Fletcher often as not did give Godber whatever it was he asked him for, for all of Godber’s many protestations about Fletcher’s cruel and indifferent treatment of him and his meanness in re sharing, or rather not sharing, his few personal, private possessions with the impudent little twerp, like they was in nursery school together or something.
He’d sigh gustily, roll his eyes, hold forth and pontificate on the entitlement of the youth of today and the lack of respect they showed to their elders and the very concept of private property—Fletcher was as at home with hypocrisy as he was in other people’s houses when they went away on holiday—but, in the end, he’d hand it over, whatever the ‘it’ du jour happened to be. Toothpaste, throat lozenges, darning wool, squares of chocolate, even unto still more luxury items like squares of soft bog roll.
Sometimes Fletcher managed to hang onto his pride hard enough to also hang on to his stuff despite the pouting and wounded Bambi-eyed expressions directed his way by his cellmate, but at least as often … whatever Godber wanted from Fletcher, he got. Once he’d put up with a little cursory huffing and puffing about it, anyway.
It was embarrassing, is what it was, to be wrapped so tightly around the cheeky begger’s little finger like that, so very vulnerable to a bit of naïve charm and a pretty face. Fletcher felt like the quintessential proverbial old fool who thought the drop-dead gorgeous girl at the bar really did like him for his personality, only this particular girl was of the variety that was mainly gorgeous behind bars rather than at them. Or at least that’s what Fletcher told himself when he was fussed to muster up the effort of denial, which, granted, was increasingly rarely at this point.
But, either way, Godber was a good-looking lad and the type who’d certainly turn heads in stir, regardless of whether he’d turn those same heads outside of it. So much so that Fletcher tried to warn him about it, discreet like. Not in a revealing way, nothing incriminating, just … let him know that he might do well to take care to take a bit less care in his appearance.
“You’re just a bit … lovely, you know what I mean?” Fletcher told Godber, carefully not looking at him while he gestured vaguely up and down the length of Godber’s body.
Godber looked down at his torso and then back up at Fletcher with a quizzical smile.
“Ta very much,” Godber said, grinning widely.
“Oh, give over, not like that,” Fletcher said irritably. “I just mean … you oughta be careful, that’s all. You’re … well, you’re the closest thing to ravishing most blokes in ‘ere will see for a while and that’s more than enough for a lot of them to at least consider putting thought to deed. And that’s not even counting the ones who’d give you the glad eye on the outside.”
“Well, that’s as may be, but I don’t see as how it’s of any relevance, like,” Godber said with a shrug. “Until lock up there wouldn’t be much time for anyone to ravish me undetected, what with all the screws milling about monitoring our every move, and then after the doors get shut it’s just you and me. And I trust that you’ll let me know if I’m getting too irresistible.”
The little bastard actually winked at him. Unbelievable. This was the thanks he got for his kindly, nay fatherly, advice to get a crap haircut and wash his armpits a bit less?
“I’ll resist you, you little toe rag!” Fletch said, pantomiming cuffing Godber around the ear in his general direction. “I tell ya, you try to help someone and where does it get you?”
“If you wanted to get somewhere with me, you only have to ask, Fletch,” Godber said, all but fluttering his eyelashes at him.
“You think you’re very funny, don’t you?”
Godber just smiled at him, twinkly eyed, and cupped his chin in one hand like a coquette. Huh. Cock was right, anyway.
“I’m going to bed,” Fletcher muttered. “Do whatever you want. Get a haircut, get a fella, but I shall be getting some rest.”
This didn’t happen to Fletcher. This sort of … situation. Not anymore, in his more mature years, now that he was no longer a callow youth with a libido that couldn’t be contained. Over his many and various spells doing porridge, Fletcher had gotten very practised at ignoring his baser instincts—while also taking care to retain the ability to, at the drop of a hat, convincingly play the part of a man who was paying very close attention to them, when the situation called for a little performative lechery over someone more suitable and skirted, but that was besides the point. Anyway, at this point in the game, he wasn’t prone to getting stupid like this over some bloke. A boy, really. A kid, all but the same age as his Ingrid.
It was partly the age difference that did it though. Not in a bad way, not how it sounded when you said it like that, but there was just something about seeing someone so sweet and innocent and unspoiled that made Fletcher want to … well, spoil him a little, honestly, so maybe it wasn’t as innocent as all that. But mostly Fletcher just wanted to protect him. Look out for him and shield him from the worst of what prison could be. Teach him how to get by, how to bide his time, and not lose himself in the process. Teach him practical vocational skills by giving him the benefit of his extensive experience in the profession of thievery and con-mannerism.
Show off to him, a bit, maybe.
It was hard not to want to—show off, that was—when Godber looked at him like the sun shone out of his backside at even the mildest of anecdotes or most minor of witticisms. It was addictive, seeing those big, smiling eyes looking over at him like he’d hung the bleeding moon in addition to having a solar-powered bunghole. Like he was somebody, not just a pudgy, middle-aged felon with next to no formal education and exactly zero prospects for an honest life, even if he’d wanted one.
And Godber did want that. An honest life. He wanted to do his porridge, get out, and be a good little boy: make something of himself. And Fletcher wanted that for him, he honestly did, for all that he’d needle him about the futility of thinking even a second O-level from the prestigious academic institution that was Slade Prison would help a working class Brummie ex-con make a clean start of it.
Fletcher wasn’t selfish enough to want it to be true that no one would give Godber the chances he deserved, for all that he felt in his bones that it almost certainly was, and it wasn’t cruelty that made him make his little jibes and comments: he was trying to protect the kid. He didn’t want the first Godber heard about the deck being stacked against him to be after he’d put all his money on the table. He wanted to tell him, so that he knew ahead of time that it were better to find some way of stealing house money and playing with that instead. That’s all he wanted to get through to the lad, not discourage him from trying at all.
Was there a small, petty part of him that wanted to keep Godber down at his level? Below it, even, since he did have seniority over him in this context, with his many more years of criminality under his belt. He’d been doing hard time in a borstal before Lennie Godber was so much as a gleam in the erstwhile Mr L. Godber Sr’s eye.
Yeah. Sure. On some low, base level he was not at all proud of, of course he wanted that. He was only human, after all. That didn’t mean he was going to try and pull the kid back down into the crab bucket with him though; he wanted better for Godber than that. Wanted better for him than Fletcher himself, come to that, so … that was that.
Fletcher had stolen a lot of beautiful things in his time that were far more valuable than whatever he’d managed to fence them for. Things that had been treasured, loved even, by the people he’d stolen them from, who’d considered them irreplaceable no matter what kind of insurance pay out they got on them. Fletcher didn’t feel bad about it though. Not really. There had been few enough beautiful things of real, material value in his life that he’d had the luxury of treasuring for their beauty alone and would have been devastated for purely sentimental reasons to have taken from him. The bare bleeding essentials would have been nice a lot of the time, frankly, never mind high-minded twaddle right up at the tippy top of Pavlov’s hierarchy of needs.
If that was Pavlov he were thinking of and not some other bugger. Dogs came into it, Fletcher was pretty sure, but the details were a bit fuzzy and he couldn’t remember what tier Mr Pavlov had put having a pet into. In his defence, this kind of fuzziness was liable to happen to even the cleverest of men when the sum total of their education had come from the school of hard knocks and whatever cobbled together patchwork of knowledge they half-remembered from the radio, or the newspaper, or one of the better classes of books, like the ones Fletcher would occasionally read when he got bored enough to try and put himself to sleep with one.
Which was yet another reason Fletcher didn’t feel too badly about the posh nobs whose objets d’art he’d ripped off and sold for fifty quid and a round of pints to get them off his hands sharpish. Those old Etonian wankers had more than he’d ever had, and ever would have, bar brain cells, so they could cry into their fifty-pound notes about it. Or go down the pub with ‘em to buy their stuff back from Fletcher, who’d give them a very competitive price.
But when he thought about taking Godber … that good-hearted, kind lad who was so, so very beautiful, even if he were more artless than artwork, impressionable rather than Impressionist, and who was so easy to covet for his beauty alone, well … that, Fletcher wouldn’t stoop to. Not that. He’d steal, he’d swindle, he’d lie, but he could not take that boy away from whatever dim hope he had of a brighter future. That was far too valuable for the likes of Norman Stanley Fletcher to steal just for the chance of gaining a fraction of its worth out of the proceeds of the theft. Fletcher was a criminal, not a villain.
Besides which … Fletcher hadn’t strayed from the straight (as it were) and narrow path for some time with regards making an indecent proposal to someone what it wasn’t decent to. Not since he’d been young enough to plausibly pass for a naïve youth who was being taken advantage of by predatory older men with wandering eyes and hands.
And, to be fair, it wasn’t as though he’d never had to fend off any unwelcome advances of that nature, so it weren’t like it was pure fiction when he’d alluded to Godber about the wisdom of being careful about looking too alluring around lecherous old perverts on the inside. But, to be even more fair, there had also certainly been not infrequent occasions when Fletcher had been a more than willing participant in some brute’s ravishment of him, where he’d played up his supposed naïvité for all it was worth to seem the more ravishable.
Fletcher would need to take his socks off to count the number of ex-, or, more realistically of the ones still living, current, cons out there who each confidently believed they’d been the first man to ever lay a hand on Fletcher’s trembling, lissom young body. And hopefully it still gave the old bastards a warm glow of accomplishment in their twilight years if they should ever happen to reminisce on it, because for Fletcher’s money they’d all given him a good first time once they’d succeeded in getting him to ‘succumb’ to their amorous overtures.
The thing was though, being the lecherous old pervert was a different proposition entirely, and not one that Fletch felt he was equal to ageing into gracefully. He’d sooner gnaw his own toes off than try it on with some unworldly lad who looked up to him and might let him at him out of loyalty than he would do it so often that he ran out of fingers to count seductions on. Or, well, ‘seductions.’
No. It was despicable to even contemplate, so he firmly locked the doors against any such idle little daydreams whenever they threatened to open again.
Not that the kid made it easy or nothing.
“I’m just saying, that’s the third slat that’s gone on that top bunk,” Godber said from below him. “If you don’t get down here, you’re gonna fall through on top of me.”
“Are you casting nasturtiums on my weight?” Fletcher asked irritably. “And if this is your way of angling for the top bunk, it’s not working, by the way.”
“Then I’d just fall down on top of you,” Godber said. “I’m not at all confident it could support a prima ballerina’s weight without breaking at this point. The whole situation is completely untenable.”
“We can sort it in the morning,” Fletcher said. “Go to sleep, Lennie.”
“Not with you hanging over me like the sword of Damocles, I’m not,” Godber said. “Just come down and sleep in the bottom bunk for one night until we can ask them to bring in a cot or something and fix the slats up above tomorrow.”
“No.”
“Well, fine then,” Godber said and, alarmingly, got out of bed.
He didn’t seem to be making moves to climb in with Fletcher though, and when Fletcher looked down over the edge of the bunk at him the kid was lying down on the bleeding floor with only his lavatory paper-thin blanket—and none of your three-ply quilted nonsense, he was talking standard issue prison tissue here—between him and the cold, hard floor.
“Godber,” Fletch said, exhausted. “Are you attempting to play on my sympathies by lying there like the little matchstick girl freezing to death and giving yourself chilblains? Because it won’t work, you know. I ain’t got no ‘eart strings to tug on. They all calcificated years ago from eating prison food.”
“You can do whatever you want,” Godber said, back turned to him. “I just don’t fancy being flattened in the middle of the night when the rest of those slats give up the ghost.”
Fletcher sighed and got out of his bunk to go and crouch down next to Godber.
“This is the behaviour of a child,” Fletcher said. “Come on, son, get back in your bed. None of this nonsense.”
“Only if you promise you won’t get back up on the top bunk,” Godber said.
“Oh, so I should sleep on the floor then, is that it?” Fletcher asked.
“No, obviously not,” Godber said, turning around to face him. “Just sleep in the bottom bunk with me for one single, solitary night and then we can get something else sorted tomorrow. Or you can sleep in the bottom bunk on your own and I’ll sleep on the floor if you really can’t cope with the awful prospect of sharing a bed with me, but however the rest of this night shakes out, it is not going to involve you getting back up there and me getting back down there. I’d sooner freeze down here all night than take me chances doing that.”
He really, truly, did not make it easy.
“All night?” Fletcher asked. “You’ll stay here all night if I have the audacity to try and sleep in my own bunk, which is absolutely not going to break any time soon, and which you would be in absolutely no danger sleeping beneath?”
“All night,” Godber repeated obstinately.
“Right, okay.” Fletcher said and winced at the twinge in his back as he stood upright again. He nudged Godber with his toe. “Come on, get up. Back to bed. You win. I’ll sleep down here with you. Not that I imagine I’ll be able to get any bleeding sleep under the circumstances.”
“Thanks, Fletch,” Godber said, smiling. “And don’t worry, I’ll be a complete gentleman. Your virtue is safe with me.”
“Oh, naff off.” Fletch huffed as he reluctantly slid into the bottom bunk and got as far toward the wall as he could manage without any of its icy surface touching his skin. “I’m in no mood for any of your guff, sunshine.”
“Okay, I’ll behave,” Godber said, climbing in after him. Fletcher tried not to swallow as he felt the mattress dip and the warm body settle beside him. “Sleep well.”
“Yeah, well, that’d be a good trick, wouldn’t it? ‘Sleep well.’ Huh. Do you reckon you’ll be able to sleep well like this, then?” Fletcher said, but when he looked over at Godber, the boy was already asleep. Fletch sighed. “Goodnight then, Lennie.”
*
He must have slept eventually though, because at some time in the middle of the night, halfway between waking and sleeping, Fletcher became aware of a shivering body next to his and reached out to pull the owner of that body closer to him, gasping a little at the bracing cold of his strange bedfellow’s skin against his when he took them into his arms. He moved his hands from their back to chafe his palms up and down their bare biceps to warm them up a bit. Warm him up a bit, actually, because it was more obviously a ‘him’ now that Fletcher was awake enough to take note of various context clues rubbing up against him as the tall, broad shouldered figure shifted in his arms and tucked his head under Fletcher’s chin.
Fletcher felt the man sigh against the base of his neck and press a firm thigh between his legs, so Fletcher obligingly slid a hand down to cup an equally firm buttock and squeezed it to reciprocate. There was another gasping little sigh that made Fletcher groan quietly to hear it, and he pressed a kiss against a smooth, unlined forehead at the same time he pressed down on the gluteus maximus he had in hand to encourage a little more friction.
“Mmm, Godber,” he said, and then his eyes flew open. “Oh. Oh God. Godber.”
Fletcher was torn between wrenching his arms away from Godber, pushing him away from him and maybe all the way out of the bunk entirely, and just doing what he was … lying there, frozen stiff with the boy still cradled against him.
Luckily, Fletcher wasn’t entirely stiff, but any chance of not incriminating himself seemed well and truly gone unless Godber was, by some miracle, still asleep and had just been making up to him in his sleep by accident while he were having a dream about an older Denise who had, perhaps, let herself go a bit.
“Don’t stop,” Godber whispered against his neck, killing any thought of Fletcher having gotten away with it dead in its tracks. “Don’t stop, Fletch, please. Touch me.”
“I … I can’t do that, Len,” Fletcher said. “I shouldn’t. You’re just … I don’t want to take advantage of you like that.”
Godber rolled Fletcher onto his back and climbed over him, caging him in with his forearms braced on either side of his head.
“I could take advantage of you if you wanted,” Godber said, quietly. “If that made it any easier, like.”
“This is a bad idea,” Fletcher said, but he still reached for Godber as he settled the welcome weight of his body down on top of him. Still opened his legs to let the boy press his narrow hips between them. “You don’t want to do this, not with me. You’re just … you’re just hard up, is all.”
“You’ve got that right,” Godber said, pressing his hips forward as he leaned down to kiss him. Fletcher didn’t resist him, but when he didn’t kiss back either, Godber pulled back a bit, looking worried. “Do you … I wouldn’t really take advantage of you, you know that, right, Fletch? I only want to do this if you really do want to and you’re just pretending you don’t to be noble, like.”
“No, I … of course I want to, you nerk,” Fletcher replied, not sure if he was more annoyed with Godber or with himself for the lapse in restraint. “I mean … look at you. You’re … my God, just look at you. You’re just … ”
“A bit lovely?”
Hovering over Fletcher, framed by moonlight, all poised muscles and heated intent in his eyes, Godber really was lovely. Entirely too lovely and now it had gotten them both into trouble, just like Fletcher told him it would.
“Yeah,” Fletcher said, shifting a little beneath him. “Something like that.”
Godber reached down to stroke Fletcher’s cheek softly as he looked into his eyes with an even softer expression.
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?” Fletcher asked, hands tentatively coming back up to slide around Godber again as he leaned down further and further into his space.
“That I adore you, Norman Stanley Fletcher,” Godber said close to his lips, before closing the gap between them. Fletcher kissed back this time—opening his mouth to gasp as Godber rocked his hips forward into his again. Godber grabbed the opportunity to take even greater advantage and slid his tongue into Fletcher’s mouth briefly, before pulling back just a little and smiling down at him. “You’re lovely. You’re so very lovely, Fletch.”
“’m not,” Fletcher replied. “You’re just saying that to have your evil way of me.”
“It’s true,” Godber insisted, and took Fletch’s hand to hold it against his chest. “You’re a proper thief, you are. Stole this and all, didn’t you?”
Something inside Fletcher broke. He tugged Godber down to kiss him first this time and wound a leg around his thigh to get Godber to grind back down against him, while he lifted his own hips to meet him halfway.
“I wanted better for you than this,” Fletcher said, his better angels still good enough to be devastated even as his base, animal nature sang out in bliss.
Fletcher had wanted better for Godber, yes, but he’d wanted him too. Wanted this: his lips pressing eagerly against his; his tall, lean frame over him; his body between his legs; his cock, hard and desperate, rubbing up against him. And worse than any of that, Fletcher had wanted his heart. He’d wanted it so badly, even though he knew he had no businesss so much as thinking he could ever deserve to be given something as precious as that.
“You did all the due diligence anyone could reasonably expect of you,” Godber said, between kisses, before taking both Fletcher’s wrists and pinning them against the mattress. “It’s hardly your fault I were unreformable, like, and couldn’t help pulling you down into disrepute with me.”
At that, Godber bucked up against Fletcher, hard, and Fletcher groaned again. Instinctively, he tried to cover his mouth with his hand to muffle it as best he could, but he couldn’t tug his wrist free in time, so he pressed his lips together firmly instead to try to limit the auditory evidence of his indiscretion that way.
“What do you want with me?” Fletcher asked. And then, lest it was taken as more modest self-effacement, or maybe play-acting at resistance, added, “Anything you want, just ask me.”
“Anything?”
“Yeah, anything,” Fletcher replied. “Whatever you want; I’ll give you anything you want.”
Godber released his wrists to lean down and kiss his neck, then dragged the tip of his nose up along Fletcher’s jaw before whispering in his ear.
“I want you,” he said. “I love you, you mean old scrote, and I want all of you.”
“W-well,” Fletcher said, trying not to conclude the evening’s entertainments prematurely as the emotional impact of those words all but ripped through his heart and, more importantly, his loins, “okay then. Don’t say I never gave you nothin’.”
Godber smiled and then kissed him again, like he was the one who’d gotten away with stealing something he shouldn’t. Like Fletcher was worth enough to risk what he could lose if he took him.
Fletcher wished he could give Godber everything he deserved. A future. An honest life. The breaks that he was hardworking and clever enough to be entitled to on merit, in a more just society.
“Say it to me romantic like,” Godber demanded, before kissing him again hotly. “Tell me you love me too.”
There wasn’t much opportunity to reply for a while, though, despite his insistence, because Godber would also insist on keeping Fletcher’s mouth otherwise occupied.
“Gordon Bennet, give you an inch and you’ll take a mile, won’t you?” Fletcher replied, once Godber had finally let up enough to let him get the words out. “But if it’ll make you happy, I do, as it happens. I didn’t mean to, but I do love you.”
In the absence of being able to give Godber what he deserved, Fletcher would have to settle for giving him what he wanted. Which, fortunately, was his to give.
“I love you, Leonard Arthur Godber,” Fletcher said. “Is that romantic enough for ya?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Godber said, ducking down to steal another quick kiss from him. “I’ll take what I can get, me.”
“You always do,” Fletcher agreed.
He reached for Godber’s hand and put it over his own heart. Godber smiled down at him again, gratitude all but leaking from every pore on his face in a way that it never had when he’d sulked over Fletcher’s supposed meanness in not giving him enough in the past. Maybe this was finally enough to satisfy him. Maybe Fletcher was enough, as improbable as that sounded.
“Are you sure, Godber?” Fletcher asked. It were only decent to give Godber one last chance to change his mind before he well and truly made his bed here, since Fletcher would be loathe to give him up once he really had him. “I’m no good, you know? You could do a lot better than the likes of me. I’m not worth it.”
“Yeah you are,” Godber said. “And no I can’t.”
“Oh, be reasonable, Len,” Fletcher said. “If you’re risking it all on someone, there are better hearts to steal. You’re a nice, young, good-looking lad with your whole life ahead of you and I’m … well, I’m damaged goods, aren’t I? Some over the hill, low-rent criminal that’s never going to change.”
“You’d better not,” Godber said, spreading his palm against Fletcher’s chest again. “I like you just as you are. And I don’t know about this damaged goods tripe. I reckon that to the right collector this battered old timepiece is priceless. Not that they’re getting it. Not if I have anything to say about it.”
“What am I going to do with you?” Fletcher sighed and put both arms around the boy again. “I tried, you know? I really did try not to lead you too badly astray. I wanted you to have a better life than this.”
“Well, I can’t say as how I have no complaints.” Godber looked around at the dingy prison cell, and then back down at Fletcher. “But, I don’t know, I feel like once this nonsense is over and done with, I’ll have done pretty well for myself in making the most of my porridge if I get you out of it.”
Fletcher said nothing for a moment, and Godber leaned down to give him another little peck, more innocent now.
“I will, won’t I?” he asked, sounding uncertain, under an all but transparent façade of bravado. “You’re my fella now, aren’t you? And … you will be … even when we’re out of here. Won’t you?”
“Yeah … I will.” Fletcher sighed, hugging him closer. “If that’s what you really want, then you’ve got me. Now and forever more, for as long as we both shall so on and so forth, et cetera, et cetera. It’s a fair cop.”
“Yeah?” Godber asked, leaning up just enough to beam down at him again. “Hey, c’mere, give us a kiss.”
And no sooner had Godber spoken than he leaned in and took it without waiting for an answer.
But that was okay, Fletcher thought as their lips met again. He usually did give Godber whatever he asked him for. This was no exception.