – Yes, I’m still here. No, we can’t use the old one, it needs to stay upstairs. It won’t work with the computer program.”

Jonny did as he was told and pulled a chair from the kitchen table, plunking down in front of his bowl and pulling a copy of the newspaper towards him as he fixed his breakfast, half-listening to his mother bicker to a woman on the other end of the phone. She was leaning against the kitchen counter, shuffling through a pile of envelopes and frowning at one of them, shaking her head.

“Yes, I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said hurriedly. “Thank you. Good-bye.”

“Have fun at work, mum,” Jonny said to the comics page, shoving a spoonful of Cinnamon Toast Crunch into his mouth.

“Uhg. Thank you, dear. Can you take the garbage out for me when you’re finished, please? I have to go. I'll be late home tonight, there's that assembly at Cambridge tonight your brother and I have to go to.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, not listening.

“Oh and Jonathan, could you please drop this letter at Mr Yorke’s house, it accidentally got mixed up in our mail, might be something important.”
That was the last thing Jonny’s mum said before she slammed the door shut, and there was Jonny, the words still ringing through his mind, his eyes set on the white envelop that said “Mr Thomas Yorke” on it.

Jonny swallowed. He knew it was mere coincidence that he was the one who was sent to Mr Yorke’s house. His mother would have probably sent Colin or do it herself if they both weren't out for the rest of the day, and her natural mother instincts just wouldn’t let her postpone it. And so, it was Jonny who was chosen to go to the house next door, knock on the door and give Mr Yorke his letter.

Jonny swallowed again.

If only his mum had known just how much he has been waiting for an opportunity like this, and just how much he feared it, only the thought of knocking on that door making him light headed and tense. He was going to see Mr Yorke from up close, not from his bedroom window or from across the street like the last times, this time he's going to be face to face with the man who unknowingly made his days so much more interesting.

It took him almost half a day to gather enough courage to actually do it, and after what seemed like eternity he finally grabbed the letter and ran an unconscious hand through his hair, letting it fall over his eyes and cover them almost completely. It wasn't until he was actually knocking on the wooden door that panic started creeping up his spine and he was just about to spin around and run back home when he heard the familiar sound of a key twisting inside a lock. It was too late now, Jonny had nothing to do anymore but wait. And swallow.

The door took almost forever to open but Jonny knew right there and then that this image, the image that was revealed to him when it finally did, was one that would be burnt in his memory for all eternity. The man that opened the door was nothing like the man that Jonny saw every now and then, picking up garbage from his front lawn or checking his mailbox. He had eyes, deep blue eyes that were uneven and hid something, he had a nose, one that looked like it took a beating once or twice during its lifetime, he had cheekbones, high and sharp and harsh, he had thin ginger stubble covering his cheeks and he had lips. Red, full lips that opened up into a crooked smile that was, fucking hell, it was pointed right at him. It was only then that Jonny even began to realize he was standing in front of Mr Yorke, his relatively new neighbor.

Mr Yorke looked as if he just got out of bed (it was noon).

Mr Yorke was not wearing any shirt (he came like that to the door).

Mr Yorke was opening his mouth to speak (he was still smiling).

"So...Can I help you?"

"I'm...Uh..."

"Oh! You're the boy from next door now aren't you?"

"How do you..."

"I saw you storming up and down the street on more than one occasion, always with those headphones. Whatever it is you're listening to, you just have to tell me! I mean, if your expression is anything to..."

"The Pixies!"

"Oh! Good choice, I was just-"

"No, I mean, you're listening to The Pixies..."

"Oh, I know."

Jonny's heart was racing, he saw him, he knew him, what if he knew all about the...

"Come in!"

"I er...What?!"

"Please, come in. You're the first person to knock on my door since I moved in this house. Well, that's not entirely accurate, there was this person who came to sort out the leak in the basement but, you're the first neighbor so, I guess I should really invite you in. I mean, it would be rude otherwise."

Jonny was staring dumbly at the man in front of him. He was considering his next move. He was pretty sure he came there for a reason, something to do with important postage items. But the only thing he could really think was 'Sod it' as he stepped inside the man's house.

Mr Yorke showed him inside the living room, a room still in transfer, still occupied with half full boxes and unopened letters (Oh! that's what it was!). On the corner sat the little turntable that was responsible for the familiar sounds of 'Surfer Rosa' that filled the room. The entire room was cluttered with pieces of paper and old notebooks, Jonny could even see them on the walls and on the...There it was, the upright piano that Jonny still remembered sitting on the front lawn. Jonny almost flinched when his eyes fell on it, only the voice behind him helping him to tear his eyes away from it.

"So, are you old enough to drink? because all I have is beer and tap water and...It doesn't really feel right to serve tap water to my first guest in this neighborhood."

"I uhm...No."

Jonny mentally kicked himself, just lie, stupid.

"Oh. Tap water it is then!"

There was something almost hilarious about the man that just disappeared into the kitchen. He was tired and cheerful and... small. Jonny was still smiling to himself when Mr Yorke came back holding a glass of water while still in the process of pulling a crumpled t-shirt over his head.

"There we go. Sorry, I always sucked as a host. I don't even have anything to eat or...What's your name?"

Jonny nearly choked on his drink at that. "It's...Jonny. Greenwood, I...I live right next door."

"Oh well, nice to meet you Jonny, I'm Thom. Yorke, I live right here." That crooked smile again.

Jonny placed a hand over his mouth and chuckled. 'Broken Face' just started.

"Is that what you listen to when you wake up?"

Jonny paled at his own voice that was already hanging out in the room before he could even give it an order to stay inside his mind, where it belonged. What the fuck are you doing?!

But to his surprise, Mr York didn't even blink, his expression remaining exactly at the same half-sleepy-half-curious form it was wearing before. "Oh! Ha...yes, I know, it's not exactly an easy thing to listen to when some of your senses are still asleep. I guess that's what I like about it, it helps me realize I'm actually awake." And there it was, a laugh that sounded a little like a series of little gasps that were followed by a low sigh. Jonny smiled again to himself despite of feeling like a complete idiot after what he had just blurted out.

"So what's that on your lap?"

Jonny looked down at his lap, almost surprised by the question. There was a white envelop sitting there, staring right back at him. "Oh! Our...Your mail got mixed up in ours and...It might...It might be important..." Jesus, Jonny Greenwood, did you leave you capability of making coherent, polite sentences at home?

He found himself reaching out his hand with the envelop in it in Mr Yorke's direction, who blinked and took it, not even bothering to glance at it before placing it on the table in a pile of other disappointed envelopes. He got up all of a sudden and Jonny found himself not being able to stop staring at his neighbor's lean figure as he went over to flip the record over. Jonny didn't even notice it wasn't playing anymore. He had to mentally kick himself again just to be able to stop staring when Mr Yorke went back into his sit.

"You haven't told me yet."

"Sorry?"

"What it is you're...listening to, with your big headphones. I really do wanna know."

"Oh! Just...all kinds of...Yesterday I was listening to 'Fear of Music by the 'Talking heads', but it's not mine really, I borrowed it from my brother..." What in earth are you even talking about?!

"That's not half bad Jonny! I have all of their records lying around somewhere in a box, one of those very boxes actually," Mr Yorke was running his desperation filled eyes around the room.

"You do? That's so...I mean, I've never met anyone your age who liked that kind of..." Jonny just stopped and paled again, realizing what he had just said. Mr Yorke just smiled (without parting his lips, this time) and looked back at Jonny with a reassuring gaze. Then he did something that Jonny was so grateful for, he wanted to hug the man. He changed the subject.

"So you have a brother then?"

"Yes! Yes...a big brother. I have a big sister too but, but she already left home so, it's just the three of us."

At Mr Yorke's raised eyebrows he added- "Oh...It's just us and my mother. My father he...he died when I was little."

He lowered his head, letting his hair cover his eyes once again and waiting for the usual- 'Oh, I'm sorry' that always came after he told people about his father.

"Oh, I'm...I hope your big brother is not too much of a wanker."

"What?"

"Well, I'm a big brother myself and...I remember when my little brother was about your age and I pretty much did anything possible to make him suffer. I was a really bad big brother...a wanker." He was smiling again but this time it was a dry smile, a non-convincing one.

"Oh well...He's, he's trying I suppose. He's trying too hard sometimes, sometimes I wish he was a bit of a wanker, you know?"

"I guess he's just feeling responsible..."

"Well I can fucking take care of myself! But they just won't realize that, they won't let me be, they're always there, always questioning me and criticizing my every move and poking me around with this...this over-concerned look like I'm 8 years old or something and...it's...I'm choking!"

"Hey! Hey...it's alright..."

With a start Jonny realized three things:

- He had tears, bloody tears running down his cheeks. One was still hanging on the corner of his eye.

- Mr Yorke was now very close to him, kneeling on the floor next to him, offering him the half empty glass of water that was earlier set on the table.

- Mr Yorke smelled good. Really good. Like new sheets and chocolate.

Jonny took the glass and drank silently, trying to compose himself as he ran the back of his hand across his wet skin, feeling the unavoidable blush taking over him. That has never happened to him before. Especially not with a person he had just met.

"I'm...I'm sorry, I don't know...I'm not usually like that..."

"It's alright," Mr Yorke smiled again his famous smile and raised himself off the floor, only to find a spot next to Jonny on the couch. He spoke softly, his soothing voice making Jonny relax a little. "I guess I was asking for it, I have the talent to ask all the wrong questions. I should have been a...therapist or something. I would have sucked at it of course, other then offering tap water I have no idea what to do really..."

They both laughed, Jonny trying to muffle his own laugh with the palm of his hand only so he could listen to the laugh of the man next to him.

"Well I should get going I suppose..."

"Alright, I'll let you know if I ever find the box that had all of the records in it. I'm not even sure I brought it anymore, that would be a shame now wouldn't it..." Mr Yorke's voice trailed off and Jonny found himself trailing off with it, almost trying to grasp it as he stood there near the door, not really wanting to leave.

"Well either way! It's been a pleasure to meet you Jonny! I'm sorry I...kind of...made you cry..."

Jonny chuckled and opened the door, it was really time to go now.

"It's alright Mr Yorke, not your fault, really."

Mr Yorke's face twitched at that. "Argh, please, never call me that. Jesus...Just call me Thom."

Thom.

"Alright, Thom" Jonny smiled forcefully as he stated closing the door behind him.

"And Jonny!"

"Oh?"

"If you ever need...feel like you need to talk, well I know it sounds a bit...odd, coming from a person you just met but, you can always talk to me. I can be like your...really bad therapist."

This time Jonny smiled for real. "Okay, thank you, Thom" And for some reason, Jonny's heart sort of skipped a beat when he said that name.

Chapter Three, Part One

It was night-time under an old tree, under an old tree where he stood. Leaves had fallen around him in colours, leaving trails of brown and red and yellow behind him and he saw, just past the shadow of the tree, golden sunlight. He felt that if he were to reach out he could touch it, feel it’s warmth and it’s glow on his skin and it would calm him, but he was rooted to the ground and couldn’t move from the cold dark.

He was scared.

The shadow was growing bigger and the light was fading away. Soon it would be gone and he would be thrown into complete darkness with no apparent way out. The leaves kept raining around him, deadly sharp though still appearing innocent.

He cried for help and no sound came out. Nothing.

There was a string on his finger he wasn’t quite sure what for. He had to remember something. Something important. Something long and thin and rectangle and white and if he didn’t remember…

The tree shook above him, the light disappeared and a small, soft hand landed on his arm, a quiet voice spoke his name. Mismatched blue eyes glowed in the dark around him, watery and friendly. He could feel the letters blow into his hair and he clenched his eyes shut.

“Jonny,” the fingers on his arm loosened until they were almost gone. “You have to get up, Jonny.”

“I can’t,” he whimpered. “I’m stuck.”

“No, you’re not. Get up.”

“I can’t!”

“Jonny, for fuck’s sake!” something punched his arm roughly and he groaned in pain, his hand moving over the sore spot. “You have to get up, you’re going to be late for school.”

It was Colin, looming over him. A drop from his hair landed on Jonny’s cheek and he grumbled, wiping it away.

“Fuck off, Colin,” he muttered into his pillow, closing his eyes again. His brother grabbed a hold of the blanket and pulled it off his body, exposing him to his bedroom. Jonny yelped and curled into a ball.

“Naked, Jonny?” Colin laughed. “You never sleep naked.”

“It was hot, okay?” Jonny snapped, grabbing at his blanket. Colin continued to laugh, tugging playfully on it until finally giving in and releasing his grasp on the fabric. The younger boy threw it over himself and glared up at him.

“It’s not funny,” he growled. Colin held up his hands in defense, still grinning.

Despite his brother’s protestations that he was going to be late, Jonny took his time getting ready. Shuffling from room-to-room in search of his school tie, which he had left abandoned the previous evening somewhere in the living room (it turned out to be caught between the couch cushions), humming and hawing over which cereal to eat (he decided to make toast instead) and finally if he should shower in the morning, or when he got home from school. Colin practically threw his history textbook at him in annoyance and Jonny grinned from behind the daily newspaper.

No more than an hour later and he was shutting the front door behind him, peeling an orange and tossing the skins onto the ground as he wandered slowly down the street, headphones around his neck with the wire trailing into his pocket. He popped a piece of the fruit in his mouth and dug around for his tape player when he heard it.

His name.

In that voice.

Goosebumps trailed up his arm as images of his dream flashed before him and he turned to where the voice was coming from. Thom was on his front lawn, dressed in a similar state as he was the day before – this time with a t-shirt (thankfully. Or not thankfully, Jonny couldn’t really decide which.) He waved to the boy as he dropped a recycling box at the curb, the box over-flowing with cardboard and paper Jonny assumed was left over from unpacking.

“How are you, Jon?” Thom asked when Jonny made his way over, glancing behind him to make sure Colin wasn’t watching.

“I’m alright, and yourself?” he asked, unable to hide a sheepish smile. Thom rubbed at the back of his neck, eyes lingering on Jonny’s tie before he cleared his throat and looked off in space, somewhere behind the boy’s head.

“Oh, I’m fine. Still looking for those blasted records,” he rolled his eyes. Jonny snickered.

“Would you like some orange?” he asked, holding the fruit out. Thom smiled and Jonny placed a piece in his hand, trying not to watch the older man slip it into his mouth and bite down on it, juice running down his chin like a child. He wiped at his lips with his arm and laughed lightly at himself. Jonny felt his legs threaten to give way at the little noise and he looked down at his shoes.

“Off to school then, are you?” he asked and Jonny nodded, still staring at the ground. “Jonny?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was just thinking,” he rubbed at his nose nervously. “I should probably get going; I have a detention to go to.”

“Man, detention,” Thom shook his head, almost fondly. Jonny frowned. “Guess I should let you go, then. Don’t want you to be late.”

“Alright,” Jonny smiled, trying to keep his teeth covered with his lips. Thom returned the gesture, eyes twinkling with something Jonny didn’t quite understand.

“Thanks for the orange,” he said, moving to pick up a second recycling box from beside the first.

“No problem. I’ll see you later, I guess.”

Thom nodded, “Sure thing. Have a good day, Jonny.”

Jonny continued walking, realizing his grip on the orange in his hand was almost painful, fingers digging into the skin. He blushed, hoping Thom hadn’t noticed and he tossed the thing away, brushing his hands off on his trousers and pulling his headphones over his ears, Surfer Rosa swooping into his senses and he hummed along lightly, trying to take his mind off of the little man next door.

---

It didn’t work.

The detention room was in the library, behind shelves of books that no one ever bothered to look through or even sort. The amount of dust that covered them was disgusting, to the point where most of the book’s spines were unable to read without taking a finger and dragging it down them, uncovering letters along the way.

The room had one large window, the curtains usually pulled close to avoid any distractions. Jonny wasn’t the only one sitting in the room. His teacher, Mr White, was sitting at the desk at the front with a pile of essays, red pen in hand. A few seats off was a girl Jonny had never talked to, her red hair pulled back into a pony tail as she tapped her pencil on the desk, eyes focused on the television screen at the front of the room. The movie was about Viet Nam and was probably the most boring thing Jonny had ever seen in his life.

Behind him sat Jonas and his buck-toothed friend. Ever since the fight in the classroom neither one had spoken to him, though they still threw him the odd glare every now and then. He chose to ignore them, deciding he had far better things to worry about.

Like passing this stupid bloody course.

Like learning that song he heard Mr Yorke – Thom – playing the other day at his piano. Jonny squirmed in his seat, trying to get comfortable and trying as hard as he could to focus on the screen where soldiers were running through the streets and people were holding up signs about peace, ‘Working Class Hero’ playing in the background.

“I hate this stupid shite,” he heard Jonas mumbling. “John Lennon was a pouf.”

Jonas’s friend chortled and Jonny fumed.

“Stop talking,” Mr White said from the front, eyes on the boys in the back. Jonny tossed him a look of gratitude but he had quickly turned back to the student papers he was marking and Jonny slumped forward in his seat, nibbling on the end of is pen.

He didn’t really understand what his fascination was with his neighbor. At first he thought it might have been the piano on his front lawn that first morning he moved into the neighborhood, the way it practically glowed with use and Jonny had instantly known that it was loved and cared for, unlike so many others he had seen. And then the music, the strumming of an acoustic guitar. And the voice.

He let his hair fall in front of his face as he bit down harder on his pen.

There were people in his music class he thought were quite talented. They played instruments, too. Some of them even sang – a boy named Christopher brought his guitar to class quite often and sometimes he would play old Simon and Garfunkel songs, much to the enjoyment of the female students. Jonny didn’t mind, either. He’d sit and watch and clap with the others when the boy was done, sometimes he’d even close his eyes and think of the notes as they sounded from the strings.

But that wasn’t like this. This was different, and he couldn’t quite figure out why. He didn’t spend hours of his day thinking about the boy in his class the way he did about Thom. He wouldn’t have even noticed him had it not been for that guitar and the crowd of students that often surrounded him. Thom, on the other hand…

Thom was different.

There was an explosion on the television screen and Jonas howled from the back, smacking the top of his desk with a laugh.

“Fucker didn’t see that coming!”

“Jonas!” Mr White snapped. “If you can’t keep quiet you can watch this later in Mrs Mitchell’s class.”

Jonas groaned and Jonny smirked to himself, turning the page of his notebook and drawing a picture of the tree from his dream. The boy standing underneath it had dark hair over his eyes, leaves tumbling around him and soft fingers resting on his arm.

---

Jonny was standing in a hallway. It was dark and empty, but he didn't feel alone. He started walking, his footsteps echoing against the walls and back into his ears. He was at school, and there were no other people there, just Jonny and his footsteps.

But he didn't feel alone.

Jonny saw a box in the middle of the deserted hallway and he opened it and tried to look in, but before he could, he heard a voice calling his name from behind.

"Jonny."

It was his neighbor, Thom, and Jonny knew that without even looking. It was his neighbor and that box was his.

"Is that yours?"

"Yes, I was looking all over for it."

"What's in it?"

"What do you think is in it?"

Thom was now standing next to Jonny and Jonny could smell him.

"I don't know."

Jonny looked over at his neighbor for the first time, he looked different. He was close. Jonny could see his freckles.

"You have..."

"I know. They're from the sun..." Suddenly Thom looked worried, like something terrible was going to happen.

"I need to go."

"Wait!" Jonny felt like crying. "Can I come?"

"No Jonny. You stay here. You're in detention, remember?"

"But..."

Thom wasn't there anymore, but Jonny didn't feel alone.

And that's when Jonny woke up in his bed, a combined sense of relief and disappointment flooding him. He noticed right away that he was painfully hard and it was strange because in his still dream-hazed state he knew exactly why he was hard, but as the seconds passed it wasn't that clear anymore, until reality took over him and the reason was pushed away to the back of his mind, where it nested and bothered him during the entire day.

---

When Jonny got home from school (Yes, he actually lasted the entire day) he noticed something leaning against the door of the house across the street. He looked around him, as if searching for a hint or a suspect, but as there was no one around him so he started walking over to his neighbor's house, curiosity and strange excitement spreading in his veins. As he got closer it became obvious to him the object that was leaning against the door was set there for him and him only, and the notion made him dizzy as he picked it up.

It was a record, and as Jonny held it in his hand the red lettering on the cover that said "Stop Making Sense" somehow made him smile, and before he knew it he was knocking on the door, not really stopping to consider weather that was a good idea or not.

A smiling man answered the door and for a moment Jonny's dream hit him again and made him shiver but he quickly pushed it away. "So you found your records I reckon?"

"Ah, some of them anyway, still looking for the rest. All of the ones I really feel like listening to are still missing, of course."

Something in Jonny's mind told him he should giggle now but he was too distracted by that...scent.

"You should come in! I have juice! And it's a pretty rare occasion, so..."

"Oh!" Jonny felt dizzy again, and that same part that told him to giggle before was now shouting- Get inside, don't be rude! But this other part was shouting Just go home! Even louder and now there it was just too messy in there to figure out what he should really do. So he just stood there with the record in his hand.

"Oooor, we could just stay here...I can bring the juice..."

Something inside the house caught Jonny's eyes.

"No I'll uhm, I'll come in..." And he was walking inside, letting his legs lead him, ignoring the struggle in his head. It didn't matter anymore once he saw the acoustic guitar perched against a wall, and another voice his head, a whispering one was saying- This is it.

Thom got back in the room with two glasses of orange juice in his hands and caught Jonny staring at the instrument. "Do you play? I bet you do, I can see it on your face."

"Yes" Jonny's cheeks were burning. "I...play..."

"Well go ahead then, play something."

"Oh! no...I...I couldn't....you should play something..."

"Only if you play later."

"O...Okay." Jonny never meant to agree but the chance to actually see Thom playing for once was just to much to skip.

"Oh...Been a while since I actually played to anyone..." If only he knew how untrue that was.

He picked up the guitar and started playing right away, no tuning, no warming up, no introducing. Not that Jonny needed to be introduced to that melody, he already knew it by heart.

At first Jonny looked away, blushing as he tried to avoid the scene just in front of his eyes. It felt like he didn't really belong there, like he should be outside now like he always was, only listening and not taking part. But it was just too intriguing and soon he found himself staring at the man with the guitar, taking the image in, almost filming it with his mind for later use because it was just entirely too beautiful. Everything about it was beautiful, the way Thom was closing his eyes, completely lost in the music, the way his entire body moved with rhythm, the way he produced the melody, making it look so easy.

It was a sad song and he was aching with it, transparent eyebrows clenched together and full lips forming pain. But it was instantly gone the moment he was done, hanging both of his blue eyes at Jonny and smiling, waiting for some sort of a response. Jonny couldn't really respond, the sounds were still possessing him, the images still twirling in his head like a hurricane, the shiver that took hold of his entire body still refusing to fade away.

"Did you...did you write that?" He asked eventually even though he already knew the answer, just because he knew he should say something.

"Yes. Sorry if I depressed you...I tend to do that to people."

"No I...It was beautiful."

Thom ducked his head a smiled, and Jonny thought he was blushing which was just too much for him so raised his glass from the table and drained almost all of its contents down his throat.

"Oh well! Your turn!" Thom said cheerfully all of a sudden and Jonny's mind went blank with horror, what the fuck was he going to do now?

"Oh...I...Uhm...I...."

"Come oooon Jonny, it's just me, a silly little man who can't even find his own records..."

Jonny just could not blush any deeper than that.

"Just imagine me naked or something!"

Oh, actually, he could.

"Fine!" he snapped before Thom would say anything else and grabbed the guitar from Thom's hands.

He sat there for a few moments with the guitar in his lap, it’s oh so familiar wooden scent doing something to calm him down if even just a little. Something rose and jumped somewhere behind his eyes and he tried blinking it away, but it came back. What was the point anyway, the only music that he has been practicing in the last few weeks was Thom's music.

But how would he explain?

It was too late. His fingers were moving over the frets and all he could do was slouch over the guitar and look at them working, producing the sounds of no return. He decided to just let it go and for the first time in front of anyone that wasn't his own reflection in the mirror he was playing, for real, not in the reserved manner he always did when other people were surrounding him. He swung his head and swished his hair and flung his hands and let himself get lost completely in the music, just like Thom had done only moments before. In a way, he owed it to him.

And then it was done, unreturned, and Jonny was waking up from a dream, trying to convince himself that Thom would still be there when he lifted his head up. That he won't be weirded out by hearing a new version of his own writings. That he won't be mad and tell Jonny to go away and never come back.

Oh god Jonny, what have you done?

There was silence to a point where Jonny was already convinced Thom is not there anymore, which was the only thing that truly gave him enough courage to lift his head. But like in a dream or a nightmare, Thom was still there, only he wasn't Thom anymore, he looked different, like someone else.

He was paler than ever and shock stricken and still. So still that he might as well have been the wax-statue version of himself.

Jonny felt like he should just leave. Disappear from this room completely and let Thom forget that it ever happened, that they ever even met, that he ever let this bratty kid from next door into his living room.
He was starting to put the guitar away when a soft "No" was thrown in the air from Thom's direction and he froze. "How did...how did you...do that?..."

"I'm sorry, Mr Yorke, I'm sorry I'm...I went too far I just...I heard you playing, from the street and...I really liked it and...I...I just..."

"How did you make it sound like that?"

Jonny almost fell over out of confusion.

"What? Like...What?"

"Like that! Jesus, like...that...So much more...Brilliant!" And with the last word Thom jumped out of his seat, making Jonny flinch as he started fussing over the table, managing to find a piece of paper that had one blank side and a pencil and placing them in front of Jonny.

"Could you write it down?"

Jonny was not responding.

"Jonny? Could you write it down? That part you added and the...The changes you made in the beginning! Please, I'll never be able to..."

Jonny slowly took the pencil and wrote down the tabs with a shaking hand. Was this really happening?

Thom was still bouncing around the living room in genuine excitement, biting at his nails and smiling. "God! I've been working on that motherfucker for months and there it is...all done...I’m not even going to ask how you did it, I don't care!"

And he was laughing now, his crazed uncontrollable laugh that Jonny tried recreating in his mind ever since he heard it for the first time.

"Fucking hell..." Thom was muttering to himself, sinking back into his sit, only his foot, tapping frantically on the floor, suggesting that he has not fully calmed down yet.

"There, Uhm. That's it." Jonny said shyly.

Thom picked the piece of paper up and gazed at it for a while, unconsciously touching his lips while his eyes darted over Jonny's handwriting.

"You should have warned me, Jonny...you couldn't just drop that on me...God..."

"I'm sorry..."

"No! No...Please, don't be...I was just...I wasn't prepared for that is all...How old are you?"

Jonny was ambushed by a pair of blue eyes who were now looking at him like they've never seen him before. He moved uncomfortably in his seat, wishing he wasn't still in his school uniforms all of a sudden.

"I'll be...18 in November."

"This is...this...that's quite incredible, Jonny. What you did with this song, you're very talented."

Jonny made a mental note: Never cut your hair again. Maybe if it was longer he could hide himself completely behind it.

"Thank you." Jonny said faintly, barely succeeding to let the voice out. "I should go now, it's getting late..."

"Alright...By the next time we'll meet I hope you'll take more poor songs of mine and salvage them from their mediocre misery" Thom was smiling, his hand raised behind his head, rubbing it gently as he spoke. "No but really," He added, smiling a little less, "Feel free...Oh and don't forget that!"

He handed Jonny the 'Talking Heads' record and walked him to the door. Jonny was looking for something to say.

"I'll uhm...See you later..." Was the best thing he could come up with. It didn't really matter once the door was closed behind him and he was left with the thoughts that he knew weren't going to leave him alone anytime soon.

Chapter Three, Part Two

The door took almost forever to open but Jonny knew right there and then that this image, the image that was revealed to him when it finally did, was one that would be burnt in his memory for all eternity. The man that opened the door was nothing like the man that Jonny saw every now and then, picking up garbage from his front lawn or checking his mailbox. He had eyes, deep blue eyes that were uneven and hid something, he had a nose, one that looked like it took a beating once or twice during its lifetime, he had cheekbones, high and sharp and deep, he had thin stubble covering his cheeks and he had lips. Red, full lips that opened up into a crooked smile that was, fucking hell, it was pointed right at him. It was only then that Jonny even began to realize he was standing in front of Mr Yorke, his relatively new neighbor.

A thick stream of coffee-flavoured smoke leaked out from the open doorway, mixing in to the warm summer air and dancing along Jonny’s shoulders into his nose. It took him a moment to realize that the smell was coming off the man in the door way. His hair was sticking up messy and feathery and he wasn’t wearing a shirt, his skin smooth and pale and dappled with freckles from the sun, a thin line of hair trailing from his stomach into his boxers.

Jonny swallowed thickly.

“Have you seen my elephant?” Thom asked, his blue eyes still locked on Jonny. “I had it in my pocket just this morning but I can’t seem to find it.”

Jonny shook his head and Thom grabbed his shoulder, pulling him into the house. In the corner stood a tall tree with multicoloured, rusted sharp leaves, a spot of blackness underneath it. Thom didn’t seem to notice.

The coffee scent followed him around like a dog. Jonny watched the older man plunk down on the sofa and pick up a record. The cover was blank white and Jonny had to strain to see if it had a name.

“Oh well,” Thom sighed and let the record drop to the floor. The coffee was beginning to make him sweat, beads of it dripping down from his hair and over his nose. He wiped at his lips absent-mindedly, one finger pausing as his teeth came down on it gently. Jonny watched, his heart fluttering.

“Don’t mind me,” he said loudly, causing the boy to jump. “I was just about to get some Kleenex. Do you know where I can find any?”

The tree lurched forward and Jonny stepped back. Thom paid it no attention.

“I need Kleenex to clean up the mess I made,” he informed him. “Maybe I should take a shower. Would you like to join me?”

Jonny’s voice finally returned to him again and he opened his mouth, lips dry. “Er, what?”

“A shower. Upstairs. I made a mess, I melted my crayons. You’re colourblind, aren’t you? Maybe you can help me find some Kleenex.”

“No, Thom,” Jonny shook his head. “I need to talk to you, it’s important.”

The tree shuddered in the corner and Jonny was suddenly thrown naked into a shower stall, the glass doors pulled tight around him and the water warm on his skin. Thom was standing next to him, still in his boxers, still nibbling on his finger. Still piercing Jonny with his sharp blue gaze.

“That’s better,” he said. “Right?”

“Uh, I guess,” Jonny blushed and tried to hide himself, though Thom wasn’t looking. Not yet, anyway. In a weird turn of events, the dark haze that surrounded the room started to fade away and Thom tugged off the last of his clothing over his hips, tossing them away somewhere, Jonny didn’t pay attention, until he was just as naked as the boy.

“Colin is going to get mad,” Thom informed him. “Very, very mad, Jonny. If he knew what you were doing.”

“What am I doing?” Jonny asked, feeling a heat swell up inside of him as Thom took a step closer.

“You’ve been skipping detention,” Thom’s eyes flickered down to his lips and back up again. “Bad boy.”

“N-no, I haven’t. I was just in it the other day, I was there. We watched a movie. It was really boring, and there were soldiers and bombs and fighter jets and – oh.”

Thom’s thumb was brushing gently over Jonny’s hip as he stared into his eyes, drinking up the words as his lips formed them. The boy shivered and leaned back into the wall of the shower, finding it surprisingly warm and dry in comparison to what a shower should feel like. Instead of being firm like a wall it was squishy like…well, a mattress, if he had to be honest with himself.

His mattress.

Thom pressed forwards.

Jonny clenched his eyes closed tight, the water turning into sheets and fabric tangled around his arms, everything going dark and hot and stuffy until he managed to emerge from his blanket, panting in his struggle and sweating from being over-heated in the dark of his room. His window was open and thunder rumbled in the distance, a light rain dripping down from the roof. He groaned, feeling the effects of his dream as he slipped back into consciousness, skin tight and straining.

“God, what the fuck is happening?” He whimpered, running a hand over his forehead to brush his hair from his face. He swung his legs onto the floor, rubbing over his eyes with the tips of his fingers and trying to ignore his rapidly beating heartbeat and the painful bulge in his boxers. This wasn’t like him, he didn’t get off on random, messed-up dreams. But then again, he never really got off thinking about a full-grown man before. Boys, yes. Boys his age, but not men. And even then he tried desperately not to, tried to think of girls with their soft features and big watery eyes and strong chins and mud on their knees and deep booming voices and – Christ. He especially didn’t think about men that just moved in next door. Especially not men with eyes the same colour as the sea on a clear day, day-old stubble clinging to his chin and hair in a permanent state of sleep-unsettledness.

His body twitched and he felt like smacking himself across the face.

Maybe, he thought, maybe it was best if he didn’t see Thom again. Maybe then he could clear his mind, get back to his schooling and pass his classes. He could make his mother proud, he could go back to being the way he was, playing with his brother instead of shouting at him to leave him alone. Yes, he thought. This was a great idea. In fact, he was going to ask Colin as soon as he woke up if he could tag along with him after school to drop off resumes. Colin had asked him before but Jonny had turned him down and instead clambered up the stairs to his room to read a book. A very boring book at that, and now he was regretting it.

He could forget all about Thom – Mr Yorke. He wouldn’t bother him again, and Mr Yorke would forget about him and it would be like this thing never happened. Things would go on being normal.

Yes, this definitely was a good idea.

---

Jonny was laughing. Hard. His stomach was hurting, he was gasping for breath and trying to wipe away the tears that kept coming. His jaw hurt, his head hurt but he couldn’t remember the last time he felt so elated, so free. When he opened his eyes again he lost it and flopped over on the old couch, holding his stomach and trying to make coherent words out of his giggles.

“S-st-stop please, please stop I can’t – I can’t take it, please,” and he rolled onto the floor, hitting his head on the coffee table which just made him laugh harder. The song faded out and a new one began.

“You alright then?” said a voice from near the record player, a little out of breath. But just barely, Jonny noticed. “I told you not to put it on that song, but you didn’t listen. You had to go and challenge me.”

“I’m – I’m sorry,” Jonny gulped, cheeks burning. “I had no idea.”

Thom grinned and Jonny crawled off the floor back onto the couch. He had knocked over his glass of water in the process and felt guilt latch itself onto his stomach. There was a puddle on the top of the table and dripping off the side of a bowl that contained soil and a bonsai tree.

“Er, sorry. I’ll clean that up,” he mumbled. Thom shrugged.

“Don’t worry about it. That plant needed water, anyway.”

Jonny smiled and Thom returned it.

“So. Now that I’ve made a fool of myself, it’s your turn.”

“No,” Jonny shook his head and pulled his legs to his chin, wrapping his arms around them. “I am not doing that. I refuse. You can’t make me.”

“Come on, Jonny!” the older man rolled his eyes. “Have some fun, why don’t you? Instead of stomping around like the world is out to get you, get your arse off the couch and come sing with me.”

Jonny shook his head stubbornly.

“Fine,” Thom snuffed. “Be a brat.”

Jonny was sure that remark was supposed to sting, but instead of fuming like he usually did he found himself grinning against his jeans, eyes still on the older man standing in front of him with t-shirt clinging to his skin. Thom pulled it away from his chest and wiped his face.

“I’m getting too old to dance around to ABBA,” he mumbled. “Far too old. You’ve seen Risky Business, yeah?”

Jonny shook his head no.

Thom frowned, but continued. “Okay, well. Have you seen The Simpson’s episode were Homer dances around in bear slippers and his underwear while the rest of the family is at church?”

Jonny nodded.

“Well, picture some skinny little British sod with bleached blonde hair doing that in his parent’s living room and you’ve got me ten years ago.”

Jonny burst out laughing, unable to help himself, though he found it hard to picture Thom any other way than he was now, with sandy hair and no socks on under his faded trousers.

“Why do you even have ABBA to begin with?” he asked once he got control of himself. Thom rubbed at the back of his neck, a habit Jonny was beginning to familiarize with its meaning. He was nervous, or embarrassed. One of those. No, wait, he rubbed his nose when he was embarrassed. Or was that when he was lying?

“Er, it was my ex-boyfriend’s, actually. He had terrible taste in music. Absolutely terrible.”

Jonny’s chest tightened and he swallowed thickly, unsure if he heard correctly. Did he just - did he just say…

Thom was looking at him uneasily, an odd look. His head was ducked slightly and his fingers were still running up the back of his neck. He captured his bottom lip between his teeth and his eyes moved towards the records.

“Well, anyway. Let’s put on something else.”

“Okay,” Jonny agreed. Thom had a way for changing the subject when he most needed it. He watched the older man bend down in front of his box of records, flipping through them and sitting on his knees. Jonny tilted his head to the side to study the way his muscles moved under his shirt as he flipped a record over and read the back.

“R.E.M,” Thom stated suddenly, standing up. His knees made a popping noise and Jonny pulled his own tighter against his chest. Maybe he should have listened to himself earlier, he thought. This was a bad idea, a very bad idea. He should be out with Colin dropping off resumes. He should be in his room working on his final project for music. He should be, he should be anywhere but sitting on this man’s couch, watching him dance around the room like a kid on a sugar high.

He squirmed uncomfortably, trying to think of anything but the way the older man, in his early 30’s had more energy than he did. The way he had been barely out of breath after bouncing around the room like a nut. The way he wiped sweat off his forehead, his cheeks red.

Thom put the record down on top of the player and turned to look at the boy on his couch, arching an eyebrow.

“You’ve really never seen Risky Business?” he asked.

“Never,” Jonny shook his head. “Should I?”

“You should,” Thom answered. “In fact, I think I have it upstairs in a box, if you want to watch it. I could pop some popcorn. I have some Coke, if you’d like. I don’t know what you kids drink normally.”

“Coke sounds fine,” Jonny nodded, trying to ignore the ‘kids’ remark.

“You don’t need to be home, do you?”

Jonny shook his head and lied, “No, I’ve got nothing to do.”

Thom grinned. “Great! Well, I’ll be back down in a second, feel free to get some food from the kitchen.” And he scampered off up the stairs, the sound of a door opening and feet shuffling overhead on the ceiling. Jonny nibbled on his lip again, pulling his legs from the couch and moving into the kitchen. There were still boxes in the corner beside the sliding door and a pile of papers on the kitchen table. Dishes were piled by the sink, and above the telephone was a clock in the shape of a puzzle piece.

Jonny opened the fridge and pulled out a can of soda, opening it on the spot. He shut the fridge door and his eyes caught on a few photographs that hung there. One of them showed Thom standing with a bald man wearing a nice suit. They were both grinning, the bald man holding up a paintbrush dripping with yellow paint. Thom was clean-shaven with short black hair, though he didn’t look much older than he was now. Behind them, in a bit of a blur, were paintings that he assumed the bald man had done. Most of them were scratchy and messy looking.

Jonny swallowed his drink and allowed his eyes to move over the other photographs. A photo of a man who had the same eyes and cheekbones and lips as his neighbor, the same goofy smile but flaming bright red hair. Beside him stood another man, similar to the first with the same sharp features, though he wasn’t as skinny. Blinking, Jonny realized the first man was Thom, and the second had to be related to him. They were outside next to a large boat and Thom had who Jonny assumed to be was a family member in a headlock. He laughed lightly to himself, taking another sip which he had to force himself not to spit out when he saw the final photo, one of Thom standing on stage with an acoustic and a crowd of people staring up at him. His eyes were closed and his lips hanging close to a microphone, caught in mid-word as he sang. There were more people in the back, dark shadows of figures that had no faces, only instruments and he realized something, something big.

Thom was in a band.

A band that performed in front of people. Maybe even a band that travelled from city to city in a bus. A band - maybe he had albums. Maybe he was rich and famous, maybe he -

“Oh,” said a voice behind him. “I see you noticed the pictures.”

“Er, yeah,” Jonny didn’t look at him, letting his hair fall in front of his face to hide. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright, I don’t mind you looking at them,” Thom moved beside him and pointed to the photo of him and the other man by the boat. “That’s my brother, Andy. He plays guitar, too.”

“Oh,” Jonny nodded. “He looks like you.”

Thom snickered, “Everyone says that.”

“Uhm,” Jonny motioned to the one of Thom on stage. “And this one?”

“Oh,” Thom frowned. “That’s…pretty old. A few years ago.”

“You were in a band,” Jonny stated. Thom nodded.

“Once, yes. Not anymore though. Anyway,” he shuffled awkwardly, holding up a DVD case. “I found it. You want popcorn?”

And Jonny knew he should let it go, though a thousand questions seeded in his brain, he decided to keep them from later, when he knew Thom a little better, forgetting entirely about the promise he had made himself early that morning when he woke up from his dream. The promise that he’d never speak to this man again, pretend that none of this happened.

Instead, he just nodded and Thom smiled.

---

It was well past one in the morning when Jonny toppled through his bedroom window, sweaty from climbing up the side of the house, his clothing attaching itself to his skin. As quietly as he could, he pulled open the glass and fell onto the floor, cursing under his breath when his jeans snagged on a lose piece of wood. There was a small hole now, on a spot over his knee. He rubbed over it with his finger absentmindedly, still sitting under the open window.

He was thinking about him. Not for the first time. He had been thinking about his dreams, and how they started off innocent but slowly mutated into something that made him wake up with a gasp and have to think about old Mrs Pots, the school nurse or hum “God Save the Queen” to get the bulge in his boxers to go down in the middle of the night. There were more alternatives, yes, but he hadn’t been ready for that. Didn’t want to admit it, not then, anyway. Now…

Now he was thinking about him, and how he had a boyfriend. A boyfriend. Jonny could hear himself bitterly spit the word out in his mind. He clambered to his feet, pulling off his t-shirt and tossing it somewhere in the room, not bothering to look where it landed as he went to put the screen back on the window to keep out the bugs. It snapped back into place as images of him with some guy flashed through his mind, and it wasn't fair, damnit.

He unbuckled his belt and let it drop to the floor heavily, already working on kicking off his sneakers. As he unzipped his fly he thought about him, running his hands under the shirt of some stranger, his lips finding their neck and leaving teeth marks. Jonny tried to imagine the way stubble would feel against their skin.

Against his skin.

His jeans fell into a pool at his feet and he stepped out of them, now clad in nothing but his underwear. He pulled back his blanket, forgetting entirely about brushing his teeth or setting his alarm for school the next morning and instead let his mind continue to wander down the paths of his brain that lead to thoughts he dared not utter aloud. Thoughts he tried not to even to think about.

So, if he had a boyfriend, that means he’s…

He’s…

When the word spells itself out at the front of Jonny’s mind, he oddly hears it in the voice of his classmates. His peers. And they’re all pointing at him, and laughing. Calling him names. And in that moment, it all made sense to him. Everything, why he was the way he was and why he was acting the way he had been.

If what him being gay meant was that he liked men, he liked having them touch him and kiss him and he liked being with them, like that, then what did that make Jonny? Jonny, who was allowing his fingers to trail gently over the skin above the waistband of his boxers as he tried to imagine it were someone else doing it for him.

Someone with stubby fingers, and baby-bird feathers for hair and a piercing blue stare through mismatched eyes.

He bit his bottom lip and let his hand sink down the front of his boxers.

Maybe being gay wasn’t so bad after all, he thought. After all, anything he was couldn’t be sick, or disgusting or evil or any of those things he was taught back in Sunday school, when he and Colin didn’t have a choice about going or not.

The palm of his free hand moved over his hips, lingering on the bone that small hands had touched in his dream, and his stomach, over his chest and neck, into his hair as his other discovered a steady pace between his legs.

And Jonny blushed when he realized that, even if he was all those things, wrong or evil, it only made Jonny want him more. So he delved deeper into mind, thinking about his voice when he sang, his hand sliding up the neck of his guitar and his eyes closed. In his mind, Jonny took away the guitar, took away anything that would distract him from the man next door and placed himself there, instead. He was kissing a trail down a thin torso and rocking his hips. He was making him sing in an entirely different way, for an entirely different reason.

He tossed his head back, letting out a quiet moan as he moved his hips in time with his hand sliding over his skin, eyes closed tightly to keep out the reality of the situation and allow his imagination to take over completely. The thought of exposed soft flesh that was usually covered by too-big clothing against his, warm breath in his hair and another man’s hand instead of his own sent him tumbling over the edge and he came with a cry that sounded an awful lot like “Thom”.

Chapter 4, Part One

Jonny was standing in the middle of the street where he lived. He was wearing a white t-shirt and his school tie was neatly tied around his neck.

He was holding an acoustic guitar, Thom's acoustic guitar and he was playing something that was not really recognizable but oddly familiar.

Thom was stepping outside wearing a pair of white sunglasses and a bathrobe and he stood next to Jonny and listened. "You're not wearing any shoes" Jonny said all of a sudden, not playing anymore.

"Oh," Thom was looking down at his bare feet with a grin and nodded, "Yes it's true, but you don't mind, now do you?"

Jonny started playing again, not really paying attention to the older man as he concentrated on the guitar, pouting his lips and closing his eyes. "You think they don't know what you're doing?" He said all of a sudden, eyes still closed, fingers still strumming.

"Sorry?" Thom paled and stepped back.

"It's weird, all of it is, it's wrong."

"What are you talking about?"

"You know..." And all of a sudden he reached the peak of the song and the guitar wasn't acoustic anymore, it was a black Gibson and Thom blinked in disbelief as he watched the young boy mastering the instrument, throwing his head back in ecstasy, his lips parted and his eyes shut, his black silky hair flying back after him except for one strand that was still clinging to his eye. Thom reached a hand to move the strand away but flinched before he could as Jonny released what sounded a lot like a moan into the air.

Thom felt like he should just look away, like he was intruding Jonny's privacy by looking at him at this very moment, but he couldn't, not even when he started hearing them, the knockings, someone was knocking on his door but he wasn't home at all. He looked over to where his house was and saw that a tall grown up man with dark hair and a long coat was standing next to his door, knocking on it again and again. He looked back at Jonny who was now just standing there, smiling at him, and told him he had to go because there was someone at his door. Jonny just shrugged and the knockings became louder and louder, almost unbearable now.

When Thom found himself in his bed the knockings were still there, but they weren't half as bad as in the dream, they were delicate and small, almost as if the person who was knocking was doing it halfheartedly. It took Thom a few moments to realize that there is really only one person who would knock that way, or any way on his door and an image from the dream he was just having crashed behind his eyes and made him shudder. What the fuck was that all about?

He got out of bed and self consciously threw a clean shirt over his head, taking the stairs down two at a time as he rushed to the door. Jonny was just about to give up and leave when he finally made it to the door, a smile replacing the disappointment on his face when he saw Thom. He was dressed to school and looked very tired, even the big smile on his face not succeeding to erase that away. Thom found that he quite liked that smile.

"What time is it?" Thom asked when he realized his watch was still absent from his wrist for the day.

"It's early, I know!" Jonny was nearly jumping with excitement, his hair still damp from a morning shower and his shirt still tucked in and not half flung out like Thom was already used to seeing it. "But I just had to tell you something, I couldn't wait 'till after school, I had to tell you now!"

Thom was smiling now too, Jonny's contagious enthusiasm taking a hold of him. "What is it, Jonny?"

"So I was playing the song, the one you said you had a problem with...And it just, it hit me, it was so...Clear!"

Thom was almost laughing now with Jonny's eagerness, his inability to hold back. It was so pure and endearing and it started a rush of excitement at his chest, the way Jonny's fingers were almost moving across imaginable frets as he spoke.

"Shit! I have to go or I'll be late but just, just listen to this!" And he pulled a cassette out of his front pocket and threw it in the air, Thom's still sleepy instincts nearly failing him as he lifted his hand for the object. Jonny was already halfway across the lawn when Thom raised his head back up, his backpack swinging against his back as he ran.

Thom couldn't really concentrate at anything after that, after the dream he had, after that smile being the first thing he saw today, and especially after he played that cassette and a stream of utter brilliance washed over his ears.

That kid, the kid from next door that he met not very long ago, took two of his songs and combined them into one, creating something new and beautiful. That kid had musical abilities like some people might never have. That kid had a smile that Thom liked, and big eyes that sometimes stared a little too long. That kid was slowly driving Thom out of the little peace of mind he still had left, was giving him dreams and thoughts that were entirely too wrong to admit, was causing Thom to start wishing he could actually do something about it.

But of course he couldn't, never, and the sooner he forgot about it the better. Thom took the cassette out of the player and placed it under a pile of papers. He sighed and went to have his morning tea.

---

“So, what did you think?”

Thom mentally shook himself back into reality.

“Hmm?”

Jonny smiled up at him, dark hair falling over one of his eyes. His fingers left momentarily from the neck of his guitar to brush them away before settling back into place, and Thom thought to himself how there was no other place in the world for those boys fingers.

Well, except for…

Focus.

“The tape I gave you this morning,” Jonny continued. “What did you think of it? I hope you’re not too mad that I mixed your songs together.”

He thought back to the tape he had tried to hide under a pile of papers, and then again in the laundry room, and finally behind a book on his bookshelf that he had only read once in his life but it was no use. It kept calling out to him through out the day and he found himself listening to it again and again and again, each time finding something new or brilliant or ingenious about what the boy had done.

“No,” Thom stated. “I’m not mad at all. It’s brilliant, Jonny. You have such an amazing talent, you know? Especially for someone your age, to have discovered that already is just…amazing. Sorry, I’m gushing.”

Jonny snickered, pulling a string on his guitar and glancing up at the older man through a curtain of dark hair. Thom fidgeted in his chair, nibbling on his bottom lip in thought. After a few moments of watching the boy twiddle with the instrument he got off his chair and moved into the kitchen, pushing papers on the table aside and an unfinished painting (Jonny had said it looked brilliant and he blushed again), until he came up with what he was looking for. Back in the living room, Jonny was writing something down on a piece of paper and looked up when Thom shoved something under his nose.

“What are these?” Jonny asked.

“Tickets,” Thom explained. “To a show in town tonight. There are a few local bands playing, but they’re pretty good. Do you want to join me?”

Jonny stared at them, opening his mouth to speak but closing it again almost instantly. He took one of the tickets from Thom’s hand and looked at it, tilting his head to the side to read the fine print.

“I mean, I was going to go anyway,” Thom rubbed at the back of his neck nervously. “But, I just thought it’d be nice, you know –”

“I’d love to,” Jonny grinned up at him. Thom smiled.

“Great! Well, um. Is it okay with your mum?”

Jonny’s eyes didn’t quite reach Thom’s then and he frowned.

“Yeah, it’s fine. She doesn’t mind me going out.”

“Are you sure?” Thom tucked his own ticket away into his pocket. “I don’t want to get you into trouble or anything.”

Jonny shrugged, “It’s fine, really.”

“Okay,” Thom nodded, still feeling unsure. “Well, I need to have a shower, so…”

“Oh,” Jonny blushed and looked to the carpet. “Yeah, I guess I should get out of my school uniform.”

“Be here for seven?” Thom suggested and Jonny nodded, picking up his pad of paper and leaving his guitar to rest on the carpet, standing up from his spot and wobbling slightly as he did. He tossed the older man a sheepish grin before giving him a small wave and heading out the front door.

---

Mrs Greenwood’s thoughts were brewing. She sat alone at the kitchen table, attempting to read through the morning newspaper but finding it more difficult as the moments wore on and she shook the paper angrily before letting it settle down on the table. Colin was out for the night with his friends, he had left her a note and took his car and left. Jonny hadn’t come home after school and she was starting to get worried. This wasn’t the first time he had done it in the past couple of weeks. Some days he came home, dropped off his bag and was straight out the door again. Some days she didn’t even know he was gone until he came home in the evening, kicking off his shoes and asking what was for dinner.

At first she thought nothing of it. He was a quiet boy who tended to enjoy his own company rather than be with others, and often he would take the long way home from school and stop in the forest to read with his back against a tree, or would wander into town to get a slushie from the corner store. He would come home bouncing from his sugar-high with leaves in his hair and a blue tongue. Now, however, now was different. Now there was no evidence as to what he was doing or where he was going, and the fact he didn’t tell her, or his brother, anymore, made her worried in a stereotypical mother-like fashion.

Today however, that changed, and now she was brewing at the kitchen table. It might have been nothing, she thought. She hoped. Mr Williamson never really paid attention to details, she thought. He could have been mistaken. She had ran into him earlier that day on her lunch break as she rushed from the small café downtown back to her office building. He was out paying bills at the bank when he mentioned he had seen her son over at their new neighbor’s house, and he wasn’t aware that they had become acquainted with him. She brushed it off as nothing, saying Jonny was giving him some misplaced mail even though she knew that wasn’t it at all. That was weeks ago, and Mr Williamson was going off on how this had happened just the other day.

He must be mistaken.

The front door opened and Jonny stepped into the room, pulling the school tie from around his neck, his backpack hanging off one shoulder.

“Where have you been?” she asked, folding the newspaper and setting it aside. Jonny glanced at her quickly, than back down to his tie.

“Out,” he mumbled. “I have plans this evening, I won’t be here long.”

“Jonny,” she started when he went to climb up the stairs. “I need to talk to you for a moment.”

The boy hesitated and she could hear him sigh before stepping back down and moving into the kitchen. She gestured to the chair beside her and he pulled it out from under the table, plopping down in it and frowning at her. She needed to keep this light and casual if she was going to get anything out of him. She smiled and he blinked, confused.

“I ran into Mr Williamson today,” she spoke quietly and continued when he didn’t say anything. “He said he saw you over at Mr Yorke’s house.”

Jonny stared, long and hard at the table top in front of him. Mrs Greenwood continued.

“Have you spoken to him since you gave him his mail?”

“Er, a few times,” Jonny admitted. “Just on my way to school, and stuff. He was putting out recycling and I stopped to chat for a moment. He’s really quite nice.”

She sighed, running a hand through her hair before letting it settle against her cheek, fixing him with a questioning look. “Jonny, you know how I feel about him. He’s…weird. I don’t like him at all, and I’d rather you not speak to him.”

“He isn’t weird, though!” Jonny argued. “He’s really nice, and he’s a musician and an artist. You should see some of the paintings he does, mum. They’re really neat.”

“You’ve seen his artwork?”

“Er, yeah,” Jonny squirmed under her gaze. “He was painting in the front yard the other day and I saw it.” He lied. She sat up straighter in her seat and continued to eye him.

“Well, either way. I don’t want you talking to him anymore, you got it? You should make some friends your own age, and concentrate on graduating and getting through history. Have you been going to your classes?”

“Yes, Mum,” Jonny grumbled, though he was secretly thankful she changed the subject so quickly. “Can I go now? I have to get ready.”

“Alright,” she dismissed him and he practically leapt from the table and ran from the kitchen, taking the steps two at a time. His bedroom door slammed shut behind him and she shook her head at the table, defeated.

---

The music was loud – booming. People were stomping and laughing and dancing and clapping, smoking cigarettes and joints and spilling their drinks on the floor, leaving sticky puddles for others to slip in. The speakers buzzed, the instruments roared through out the noises of the crowd and the bands on stage wore tight ripped jeans and high boots. They had chains around their neck, jewelry in their lips and noses and over their eyebrows, their hair glued up into Mohawks in different colours. Boys Jonny would never associate with glanced at him, smiled at him and stomped around him. Girls handed him pins, their fingernails painted black and their arms clattering from more chains and leather, their ripped jean vests barely covering their home-made t-shirts. The singers swore and screamed and shouted about the government.

This was nothing like he had ever seen before, but he quite liked it.

Despite the ripped clothes and the funky hair, Thom seemed to fit right in. Jonny could tell he was comfortable in this environment, being surrounded by music and music listeners. He wondered if he missed it, being in a band. He watched him get carried off by a group of punks into the middle, and laughed and clapped along with the rest of them when they started moshing, a little tuft of sandy hair caught in the middle and laughing all the while.

When he finally emerged as the next band set up, he was sweating and panting, unable to hold back a grin as Jonny pulled him from the crowd of people to his side, laughing at his state.

“I’ve never seen you so tired,” he said, his ears ringing. Thom snickered.

“I’m not as young as I used to be, I could go a whole night without a break. Mind you, drugs were usually involved.”

Jonny frowned and Thom ruffled his hair. “Don’t worry, Jon. I don’t do that anymore. It’s bad for you, that stuff is, and if I ever find out you’ve done it I’ll kill you myself.”

Jonny laughed and elbowed him playfully. The crowd pushed forward and within seconds they were squished together, Jonny against a stranger’s back and Thom pressed tightly against his, the heat from him sinking through his clothing into the other boy’s skin, still panting slightly from his romp with the local teenagers.

Jonny swallowed hard and tried to think of anything but what was going on at that moment. Thom moved to scratch his nose and he could feel his hands moving, his muscles moving against his back and his cheeks burned.

“You alright, Jon?” Thom’s voice said next to his ear as the new band plugged in their guitars. Jonny nodded, not turning to look at him just in case his embarrassment was showing on his face. Thom gave his shoulder a friendly squeeze and the crowd behind him shoved forward even more.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered.

But soon the crowd had broken up again to move about the floor, and Thom pulled Jonny in with him, getting carried away by the current of moving bodies and before Jonny knew what was happening, he was dancing along with them. Throwing his cares and his inhibitions aside he pretended he was back in his bedroom with his stereo blasting and no one to see him except for the posters on his wall and the bugs latched onto his window screen. Thom laughed at him and the others tugged and pulled on his arms, trying to get him to join in with them, their chains and their buckles and their jewelry glowing in the light.

And as soon as it started, it was over, and Jonny crawled away to lean against a far wall away from everyone, barely able to catch his breath. He wiped his forehead and grinned when a familiar figure made his way to him, two red plastic cups in hand. Thom shoved one into his hands, grinning to the boy as he did so.

“You’ve earned it - just don’t tell your mother.”

Jonny sniffed the beer hesitantly, and then took a sip. He was never into drinking alcohol, but Thom was beside him, watching him curiously and taking drinks from his own cup, smiling when Jonny followed suit.

“I’m not big on alcohol,” he admitted after a few minutes. Thom shrugged.

“That’s alright. You don’t have to drink it. I know people your age are into that kind of thing, though. I wasn’t sure if you were.”

Jonny grinned, taking another sip. It wasn’t so bad, after all. It was cheap and a little warm but it was fun and exciting and Thom laughed when he spilt some down the front of his shirt, which was in itself an excuse to keep on drinking. Anything to make the older man keep laughing, keep tossing him silly glances and grinning sheepishly when their eyes met.

They stepped out onto the street not long after, the cool night air refreshing them from being stuck inside the stuffy bar for hours. Jonny giggled and hid his mouth behind his hand and tripped over cracks in the pavement, which made him laugh harder and Thom had to pick him off the sidewalk, telling him he was never buying him alcohol again.

“I kind of thought you’d be a lightweight, but I had no idea…”

“Oh, shut up,” Jonny hiccupped, latching himself onto the older man’s arm and cuddling into him for support. “I’m not drunk, I’m just tispy. I mean, tipsy.”

Thom laughed and Jonny blushed, moving aside for a young couple to pass him, his nose brushing against Thom’s arm and sending shocks of electricity through his stomach. Thom didn’t seem to notice, he was looking ahead with a small smile on his lips.

“Maybe we should get you some food,” Thom decided. “You know, so you’re not drunk – sorry, tipsy, for when you get home. I don’t want your mother coming after me with a butcher knife, or something.”

Jonny broke into a fit of giggles again and clung helplessly to Thom’s side as they maneuvered past a homeless person, their hat hanging out of their hands and long grey beard tangled at the bottom.

---

Thom was surprising, Jonny decided. A very surprising person. And he had good tastes in just about everything the boy could imagine. He laughed a little to himself when Thom opened the front door of a small diner in a back alley for him, grinning and ushering him inside. Jonny wasn’t even aware it existed. It was light something ripped straight from the 50’s, with checkered floors and high booths and even a jukebox in the corner. All it was missing were girls in poodle skirts and boys with leather jackets and cowboy boots. They settled into a booth in the corner, Jonny flopping roughly in his seat and Thom laughing at his clumsiness, the boy grinning and pulling his menu from the table to go over it.

“I haven’t any money,” he muttered. “I’ll just get a milkshake.”

“Don’t worry about it, I can buy you something,” Thom brushed it off and went through his own menu. “They have veggie-burgers.”

“Are you a vegetarian?” Jonny asked.

“Yeah, well. I try to be,” the older man shrugged. “Sometimes I order something with bacon.”

They giggled in their booth as the waitress took down their order, Jonny ordering a large milkshake and Thom a glass of water, smiling to her when she picked the menu off the table and marched to the back of the restaurant.

“Water?” Jonny sniffed, trying to ignore the feeling of Thom’s knee pressing lightly against his own. “How boring.”

“They put a bit of lemon in it,” Thom shrugged, unwrapping a straw and blowing the paper off of it playfully in Jonny’s direction. From under the table his knee stayed against Jonny’s and neither of them moved.

“That’s still boring,” Jonny informed him, pawing at the paper.

“Hmm,” was all Thom said, still looking over his menu as Jonny eyed the jukebox curiously, tapping his spoon and his fork on the end of the table to create a beat and causing the older man to lift his eyes to watch him.

“You always make noise?” he asked with a smile. Jonny stopped sheepishly.

“I guess, I don’t know. Bad habit, I’ve got all these sounds in my head and sometimes no way to get them out.”

“That’s mark of a true musician, Jon. Keep that with you forever and you’ll just grow to be better and better at what you do,” Thom said and the boy continued to flush at the attention.

“I’m worried it’ll drive me mad one day,” he admitted. “All these songs, I mean. I’m worried they’ll just pile up and I’ll have no place to put them.”

“You have to put them someplace when you get them, then,” Thom leaned back in the booth, studying him. “To prevent that. I used to have this dream that I’d carry my guitar everywhere I went, just in case I had the same problem. But it got in the way a lot of times, and I was worried it’d get lost. So now I just carry a sketchbook, just in case.”

“Do you draw a lot?” Jonny asked. Thom shrugged.

“Here and there. I studied art in university, but music has always been my thing. Stan was more of an artist than I’ll ever be, I just dabble sometimes.”

“Stan?”

“The man in the photo on my fridge,” Thom explained. “The bald one with the paintbrush.”

The waitress placed their drinks on the table and took down their order, scampering off again to leave them alone. Jonny took a sip of his milkshake through his straw, eyeing Thom through his hair curiously. The older man watched him for a moment before clearing his throat and taking a drink of his water. The boy felt himself blushing and ducked his head, nibbling on the end of his straw a little.

“Is he your ex?” he asked a moment later and Thom let out a great bark of laughter.

“Stanley? Oh no, Christ no. He was my best mate, is all. I still talk to him sometimes. He’s married, with a child. Paints all the bloody time, probably drives his poor wife up the walls. He’s really weird. Really weird.”

“Weirder than you?” The boy smirked and Thom chuckled.

“I guess so, yeah. Maybe he rubbed off on me. Maybe I rubbed off on him.”

“Maybe you rubbed off on each other?” Jonny offered.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Thom stirred his water and glanced out the window momentarily lost in thought before turning back to Jonny. “Have you thought about what you’re doing after high school?”

He shrugged, “Not really. My mum is always bugging me, and Colin is trying to help out the best he can. My mum wants me to go into medical science stuff, you know. Psychology or whatever. It’s interesting, but I’d rather do something music oriented. Music history or something. Old instruments fascinate me.”

“Really?” Thom urged him on.

“Yeah. Have you ever heard of the ondes Martenot?” Jonny asked. The older man shook his head.

“’Fraid not.”

Jonny’s eyes bulged at this and he continued on, “It’s a brilliant piece of work, I’ll tell you that. I just finished a paper on it not too long ago. It was near impossible to get old arrangements for my presentation. It’s an early electronic instrument from the 20’s. It’s a lot like the Theremin. If played properly it makes these incredibly eerie noises and it’s absolutely delightful. It takes a lot of patience and control, though. I’ve wanted to learn how to play it for so long. Fiddling with radios is fun and all but this would be a great accomplishment, to be able to conquer one.”

“I see,” Thom nodded. “You play with radios?”

“All the time,” Jonny grinned. “It’s quite fun. Sometimes I mix it in with some guitar or keyboard or anything, really. It’s great when you get stations from other countries. I think Colin has an old ham radio up in the attic but we haven’t been able to dig it up out of all the rubbish.”

“Sounds like a good summer project,” Thom said and the boy nodded.

“I guess, yeah.”

“I’d like to hear one of these songs with the radio in it, if I could?”

Jonny grinned, “Of course. One day I’ll show you, or record it or something. It’s not hard at all, I could even teach you.”

“You’re a musical genius, though. Of course it isn’t hard for you,” Thom laughed and Jonny ducked his head, drawing circles on the table top with the tip of his finger.

Once Jonny started eating his buzz from the alcohol seemed to wear off, but his shyness failed to return and he was still babbling on widely about musical instruments and bands he wanted to see live, and how he always wanted to be in a band, to play with other people who felt the same way about music as he did. Thom listened, eyes locked on the boy as he spoke, nodding in the appropriate places and smiling whenever Jonny blushed at something he said, or when he laughed behind his hand.

“You shouldn’t do that you know,” he said finally and Jonny stopped chewing.

“Do what?”

“Hide your smile,” Thom gestured to him. Jonny frowned.

“But, it’s all crooked and it makes me have a lisp,” he mumbled.

“So? That’s part of who you are. You should be proud of it, it makes you unique.”

“I’m sure you have things you’re self-conscious about,” Jonny said quietly, stabbing at a meatball in his spaghetti.

“Well, of course,” Thom rolled his eyes. “But that’s not the point, the point is that sometimes things like that is what makes you what you are, and you shouldn’t hide them. You should embrace them, especially if you can’t change them.”

Jonny hummed.

“Well, anyway. I guess you’re right, I shouldn’t really talk. It’s hypocritical of me,” Thom shrugged and took another bite of his salad. “So you really want to be in a band, huh?”

“Yeah, ever since I can remember,” Jonny nodded, thankful for the change of subject.

“What’s it like? Where you ever famous?”

“Erm, I don’t know,” the older man poked at a piece of lettuce. “Not really, I guess. It’s a lot of work, though. And you get tired really easily, after dealing with people day in and day out. All the disagreements and everything. That’s where my ex comes in, he was in the band as well.”

“What did he do?”

“He played bass,” Thom mumbled. “Sang back-up.”

“Oh,” Jonny swallowed.

“Yeah. It’s hard, you know. Creative differences, and what-not. But don’t let me saying that change your mind about being in a band. If you make it work, I’m sure it’s the greatest thing ever. I mean, you get to live doing what you love most, and money isn’t bad either.”

“That’s true,” Jonny laughed lightly. “Maybe one day.”

“Maybe one day,” Thom agreed. “You never know. All your dreams will come true if you put your mind to it, Jonny.”

And it was in that moment Jonny realized he was ready to admit that he quite liked Thom Yorke, and it only made the sick feeling in his stomach worse.

---

The only reason Jonny agreed to accompany him mum to the supermarket was that Thom was absent from his house when Jonny went there after school. It was a good bargain for the both of them- Jonny got to finally pick his favorite type of crisps and his mum got to spend some time with her mostly-out-of-the-house son.

Jonny spent his time in the supermarket dragging along his feet after his mum and their cart, rolling his eyes at her every now and then and shrugging whenever she tried consoling with him about the purchase of this product or another. For him it didn’t matter really, it was all the same.

For him all of it was a big blur of colors and letters, packages and cans that he couldn’t really see, the only thing he could see clearly was a certain man he couldn’t really stop thinking about.

The only thing he saw as he traveled trough these aisles was the way Thom always held his guitar, the way his body swayed when he played, the way his eyes fluttered when he sang and, of course, the way his tongue always trailed over his bottom lip, leaving it moist and red and soft, and so, so very—

“Oi! Jonny!”

Jonny panicked so badly when he heard this voice with that tone, that cheerful tone, that he knocked over three cans of artichoke hearts. Actually, it was a good thing, cause it gave him an excuse not to actually look at Thom as he approached him and his mother.

“Is that your mum?” Jonny could hear Thom’s smile in his voice but from his spot on the ground he could really see Thom’s brown flip-flops.

“Oh hello, you’re Mr Yorke now aren’t you?” He heard his mum’s most polite tone above him, a tone that made him shiver.

“Yes, yes I am.”

As he rose up from the floor, setting the cans back on the shelf, he realized he should probably say something. His voice was betraying him now, coming out in a silent hoarse version of itself.

“Uhm, hi, Mr Yorke” Jonny kept his head ducked.

There was silence now between the three of them and Jonny instinctively lifted up his head to look at Thom for the first time. Thom was standing there in a pair of blue jeans and a shirt that was one button too open, the pale skin of his chest glowing in the supermarket’s neon light. He had nothing but a green basket of oranges in his hands and he was looking at Jonny with a confused gaze. And then at Jonny’s mum. And then at Jonny.

And then he smiled.

“Alright, it was nice to uhm, meet you, Mrs Greenwood. I’ll see you around.” And he threw Jonny a quick blank glance and walked past the two of them, Jonny trying to read his expression as he disappeared into the next aisle.

Chapter 4, Part Two

Jonny was almost too scared to knock on the door of the house that has become like a second home for him. He was scared of what he will find when the door opens, will it be hurt, anger ... or maybe disappointment? The possibilities flashed through his mind and he screeched his teeth together, his knuckles hitting the wooden door once again.

Finally, the door made a clicking sound and opened, revealing the man behind it just like it did all those other times, only this time…

No, there was nothing different this time; Jonny was not anticipating that. In all of the bad scenarios he had in his head- Thom, with hurt in his eyes, not wanting to speak to him ever again, Thom, with anger on his face, telling him that he wants nothing to do with him anymore, Thom, with a sleepy expression, telling him “Hey, Jon, come in”- was not one of them.

As he went inside he was looking around for clues, anything that might give away the fact that Thom was angry with him, a spilled drink, a torn paper, anything. But it was all just the same, chaotic order that only Thom could figure out. Notebooks, loose strings, crayons, half empty glasses. A big black tambourine.

“Want some orange juice? Freshly squeezed, by me!” Thom wasn’t really asking because he already had two glasses in his hand and he was offering one of them to Jonny.

“Thanks.” Jonny muttered as he took the glass. Now he started looking for clues that hid on the man himself, something that would determine how angry he really was. But Thom was his usual self- soft hair and sharp stubble, red lips and blue eyes that blinked separately. Nothing different or unusual, just the way Jonny had already memorized him.

“I finished my painting. The one with the scary trees. Wanna see?”

“Oh uhm, yeah sure…”

Thom picked up a big canvas from behind the couch, still holding his orange juice in one hand. “Humm, what d’ya think? Is it too blue?”

“Thom…”

“I think it’s a little too dark, maybe it’s not finished yet.”

“Thom I…”

“Yes, I need to work on it some more”

“Thom! I’m sorry…”

Thom finally placed the canvas back on the floor and looked at Jonny with a sad grin.

“So…Your mum doesn’t like me…”

“She…Well no, she can’t not like you, she doesn’t even know you!”

“Jon, did she tell you anything about coming here?”

Jonny was about to say something but he stopped himself and closed his mouth, looking away from the man next to him.

“No…she didn’t say anything, it’s my bloody business.” Lying to Thom felt funny, a bit like realizing you just wore a shirt the wrong way, the collar feeling too tight around your neck.

“So why did you have to pretend you didn’t know me?”

“Because…I don’t want to know what she feels about this…about our friendship.”

“So you’re just ignoring it? We’re not doing anything wrong here, Jon.” Thom rubbed the back of his neck and swallowed as he said this. He almost looked lost for a moment.

“I know! But she wouldn’t think so! You don’t know her, she can so…narrow minded…” Jonny got distracted by the look of concern on Thom’s face. He never saw him that way before, looking almost like a responsible adult.

“Well just…Just promise me you’ll talk to her. Soon!”

“Alright.” Jonny had to physically force himself to form that word. But he felt better when he finally did because it looked like the dark cloud that was encompassing Thom’s expression has faded away and he was smiling at him again, taking another sip from his glass.

---

This was it, Jonny thought. This was the end. He stood in front of his mirror, staring at his own reflection dressed in a gown and hat, the little strings hanging off the side tickling his ear. This was his last day as a high school student. He had managed to pass all his classes in the end and now he was finished and he’d never have to see the walls of the building again.

He frowned to his reflection as he fixed his tie and there was a knock at his door. Colin stepped into his room, hands resting gently on the door frame as he watched his brother struggle to fix his tie.

“You need help with that?” he asked. Jonny shook his head and let out a great sigh, letting the fabric untangle. “Are you nervous?”

“Why the hell would I be nervous?” Jonny mumbled, fingers attempting the knot again. “It’s just a graduation ceremony, you just go up on that little stage and get a piece of paper and throw your hat at the end. Nothing else to it.”

“Then why are your fingers shaking?”

“I don’t know, Colin,” Jonny snapped, the tie splitting apart again and knocked his hat onto his floor with frustration. “It’s this bloody college business, I don’t know what I’m doing. I applied to the program Mum wanted me to, but it’s not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life. I don’t know what I want to do for the rest of my life; I don’t like thinking about that kind of stuff.”

“I know, Jon,” Colin stepped behind him and took the tie from around his neck, fiddling with it. “But at least you got into school, now if you find out what you really want to do you can change programs and not have to worry about getting accepted again.”

“That’s true,” Jonny sighed again and Colin gave him the tie. “Thanks.”

“You’ll do fine, Jon,” he gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze and Jonny tossed him a small smile, turning back to the mirror.

His mother took photos in the downstairs hallway, telling him to stand next to his brother, to put his cap on and Jonny groaned miserably, coming up with excuses to leave the room but she never bought them and soon he was being blinded with the flash of a camera.

“Smile, Jon!” she peeked out from behind the lens and the boy shook his head.

“Teeth,” he said and she rolled her eyes.

“These are for your grandmother, Jon. She’s seen you naked, don’t be ashamed about your teeth.”

“That’s different, I was a baby. Shut up, Colin. Stop laughing!”

Mrs Greenwood placed her hand on her hip impatiently. “The sooner you smile the sooner we get out of here, the sooner you graduate and the sooner your summer vacation starts. Now give me that adorable smile of yours so we can get out of here and get this over with. I’ll buy ice cream.”

Jonny sighed, “Fine.” And gave her his weakest smile possible. The camera clicked and he was out the door, pulling off his cap and hopping into the backseat of the car, eyes darting to the house next door quickly before his mum got into the driver’s seat and Colin into the passenger’s side, fiddling with the buttons to make the window go up and down.

The ceremony was being held outside in the football field. A stage had been brought in and decorated by younger students in the school’s colours, a podium and a microphone were already set up along with lines of chairs in front of the stage.

When they arrived Jonny got out of the car before his mother had found a parking space and wandered away down the field to hide under a tree, twirling his cap on his finger and watching his classmates crowd around the snack table or kick a ball back and forth, the girls taking off their high-heel shoes and the boys slinging their jackets over their shoulders.

Everyone was laughing and having fun and he was slumped against the back of a tree. He was used to it by now, he had gone through all of high school like this. After Colin had graduated he had no one. The students had set up their yearbooks on the table and were signing each other's, writing long notes and whispering to one another their ideas for the summer before they were off to school again in other cities.

Jonny hadn’t bothered with a yearbook; he thought they were boring and he tended to lose them anyway. At first his mother was furious about this, but he eventually stopped telling her when they were coming out and she soon forgot about them.

Colin found him a few moments later and sat down next to him, handing him a cigarette, which the boy took thankfully, Colin lighting it for him and waving to a girl who recognized him.

“This is it, Jon. The last day you’ll ever have to see their ugly faces again,” he smiled and the boy laughed, coughing a little and sending out a puff of grey smoke. He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his gown and poked his cap with the tip of his shoe.

“It is kind of scary,” he admitted. “I’m used to their insults, being picked on by them. I’ve got whole new people to worry about, with new insults and new jokes on my behalf.”

“You don’t have to, though. You could just tell them to fuck right off, don’t let them get away with it,” Colin suggested and the boy tapped ash onto the grass before taking another drag.

“I guess,” he agreed. “It’s just so much easier to let them have their fun, though. Once you get in the way of it, they start to get physical.”

Colin shrugged. He couldn’t really argue with that. The football bounced off the tree over their heads and landed next to Jonny. He picked the ball up and waited for the owner to come by, a stocky boy with brown hair. He stopped a few feet away from him and held out his hands.

“Ball?” he said.

“Jonas Johnston,” Colin beamed up at the boy. “I haven’t seen you forever. You’ve lost weight.”

“Er –”

“You’re face still looks like it was run over by a transport truck, though.”

“Colin!” Jonny hissed, though only half-heartedly. He was enjoying the way the other boy’s cheeks were turning red with humiliation.

“You still wear those tight trousers, Greenwood?” he asked, face still burning. “And prance around with your fairy drama friends?”

“Why yes, yes I do. I’m wearing tights under my jeans right now, would you like to see? I know how they get your gears grinding, so to speak. Here, wait there, I’ll take my trousers off,” and he began to stand up, Jonny unable to hold back a yelp of laughter as Jonas stepped backwards, frightened.

“Hold on, then,” Colin frowned, starting to undo his belt.

“Colin, stop!” Jonny giggled. “The poor sod just wants his ball back, he doesn’t need to see what you wear under your jeans.”

“Oh,” Colin frowned, feigning disappointment. “I thought he liked what was under my jeans. That’s why he kept poking fun at them, am I right, Jonas?”

“Whatever, Greenwood. Can I have my ball back, Jon?”

Jonny blinked in confusion. Jonas had never called him by his first name before. He eyed him warily as he picked the ball off the grass and tossed it to him. The boy nodded, throwing Colin a glare and darting off into the field again towards his questioning friends.

“Twat!” Colin shouted after him, fastening his belt again and plopping back down in the grass as his brother finished his cigarette, flicking the butt away into the dirt. “He never changes. He’s going to be a cop one day, I tell you. Just so he can bully everyone else around.”

“He wants to be a professional football player,” Jonny picked a leaf up off the ground, twisting the stem between his fingers. “He’s quite good, actually. As far as I know, anyway. Isn’t Ed into football?”

“Yeah, a bit,” Colin shrugged. “He likes weed more. You should see the plant he has in his shed, Jon. It’s huge!”

Jonny grinned as his brother’s eyes lit up, elbowing him in the side playfully and standing up, brushing the dirt off his trousers and glancing out towards the field where parents were starting to find seats and students were beginning to gather around at the bottom of the stage, pulling their caps over their heads and shoving one another away from their group of friends already seated.

“I guess I should go,” Jonny mumbled. “You should probably find Mum, she’s probably chatting with one of her knitting buddies.”

“Oh,” Colin nodded, sounding disappointed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Well, see you after, Jon. Don’t trip over your gown.”

“Thanks, mate. Now that you’ve said that I’m going to,” Jonny groaned and Colin shoved him from under the tree in the direction of the stage.

There was the typical banter beforehand, teachers congratulating the students as a whole for graduating, commenting about the year, the loss of one of their teachers due to retirement. The students half-listened, teasing one another and pulling on each other’s gowns. A boy put a frog in one of the girl’s from another class’s hair and she screeched, turning around to punch him in the arm. They were told to sit still and be quiet and afterwards their giggles were turned into hush whispers, Jonny slouching back in his chair with his hands between his knees, eying the crowd thoughtfully.

That’s when he saw it, and he sat up to get a better look, to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. A tuft of sandy hair weaving in through the crowd at the very back.

Jonny’s heart thumped quickly in his chest and his eyes shot from the familiar figure to his mother and his brother, sitting close up front. Colin flashed him a grin and the middle finger while his mother waved to him, a broad grin on her lips as a woman behind her tapped her shoulder and whispered to her, his mother’s cheeks blushing and she tossed him another quick glance. Jonny rolled his eyes.

The evening dragged on slowly until finally he heard his name called and he stood from his chair, fixing his cap which had fallen over his eyes and stepping up onto the stage, being careful to avoid the hem of his gown as he walked towards the podium to receive his diploma. He looked into the crowd again, spotting his mother with her camera and, yes, way off in the back was Mr Yorke. He smiled when Jonny caught his eye and gave him a small wave, ducking his head a little and Jonny waved back as he stepped off the stage.

What he didn’t see as he was joining his fellow students at the side, their hats dangling loosely from their fingers or shoved under their arm as they unraveled their diploma, was his mother turn around in her seat to glance back at who he was waving at, the smile on her lips dissolving into a concerned frown.

---

It was early noon and Thom wasn't expecting a knock on his door until at least three hours later, so when he heard the firm knocks, he knew it wasn't Jonny and something in him felt uneasy as he placed his guitar on the couch and went to open the door.

He soon realized where the uneasy feeling came from.

Mrs Greenwood was standing behind the door, looking as if she was about to pull out some sort of a legal settlement and make Thom sign it. Thom hated signing things.

"Oh, hi, Mrs Greenwood," Mrs Greenwood didn't answer back. Thom felt like a child. "Come in, please."

Thom was already expecting to be maced or slapped across the face at this point, but instead, Mrs Greenwood just entered his house, still not saying anything. She looked around for a while, leading herself into the living room and flinching a little when Thom offered her a drink.

"No, Mr Yorke, I only came to talk to you. I think you know what about."

Thom slightly nodded, straightening the wrinkles on his shirt with his thumb.

"Did Jonny talk to you?"

Mrs Greenwood frowned at the mentioning of her son by Thom, but then her expression changed, it became strong and determined, as if only listening to Thom mouthing her son's name made her feel that what she was doing was the right thing.

"No, actually he did not, he doesn't talk to me much these days."

"Oh." Thom started to get the impression this wasn't going to be lovely.

"I assume he doesn't feel the need to talk to me, now that he has a new friend." She lifted her head and stared right into Thom's for the effect. It worked.

"I uhm, I guess you're referring to me..." Thom was becoming really nervous now, his fingers fidgeting with a loose string in his trousers.

Jonny's mum was pacing around the room now, it made Thom dizzy.

"Look," She stopped in her tracks just when she was right above where Thom was sitting, "I don't know you, and I do believe that most of what people are saying about you is rubbish."

Thom was just looking up at her, almost waiting for her to send him to the corner to think about what he had done.

"But let me just say it as clearly as I can: I don't want you near my son anymore."

Thom cleared his throat. Then he rose from his sit. Then he realized Mrs Greenwood was taller than him.

"And why is that, Mrs Greenwood?"

"Well first of all, I don't trust a man your age who lives in a neighborhood like this one all by himself."

Thom rolled his eyes and sighed. He should have seen that one coming.

"And second of all, it's just...Wrong...it's not natural. Jonny is not a normal kid, he's always been quite the loner and this isn't helping! He should be making friends with people his own age!"

Thom snapped. He was standing really close to Mrs Greenwood now, their noses nearly touching but Mrs Greenwood didn't step back, she just glared at Thom. Jonny had her eyes.

Thom spoke slowly and evenly, even though he could hear little cracking sounds inside him as his composer was starting to collapse.

"Your son is mature enough to make his own decisions, Mrs Greenwood, and you could have known that by yourself if you had only tried to get to know him a little better. I think you should leave it up to him, who he's making friends with, because in case you haven't noticed, he's no longer the little kid who used to come home from kindergarten with strange looking paintings."

Mrs Greenwood slapped Thom across the face. He fucking knew it.

"Who the hell do you think you are?!" Her voice was loud and shaky and Thom didn't rub his cheek even though he really wanted to.

"I could ask you the same thing!"

"As long as Jonny is still a minor you will stay away from him and god help me if you don't, cause there will be consequences for this twisted little relationship!"

Thom nearly lost his nerves at that, "What do you mean by..."

"And I don't only mean you, Mr Yorke, I mean Jonny as well. I'm not stupid, I know there are two sides to every coin, that's why I came to you first. You can stop this now and no one will get hurt."

For the first time in a very long time, Thom had nothing to say. Not that he could if he had, his mouth was too dry and his vision too blurred to speak anyway.

"I hope we understand each other. Now if you'll excuse me."

And as the door clicked close, Thom just kept standing there, staring at the corner and thinking about what he had done.

---

Jonny knocked on the window for a third time, trying to see through the crack in the curtains. There was a television on, something that looked oddly like the weather showing, and Thom’s battered acoustic is sitting propped against his old couch. But there was no sign of Thom anywhere, and Jonny thought it was very unusual for him to leave the television on when he wasn’t in the room.

Perhaps he was on the phone, he thought. Though he had no idea of who he would be calling. He never really mentioned his family or any friends he had back home, a fact that made Jonny both sad and elated at the same time. Sad, because he realized how lonely Thom must have felt, and greedily elated to know that Thom was his, and his alone. That all his attention and friendship was focused on the boy and spared for nobody else.

He gave up after a few more moments and climbed off the front porch, making his way across the yard and back into his own house, kicking off his shoes and frowning in thought. It had been a few days since he and Thom had spoken, or even seen each other. The only time Jonny had seen him outside he was with Colin and Ed and he had given Thom a small wave and a smile, but the older man had simply turned his back to him and walked into his garage, shutting the door behind him. Jonny didn’t blame him, though. He was with his brother and his brother’s friend, perhaps Thom thought it was best to pretend he couldn’t see them. After all, Jonny had mentioned, more than once or twice, that Colin was uneasy Thom living right next door to them.

He still listened closely for the sounds of Thom playing piano, the light summer breeze pulling the noise from his open living room window into Jonny’s bedroom and the boy would sigh, contended as he read a page of his book or wrote his own music down on a pad of paper. He still sat himself on his bedroom floor, directly under his window with his acoustic in his hands and played at the same time Thom was.

Sometimes, it was the songs they played together, other times, it was Thom’s own work. Once, it was one of Jonny’s own creations and he felt a warm blush creep into his cheeks and had to put down his own instrument so he could listen, heart beating against the walls of his ribcage at the thought of the older man playing one of his songs. The thought that he even remembered. The sound of something he wrote coming from someone else made him ache with longing to be over at his neighbor’s house, but again and again he crept over only to return home a few minutes later, frustrated and confused.

At first he thought he might have done something wrong, said something wrong. Maybe he was annoying Thom with his almost constant visits. Maybe he was too high-strung, too immature, too bratty, as everyone put it. He wouldn’t doubt it. It wasn’t the first time he had lost a friend because of any of these things. Most kids his age found him annoying, and they were far more immature than him. He couldn’t even imagine what a full-grown man would feel like in his presence. He spent the days thinking about it bitterly, blaming himself for the way Thom was acting, telling himself he was stupid and needed to grow up. He was almost an adult now, he needed to clear his mind of useless, teenaged junk and start thinking clearly for once.

Soon, though, those thoughts turned and Jonny felt that he deserved better. He couldn’t come up with one reason as to why the older man wouldn’t speak with him, he hadn’t done anything to receive this treatment from him. It was during this time that he shut his bedroom window so the sounds of music wouldn’t filter in through his screen. He listened to his own music instead of the mix CDs Thom sometimes made him, though after a day or two he gave up on this, simply because he liked them far too much. He still tried to ignore the thoughts that came with them, though. Of Thom laughing at some silly story he had to tell, eyes shining in the sunlight leaking in from the open curtains, goofy grin on his lips.

The image of his neighbor doing simple, everyday things while Jonny was there was enough to make him fidget nervously in his seat during breakfast, thinking about how Thom would be pouring himself a cup of coffee right about now, hair wet and sticking up from his shower, smelling of soap and shampoo and that delicious sweet chocolate scent that seemed to cling to him relentlessly. Thom sipping loudly from his mug with the cartoon mouse on it, reading out articles from the newspaper, his voice still heavily coated with sleep in a way that made the boy have to pull his legs up under his chin to hide the growing bulge in his jeans. He took these thoughts to bed with him, breathing heavily in the dark of his room and stuffing his fist into his mouth, biting down onto it to smother his moans as he came hard into his own hand, hips jerking roughly under the summer blanket.

Jonny wasn’t getting any sleep, and the fact that he and Thom hadn’t spoken in what felt like ages wasn’t helping the situation any.

He felt he needed Thom, needed to hear his voice and feel his eyes on him as he played with the piano in his living room or strummed his guitar absentmindedly. He needed his presence, to hear his laugh and to watch the way he would dance around his house to whichever record he had put on. He needed Thom to fall asleep. He was his addiction, his drug; and now he was going through withdrawal.

He felt a little silly, thinking this to himself. Despite that, it didn’t make it any less truthful. Now he was fed up, now he felt he deserved an explanation as to why Thom had been ignoring him for the past few weeks, why Thom had been avoiding him and not answering his door. Jonny waited well into the night when he could still see that there were lights on in Thom’s house but his mother had long since fallen asleep. Colin was out and about with his friends, which meant Jonny could easily sneak out of his room and across the lawn like he had so many times before without being noticed.

He thought to himself about what he would say when Thom opened the door on him. He would hold it open if he had to, in case the older man tried to shut it on him. He couldn’t see Thom doing that - but then again, he never thought Thom would outright ignore his existence. Especially after they had been so close and had spent hours talking and playing music they way they had. He spat bitterly in the grass as he made his way across Thom’s lawn and to his front porch, knocking on the door louder than he meant to.

Thom appeared in the front window a few seconds later, frowning at the sight of the boy on his doorstep.

“We need to talk,” Jonny said loudly and Thom hesitated before disappearing again. Jonny could hear his footsteps approach the door and finally it opened, revealing his tired-looking neighbor.

“You shouldn’t be here, Jonny,” Thom said quietly. Jonny ignored him and pushed past him into the front hallway. With a sigh, Thom shut the door behind him and turned to face him, sadness and annoyance painted on his features.

“So, what gives?” Jonny asked, folding his arms and leaning against the wall. “You’ve been avoiding me. You won’t answer your door.”

“I’ve been…busy,” Thom muttered. Jonny smirked.

“Bull.”

Thom ran a hand through his hair self-consciously, “Look, Jon –”

“No, you look,” Jonny stepped forward and pointed a finger in his face. “I want the truth, Thom. I have done nothing to deserve this treatment from you. If I’m annoying you, you need to tell me and not avoid me like you’ve been doing. If you don’t want anything to do with me anymore, if I’ve done something to upset you –”

“You haven’t,” Thom said sharply. “Jon. Christ. It’s your mother.”

Jonny blinked and stepped back, confused, “What about my mother?”

“She - I don’t know. She doesn’t want you over here anymore. She told me to stay away from you, Jonny. If I don’t listen to her, I don’t know what she’d do. She might call the cops on me, or something. That’s the last thing I need. Do you understand? This isn’t normal, you and me. It isn’t normal for a boy your age to be friends with a man my age.”

“I am not a boy, Thom. I’ll be eighteen in November,” Jonny snapped angrily. “I can make my own decisions.”

“Obviously she thinks otherwise,” Thom’s shoulders dropped in defeat. “I’m sorry, Jonny. I really am. I like you, I really do. I enjoy your company, I think you’re brilliant.”

“...But?”

Thom sighed, his eyes looking down at his feet, “But, I don’t think you should come here anymore.”

Jonny nodded angrily, feeling tears stinging at his eyes and he wiped them away with the palm of his hand. “I thought you were different, you know. You treated me like I was an adult, an equal. You treated me like I was your friend and not just some dumb kid who lives next door.”

Thom moved to pull Jonny into a hug. The boy fought against him but Thom’s hold was demanding for control, and soon Jonny softened into his embrace, burying his head against his shoulder and sniffling.

“You’re not just some dumb kid who lives next-door, Jonny. You are my friend, but unfortunately your mother doesn’t feel the same way.”

“I don’t care what she thinks,” Jonny whimpered, pressing his forehead against Thom’s neck. “It’s none of her bloody business.”

Thom laughed a little sadly at this, his hands running up Jonny’s back, trying to comfort him. The boy stopped shaking in his arms and let out a soft sigh, running his nose along Thom’s t-shirt, taking in his scent.

“You smell good,” he muttered against the fabric. Thom blushed.

“Um. Thanks...”

Jonny tightened his grip on the slender waist and Thom pulled away gently, trying to break their contact as carefully as he could. When he looked down dark brown eyes where staring back up at him, still wet from tears. Something in Jonny dissolved, a small wall was torn down that divided his usual shy self from something new, something he wasn’t used to and before he knew exactly what he was doing he was closing his eyes and leaning back into Thom, soft lips brushing against his chin before he felt hands shove him away nervously.

“Jonny,” Thom said sternly. “What are you doing?”

“You said you had a boyfriend before, right?” Jonny asked. “So why can’t I kiss you?”

“Just because I had a boyfriend in the past doesn’t mean I’m interested.”

That hurt. Jonny felt something in his stomach boil uneasily and he glared.

“That’s not it at all, isn’t it? You’re scared, that’s why. You’re scared to kiss me. You want to, but you won’t because you’re scared. Of my mother, of all people!” And he started to laugh. Thom shook his head angrily.

“Get over yourself, it’s not going to happen.”

“And why the hell not?” Jonny’s voice rose loudly and Thom looked ready to hit him, but the boy didn’t back down.

“You’re too young, that’s why!”

Something snapped, and Jonny shouted angrily, “I am not, stop treating me like a fucking child!”

“I’ll stop treating you like one when you stop acting like one!”

Jonny laughed sarcastically, “Oh, that’s real good, Thom. I haven’t heard that one before.”

“Have you even been in a relationship before, Jonny?” Thom asked suddenly. “Do you even know what you’re trying to get yourself into? It’s not just picking flowers and passing sappy love-notes and holding hands under the desk in class, hoping the teacher won’t notice. There’s more to it than that. A lot more.”

“What?” Jonny snorted. “You think I don’t know about sex? I know about sex, Thom. Thank you very fucking much.”

Thom laughed harshly, “I’m sure you do.”

Jonny visibly started to shake in anger, “You don’t believe me?”

“Not really,” Thom arched his eyebrows. “You still seem like a silly little virgin to me.”

“Well you know what, Thomas?” Jonny stepped forward so they were almost nose to nose, eyes locking together in a challenge. “You’re wrong. That’s right, stupid baby Jonny has had sex before. What do you think about that, old man? I let some boy in my music class bend me over a table in the backroom at school and fuck the hell out of me. Your silly little virgin friend isn’t a virgin after all, so don’t give me bullshit about being too young.”

Thom’s breath was very warm on his face, he noticed. Very warm and very quick. He decided to press his luck a little more and grinned menacingly.

“And you know what I was thinking the whole time?”

Thom said nothing and Jonny leaned forward so his lips were against Thom’s ear and he whispered, “There’s no way in hell your cock could ever feel this good.”

That was all it took for Thom snap, to grab a hold of him and slam him against the wall, teeth baring in a snarl and whatever was left of his nails digging into Jonny’s shoulders to hold him firmly in place. He could feel the heat radiating off of the older body through his clothes, feel Thom’s stomach moving quickly with each breath against his own. He should be scared, he thought, at the manic look that had come into Thom’s eyes, the way he was trying to press him harder into the wall, as if he was trying to push him right through it. Oddly enough, he wasn't, and he barely moved a muscle under Thom's intense gaze.

“Get out of my house,” he growled through his teeth, even and calculated. “I don’t need little whores like you wasting my time.”

And with that he threw himself away from the boy and stomped up the stairs to his bedroom, slamming his door behind him so hard Jonny could feel the vibrations on the wall against his back. Without thinking twice he burst through the front door and ran home, tears refusing to come until he was locked safely in his own bedroom with his back against his door and his head in his hands.

Chapter Five, Part One

A week had passed since the argument and Thom found himself shut away in his bedroom in misery, writing down new music in his notebook only to scratch it out roughly with his pen and fling the book away from him in frustration. He would twiddle with his guitar for a few moments, get bored and move onto something else, creeping downstairs into the living room where his paints had been set up for days, cracked and dry in old vegan yogurt containers, his paintbrushes ruined from sitting in the water for so long. He pulled them out of the glass and left them on a paper towel on his table to go wash up his things, thinking he’d search the attic afterwards for some new ones. There had to be another pack up there, one someone had bought him for Christmas yet he never opened.

He was beginning to realize now that his actions in the past couple of weeks may have been wrong after all. Inviting a young teenaged boy into his house, unaccompanied by a parent to talk was not looked upon as being friendly. Taking Jonny out to a gig and to dinner is even worse, especially since he paid for it. Back when he was younger that was considered…well, a date. And while the thought of taking Jonny out on a real date was not a displeasing one (other than the fact that it would be incredibly frowned upon), that was not what he intended at all. He knew Jonny was lonely, he could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice and the way he talked about school and his family, and Thom wanted to do something nice for him. Yes, Thom enjoyed his company just as much, but…

He wasn’t quite expecting this, even if there was a knot in his stomach telling him that he may not have been expecting it, but hoping for it was a completely different matter.

He tossed the left over paint containers into the sink and turned on the water, blocking the drain with a stopper and pouring dishwashing soap into the sink as it filled up, staring out his kitchen window in thought.

It was ridiculous. He should be allowed to be friends with Jonny, and the boy had been right. He was frightened of Mrs Greenwood. He didn’t know what the woman was capable of and he definitely didn’t want the rest of the neighborhood – or worse – involved. He hadn’t done anything wrong, though. Talking was not a crime, taking a lonely boy out for some fun was not a crime, either. And now he was feeling guilty, like he had been too hard on him for pushing him away and sending him out of his house. He was barely seventeen himself when he was in his first relationship, and back then he had absolutely no idea what he had gotten himself into. But he had made it out alive, didn’t he? Alive and smarter from it, if anything.

Now Jonny was gone. He stomped past Thom’s house some mornings, alone. Or in the afternoon, usually accompanied by his brother and his brother’s friend. He never gave the house a glance.

Thom yelped when the water became too hot and pulled his hand away quickly, turning it off and frowning to the bubbly water in the sink.

He had been stupid, whether it was inviting the boy in that first time, or pushing him away when he tried to kiss him, he didn’t know. Jonny wanted him. Him. Even after some teenaged boy had his way with him, and he could be out and about with someone his own age, someone who wouldn’t want the restraints of a relationship and would just want to have fun, yet still Jonny came back to Thom. Thom, who had tried so hard to open up to the boy, to take him in as a friend, someone who he could relate to, only to push him away.

He scrubbed one of the paint containers angrily, feeling a wave of sour emotion come over him, causing him to drop the container back in the sink and shake his head angrily at himself. Turning back on his heels he grabbed the tea towel off the kitchen table to dry his hands, tossing it behind him as he slunk out of the kitchen and up the stairs to his bedroom, flopping face-down onto his bed and burying his head into his pillow miserably.

---

Jonny was sulking. Colin watched from the other end of the couch as his brother pouted more than usual, his fingers sliding up the neck of his guitar and his hair hanging into his eyes. He blew it away angrily and cursed under his breath, letting the instrument drop to the floor with a thud that made Colin clench his eyes closed.

“Fuck this,” Jonny muttered, pulling his knees closer to his chest and leaning against the arm of the couch, shaking his head and turning his attention towards the television screen. Ed flipped channels aimlessly on the chair beside them, nibbling on his bottom lip and frowning in concentration.

“You said you had all the good movie channels, Coz,” he said after a moment. “I can’t find anything – Oh, wait. What’s this?”

Colin’s eyes darted away from his brother to soak up the glow of the screen where two men were standing in an empty parking lot under a dim yellow light, both of them drunk. One was telling the other to hit him as hard as he could.

“Seen it,” Jonny mumbled. “Three times.”

“Seen it,” Ed mimicked his voice and Jonny punched him in the arm. Colin laughed and tossed a pillow in his friend’s direction.

“Oi, the lot of you! Stop beating on me, I haven’t seen this before.”

“You missed the beginning of the movie anyway,” Jonny ran his hands over his face and plucked his guitar off the floor again, positioning his hands over the strings and letting out a sigh as he attempted finger-picking once more. He gave up a few minutes after, choosing a new swear word to utter under his breath as Ed nibbled on the corner of the remote, eyes glued to the screen. Colin was flipping through a magazine he found on the coffee table, uninterested in what was going on around him.

“Haven’t seen that Yorke guy for a while,” Ed announced shortly after. “Isn’t he usually out in his yard?”

“Yeah,” Colin said “Mum said she had a little talk with him. Apparently Jon here was hanging out with him when he wasn’t allowed.”

“Fuck that,” Jonny spat. “I can do whatever I want. He was just helping me with guitar, is all.”

“Doesn’t he like…have skunks for pets?” Ed asked. Jonny arched an eyebrow.

“What?”

“My friend Becky said he’s got pet skunks, you take the stinker thing out of them and they’re like cats,” Ed explained. He blushed when the two brothers fixed him with a questioning gaze. “Well, I guess not. Must just be another rumor.”

“Yeah, must,” Jonny mumbled. “Besides, Mum doesn’t have to worry about me going over there anymore, anyway.”

“What happened?” Colin tossed the magazine back onto the table, turning his attention towards his brother. Ed nibbled on the remote again.

“Nothing,” Jonny shrugged. “He’s just…nothing. I don’t know. He’s weird, yeah. Anyway, I’m going to go practice in my room,” and he grabbed his guitar off the floor, nodding to the two of them before taking the stairs two at a time to the upper landing. Colin glanced at Ed, who shrugged his shoulders.

Jonny was trying to avoid going near his bedroom window, trying to avoid glancing down at his neighbor’s yard to see if he was there, picking up more fallen leaves for a collage or sitting under his tree with his acoustic in his hands. He had kept his window closed since Thom had shooed him out of his house and his room was stuffy and over-heated, only succeeding in making him feel all the more miserable.

He hadn’t been able to come up with his own music for quite some time, everything in his head rotating around that bloody, four-lettered name. Everything was from him. His songs and his notes and his music, Jonny just took them and manipulated them into something more, something bigger and, as Thom had put it – better.

With a sigh he let his guitar rest against the end of his bed and flopped down onto the mattress, staring straight ahead towards his cluttered desk with its computer and his tank of fish swimming idly. He put his arm under his pillow and rested his chin on it, letting his mind wander off.

Maybe Thom was right. Maybe he was too young, too immature to really understand what he’s getting himself into. But he knew, somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach, that this wasn’t one-sided. The older man wanted this just as much as Jonny did, he could see it in his eyes when he looked at him and his smile when they were sitting on the living room floor together, writing down music and tossing jokes towards one another. He could hear it in his laugh and see it in the way he nibbled on his lip or ran his fingers along his morning stubble when he poured himself a cup of coffee.

Or maybe, Jonny thought bitterly, maybe he was just imagining it. Maybe he was wrong, maybe Thom wanted nothing to do with him and had been looking for an excuse the whole time to get him out of his house. Jonny should be out with kids his own age, hanging out in front of the corner store and skateboarding and fishing. Instead he sat under trees reading books or watched nature channels and old movies on television back in his living room.

Maybe instead of sitting under his bedroom to listen to those sounds he heard coming in from the next house, he should have turned on his heels and walked out of his bedroom.

---

Thom contemplated lying in bed all afternoon, not being able to figure out what the point was exactly to getting up in the first place.

He remembered the newspapers piling up on his porch, and the garbage that needed to be taken out, and his hedges that needed trimming and his grass needed watering and –
He rolled over with a groan, pulling the blanket over his head and closing his eyes again. Bed sounded better than any of that. Much, much better.

---

It was thundering one afternoon, and Jonny stretched out on the couch, watching Ed and his brother try to beat one another at a videogame.

Colin was losing, and how. He made funny faces at the screen whenever his character fell off the screen and lost a life. Jonny sighed, and tried not to think about what the man next door was doing at this moment. He imagined he would be going about his normal activities - painting and listening to his records and watching stupid movies.

But he didn’t care about that. Of course not.

Finally, Colin won and pointed a finger at Ed, shouting “Ha!” triumphantly.

---

Even though he knew all along it was going to happen at some point, Thom was still surprised when it did. It just happened too fast, sooner than he thought it would and now it was inevitable. He had to take a shower, shave, get dressed, and leave the house to get some supplies.

When the tea ran out, he started drinking hot water with mint he had growing in his back yard and when he ran out of fresh food he just settled for French beans from a tin. But the breaking point came, to his own surprise, when he ran out of toothpaste.

Thom never quite saw himself as the type who wouldn’t manage to survive without toothpaste, but after two days without it he decided enough was enough- he needs a supermarket, the sooner the better.

He almost forgot what he looked like under the one and a half week beard that was decorating his face and with a clean shirt on. He snorted at his own figure staring back at him from the bathroom mirror and went downstairs to find his shoes, another concept of which he was starting to forget.

It took him nearly forever to actually find his car keys that hid in the pocket of his jacket. The jacket he wore that night when he and Jonny spent the evening out together, almost a lifetime ago. Thom snatched the keys with a hateful motion, fucking keys, just when he was managing to keep Jonny away from his thoughts for more than five minutes they have to appear in that pocket and ruin everything.

But that’s how it was those days really, when everything Thom did or tried doing depended on whether he could do it without the image of a dark haired boy in his mind. Because with this image came the guilt, the notion that he was nothing but a little coward and mostly the ugly jealousy that was so misplaced and wrong that Thom was unable to function whenever it flooded him.

That’s why he was trying not to think about it most of the time. That’s why he only left his house when he really had to, because outside of his house were slender boys with long fingers and a slight lisp that drove him out of his twisted mind.

That’s why he was being almost paranoid now when he finally stepped inside of his car, looking around him for a hint of Jonny, trying hard to be transparent, not to leave any footprints behind him.

It was going well, it really was going well for about 40 seconds, until he had to hit the brakes- producing a loud screech from the old tires of his battered car. He wasn’t really sure what made him stop because obviously there was no one at Jonny’s bedroom window. Or was there?

Thom narrowed his eyes. It was nearly dark now and his tired eyes kept sending contradicting signals to his mind- Yes, there’s someone at the window! No! There’s no one there!

He decided after a while that it didn’t really matter anyway and that if he was going to lose his mind completely he might as well just wait until he had some toothpaste and a can of beer to ease the pain.

Walking through the neon aisles of the supermarket was never really an easy thing for Thom and the only thing he really wanted was to get out of this air-conditioned home for the brands. He was just scanning through the tea shelves when something distracted him, a sound of laughter. A bunch of teenaged boys, casually standing and chatting near the beer shelves caught his eye for some reason, and it made him sick to the stomach when he realized why.

It was because it could have been each and every one of them. He could have been looking right now at the little lifeless bastard who bent Jonny over a desk and fucked him, it could have been one of those ugly fuckers who got to touch Jonny in a way that Thom never would, who got to be inside Jonny, who got to—

“Excuse me, sir?”

Thom blinked and realized he was blocking the access to the entire aisle with his cart. An old lady was standing right near him, frowning at him as he cleared the way to let her through. He had to push the thoughts away, he had to block them, he was in a public place for fuck’s sake.

He could do this, he just had to stay focused on the little grocery list that was crumpled between his fingers.

Cereals.

They didn’t have the kind that he liked. What were the odds of that anyway? There were about three thousand different kinds there, but not the one that he liked.

Pasta.

There was a sale on those, two plus two. But he only needed one.

Bananas.

The bananas looked black and tired.

Cheese.

“You should check the expiration date on those!”

“What?”

“Check the expiration date at the back, you don’t want to get expired cheese no do you?”

It was the same lady from the tea aisle and she was nodding at him knowingly. Thom just placed the cheese back on the cooled shelve and pushed his cart away from there.

Beer.

Jonny was too young for beer.

Toothpaste.

Yes, for the love of god, he just had to get the bloody toothpaste and get the hell out of this place. But he couldn’t, cause they were standing right there, keeping Thom’s toothpaste as prisoner. Those kids from before.

They were still laughing, what were they laughing about? Maybe they were laughing at Jonny’s weird old friend who couldn’t even handle it when Jonny’s mummy came to threaten him, who gave a shite about what other people thought. Maybe they found the fact that Thom was jealous at something he could never have funny, or the fact that he couldn’t even function anymore with the lack of Jonny’s presence in his life.

Maybe they were making fun of Jonny, of his complete vulnerability and the way he opened himself up to a complete stranger until it all exploded in his face. About how he trusted a man that in return just ran away with his tail between his legs, about—

“Sir?”

Oh god no, not that lady again, that was fucking it. Thom just deserted his almost empty cart and rushed out of the supermarket, away from those mocking kids, away from the harassing old lady, away from his toothpaste…

But is seemed like he had no where to hide, they were everywhere, snot-nosed laughing teenaged boys, near the cigarette vending machine, in the parking lot, near his car, everywhere they were and they were all mocking him, it could have been each and every one of them.
Thom nearly slammed his car door on his own foot. He didn’t even bother fastening his seat belt; he just shaking handedly inserted the key into the ignition slot and hit the pedals, nearly knocking over a cart that was in his way.

He was heaving, cold sweat on his forehead and flashing images in his eyes-

Of Jonny’s parted lips half pressed onto that desk, his heavy moans leaving a trail of dampness over the wooden surface, his hair falling over his eyes and his nails digging into the wood as he was being penetrated by some kid, almost a stranger to him.

That was the moment Thom decided it would be better if he stopped at the side of the road for a moment to relax, that was the moment he focused his eyes on the road and noticed two wide paralyzed eyes of some creature, a rabbit maybe, staring at him, his headlights reflecting back from them in the general darkness of the road.

That was the moment Thom flinched and turned the wheel sharply, leading his car to the side of the road and into an old tree, leaving a trace of old tires on the road behind him.

And that was the moment everything finally became very quiet and very still.

Chapter Five, Part Two

Thom's car was missing. Not for a very long time, but long enough that Jonny would notice it.

At first, he tried ignoring it, pushing it into the back of his mind, filling his thoughts with things that really mattered, like what he'll have for breakfast or where he left his favorite sweatshirt.

But it kept sneaking into the usual stream of his thoughts until he began worrying, he was worried and it only made him angrier, 'cause Thom didn't deserve to be worried about. He didn't deserve any mention at all in Jonny's thoughts for that matter.

And yet - he was there. Jonny tried telling himself that he probably just left, just took what he could and stuffed it into a bag and left like the coward that he was. But Jonny knew that wasn't true, not only because he knew Thom would never just desert his guitar, which was still visible through the front window of Thom's house, leaning against the same wall it has been laid against a couple of days ago, but because he just had a feeling.

Jonny never quite believed in those kind of things, feelings or hunches that came out of nowhere and indicated that something bad was about to happen. He heard about them from other people and read about them in books, but he never really had them, so he figured it was just another thing that people liked telling themselves, just like superstitions or religion.

But there it was - a bad feeling that settled somewhere in between his lungs and his stomach, making it hard for him to breathe, waking him up late at night from a deep sleep, not allowing him to concentrate on anything for more than five minutes.

It was still there three days after the car had disappeared, and he heard knocks on his bedroom door, slowly lifting his head from the book he was blankly staring at.

"Yeah?"

Colin stepped inside, his face twisting. "Jesus fuck Jon! Will you open a window? I can't breathe in here!"

Jonny just rolled his eyes, "Or you can just sod off instead."

"Alright, I just thought you might wanna know that your new friend is at the hospital, in case you were wondering where he was. And don't give me that look because I know you were, I've been seeing you looking out the window every three minutes."

Jonny stared.

"Well anyway, a friend of Ed's new girlfriend said she saw him there yesterday. I hate her."

Jonny just kept staring.

"I mean, Ed's new girlfriend, she's a bitch. I think she's been telling him some nasty things about me, could you believe it? Who the fuck does she think she is, coming in like that and--"

"Colin!"

"Hmm?" Colin almost looked surprised to see his little brother emerging back into life.

"What hospital?" Jonny felt the blood being drained from his face and into that place where the feeling was still dwelling.

"I don't know."

"Did...Did she say anything else?"

"Aren't you supposed to be staying away from him?" A little curious smile crept over Colin's face.
"I did! I...I am! Look, just...I'm in the middle of this book so...Could you please just..." And he was directing Colin out of his room with his eyes, feeling the need to digest that new piece of information by himself.

Colin just kept standing there for a moment, raising his eyebrows and frowning. "Fine, whatever."

Now that he was alone, Jonny didn't really know what to think. So he threw the book aside and reached for his shoes.

---

Thom's room had two beds in it, two iron nightstands and two windows. But the bed next to Thom's was empty and the windows were open, letting the light from outside shed into the room and make it a little less, well, sad.

Jonny didn't enter the room right away, he just stood there by the little window for a while, feeling a little stone rising through his throat as he watched the man inside the room looking through the window, a little white hospital wristband on his left wrist and some purple bruises near his right temple.

Jonny took a deep breath and opened the door, trying not to think about how the nurse's eyes lightened up when he asked for Thom, "Yes, yes, Mr Yorke of course, finally he has a visitor! Did you bring him his toothbrush?"

Instead he just walked inside the room, waiting for the man under the thin hospital blanket to notice him. He had to clear his throat because Thom was too drawn inside his own thought to even realize someone else was in the room with him.

Thom turned his head and Jonny could finally see all of the scratches and bruises on his pale skin.

"Fuck!"

"Hi, Jon," Thom smiled faintly. "How are you?"

Jonny gasped. "I'm, alright..."

"Good, I'm glad to hear, I was just thinking about you."

"Really?"

"Yes. I thought about that time we both got completely nauseous from red licorice, remember that?"

"Yes." Jonny tried smiling. "I'm never having red licorice again."

Thom giggled, the stitches on his forehead gleaming in the sunlight. "So...How did you find me?"

"Were you hiding?" Jonny sat at the only chair in the room, placed next to Thom's bed. "'Cause if you were, you were doing one hell of a crappy job."

"Oh, well, I was gonna use my alias name when I checked in here but I was sort of...out of it so, I guess they just took my real name off my wallet. Bastards." He was still smiling but Jonny shifted in his seat before speaking in a low voice -

"You were...How...What...Thom."

"Hmm?"

"I'm sorry," Jonny's voice was almost impossible to hear now.

"I'm sorry, too. Very much."

That little stone started rising up Jonny's throat again.

"How long have you been here?"

"I don't even know. Doesn't matter...Jonny..."

"Four days..." Jonny sobbed after a moment of silence.

"What?"

"Four days you've been here. With no toothbrush..."

"Oh, who told you that? I do have one, the hospital gave me...Jonny, please..."

"I'm sorry."

"Come on...Come here."

Jonny slowly rose from his seat, hesitating a little before he sat on the hospital bed and let Thom wrap his arms around him. Thom didn't even smell like Thom.

Thom had holes in his wrists.

Thom was whispering in his ear. "I'm so sorry...You never deserved it..."

"I know..." Jonny rubbed his eyes against Thom's shoulder, drying his tears against the unfamiliar fabric of the hospital shirt. The warmth of Thom's skin was glowing against him as they hugged and Jonny sighed, trying to memorize that feeling in his head.

Thom pulled away gently and Jonny went back to his seat, for a moment they just stared at each other, looking for all the little things that changed over the time they hadn't seen each other.

"So anyway, what the fuck happened to you?" Jonny laughed all of a sudden, tears still drying on his cheeks, causing the older man to throw his head back in laughter.

"I...I think I...Sort of...Hyperventilated. Uhm, while driving..." Thom still smiled as he said that, rubbing his tired eyes. "I drove into a tree, pretty slowly actually, but I got a pretty bad concussion because I wasn't wearing my seat belt. How very typical."

Jonny frowned.

Thom lowered his eyes and his voice. "Well, yeah, I don't recommend that. I feel pretty fucking stupid right now."

The room was silent for a moment, Jonny opening his mouth to speak and regretting, Thom staring at his hospital wristband.

"I was thinking about you," he said all of a sudden, surprising even himself. "When I...crashed..."

Jonny blushed and then paled. "What...What do you mean?"

"Well the...This situation we were in...It got to me Jon, real bad. I was utterly miserable since our fight, since I...kicked you out of my house like that. And I deserved every second of it."

"Well you didn't deserve this!" Jonny snapped, feeling he might start crying again unless he calmed down.

"It wasn't your fault, Jonny," Thom smiled soothingly at him, making his heart race for a whole different reason. "I just really care about you, you mean a lot, I don't know... It's funny..."

"What's funny?" Jonny felt himself blushing again.

"You and me, we're funny." Thom smiled again, and Jonny's body tingled with suppressed excitement.

He looked up at the ceiling and then back at Thom, the absurdity of seeing him so still for so long biting through his confused mind.

"I guess we are."

---

The next time Jonny showed up in Thom's hospital room, Thom's cheeks already had their familiar rosy shade back.

"What's that?" He asked before even greeting Jonny, his eyes not moving from the little bag in Jonny's hand.

"Well aren't we curious?"

"Come on, what is it?" Thom sounded like child and Jonny couldn't help but smile in satisfaction. He threw the bag at Thom's bed and took his seat near it while Thom enthusiastically tore the bag open.

"Red licorice?" Thom laughed.

Jonny smiled and rounded the other side of the bed, pulling open the curtains to let in the afternoon sunlight as Thom rummaged through the paper, pulling out a string of candy and popping it into his mouth, practically purring as he chewed.

“This is so much better than hospital food,” he swallowed and offered Jonny a piece. The boy shook his head and pulled his guitar from over his shoulders, sitting down on the chair and leaning forward to inspect Thom’s cuts.

“Are they getting better?” he asked after a moment of silence, save for the rustle of the paper bag and Thom ripping off pieces of the candy with his teeth.

"Oh, well, I guess. Thank god my car was so old it didn't even have an airbag, the doctor said that might have saved my life." Thom replayed between chews, his teeth struggling with the candy.

"Oh, how come?" Jonny wondered, reaching his hand to the paper bag only to have it clapped away.

"You said you were never having any of this ever again!" Thom giggled, a little smile of content on his lips. "And if you're not wearing any seat belt, an airbag can be a pretty bad idea."

"Well, I lied!" Jonny frowned, still eying the bag. Thom eyed him curiously, still clutching the bag close to his chest away from teenaged fingers. He nodded towards the boy’s guitar with a wicked grin.

“Play something, and then maybe I’ll let you have a piece.”

“Er,” Jonny blushed.

“Oh, come on Jon. I know you didn’t bring that here just to look at it, so go on and play me something. Play something you’ve been working on while…er, while we were apart, I guess.”

The boy fidgeted nervously in his seat, pulling his guitar from its case and nibbling on his bottom lip, avoiding Thom’s eyes. “I haven’t really worked on anything.”

"Oh." Thom paused, staring into space for a second. "Well too bad..." He added after regaining his composure. "Cause that licorice is pretty good, one of the best I had during my entire life, and let me tell you one thing, Jon-Jon," He leaned forward in his bed and narrowed his eyes. "I've had quite a few."

Jonny snickered and placed his hand on the neck of his guitar, stroking it thoughtfully. "What wouldn't I do for candy?" He sighed before diving into a melody that was partly his and partly Thom's.

He kept his eyes on the frets, trying to avoid the gaze of the man in the hospital bed, but after a couple of minutes he realized it was probably just distracting him a lot more not to look, so he did. He regretted it the moment he raised his head to meet a pair of uneven blue eyes practically burning a hole through him. Jonny swallowed thickly as his fingers stumbled over a note, producing a sour noise that made him physically grimace and for Thom smile, eyes lighting up in amusement.

“Sorry,” Jonny mumbled and Thom shook his head.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “Keep going.”

So he did, closing his eyes to avoid looking up again into the searing blue gaze that was now fixed on him stubbornly. Thom watched his fingers move, watched the boy nod his head gently in time with the song, dark hair brushing over the strings of the guitar when he bent down too low. When the song was finished he hesitated a moment before looking up, thankful that Thom’s gaze had softened slightly into something warm rather than hard and intense.

“Lovely,” the man said after a moment. He offered the bag of candy to Jonny and he took a piece, unable to hold back his grin.

“I wrote words for that song, you know,” Thom said after a moment of watching the boy nibble on the red licorice.

"Oh?" Jonny raised his eyebrows curiously. "Can I hear them?"

"Uhm," Thom hesitated. "You can see them." He opened up the little iron drawer near his bed and took out a white notepad with the hospital's logo in it. "Had to flirt with the nurse to get that." He grinned and flipped through the pages. "There."

Jonny stared at Thom's fetched hand, offering him the notepad and shook his head.

"No way Yorke, you're going to sing that to me."

Thom started protesting but Jonny was already halfway through the intro so he had nothing to do but sigh and rub his lips, looking down at his own handwriting. Then he opened his mouth and sang for the first time in weeks, surprised to find that he still could.

“There's nothing more dull then talking about yourself, but what I meant to say, I'm sorry that I lost control...I'm in a lull."

Their eyes met and this time Thom’s cheeks reddened in a blush and Jonny smiled sheepishly to him, letting his hands fall away from the instrument to rest on his lap.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“I’m rubbish,” Thom played with the hospital blanket, avoiding the boy’s gaze and Jonny shook his head.

“Nothing you could do would ever be considered ‘rubbish’, Thom,” Jonny said quietly, searching the older face. Thom looked up, his blush deepening and he cleared his throat, reaching for the bag of candy. He took a piece out and ripped it in half, handing one piece to Jonny and keeping the other for himself.

“I think we’ve earned it.”

Chapter Five, Part Three

---

Thom was back. His car was still missing from the front of his house, and his lawn was still overgrown and had patches of dying grass in certain spots. There were newspapers pushed to the side on his porch, old and forgotten. But still, to him the neighborhood seemed to let out the breath it had been holding and things were starting to feel normal again.

Normal – hah. Everything but Jonny felt normal.

He had been excited when Thom told him he was going home, excited to have his friend back. But now that Thom was home, things felt oddly different. Jonny had a twisted, nervous feeling in his gut he didn’t quite understand why was there. He had opened his bedroom window again, thankful for the summer breeze despite finding the view it offered distracting. He would often steal glances to see if there was any change to Thom’s yard – anything that might show he was in fact back home instead of still lying bruised in a hospital bed, even though he knew otherwise.

He wanted so badly to go over and talk to him, to see him and be with him again. But at the same time he didn’t want to pester him, he wanted to give him time to rest and think about things.

Things like Jonny trying to kiss him before this whole mess started. That was the biggest reason he was avoiding going over there now. He wasn’t quite sure if he’d be able to handle a rejection from Thom. He wasn’t even sure how to go around getting to that point in the first place, he knew if he tried he would end up stumbling over his words and feeling embarrassed and probably running away, back to the safety of his own bedroom.

It wasn’t until a few days later when he was sitting at his computer trying to find instructions on how to fix an alarm clock when he heard the sound of a piano filtering into his room on a breeze. Thom was playing something he never heard before, something soft and heartbreakingly beautiful.

Quickly, he got off his chair and made his way to the open window, pushing apart the curtains to lean against the wooden sill, poking his head out into the evening sunlight for a better listen. There was a dog barking off in the distance, and a group of young children playing street hockey down the road, but he could still hear a quiet voice singing along.

“Let you out. Led you back. Stay on. Sit down. Let it fall.”

And that was all the encouragement he needed.

---

Pulling a gum wrapper from his pocket and spitting out his piece, Jonny crumbled it up and tossed it into the rubbish bin Thom kept on his front porch. It landed in the mix of cigarette butts and rolling papers and odd bits of garbage that landed on his grass in a windy day. Smoothing down the front of his jeans, he reached up and knocked on the door, heart thumping quickly in his chest. Jonny hadn’t seen Thom for over a week, he wasn’t even sure if Thom wanted to see him. It was a risk he was willing – a risk he needed to take. The next minute of waiting there on the front porch was torture; it seemed like years had passed before he heard the piano stop playing and footsteps approaching. There was a click and the front door swung open to reveal a tired, yet happy looking Thom.

“Jonny,” he smiled. “I was wondering when you were going to stop by.”

He felt his heart sink. Thom had been waiting for him.

“Sorry, I just – trying to get things ready for college, and my mum and everything. And I wanted to let you rest, you need it.”

Thom gave a light laugh, opening the door wider in invitation for the boy to come inside. “It’s alright, Jon. Don’t worry about it. This place has been a mess, anyway. I wouldn’t want you to see it like that.”

“I don’t mind,” he said quietly, kicking off his sneakers as Thom shut the door behind him. They stood for a moment in a tense silence, eyes wandering over each other and darting to the floor when they met in a strong gaze of blue on brown until Thom gestured towards the kitchen.

“Erm. Do you want a tea, or something?”

“I’m fine, thanks. How are you feeling?”

Thom shrugged, “I’m fine. My neck is a bit stiff, but other than that everything seems to be working correctly.”

“Oh, well. That’s good. Um, I actually came here to talk to you. About…what happened,” Jonny explained. “Before your accident.”

He noticed Thom pale at this, and his eyes darted away from Jonny’s to look into the living room. “Oh. Uh, alright. We can sit down in here then, I guess.”

The two sat down on opposite ends of the couch, Jonny’s knees pulled up to his chest and his back resting against the arm rest, Thom leaning at an angle with one of the pillows lodged under his arm. He nibbled nervously on his fingernails, eyes on the boy as he waited for whatever was coming.

“I – er, I just…wanted to apologize, really. For the way I acted,” Jonny said sheepishly, playing with a hole in the knee of his jeans. Such typical, teenaged jeans, thought Thom. “You deserve so much better than some bratty kid for a friend.”

He laughed at this, the sound vibrating off the walls. Jonny smiled, despite himself. The man’s laugh always made butterflies flutter in his stomach, no matter how angry or sad or scared he was.

“I won’t deny you’re a brat, Jon,” he grinned. “But you’re wrong about me deserving better. I feel spoiled, to tell you the truth. You coming to visit me in the hospital, I can never tell you how much that means to me. You’re nothing like anyone I’ve ever met in my life.”

Jonny frowned, pulling away a loose thread from his knee and letting it float down to the carpet. “Is that a bad thing?’

“Definitely not,” Thom assured him. “And you don’t need to apologize. You were right, you know. You are almost an adult now; you can make decisions for yourself. If you want to be friends with someone almost twice your age, that’s up to you. Fuck what everyone else thinks.”

And at this teenaged cheeks blushed, his legs unfolding from their spot against his chest and stretching out across the cushions. Thom eyed him, going back to nibbling on his fingers as the boy fidgeted at the other end of the couch.

“I feel silly,” he admitted.

“Why?”

“Because I tried to kiss you,” he said hurriedly. “I mean, I don’t understand how you can even have me here in the same room with you. I wouldn’t be able to look at me after that.”

Thom frowned, “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Jon. It’s alright.”

“You’re not upset?” he asked. The older man stopped nibbling and thought for a moment. A very long moment.

“No,” he said finally. “I’m not upset - and it won’t affect our friendship, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Jonny’s blush deepened at this and he shifted again in his spot.

“That’s the thing, though,” he said, moving a bit closer. Thom lost his voice when a hand landed on his leg, the heat of the palm managing to dig its way through the fabric of his trousers and stretch against his skin. He cleared his throat.

“Er, what’s the thing?”

Jonny was moving up his body, the old couch squeaking beneath them as he crept slowly and finally stopped, legs planted firmly on either side of Thom’s waist and hands running up the front of his t-shirt, feeling his stomach move with each breath. Thom swallowed hard, pushing himself back, trying to get away.

“Jonny,” he stammered. "I told you, I -”

“I don’t want to be friends, Thom,” the boy whispered, and without warning he dove, hands against broad shoulders to hold him down and lips pressing surprisingly gentle against Thom’s, waiting for him to either shove him away or kiss him back. After a few seconds of waiting, barely moving, he felt a small hand slide up into his hair and pull him closer, mouth opening under his, pulling a moan from his throat.

Almost as quickly as it started, Thom pulled back, hands pushing Jonny away from him.

“No,” he shook his head. “I can’t do this, I can’t. Your mother, everyone. It’s wrong. I told you I wouldn't, I can't. Remember? You're too...”

Jonny ignored him, pulling at the hem of his t-shirt and ducking down to kiss the skin along Thom’s jaw line.

He can stutter and half-heartedly push him away all he wants, the boy thought, no matter how many times Thom tried to convince Jonny that he didn't want him his eyes were always betraying him and revealing the truth. Jonny realized that in the hospital. Realized that what he was seeing behind the electric shade of blue wasn't the kind of love one kept for a friend, and he bit gently on a spot against Thom's neck. The body beneath his tensed at the contact but made no other move to get him away, and had he not been so distracted with the sharp breaths coming from open lips near his ear he would have laughed at the fact that he was right.

Soon they were at each other hungrily, lips and teeth and tongues and teenaged boy rocking his hips roughly against Thom's, panting against soft flesh and fingers dragging down his chest.

“Upstairs. Now,” Thom gasped, moving to get off the couch. Jonny didn’t need to be told twice, he scrambled onto his feet and was instantly pulled away from the living room, the two of them rushing up the stairs and bursting through the bedroom door, teenaged boy pinning an older man to the wall and biting at his neck, hair messed from small hands running through it and a combination of the summer’s heat and their energy causing bits of it to cling to their faces, dark strands caught between eager mouths as they landed on the bed.

The way Jonny shook under his hands as he removed his clothing, first the thin t-shirt over his head and off the side of the mattress, second his belt then unfastening the buttons on his jeans, skin quivering underneath barely-there fingertips made something - a hint, a realization, a combination of both, snap in the back of Thom’s mind. He pushed it down and continued on, lips finding lips and breath mingling.

He could inhale him, breathe him in. Smoke him up and get high off the fumes. Lips turning red, swollen and bruised from kissing, from teeth biting. Jonny's long thin fingers trailing up under Thom's “Kill All Artists” shirt, tracing the bones in his spine and releasing goose bumps over his skin. Teenaged boy's jeans and boxers fell to the hardwood floor of the bedroom and, gently, Thom leaned him back into the sheets to look at him for the first time, blushing at Jonny's obvious nervousness.

He hadn’t clued in yet.

Even when he unzipped his own trousers, pushing them down his legs and finally off completely, when he glanced at the boy in his bed who ducked his head when their eyes met, he didn't clue in. He parted teenaged legs and settled between them, kissing teenaged cheekbones and pulling open a drawer from the nightstand, teenaged boy nibbling on his bottom lip as he watched.

Teenaged boy flinching when he felt gelled fingers brush against him and into him, then out and gone except for a hint of knuckles against the inside of his thigh as Thom prepared himself.

Jonny shook lightly against him when he kissed him again, his lips, letting his tongue slip past teeth to coax the other out as he positioned himself. Teenaged boy moaned, quiet and reserved, barrier not yet broken and Thom devoted himself to tearing it down with a thrust of his hips, causing Jonny to cry out loudly in shock, to pull away, fingers digging into his shoulders.

Thom looked down and noticed a tear cling helplessly to dark eyelashes before slipping down a pale cheek, leaving a trail behind itself. He moved again and the boy jerked, whimpering and clenching his eyes closed tight.

And that was when Thom realized Jonny lied to him. There never was anybody else. He lied, for whatever reason Thom didn't know for sure, but had a pretty good idea as to why Jonny would do such a thing. Jonny had wanted to hurt him, make him jealous. Get a reaction out of him – and it worked. Now, he thought he should slow down, maybe. And he did, looking down at the boy shaking in a wreck of nerves and pain, eyes still closed despite all movements being stopped.

"Jonny," he whispered. Dark eyes fluttered open and he smiled, a little sadly. Understanding, Jonny began to sob openly.

"I'm sorry," he sniffled. "I just - I don't know."

"You should have said something."

"I know," another tear. Thom wiped it away with his thumb and pressed another kiss to his lips, body moving over the teenaged body again, slower and more careful this time. Jonny only sighed, allowing his eyes to shut again as he felt soft hands move gently over his stomach and chest, lips landing against his neck and stubble scratching at his skin. That was all he needed to fuel him, the feeling of baby bird hair brushing against his ear and tangling through his fingers, the feeling of teeth biting gently brought him back to all those nights he spent alone in his room, eyes closed and hand moving quickly in his boxers as he thought about this. Exactly this, the feel of this other man’s body against his own.

Except now it was real, now it was really happening and he didn't have to imagine anymore.

He groaned, arching his back and using his hands against Thom’s hips to pull him harder into him. He felt his name being whispered against his skin in a soft, a shaking breath and his hands danced over the body rocking atop of his.

“Are you okay?” Thom asked him, his words coming out broken and strained.

“N-no,” Jonny whimpered. Thom went to stop and he shook his head, “No, don’t stop. I need…fuck…need you to go harder.”

“Are you –”

“Yes, Christ! Please, just…”

“Okay,” Thom nodded, his cheeks burning. Teenaged boy was driving him crazy. In one swift movement he pulled Jonny’s hands away from his body, holding them above his head against his pillow with one hand, admiring the soft pale skin on his underarms as his other hand snaked between the boy’s legs, fingers trailing up the underside of his cock and wrapping around it, giving it a few experimental strokes. He flashed him a wicked grin and Jonny felt his eyes roll back and a desperate moan escape his lips.

“I should have known,” Thom whispered harshly, barely managing to get his words out as he thrust himself harder, the body below his starting to twitch and buck in time to his hips. “Kn-known that you wanted this all along.”

Jonny’s only response was a loud cry of broken syllables that bounced off the walls of Thom’s room as he came undone under a small, unrelenting hand. He fell back against the mattress, breathless and exposed and the body over his lurched forward with an answering whimper, baby-bird hair tickling the side of his neck.

They laid, unmoving, for so long that Jonny began to fall asleep, one hand resting lightly over Thom’s shoulder, the other tangled in his own hair.

“Hmmm,” Thom murmured after a long silence. He brushed his lips against Jonny’s jaw line and the boy smiled.

“What?”

“I can feel your heartbeat, you know,” Thom informed him. His hand came to rest over it. “It’s getting very faint, but I can still feel it.”

Jonny mumbled something, sleep refusing to let go of him. Thom just smiled to himself and rolled off to the side, the sheets cool underneath him.

“Can I stay here?” Jonny whispered.

“Of course,” Thom rested his chin on his folded arms, eyes wandering up the body beside his. “As long as you let me watch you sleep.”

“Okay,” Jonny agreed, snuggling closer to the warmth of naked skin and within minutes he was gone.


[part two]