Deckchair


"It was so bloody sudden!" Jeremy accepted the heavy crystal tumbler and held it as steady as he could while James half-filled it with his best single malt. "One minute I'm there chatting to him about some test drive or other, the next he's half-turned to look up at me and I'm staring at him trying to remember what the hell I was talking about."

James nodded, all peaceful calm, and Jeremy, all wild eyes and tension, watched him drop into the armchair across from the sofa.

"He happens like that."

"How is that supposed to help?! Whenever I close my eyes I can see him just looking at me, all expectant, waiting for a sane comment or continuing sensible conversation, and all I can do is stare at him in that blue and white striped shirt with some terrible joke about deckchairs and German stiffs going round and round in my head."

He sank half the whiskey and winced as it burnt its way down the back of his throat. His heart was pounding worryingly hard, pulse racing, keeping pace with his brain.

"You get used to it."

That didn't help either. Shaking his head, Jeremy launched himself off the sofa cushions and over to the drinks cabinet, helping himself to a chaser.

"I can't work like this! I can't live like this! I can't... think of anything else." He gestured at the window, vaguely pointing out at where his GT was taking up most of the road, squeezing other, insignificant cars up onto the pavement. It made James' yellow Boxster look modest in comparison.

Considering taking the bottle of single malt back to the sofa, and deciding against it, Jeremy sat back down with a couple of deep breaths. "How do you deal with it?"

"I just do." James' matter-of-factness was starting to grate.

Four months ago he'd turned up at Jeremy's place having apparently driven a hell of a lot more miles than the distance between Hammersmith and the Cotswolds. He'd filled the thirsty 'S' up four times since leaving home, he'd said, and he needed a drink.

It had taken Jeremy an hour and three large glasses of Scotch to get out of James what he'd practically blurted out to most of central London this afternoon; James had found himself suddenly and inescapably attracted to their younger co-presenter. No warning, he'd muttered as Jeremy had hunted through the amassed booze for another bottle of Scotch, although he'd always been bi-sexual, he'd also always thought of Richard Hammond as a 'bit of an arse'.

Up until then not someone he'd really wanted any deeper in his life than as the mate he already was, certainly not someone he'd ever thought about waking up next to, sharing breakfast with under anything other than completely plutonic circumstances. But that evening, he'd said, he'd driven home from Dunsfold Park with a ribbon of arousal wrapped around his dick, a warm fluttering sensation in his stomach and images of Richard in that blue and white striped shirt playing in his head.

Jeremy hadn't been all that sympathetic. Richard was a bit of an arse, he'd said, and there was absolutely no excuse for acting like a fourteen year old fangirl. Besides, if it got any larger they wouldn't be able to fit the man's ego into the smaller sports cars he liked to test drive.

James' 'I told you so' voice brought him back to the here and now, and his own unexpected dilemma. "You said...."

"I know what I said," Jeremy interrupted abruptly. "I wasn't being fair. For the BBC's golden child and the angel of television, he's a fairly down-to-earth bloke."

He caught James' smile. "Bollocks! He's insane. A thrill-seeker constantly looking for the next opportunity to kill himself and between personal suicide attempts he manages to find professional ones too."

"He's made of Teflon, James. Nothing touches him, shit doesn't stick."

"But we know why, don't we? Because we feel it just as surely as the producers and the directors and the casting agencies. Hell, his own agent would get down on his knees and suck Richard's dick if he asked him to! Everything about him screams 'wanker' and then he looks at you, smiles and says 'hello' and suddenly you're the only two people in the world and he's all that matters."

Jeremy sank the second whiskey and put the glass down onto the cushion next to him, pressing his face into his hands.

"What do we do?"

"Nothing. There's nothing we can do. It gets easier, I promise. You can get back to the point where you're just happy to be his friend. In a sort of round-about way."

"You're serious?"

"I am serious. But i would recommend two things"

"What?"

"One, a mid-life crisis - good excuse to buy a very silly, very fast car and drive it very fast around the English countryside. You've obviously covered this point already, so I'll move on to two. Invest in a Scottish distillery. You'll need whiskey. Lots of it."

~

Exhausted, Jeremy kicked off his shoes in the dark of the lounge and padded over to the drinks cabinet to pour himself a Scotch.

The headlights in the driveway almost blinded him through the open curtains and he watched, confused for a second, until the car turned onto the gravel in front of the house and he recognised Richard's unmistakable yellow Dino.

What the hell was he doing here? At this time of night?

Opening the door, Jeremy waited for his friend to lock the car and half-walk, half-run to the front door.

"What's up, Hamster?"

Wide, brown eyes blinked up at him in the bright spotlights, thick eyelashes clumped together with dried tears.

"Rich?"

"Jez... I've been driving all day. I need a drink, mate. And I need to tell you something."