Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 03. Rayne bites off more than he can chew.
Friday, 25th June, 1999 - London
SIMON
“Shambles? Whaddaya mean, a shambles?”
Simon Hathaway had to shout in order to be heard above the sound of running water as he showered away the last vestiges of sleep. His young lover, Thom Woodford, had been reading aloud from a selection of newspaper reviews carrying varied accounts of Whipsnade’s Oxford Apollo show from two nights ago.
Now Simon pushed back the screen to peer at the lad, seeking confirmation of what he thought he had heard. Thom merely flashed a tolerant smile back at him and returned his attention to the Guardian’s Arts section.
It was good to be back in London again. It always felt good to come home after a long stretch on the road and, for Simon, London was as near to home as he came these days. Lately he had lost his lust for the open road. Three months on tour was too damned long, however much success came from the enterprise. People who had never done this kind of thing for a living always seemed to think it must be such a glamorous lifestyle, being in a band; in Milan one day, Paris the next... doing interviews for popular music shows or glossy magazines. They never stopped to think about the kind of schedule that saw you fall asleep in your seat on a rancid tour bus leaving Glasgow Barrowlands at three in the morning, just a few hours after crawling off stage from a two hour set, to wake up at dawn in Hull, freezing your balls off whilst you waited for a ferry to Rotterdam, where in just a few hours you would be required to soundcheck for another two hour set that same night; in the meantime having slotted in four or five interviews and maybe (just maybe, if you were lucky) wolfing a cardboard sandwich and a Styrofoam coffee that didn’t touch the sides of your gullet all the way down.
In the three and a half, chaotic months just past, Whipsnade had finally concluded the mixes for their third album, ‘Drowning Fields’. B-sides were laid down for the next three earmarked singles at the same time and the band recorded promotional videos for them throughout the last week of April. This involved a twelve hour round trip to Berlin for the filming of ‘Willing Mind’ and three days standing on the moors above Bodmin, in driving sleet, doing the shoot for ‘She’s Got Stars To Walk On’. Preliminary gigs for the album tour had run throughout April, worldwide, after which the band were allowed to return to London for two whole days to record a slot on ‘Later…’ and the video for ‘Animorous’.
Filming took place on the abandoned tube station at Mornington Crescent and featured a pair of black panthers and a crew of hip-hop home-boys (from Islington) who spray-painted the tunnels with Whipsnade’s band logo and subsequently got them banned en-masse from the Underground System!
Shooting done with, there quickly followed on-the-road interviews for the trade press to coincide with the single pressing of ‘Animorous’ and the release of ‘Drowning Fields’ in June. Most of these conversations took place on buses and trains en-route to Europe’s major capital cities for more promotional gigs. During the first week of May, Whipsnade even played in Bucharest and Zagreb where (and Matty was 'adamant' about this) they had a solid fan-base. It took three days to get to Bucharest from the former Yugoslavia thanks to a blow-out on the road from Sibiu, two and a half-thousand feet up in the Transylvanian Alps. Ciaran went down with food poisoning on the night of the gig, forcing one of their roadies to stand in for him, and Rayne contracted flu when the air conditioning on the coach seized on cold. Throughout the eastern-European leg of the tour, he had suffered persistent voice-loss.
Before the end of May, illness and exhaustion forced a brief return to England to recuperate. The press had a field day, photographing Rayne at Heathrow in dark glasses and a muffler, looking thin and ill, and printing stories alleging that he had come home for treatment following a Heroin overdose. It was a short halt. Less than a week later Whipsnade were on the road again, this time with a full entourage of more than fifty people and two support bands, gigging across the UK.
“’On a damp Tuesday night in Oxfordshire, Whipsnade put on a dazzling display of chaos for a frenzied fan-base who probably wouldn’t have cared if their heroes performed a set straight out of Mother Goose,’” Thom read aloud to him from the Guardian, as Simon splashed and soaped himself in the glass-panelled shower cubicle. “’Rayne Wylde’s gang of glitter-gothic troubadours are always good entertainment and, in spite of the obvious sound difficulties, managed a performance which brought a small part of Oxford, at least, to it’s knees.
“’A close tangle with the crowd left Wylde bloodied but indefatigable last night, although the set was foreshortened as a result. What remained, sadly displayed the mighty Whipsnade as former rock kings in beggars’ rags. The old songs were delivered with a rabid gusto that only Rayne Wylde can manage. Demonstratively off his face, Wylde still navigates his way around a three minute pop song like no one else. The newer numbers range from the quivering tension of the single ‘Animorous’, to the broken-hearted balladry of ‘She’s Got Stars To Walk On’, which once more illustrates the band’s unparalleled capacity for writing unlovely love songs. It is a pity that this rendition was mangled by a singer with a skull full of lysergic acid!
"'Whipsnade on form are miles better than the shambles here in Oxford last night, but right now a period of de-tox looks the order of the day for these former hopefuls of Rock’s Velvet Revolution.’”
Simon tilted his head back beneath the blast of searing water, letting the shower soothe away his tension as Thom folded the newspaper shut decisively. He had slept solidly for the last day and night, since coming home to his apartment in the shadow of Tower Bridge. Deservedly so, in his opinion. The Guardian was entitled to its view, he supposed, but still it made him angry. All media coverage did at the moment.
In Dublin, a well-publicised scuffle with some reporter from the Daily Mirror in the foyer of the band’s hotel had been blown up out of all proportion. Rayne had been pissed off about the Heroin story, true – they ‘all’ had, but the press really had it in for them this time around. The tabloids the next day were full of rubbish about Ray being too stoned to stand up on his own, totally ignoring the fact that he had decked a photographer twice as broad as he was.
Whipsnade’s drummer sighed and rubbed shampoo through his spiky, auburn hair. He supposed things would have been easier if relations between Ray and Sean Courtney had not deteriorated gravely during the Birmingham concert. Rayne had been two hours late for the sound check, and when he finally turned up he was wired and twitchy; still on come-down from the excesses of the Manchester aftershow party. The replacement tour bus had been a mess. Equipment went missing in Manchester (presumed stolen) and the sound had been fucking awful.
Oxford, a night later, had been a magnificent struggle against crushing odds. The Guardian was justified in its criticism of the sound quality but they were not to know that Whipsnade had not even soundchecked the venue. To make matters worse, the crowd had been a bolshy bunch from the word go. Even before the first band set foot on stage they were howling and throwing stuff around. Matters were not helped by the fact that Rayne seemed to be completely out of his head when he finally arrived for the show, alone and soaking wet, just half an hour before the band were due to perform. There had been a screaming row with Court during which the guitarist threatened to quit once the tour was over and Rayne told him quite bluntly that he could do what he damned well liked.
Seconds before the house lights went down, Rayne changed the set-list triggering another argument, which continued on and off throughout the gig. Admittedly, Si conceded, the alterations (if not the altercations following on from them) helped to defuse the crowd’s aggression. Rayne was undeniably wired. He stalked onto that stage like a prizefighter, determined that no one would best him. For the first five numbers there was no let up; starting with ‘Animorous’; then the hotly disputed ‘Dark Paths’ in all it’s black sexual humour and scathing fury; followed without pause by their first single, ‘Outeract’, and a savage rendition of ‘Wild Women’ from the Acid Gardens album and culminating with ‘Wrecking Machine’, the only Whipsnade single never to feature on an album and one of their biggest ever hits.
The choices were good ones, with hindsight. It gave the crowd no respite and Simon had even relaxed and begun to think that they would get away with the lousy sound quality, when Rayne began to belt out the opening lines to an old B-side, ‘Lips Round the Barrel’, accappello. Court had looked over his shoulder at the rest of the band, clearly as startled as they were by this unscheduled addition.
The crowd loved it though, bellowing along with Rayne’s notorious paean to suicide as Whipsnade picked up the musical pieces behind their frontman. Rayne seemed not to care if they were with him or not. He was balancing on the monitors at the very edge of the stage, keening like a violin string; “Lips round the barrel... rope round your neck... Throw yourself down, boy.... Put yourself down....” Then, without warning, he toppled theatrically into the first few rows of the crowd. Trailing the mic lead behind him like the smoking tail of a stricken fighter plane, he vanished into the sea of thrashing bodies below.
Court cursed an audible blue streak and massacred his precious Strat to cover for the loss of vocals. The other two followed his lead, reprising the refrain helplessly, whilst the crowd erupted like a piranha pool at feeding time and the bouncers struggled to retrieve Rayne from their midst, ripped and bloodied but far from bowed. He was missing his shoes and the buttons of his black shirt when they boosted him back onstage, with his fly buttons half unfastened, swinging the mic around his head like a weapon. Blood trickled from his lips and left ear, but it was not until much later that Simon discovered how his silver-hoop earring had been ripped out forcibly by a frenzied trophy hunter.
Oddly enough, the lobe of his ear seemed fine by the end of the night.
It had been a shock... to the reviewers as well, who commented on the singer’s battle scars with macabre glee. Simon’s concerns were more grave. Rayne had not thrown himself to the lions like that since one memorable night in Liverpool, over three years ago, when he had performed an elegant dive from the stage of the Royal Court Theatre into a packing crowd. It was the last show of that particular tour, although it had not been scheduled to end thus. A bunch of little Nazis, who had been heckling him all night, piled in and kicked seven shades of shit out of him, putting him in hospital with a broken nose and ribs and a cracked shin. Rayne claimed not to remember anything about the incident, but he never jumped from the stage again.
Not until last night in Oxford.
RAYNE
Rayne Wylde cradled his throbbing head against the heel of his hand and leaned back slowly on the cool, khaki-green wall behind his austere bunk. He had stopped shaking, finally, which was a blessed relief. Everyone who came into his tiny cell had looked at him as if he was a crazed drug-fiend. He laughed humourlessly to himself at the idea that (if they read the tabloids regularly) they probably thought he was anyway. Certainly, he had not helped his image by letting them bring him in here like this. At least now he was caged he no longer felt so nauseous.
A young WPC had brought him coffee some time ago and he had wrestled it down past the lump in his dry throat, fighting the urge to cry, as vivid images flashed through his head from the last twelve hours.
His life had deteriorated into nightmare territory since Whipsnade came back to London. In the few short hours that they had been home, Rayne had lived a horror movie lifestyle. On the road he could hide behind an intense persona, fuelled by libido and stimulants. His coke-numbed senses let him exist at the most basic, primal level, but the drug turned him into an animal, incapable of making his own measured decisions. Here, in civilised West London, where people knew him, he had to resume a mantle of normalcy, at least for appearance’s sake. He had fervently hoped that the insanity in his head would stop the minute he walked across the threshold and back into reality.
When that did not happen, he began to panic. And the pressure was building up inside him now until he wanted to scream out loud.
Back in Oxford, he had begun to believe that it was all over; Whipsnade, his life, everything. It had taken all the shreds of courage he could muster and every last milligram of coke he could ingest (and even that most routine of habits had been a struggle) to throw himself into the crowd. Memories of the vicious kicking he had taken in Liverpool resurfaced as the Oxford mob closed over him, tearing like animals at his clothing and his body. Foolishly, he let himself accept that they would end this waking nightmare for him. Of course, they did nothing of the sort.
Since four burly security men dragged him from the heaving throng, he had felt strangely empty and listless. Nothing mattered any more. If he could not die, what was the point in seeking after thrills?
Once upon a time Rayne had sincerely believed that Whipsnade was all he would ever need. Now, alone and in despair, he wondered what that dream had led him to.
Lying on the bunk in his cell, he thought back wearily to Manchester and the blond-haired boy called Danny. All of that night had been a vague blur. He remembered, distantly, that they had fucked. The kid had been a rare beauty, and an absolute dream in bed, but after the sex things had turned very strange indeed. For a while he was able to convince himself that it was the coke Danny had given him. He had known bad gear to do weird stuff to his head before, but never with such long lasting side effects.
Since Manchester, he had been unable to eat. He did not know if it was anxiety, or drug-related illness. Everything he forced down came right back up again. Even weak tea, which he loathed anyway, or the strong Italian coffee he normally adored, refused to remain in his belly for more than a minute or two. The fear was shredding him internally.
He was ravenous all the time; only, nothing satisfied the hunger gnawing at his belly. When he ate, he was sick. Once he had vomited everything back up, he found himself starving again.
The need to tell someone what was going on created a nightmare scenario of Catch-22 proportions in his head. If he opened his mouth, his own friends would brand him a lunatic. If he kept it to himself, he would likely go crazy anyhow!
After the Birmingham show, which had been a dire affair, he had lain in bed, alone, and sobbed his heart out for most of the night, without knowing why, except that he felt so utterly wretched. Not since his boyhood had he let his feelings loose like that.
Not since mum died, anyway.
He shut those thoughts out hard, digging his nails into the palms of his hands. Grimly he stared at the grey-green wall opposite and refused to cry.
Even drugs could not soothe him by the time they reached Oxford. The insides of his nose were as raw as they only ever got after prolonged bingeing. He locked himself in his hotel room and stripped naked, dropping his clothes to the floor. Throwing himself onto the bed he closed shaking fingers around his semi-hard dick and jerked off rapidly in an attempt to calm his nerves. A satisfying wank generally helped him to sleep, but he brought himself off three times before giving up on the endeavour. He was still wired and craving… ‘something’, but he did not know what. Idly, he dabbled his fingers in the cooling spunk on his chest and belly then sucked them clean. It eased the itch inside him only slightly.
He had been frantic by this stage. Fleeing the stifling atmosphere of the Whipsnade entourage’s out of town hotel, he called a cab and roamed the city alone for an afternoon. He was a dissolute, twenty-first century vagrant cast adrift in this timeless town of golden walled universities; like a modern day gypsy lost on the set of a period drama. He walked aimlessly, hardly knowing where he was for much of the time. Passing a butcher’s shop on the High Street the most appalling craving yet had come over him. He stood for an age, staring through the window at the raw steaks and cuts of liver in their bloody trays, until one of the assistants had come out onto the street to ask if he was all right.
Rayne struggled to push away the memory of what he had done next. It had sickened him then and still turned his empty stomach even now.
It had been ten years since he last ate meat. The liver was cold and raw but still bloody when he took it from the flimsy plastic bag in a shady nook by the river. By the time Rayne was done with it, the piece of flesh was dry and desiccated and the bag licked clean. He crouched, panting like an animal, by the waters’ edge for a little while afterwards, as the blood ran slowly down his gullet and settled in a cold mass on his spasming gut. Then, sickened by his own degradation, he huddled on his hands and knees and threw up until his shrunken stomach ached and he was weeping with pain and frustration. Streams of blood and bile flowed from his mouth and nostrils as he sobbed and shuddered.
During that same afternoon, he decided to drown himself. Normally cocaine kept him away from alcohol whilst the band were touring, but he could not manage even a tiny sniff of coke by this time. His nose and throat and the insides of his skull ached like they were full of ice. It was easier to inject it, but he had always been squeamish around needles, letting Matt handle the fiddly business of mainlining. A bottle of vodka became his companion during the late afternoon and, when that was empty, he lay down by the riverside again and rolled nervelessly into the water.
It was then that he recalled something else about that terrible night in the Manchester Midland Hotel. He did not need to breathe. Even under water he was utterly sentient, although he lay on the riverbed for nearly half an hour, just hoping blindly.
A couple, walking their dog by the Isis finally spotted him and raised the alarm. They fished him from the river with a boat hook and pumped his lungs until he had coughed up most of Oxfordshire’s water supply - or so it felt. By that time, he was too enervated even to cry.
What made it worse, he could sense the energy around him so very acutely. He could feel the shimmer of summer sunshine through the dappling leaves overhead and smell the verdant greenery and rising sap, and the loamy scent of the earth beneath him. The water had its own clear, slightly irony tang and the people around him were warm and pulsing with life. Rayne could hear the pounding of their earnest, anxious hearts and almost taste the salty heat of their flesh and their blood.
The hunger was so bad that he wanted to scream until the pressure in his head was gone. He longed to grab one of them and rip out his throat until the hot red life-force spilled over his face and hands. Finally, able to stumble to his feet, he had fled, not knowing what direction to take, only that he needed to get away from their concerned voices and the mingled pity and disgust in their eyes. They watched him go in silent astonishment, water still sluicing from his hair and clothing as he ran.
SIMON
Simon turned off the hot jets and ran his hands through his wet hair, surprised to discover that the memory had left him shaking slightly. It had been a shock, seeing his best friend vanish like that; sucked into the crowd and swallowed up by them as if he would never re-emerge. Recollections of Liverpool had given him palpitations until the security guys could get Rayne safely back onstage.SIMON
Simon turned off the hot jets and ran his hands through his wet hair, surprised to discover that the memory had left him shaking slightly. It had been a shock, seeing his best friend vanish like that; sucked into the crowd and swallowed up by them as if he would never re-emerge. Recollections of Liverpool had given him palpitations until the security guys could get Rayne safely back onstage.
Amazingly, Ray seemed unhurt this time, apart from the minor cuts and bruises on his lithe body and handsomely sneering face. Whipsnade slowed the furious tempo via ‘Hoodlum Lovesong’ (from the singer’s favourite album, the skewed and opulent Silver Line Park); the icy contempt of ‘Needle Tracks’, and one of their finest B-sides, (in Simon’s opinion) ‘She Cries in Her Sleep’.
By the time they played ‘She’s Got Stars...’ Rayne was flagging, coming to sink on the monitors like a wounded animal; his ribs heaving under the tatters of his shirt as he curled up by the front of the stage. His chin came to rest on the back of his hand, and his eyes closed; wooing the microphone in broken, husky tones. Dark curls were plastered flat to his head with sweat and blood and his slight body trembled as he forced out the breathless lyrics. Hands reached out from the crowd to tug and pull at him, immune to his helplessness, unheeded by the object of their desire.
Simon had realised then that Rayne was seriously hurting. If he had been able to, he would have thrown down his sticks and dragged the other man from the stage. A frantic glance into the wings located Matty Greening, poised on the edge of an amp-case, his gold-flecked, hazel eyes watching every move just as surely as Whipsnade’s drummer did. Matt checked his watch and tapped his fingers nervily against the pitted silvery flanks of the box and Si had known then that the show was in trouble.
If Simon Hathaway seemed protective of his bandmate and childhood confidante, then Matt Greening was doubly so. For almost two years before Whipsnade took off, Rayne and Matty had been so much more than just friends. They came together in Manchester when Rayne was a student there, caught up in a drug-fuelled spiral of mutual passions, which pushed everything else to the perimeters of their hedonistic young lives. Astoundingly, pure lust fired their on and off relationship for over seven heady years until the inevitable implosion came. Sheer pressure of being in each-others’ pockets night and day as Whipsnade began to ascend the dizzy heights took its predictable toll, and the fallout was spectacular and tear-drenched on both sides. Most amazingly, Simon thought now, Whipsnade survived it.
Matt was still the consummate businessman, suited and booted for his meetings with the SOLD Board. Nonetheless, he was not so far from his humble origins in Tottenham that he could not strip down to ripped jeans and a vest in order to help with the stage lighting or fix an amplifier.
Neither he nor Rayne had been involved with anyone else since, save for the occasional fling. Matt still cared about his ex though, in spite of everything Ray had put him through. Simon had seen desperation that night at the Oxford Apollo, in every line of the younger man’s creased brow; in every tensed fibre of his casually suited body. Ray had dumped him cruelly, clearly and publicly, and Simon knew that their young manager had not forgotten it, but on Tuesday night Matt Greening had eyes for no-one on stage but Rayne Wylde. Moreover, there had been genuine concern in that watchful gaze - concern for more than just a solid business investment.
When Matt started to circle the air with his right hand shortly before the closing bars of the ballad, Ciar and Simon recognised the call for a break at once. Rayne did not see it, nor did Court, who was bent low over his Strat, picking heart-stoppingly pure notes from the strings to accompany the fragility of his partner’s smoky voice. As the song faded down, so did the lights. Predictably, the crowd went crazy for more, but Matt and big Chaz Collister were already hustling Rayne off-stage. Si leapt down from the riser, just able to make out his friend’s protestations as he was helped backstage and sank down on a box with his head in his hands.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he had demanded, glancing up sharply as Simon appeared before him. “Get back out there, now!”
“Are you okay?” Simon asked him, ignoring the command implicit in his old friend’s words. “You look fucking terrible, Ray.”
Pale eyes met his own through the tangle of sweat-soaked hair. Bluntly, Rayne Wylde said; “If you don’t get back on that stage now, Hathaway, I’m looking for another fucking drummer!”
They had managed two more numbers, culminating with an ear-splittingly violent rendition of their ‘96 hit, ‘Cattlemarket’ before Rayne called a halt of his own accord. None of it seemed to matter. The Oxford crowd was won over.
“Shambles?” he murmured again now from behind the shower screen. He paused for reflection, then shook his head, knuckling water from his eyes and casting droplets all around from his close-cropped russet hair. “It wasn’t 'that' bloody bad!”
His partner of the last eighteen months tossed him a towel as he turned off the controls and stepped out of the cubicle. Thom was a slender, striking boy of twenty one, currently perched on the lip of the oval bath tub in rumpled blue jeans and a crimson chenille sweater with a scooped neckline that showed off his slim, pale neck and most of one shoulder. He was barefoot, running a nervous hand through his blond-streaked mahogany hair, the paper still spread across his knees.
Simon eyed him with weary speculation. Right now, the lad was just too tempting to be true. He cursed himself silently and towelled his hair, then rubbed himself down casually and discarded the bath-sheet.
“You should do that properly, you’ll get cold,” Thom admonished. “You know the doctors said you should take better care of yourself.”
Simon caught him in a drowning, sidelong, cobalt stare.
“It hardly matters, does it?” he said, perhaps more sharply than he had intended. “If you’re not gonna sleep with me anymore why should you worry?”
“Not fair,” the boy countered, his fine dark brows coming down in a petulant scowl. “You know how worried I am.”
His partner reached towards the hook on the back of the door and pulled on a heavy, towelling gown in deepest ultramarine, but not before he had surveyed his naked body in the slowly de-misting mirror on the wall. He still looked pretty fit, he thought. There was no sign of physical deterioration in the firm musculature of his stocky, sun-kissed frame. He was reasonably good-looking; fit; in the prime of his life. The friction of the towel had left his uncut seven inches of chunky cock semi-hard and he posed self-consciously in front of the glass for a moment.
His flesh was still lightly bronzed from that holiday in Mauritius last year - before his test results came back - in a far-off time when Thom was still willing to be fucked by him. They had spent a fortnight in bed, or in the private hot tub, or late at night on the beach, just kissing and stroking and sucking and screwing. It was the most fantastic sex of his entire life. Simon bent his head, avoiding his own resentful eyes in the mirror.
“Well... you know the answer to that as well as I do,” he said mildly.
“I can’t...” Thom choked on the words and turned his head away. “Si, you know I can’t. I’m frightened.”
“You need to know,” his boyfriend replied, turning to face him. “So do I.”
Eyes the colour of brandy, shot through with firelight, darted to meet his own. Simon shook his head at the vulnerable, ‘little-boy-lost’ stare and Thom bit his lip like a recalcitrant child. “Why?”
“Because I want to know that I haven’t given it to you,” Simon told him bluntly. “It’s bad enough...” He stopped, clearing his throat slightly. “I just want to know that you’re all right, love.”
Thom looked down at the quivering paper in his hands. A little tumble of his coffee and cream forelock fell forward over his eyes and Simon smiled, remembering how it had been a similar reaction that brought the boy to his attention in the first place. He reminded Si of Rayne at that age, although they were nothing alike in looks or temperament.
Rayne would not have sat here fighting tears because he was asked to take an HIV test. He would not have been happy, but he would have done it.
Sometimes Simon wondered why Thom even bothered to stay with him. It was not that he was ungrateful, Thom was fucking gorgeous and he had no idea how he would go about rebuilding his life after three years together if his lover walked out now. However, if he searched his own thoughts he knew that he could answer that question too.
Thom knew that Simon Hathaway was a wealthy and generous mate, and this was a beautiful apartment, overlooking the Thames, in the shadow of Tower Bridge. Moreover, Simon was an only child, with no progeny of his own and a distant relationship with his parents (at least it had been ever since he came out and told them he was queer!) Oh… Simon knew why the kid stayed, all right. Thom Woodford was well aware which side his bread was buttered.
He felt cynical, then guilty for even considering it. Guilty and sick to his stomach.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said at last, shaking his damp head. “The pills are okay. My T-cells are looking fine. Besides this place is superheated right now, I’ll be sweating by the time I get to the bedroom.”
He shook his head again, laughing softly and humourlessly.
“Those fuckin’ Guardian bastards, though...? Heh?”
Thom looked a little bit sheepish, he thought, as the kid murmured; “There’s worse, Si.”
Blue eyes met brown across the bathroom and Simon Hathaway prompted his younger lover firmly; “Well?”
“Ciaran’s been on the phone every twenty minutes for the last three hours,” Thom whispered almost tremulously. “Matt’s in A&E at St.Mary’s. They took him in this morning.”
RAYNE
Last night with Matty had been the final straw.
For a very short while, Rayne let himself believe that once he was home in his Ladbroke Grove apartment nothing could touch him. It was good to be back. Skye, still had the cats down in Sandlingford, and the place was empty and quiet. He bought several bottles of mineral water and a Chinese meal when Charley dropped him on the corner of Barlby Road, near the railway bridge, and walked all the way back to the flat to contemplate the last few days in peace.
Less than an hour later, tormented by the memories of Oxford and with the contents of his temporarily sated stomach floating in the toilet bowl, he started to despair. What if the dream he thought he had in Manchester was true? What if he genuinely ‘was’ dead?
It was too ridiculous even to consider. Rayne needed something to affirm his status as one of the living. So he telephoned Matty.
Matt Greening had come round just after seven, with a bottle of Chianti and a smile that said he was glad Rayne wanted to confide in him. Before eight they were in bed together for the first time in over five years. The sex was fantastic - as it had always been. Rayne discovered that there were benefits to this enhanced perception of his. He was able to feel when Matt was close to coming and so control their lovemaking, prolonging the experience. For nearly two hours the pleasuring worked.
Firstly in the kitchen, where he drank wine from Matty’s soft, warm mouth whilst the younger man unfastened his pants and masturbated him urgently. Then in the bedroom, where he massaged sweet, jasmine oil into Matty’s pale, silken flesh whilst his miraculous lover cooked up a tiny rock of excellent Pakistani junk by the side of the bed. Deftly the younger man shot him up with a freshly unwrapped needle whilst he lay sprawled in the soft folds of the duvet with his eyes closed tightly.
He had not used Heroin since he and Matt split up but the ever-tactical Matt ‘knew’ that it kept him hard. Rayne was aware (by the time the needle slipped under his flesh) that Matty had come here willing (even eager) to be screwed senseless by him.
The younger man stripped off completely before shooting up into one slim thigh. Watching him, Rayne wondered privately if he was still using on a regular basis. Not that it made a difference right now! He had never hesitated to share anything with Matty in all the time they had known one another. It was as if he considered their love to give them some immunity from the horrors of the real world, although he knew that was ridiculous. So far his trust had been repaid, the three tests he had taken for HIV all came back negative, which was a miracle considering his lifestyle - and Matt’s.
But as the skinny youth sank down lazily on the vast bed beside him, such grave considerations gave way to the compulsive urge to fuck him hard. Firstly, in his hot, wine-dark mouth, then up his sweet and tender arse. The Heroin, coupled with his enhanced sensory faculties, made this a curiously intense and frighteningly lucid experience. His lover’s every gasp of delight inflamed him further as he eased the younger man down onto the mattress and sank into his arms.
Drawing Matt’s long legs up above his narrow, thrusting hips, Rayne kissed him so deeply that he could taste the wine on his bed-mate’s tongue. It was the most alive he had felt since before the tour began and he threw himself into the endeavour with a vigour that made Matty cry out loud in ecstasy and agony long before he was through. This was one of the pleasures of being with a lover he knew as well as he knew himself.
There were few words between them. Rayne shifted position restlessly throughout, pushing himself upright to kneel between Matt’s long, lean thighs; then pulling sharply out of him and turning him roughly onto his belly to straddle him and plunge back into his receptive body.
Matty felt tight and wet inside, skilfully milking his lover’s thrusting cock with the muscles of his rectum as they sprawled together on the mattress. Incoherent whimpers of pleasure escaped his lips with every stab and Rayne nuzzled his hot, lanky body greedily, overwhelmed by the delicious musky scent of his skin and the coppery tang of his blood. With almost deliberate languidness, he let the pulsing slow until each slippery incursion felt like an endless caress around his tumescent prick. Matty let out a long, tremulous sigh each time he pushed himself back in and Rayne basked in the other man’s enjoyment, sliding fondling hands over his mate’s sweat-slick flesh.
He exploded with a gasp of strangled relief, after nearly two hours of incessant fucking, kneeling back on his heels. Matt was seated astride him, pushing his firm, white arse cheeks back into Rayne’s throbbing crotch; impaling himself urgently on his lover’s erection. Rayne’s arms were wrapped tightly around the lad’s skeletal, naked torso, pulling him down hard. He bucked upward, flooding his lover’s snug, superheated anus with semen, as he buried his face in Matt’s waist-length, shaggy mane. His long blond hair was the alternating colour of every kind of honey. Rayne felt so good that he could have wept. The sustained pleasure emanating from his cock and balls was angelic relief after the tension of the last few days. He could almost forget how hungry he had been feeling.
Almost.
Matty leaned back against him with his head on Rayne’s shoulder as the older man uttered a throaty growl of satisfaction and kissed his neck, loving the sweat-slicked, saline flavour of his skin. Maybe it was the junk, but Matt seemed like a ghost in his arms, almost insubstantial after the vigorous exertion of the previous two hours.
They sank, exhausted, into the rumpled, white quilt and he writhed down sinuously to take Matt’s hard, heavy sex in his mouth. The younger man loved to be sucked, and Rayne adored the feel of Matt’s long, smooth, circumcised cock in his mouth. He teased the delicate silver ring, which pierced the firm ridge of skin above his lover’s urethra, with the tip of his tongue, half-smiling as he recalled how surprised he had been the first time he went down on Matt.
At twenty-one he had never sucked a pierced knob, and the bolts and rings punched through his mate’s nipples, belly-button and cock head had both shocked and stimulated him. Sliding his hand between Matty’s legs now, he eased a probing finger deep into his mate’s thoroughly inseminated orifice, caressing the firm, glossy bud of his sensitive prostate with the skill of a master artisan. Matt writhed and called out his name repeatedly; his voice loaded with mingled passion and longing, his fingers tangling in Rayne’s sweat-damp hair.
“Ahhh Ray... Ray... yes! Like that!”
The fat, purple bell-end of his long, hard cock was as slick as wet velvet, oozing a steady stream of pre-cum onto the singer’s tongue. Rayne swirled it around Matty’s hot, swollen head, swallowing the slightly bitter fluids and kneeling back to lick his lips.
The taste was just too much for the Vampire in him to withstand.
Often, especially on Heroin, it took them a while to reach a satisfactory climax but Matt was intensely aroused by this time and Rayne had never once failed to make him come. The singer’s lips parted around his cock head once more and he began to nod his slow, seductive way down that long, hard shaft, caressing Matty with his tongue and easing another finger into his cum-filled arsehole, then a third.
“O’Yah-weh!” Matty groaned, arching his back to push his prick deeper into his lover’s mouth. “Fist me, Ray! Jesus Christ… fist me!”
Rayne’s lips stretched in a knowing smile around the jerking tool that probed the back of his throat. He did not even gag as he swallowed Matty deeper, burying his face in the younger man’s hot, clean-shaven crotch, nuzzling the hollows of his groin. He urged a fourth finger inside, stretching Matt’s sphincter slowly, then withdrew them all. Curling the sticky, glistening digits into a tight fist around his thumb, he forced it back into the skinny fellow’s well-fucked passage before the natural lube of spunk and mucus had time to dry out and lose its viscosity.
Matt Greening began to keen desperately as his lover’s left hand and forearm steadily impaled him. Rayne did not spare him, he was hungry for Matty’s cum and the blond man was soon lashing and struggling on the bed, his long fingers snarled in Rayne's dishevelled, black hair. His hands forced the singer’s mouth down harder and Rayne kept on sucking and nuzzling. His knuckles pounded Matty’s prostate gland, gathering speed and impetus as Matt bucked and screamed at him.
“OHH… JESUS! JESUS! FUCK ME! FUCK ME!”
When, finally, Matty released his hair and rammed his crotch upward into Rayne’s face, the older man’s lips parted in a soundless sigh of relief and satisfaction. The hot, spurting, satiating river of Matt’s semen rolled sweetly over his tongue and down his throat, milky and bitter in equal parts. Rayne thought he had rarely tasted anything so delicious. Only one thing would be better right now.
Keeping Matt Greening firmly impaled on his fist, Rayne let his softening prick slip from his wet lips and flop back onto Matt’s pale belly. The screen of his tangled, sweat-damp hair hid the irrepressible extension of his dog teeth and Rayne gave in to the hunger that was crippling him.
Matty protested weakly and none too seriously when Rayne began to nibble at the head of his cock, with perfect, sharp little teeth, then kissed his way down to the softer, yielding flesh of his bed-mate’s scrotum and shaved balls. The older man licked and kissed his inner thigh teasingly, still pumping him with his left hand until Matt began to get hard again. Initially, the slender youth uttered a sharp, excitable laugh; he was still glowing from the passion of their lovemaking when Rayne began to nip at his skin, then to bite more deeply.
Habit of A Lifetime Ch. 03. Rayne bites off more than he can chew.
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