5. Nick

So. How did it go? Remember to use protection!

Edo’s text arrived at the same time as Nick got home.

He had stood up on the tube the entire way home, attempting to get rid of nervous energy and adrenaline. It hadn't worked. The excess of it leaked into a permanent smile, despite the fact that Luke had rejected his advance.

Rejected it because he wanted another date, wanted to take it slow, wanted to see where this could go. Which meant he thought their relationship go go somewhere.

We're taking it slow. And it went really well. We're going out again next week.

Edo texted back with a smiley face and two hearts. The man was clearly mental. But Nick didn’t care, because he was also the reason he had met Luke, and Luke made him smile.

JT was working at the Epiphany that night, so there was nobody around to tease him for his grin and he wouldn’t be able to talk to him about this in the morning because he had to be in College by 9. He sent Eva a text, just so he could tell someone about the date.

He went to sleep with the stupid smile still on his face.

The next night, Nick headed to the Epiphany straight from College.

Edo was in early, working on something behind the bar, so Nick went up to him, sat down on a barstool and grinned at him as he was slowly provided with a pink-purple drink.

“Nicola, hermano! You’re on the bar tonight with me, right?”

There are two counters in the Epiphany, one nearer the door, where people who had just come in tended to gather, and one towards the back, next to the bodyshots room. They were at the back bar tonight,

“Nope, you get JT, I’m with Eva. What is this?” he asked, sipping the drink slowly.

Edo chuckled as he passed over a chopping board, a knife and some lemons, “It’s a Kiss Goodnight.”
“Oh, great. What would you have given Luke?”
Edo raised an eyebrow, slicing his limes, “Vodka, sweet and sour, mango and peach juices.”
It took Nick a moment, but he got there, “A Stripper’s Kiss? Gee, nice to know how you really see me…”
“You know I love you,” he said, cheekily, “but you were missed at The Epiphany last night, all the others were asking about you. JT wouldn’t give us anything.”

“That is because JT didn’t get a lot out of me other than babbling. And because I was waiting to tell you, of course.”

“Oh, Nick, I always knew I was your favourite!” Teased Edo, fishing out a lemon slice to chew on.

“Yeah, yeah. So, did Luke say anything to you?”

“Man, you're so gone for him. And it's only been one date.”

“When I ask for your opinion, you'll know. Did he tell you anything? You sent him the same text I got, I imagine.”

Edo shrugged, waving at Eva as she walked in, “I did. He said he had a good time and you're going to go on another one. He didn't let me grill him properly. Said he had to work.”

“There's not much more to say, you stalker. We had dinner, we walked, we kissed, that's it.”

“So you did kiss!” Cried Edo triumphantly.

A slow grin, “Yeah. We kissed.”
“And?”

He could almost feel his ears turn pink, “It was awesome.”

“You two are adorable.”

“Who is adorable?”
JT had arrived. Nick waited for the inevitable mockery.

“I don’t see any new bruises. What, did you decide he wasn’t worth your time?”

“Bruises?” asked Edo, lighting up at the prospect of embarrassing Nick some more, “There were bruises last time?”

“Yeah,” said JT, perching on the stool next to Nick’s and stealing a sip of his drink, “He had a massive one on his back when he got home as well as all the bites.”
Nick’s head dropped into his arms on the counter.

“They were quite impressive hickeys,” said Edo, unhelpfully, “Must have been one hell of a night.”
“None of your business,” said Nick, through the fabric of his jumper, “and please be quiet.”

“What about the big one, though, what was that?”

Nick didn’t move.

“Go on, Nick,” cajoled JT, “Tell the man what you told me.”
Edo’s eyebrows raised and Nick didn’t need to lift his head to see the betrayed expression on his face.

“You kept details from me! Muchacho, that’s just not on. How did you get the bruise?”

Nick mumbled into his arms again, “He threw me against a door.”

Edo’s hearing must have been superhuman, though, because he replied, “A door?”

Nick finally came up for air, cheeks bright, “Yeah.”

“With passion or with violence?”

“Passion! God, do you think I’d have seen him again if he was violent with me the first time?”

Edo and JT shared a look.

“No,” said Edo carefully, leaving the but there’s something of a precedent unspoken, and making a joke instead, “but a little bit of violence, as long as it’s been properly discussed beforehand, can be fun.”
“Safe, sane, consensual,” piped up Eva, walking over to the counter with a box of straws, “What are we talking about?”

Nick let his head fall back down to the counter when Edo’s wicked grin made an appearance.

Are you free tomorrow night?

Luke’s text arrived just before the house doors opened. Nick was not, unfortunately, free the next night.

I’ve got dance shifts on Fridays. You’re welcome to come along to the Epiphany though, if you feel like rescuing me at any point from busybodies who want details…

I’ll be there. Time depends on work, but yeah. Definitely.

Thursday went by, as it always did, uneventfully. Various universities had their Pride nights at the Epiphany then, which meant the crowd was divided between shy people who were there because they wanted some company and the raucous crowd that makes up most of the media’s gay stereotype, the people who got off with people indiscriminately of sex, gender or relationship status. Edo loved Thursday nights. Got more numbers on Thursdays than any other night, including the weekends, because students had less to lose and felt freer to do what they wanted, he said. Nick wasn’t sure that was quite right, but as long as everyone involved was happy (“Nicola, seriously. I’m E for ecstasy, baby, when they’re with me they definitely get happy!”), then who was he to object? Besides, he currently had absolutely no moral high ground whatsoever.

He watched Bo go over to one of the groups of shy people huddled around the bar in clumps of three or four and look at them from under lowered lashes.

She would talk them into dancing. That was their job. Dancers like them were actually quite a valuable part of the club's internal economy – apart from the bodyshots, which were actually a smaller source of income than you'd expect, generally, the encouragement onto the dance floor meant that the people drank more and had a better time, which meant they would come back.

There it was. He watched her take two girls by the hand, leading them to the dancefloor. She was their anti-shy weapon. The thing was Bo, lovely, kind, open minded, funny Bo, was a bit of a slut. Absolutely loved sex. Loved people, really, and found a way to appreciate something in everyone enough to want to sleep with them. It was somewhere between a gift and a talent, and though Nick was sometimes horrified by it, he could also appreciate it as a way to connect with people.

Her long, straight hair swayed as she walked and tossed her fringe out of her eyes and one of the girls she was holding hands with giggled. Bo was gorgeous, too, which didn’t hurt. People always felt lucky to get her attention. She appeared to be slightly airheaded, easily distracted and good at keeping things superficial, which meant people underestimated her. Where necessary she used that to her advantage.

“People-watching?” Asked Eva, reaching behind him for the grenadine.

“Bo,” he replied, smiling at the next customer, “She’s just good at what she does.”

Eva bumped her hip with his as he handed over a double Jack and coke, “Hey. She just has so much love it tends to spill out in different ways.”

“I know,” he said, making sure no one else wanted a drink just then, “I wasn’t being mean. I meant she has the confidence and social skill to deal with people.”

“You know what they say,” she shrugged, sucking on a piece of ice, “fake it ‘til you make it.”

Not bad advice, actually.

Friday and Saturday shifts were usually the busiest, with all the people who couldn’t go out during the week taking their frustrations out on the dancefloor and occasionally each other, though Tank tended to remove the brawlers pretty quick. The other type of people who took their frustrations out on each other, well. Staff tended to leave the customer toilets alone until it was time to close.

Nick had a dance shift with Bo on Fridays. Despite it generally being their biggest turnout, it was also somehow a struggle to get people out onto the dancefloor.

After helping with bar prep he and Bo went to a café to wait for house doors to open. They had half an hour after that to join the queue and pretend to be partiers. Ok, so this wasn’t technically what they were paid to do, but Linda didn’t mind that they took some creative leave. Bo liked the fact that she got to know some of the people also in the queue. Nick liked the fact that it made them easier to trust, just more people wanting to dance. It made their job easier when they weren’t recognised as employees.

They eventually got in line, after the guy who had made Bo’s latte finished flirting with her, long after they had both finished their drinks.

Bo was chatting to the people in front of them when she suddenly turned to look behind them.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said, smiling at him, “Just thought I recognised someone.”

“Oh, ok. Do you want to go and say hi? I’ll keep our spot.”
She shook her head, “No way. He was an arse. Besides, it might not even be him,” she turned around to look again, “No, I can’t see him anymore. It was probably just someone who looked like him.”

Nick was about to ask who the hell Bo would ever define as an arse when the line started moving again and the guy Bo had previously been talking to decided that now was the time to try chatting her up again. Ah well.

By the time they had got into the Epiphany and stopped to acquire drinks – non-alcoholic, of course – the DJ was just setting up.  There was some background pop, but it was too early for there to be any real dancing. Soon, though. Nick could tell Bo was itching to get going.

And there it was, the DJ was up and running, the music was good, Bo dragged him out onto the dancefloor and told him to “shake what your mama gave you” before grinding up against him.

Nick looked up in time for JT to give him a thumbs up from the bar at the back. His mohawk, red today, was tilted slightly as he watched them.

JT had a massive crush on Bo. Nick knew it was a real crush because JT hadn’t asked her out. Yeah, ok, so he’d said it was because they worked together and were friends and it “would be totally awkward, Nick, what are you even talking about, I’m getting a beer now”, but God knows that hadn’t stopped him with Maarja, Lynn or Helen.

Bo, as far as anyone could tell, wasn’t aware of JT’s crush. Nick wasn’t sure whether to hint at it or not, mainly because JT was his best friend and the fact that he just wanted JT to be happy warred with the betrayal of his trust. He was sure they would figure it out eventually. Either that or Edo would do something wildly inappropriate and make her aware of JT’s feelings.

The night always went by quite fast when they danced with people. It was the most sociable job Nick had ever had and he always felt slightly justified in spending time by himself at College because of it.

Bo went over to the bar at the back, so Nick went to the one at the entrance and waited for Edo to notice him. The clock behind the bar glowed blue, 22.17.

 “Amigo!” Edo grinned, “What can I get you?”

“I dunno,” he said, turning to the person on his right, “What can he get us?”

Edo smirked. Nick had used that trick before. The guy on his right coughed, ran his gaze up and down Nick (he could almost hear Edo thinking elevator eyes) and smiled.

“You’re cute. I’ll have a Heineken.”
“And I’ll get a refill.” Nick pushed his glass towards Edo.

“Coming right up.”
Edo had a theory about how people ordered different drinks with strangers to make some trait of theirs more apparent.

Heineken was a foreign beer, a not very good one either, thought Nick, and according to Edo’s theory it meant this guy wasn’t interested in fancy affairs but was also a little too pretentious for his own good. But that was ok, Nick had no intention of doing anything other than dancing with this guy.

“Dance with me?”

The guy smiled at him again, “Lead the way.”

About halfway through the song they were joined by one of the guy’s friends. Nick didn’t mind – more people meant there was less of a chance he would be asked out. Turning people down never got any easier.

The group just got bigger from there onwards. Bo turned up, putting an arm across his shoulders, with a group of people following, who were soon joined by friends, then friends of friends until they were all dancing in a circle and laughing at each other’s moves.

The song changed, but the beat stayed the same and they went from one big group to lots of little ones.  The guy from the bar wandered off towards the bathroom with someone in tow.

You could always tell who was here just to find someone to get off with because they slipped easy into the kind dirty dancing that was just sex with clothes on. The people who thought they had a stab at going home with their dance partners tended to keep their touches slightly less overtly sexual. Then there were the friendlies, like the guy he was dancing with now. They had come out to have fun and expected nothing more from the night.

The song changed and Bo made him switch partners with her.

He ended up back at the bar (23.09, and he was still hoping Luke would show up) refusing the advanced of a girl who just wouldn’t believe he was gay, just in time to be rescued by a stranger. Luckily, a friendly.

He danced with him and his friend for a while before Bo came to find him, telling him there was a group of shy people towards the back and they needed to get them out onto the dancefloor at once.

Bo took her mission very seriously.

Off they went, managed to get the group out amidst the people and Nick noticed one of the guys was wearing a Firefly T-shirt. So he started chatting and dancing with him and they were starting to have a friendly little dance competition when he felt Bo stiffen next to him.

He looked up to find a set of familiar, wicked eyes tracking Bo and her and her partner’s moves.

Fuck.

Richard.