Porcelain and Cigarettes

Chapter One

He tasted like porcelain and cigarettes, sinful and sweet and oh-so-fucking-perfect. He’s wrong, so wrong; Adam knows he must be wrong, because nothing right has ever, ever felt this good…nothing has ever felt this good.

Adam’s shirt is unbuttoned, pulled out of the way, and the cold tile touching his exposed skin makes him shiver in half-frightened, desperate anticipation. He murmurs ecstasy into powerful, receptive lips that crush against his words, take them prisoner, mirror them with tongue and teeth and…“Ohh…fuck.”

Hands caress every inch of him, perfect, gentle, so out of place with the sordid surroundings. Adam wishes for a second that they were somewhere else. He feels like this ought to be romantic, candlelight and roses, because he’s never felt this way, no, notabout anybody. He’s never really been in love before (if that’s even what this feeling is) but he’s beginning to think that he might just be in love now. In love with this man, this man who is classy and difficult and strange,this man who has him pinned up against the cold wall of the men’s toilets in some sweaty, inner-city Manchester club on a slightly-drunken Friday night.

Oh yeah, this is romance for you, he thinks, as Micah’s hand slips oh-so-easily under the waistband of his jeans and he moans into the pale, freckledskin of Micah’s neck. Love isn’t sunsets and beaches and breakfast sex on the four poster.

Love is porcelain and cigarettes and the way that one of Micah’s hands is tracing teasingly light patterns on his hipbone whilst the other is reaching around to behind him and pulling him even closer, pulling their hips together so that there’s not a single inch between them…

- - -

Adam watches vaguely as Micah lights a cigarette. He’s relaxing, feet kicked up on the coffee table, head back against the chair, eyes closed to better appreciate each small rush of nicotine, a curl of white-grey smoke trailing from the glowing tip of the cigarette and his mouth making a small O at the other end.

Tapping his fingers on the table and thinking – the antithesis to Micah’s tranquillity - Adam wonders if Micah knows about last night. There’s no way that he could, not logically, but every time Adam tries to think logically about the whole situation, waves of an irrational paranoia threaten to envelop him…

No; Micah doesn’t know. He doesn’t have psychic powers, after all, much as he’d like Adam to think he did (“I always know what you’re thinking, because you only ever think about one thing, boy!”) and, well, even if he did have some form of mind-reading ability, there’s absolutely no reason at all why he would be trying to get into that locked-off part of Adam’s mind.

No, he doesn’t know about last night.

He doesn’t know.

Does he?

Adam remembers.

He shivers, tries to pretend it was a shudder. After all, it wouldn’t’ve happened if he’d been sober, would it?

He’s definitely not gay. He’s not even bi.

Salford men aren’t gay, you see. They’re tough as fucking nails, and even the fact that Adam played guitar and talked funny meant he was “the school faggot” whilst he was growing up. Which he wasn’t.

Because Salford men aren’t gay. No, and they don’t find themselves lusting after their best friends – of course not. They don’t catch themselves thinking about those lips bruising their skin or those hands…

No. He is a Salford man.

Which means he can’t be gay.

“Adam?” Micah asks, exhaling smoke, opening one eye lazily and looking at him.

“Yeah?” Adam asks, feeling uncomfortably caught-red-handed guilty. His voice is too loud, too nervous, and he thinks it must be obvious, that he must have ‘I Wanked Over You’ tattooed on his forehead in permanent marker. Stupidly, he puts a hand up to his forehead to check, realising that’s he’s blushing enormously…ohGodohGodlooksomewhereelse…

But those blue-grey eyes are pinning him to the chair. Staring at him with a fifty-kilowatt diamond gaze, and fuck it, he’s scared, little-kid-stealing-sweets scared, please-don’t-tell-my-mum scared. Primal, intense. Scared.

“Alright?” Micah asks, his pronounced Salford drawl (that accent Adam has always detested, wished he’d lose) somehow strangely mesmerizing.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asks, (too fucking shrill, Adam, you idiot…)

“Because you’re shakin’ like a shittin’ dog!” Micah says, gesturing towards Adam, and Adam realises that yes, yes he’s right, Adam is shaking (the shitting dog part is debatable) and the worst thing is that Adam doesn’t know why, because it was one stupid drunken dream, one, and a small panicky half-baked fantasy in which Keira Knightley kept turning into Micah and he found himself thinking the wrong bloody name when he came…

But that doesn’t mean anything.

Micah is still looking at him expectantly and it takes a few moments for Adam to come out of his thoughts far enough to realise that he still hasn’t answered Micah’s question.

“I’m fine,” he tells him briskly. “Now, did you say you’d written a song?” – trying to steer him away from that dangerous topic of conversation.

Micah gives him a funny look, but agrees; yes, yes he has written a song, actually, he’s quite proud of it, but he hopes that Adam can help him with the chorus (if of course Adam wouldn’t mind?)…And they find a guitar, and some paper, and get to work.

It’s fun, but every now and again, as Micah bends over the guitar, his beginner’s fingers fumbling on the strings, as Adam helps him, gently adjusting his hand…as Adam sings a line a tad off-key, and Micah smiles, and sings it again, long, slender fingers tapping half-rhythms on the body of the guitar…the tension in the room becomes almost sentient, like a guitar string stretched too tight; and one of these days, with an extra twist of the tuning peg, it’ll snap, and someone will get hurt.

But living for the future is complicated, and Micah and Adam are Salford men, and Salford men like the simple life: good food, good drink, good women…Salford men live for the moment, and living for the moment is what Micah and Adam do best.

Beta needed!
I would love for someone to help me edit this. Each chapter is pre-written but needs further editing; if you think you could possibly help, or if you would like more details, e-mail me at biroandcompass (at) Thanks!