Ben hazarded a guess and ventured blue.This was wrong, apparently, and suddenly James flinched and cried out as a disembodied hand slapped his face.If it was mocked, it was bloody realistic.But Nikolas had watched men being tortured with electric sanders and not been overly affected.One little slap wasn’t going to get him excited.
He looked over and was glad he was not the one to have hit James.He could feel anger pouring off Ben.You didn’t want to make Ben feel guilty and responsible for an innocent getting hurt; he was funny like that.Ben genuinely believed in good and evil and saw a distinction between the two.This fallacy puzzled and amused Nikolas in equal measures.
Sometimes, Nikolas wondered how Ben had become the good man he was—developed his conscience.It certainly wasn’t due to a loving, supportive childhood.Nikolas feared for him sometimes.Ben took on too much of the world’s woes, was too eager to make a difference, make things right.Better to go through life as he did—without scruples.Free of regret.
* * *
It was to Ben’s profound relief the question and answer session for the one group had taken so long that their group’s turn in the chair had to be delayed.It wasn’t that he was concerned for himself.He was worried for the doctor and his goons.There was no way Nikolas would allow himself to be strapped down and hit.Cover or not, that would provoke a reaction difficult to explain away.As it was, they were hustled out of the teaching rooms to their bedrooms where they were told they had half an hour to shower and dress for a night out on the town.
There was only one shower, and they were all still in clothes they’d worn since the previous day, so there were some good-natured slanging matches and ribald teasing as they shared and made the best of the time available.Ben couldn’t help but think once more that as unconventional as the therapy appeared to be, it was working.They were a tight-knit, bonded group, and the doctors and the men in suits were now the acknowledged enemy.
It was only when he dressed in the outfit that had been selected for him from his still missing bag that he noticed his wallet was now also absent.Queuing to climb into the two minibuses driving them into town, he discovered Nikolas was in the same predicament.It seemed an odd way to start a night out.Neither he nor Nikolas had spent less than five hundred pounds on a meal and a night out for a very long time, and heading out in jeans and T-shirts with no money seemed like a blast from a past now so long ago that Ben realised just how far he’d come in the last few years.If this was part of the therapy—making him appreciate Nikolas Mikkelsen’s wealth—then it was working just fine.
* * *
Doctor Fergus appeared as the two groups were sorting themselves out for the bus.He had his clipboard with him, which never boded well.He informed them that all expenses had been covered—a tab set up behind the bar of the pub they were going to first and then another in the restaurant.They had a simple mission: to go on a date with their “new” partner and have an enjoyable evening.He handed out the lists for the buses and left.
Nikolas studied the list.He was in one group, and Ben was in the other.
Yeah.Not.
He glanced around, grabbed Lester’s arm and suggested quickly, “You want to go out with Lincoln, yes?You look as if you need some time together.”Lester appeared shocked someone could so blatantly break the rules, but Nikolas noted his surprise quickly turned to relief.He nodded.Nikolas pushed him towards the other group and grabbed Ben’s arm, dragging him into his minibus.
As soon as the other men saw what he’d done there was a silent, stealthy, furtive chaos of changing buses.Nikolas and Ben, therefore, ended up with James, John, who, being a teacher, had refused to break the rules, Samuel, and one of the threesome, who they discovered was called Mathew.It was like a Bible convention.
Nikolas was too tired to care who he went on a date with.He had Ben sitting alongside him and the prospect of some food, and that was enough.Ben, he noticed, had shaved—entirely removing the blond goatee and the black stubble.He hadn’t replaced his blue contacts either, so other than the blond hair and tattoo he was once more like the Ben Rider-Mikkelsen he woke up to every morning.Except for an air of worry and distraction, which Nikolas didn’t like marring the perfection.He nudged him.“Don’t worry,min skat, I’ll feed you as soon as I can.”
Ben gave him a derisive look but it definitely wasn’t one of his best.His concern, apparently, was for James, and as soon as the bus started to pull out of the driveway, he leant over.“Are you okay?”
James nodded, touching his face lightly.“They swore it was an accident—it was supposed to look real but the guy was new?”He turned around in his seat so he could keep his back to the driver.“But you know what?Fuck them!I came here to convince myself I wasn’t gay—you know?I thought I didn’t want to be a fucking girl, a gayboy, a cissy, a poof—any fucking thing I’ve thought about gay guys.But you guys are…fuck.Awesome.I was in that chair and they hit me?I thoughtfuck you!Shit, yeah, I’m gay, and I’m proud of it!Hit me again!”
Nikolas couldn’t see the sense of any of that—make any connection between being strapped down in a chair and hit with realising you were gay—but gave James the benefit of his road to Damascus moment.
They all fell asleep on the trip and woke when the bus stopped, not knowing where they were.Told to get out, they found themselves outside a pub in a run-down dirty street of redbrick houses with dustbins spilling rubbish onto the pavement.It didn’t seem to Nikolas like a place to start a romantic night out, but he acknowledged to himself he was probably not the best judge of romance.Both he and Ben had been in worse places, but then they’d been armed and expecting to kill someone.The driver told them he would be back in two hours to take them to the restaurant—but they had to start the evening at this pub.
Nikolas pulled Ben to one side as the others chatted unconcerned, watching the bus depart.“Are you getting a…what’s that word you used?Hinky?Yes, hinky feeling about all of this?”
Ben was clearly too tired and hungry to bother with thinking and pulled away.
Nikolas frowned and tapped Ben’s head with his knuckles to wake him up.“Do you get the impression another agenda is being followed here?”
“Huh?”Ben made an agonised face.“Is this a pub?Will it have alcohol?Will it have food—even crisps and nuts, hell, even pork scratchings?I think yes.So, shut the fuck up maybe,Nigel, and go in?”
Nikolas shook his head ruefully.He knew his marching orders when he heard them.“I’m not even going to ask what a pork scratching is.”He dutifully followed Ben inside.
* * *
Nikolas didn’t have to be ex-Special Forces to confirm something “hinky” was indeed happening when they entered the pub.
It was not a place any of them would have gone voluntarily—Nikolas because he was a billionaire and now lived a life entirely insulated from this level of poverty and ignorance, a protective bubble he extended around Ben as well.He was fairly sure though that this was not a pub any openly gay man would choose to have a drink and most certainly not one where a group of gay men would choose to socialise.
It was grungy, the carpet squishy with undefined spills.It didn’t appear to have been redecorated since the obsession with brown patterned wallpaper in theseventies.The music was loud, raucous and accompanied by a large-screen TV showing a music video of a naked woman gyrating.There was a pool table and a dart board, which was mounted on the wall over a St George’s cross flag, and the bar was packed with the kind of men Nikolas had sacked off his survival course: shaved heads, tattoos, and undoubtedly stores of tinned goods stacked up against the inevitable (and welcomed) apocalypse.But they were in Burnley, according to the pub licence over the door, which Nikolas noted with interest had expired two years previous.He knew from the perspective of these men that therewasan apocalypse of sorts happening around them, and they’d banded together to survive, to see their culture live on, in a new world that didn’t want them.It didn’t make for easy comradeship with anyone who entered their territory unasked.That Doctor Atwell had planned the evening would start in this place only proved he was following a different agenda to the rest of them.But exhausted, starving, stripped of their money and therefore any ability to leave and eat elsewhere, the small group had no option but to dig in, try to blend, and wait for the bus to return and collect them.
Ben went immediately to the bar and asked about the tab, which they’d been assured had been set up in Doctor Atwell’s name.The barman gave him a sour glare and told him he’d never heard of the bloke and wouldn’t set a tab up for anyone—it wasn’t that kind of establishment.He added a muttered obscenity under his breath and went to serve one of his regulars.Ben was a few inches away from a packet of crisps.Nikolas knew from Ben’s expression that he was also a few seconds away from just taking it.He looped a finger into Ben’s belt.“Sit down.”
Ben grimaced but joined the others at the table.Nikolas had his back to the wall, his eyes scanning the rest of the room.“Does anyone have any money?”There was a universal shake of heads.Nikolas allowed his gaze to leave the patrons for a moment and flick across the faces of the five men with him.It was unfortunate in a way Mathew had been the one to attach himself to their group.Along with Samuel, he was the one most likely to give provocation to the patrons in the pub.He was wearing make-up—his nails were painted in lurid colours, and his eyelids sparkled with glitter.He was extremely attractive and knew it, showing off an impressively honed body in skin-tight clothes.Samuel was flying on something other than the atmosphere of the pub, and he was giving oddly innocent yet at the same time provocative glances to the backsides of the men playing pool.
Nikolas expected John to be his most reliable ally, other than Ben, of course, but John seemed to be having something of a Damascus moment, too.He was looking mutinously around as if daring anyone to ask him if he was gay—to which he appeared to be desperate to say yes for the first time.Nikolas had no idea about coming out—why would he?—but he was fairly sure this pub, on this night, was not a good time to experiment with your universal right to do and be whatever the hell you wanted.This was about territory, about belonging, and it was definitely not their territory and they didn’t belong.Nikolas was about to point out, therefore, all they needed to do was sit tight and wait for a couple of hours and then they could leave, when the bartender came over to their table.
