“Bash. Listen to me. It is not like the romance books, sex. It is hardly ever perfect in the beginning. You are learning a new body, and he is learning yours, with you having been previously unplundered territory. You will learn each other. These things take time, and patience, and a great deal of practice, which I know you are very good at, because you have spent your entire life practising things until they are perfect.”
Barnaby’s jaw ached from clenching. His eyes burned. He pressed his knuckles harder against his mouth and breathed through his nose until he trusted himself to speak.
“But ithurts,” he said. The word cracked open in the middle, and he hated himself for how small it made him sound.
“Vidal’s right. Early sex is often awkward, and it does get better with familiarity.” James paused. “But I’m also going to say the thing you don’t want to hear, because I love you and someone has to. Bodies have limits, Bash. And sometimes, two people can like each other enormously and still not be sexually compatible. That isn’t a failure. It’s just a fact. It doesn’t diminish what you have with him.”
The words settled over Barnaby like a cold compress on a wound. James would know. James, of all people, would know exactly how it felt to love someone whose body yours couldn’t answer. They’d been sixteen, and gentle with each other, and wholly wrong in every way that mattered between the sheets. They’d never spoken about it since. They’d never needed to.
“Will you be all right, Bash?” James asked.
Barnaby looked at the ceiling, and he thought about the common room sofa, and the Lucky Dip bowl. He thought of Lex searching the crowd between rounds, and the grin that had split his face when he found him.
“We can be friends,” he said quietly. “That’s — I can have that.” He stopped. Swallowed. “We can still be friends.”
“Yes,” James said. “You can. And that’s more than most people get, Bash. A friendship with someone who makes you laugh and feeds you terrible snacks at three in the morning; that’s worth protecting.”
“Even if the sex is a catastrophe?”
“Especially then. Because if the friendship survives the sex being a catastrophe, it’s a bloody good friendship.”
Barnaby almost smiled.
“I want you at Kensington the moment you land,” James said. His voice shifted, threading the warmth with something firmer. “That is not a request, Barnaby. That is a sovereign command. You will come to the Palace, and we will sit in the kitchen, and Mrs Finch will make scones, and you will tell me everything while I make extremely inappropriate comments about the boxer’s anatomy until you feel better. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Don’t be a prat.”
“Bash.” Vidal leaned closer to the screen. His robe had slipped further off his shoulder, and his dark eyes had lost theirmischief. He looked, for once, like someone who meant every word he was about to say. “You are my favourite Englishman. Do not tell James. Come to Cardona after London. I will feed you wine, put you in the sun, and nobody will ask you to do anything difficult for at least a week. Yes?”
Barnaby nodded. His throat was too tight to answer.
“Good,” Vidal said. “Now go and take a very hot bath. And Bash, do not, under any circumstances, attempt to ride a horse today.”
Barnaby ended the call. He set his mobile face-down on the bedside table and sat in the silence of his room. Then he got up very carefully, and went to run the bath.
Chapter Eleven
TheGucci jumpsuit was a masterpiece in Lex’s eyes. It was black. It was velvet. It had the interlocking double-G monogram printed across every square inch of fabric from collar to cuff to ankle. Lex had paid four thousand pounds for it at the Knightsbridge flagship store three days before flying to Tokyo. The sales assistant had called it “a statement.” It was exactly what he needed for today, Team GB Media Day, where looking phenomenal was the entire brief.
He made it fourteen steps down the corridor before Barnaby intercepted him.
Barnaby was leaning against the wall outside the lift in navy chinos and a white Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. His hair was combed back. His boots were polished. He looked good. Neat, put together, and effortlessly handsome. But a logo wouldn’t have killed him. A bit of colour. Something that saidI’m hereinstead ofI’m trying not to be noticed.
He looked Lex up and down. The journey took three full seconds.
“No,” Barnaby said.
“What d’you mean, no?”
“I mean no. Absolutely not. You look like a sofa in a Dubai hotel lobby.”
“This is Gucci, Barnaby.”
“I can see that. Everyone within a two-hundred-metre radius can see that. There are nine hundred Gs on your body. I’ve counted. It looks like the letter G has developed a skin condition and spread all over you.”
Lex looked down at himself. The monogram did cover a lot of surface area. In the shop, surrounded by mirrors and a sales assistant who was being paid on commission, this had felt luxurious. Under Barnaby’s gaze, in the fluorescent corridor light of the Olympic Village, it felt like he was wearing wallpaper.
