A Fine Mess, II


It was as if, while they hadn't been watching, real life had finally caught up with him, snuck up behind them and bitten each of them on the arse.

Neither Jeremy nor James said a word until the sound of a supercharged V8 under duress had faded into the distance.

"He'll kill himself one of these days."

"At least he'll die happy." Jeremy noted James' expression and apologised. "He can handle the car. He'll be fine."

Leaning back against the kitchen counter, James pushed the newspaper away from him. "This wasn't how it was supposed to happen."

Jeremy cast his eyes once more over the story in the left hand corner of page five, not wanting to ask how James had imagined it would happen. "You're both over-reacting. It's media speculation. Bollocks. The photograph's grainy and public sympathy is on our side. It's one friend stopping another from getting arrested just after he's seen their mutual friend's car wrapped around a motorway bridge! It isn't two guys having sex, which is what the bastard reporter here's suggesting. Try to look at it and imagine we're not sleeping together."

"It's not all that easy."

Moving to lean against the cupboard at James' side, Jeremy crossed his arms and ankles, staring down at the faded yellow squares on the Lino, tracing the straight lines with his big toe.

"What matters is that you're alive and well. This'll blow over. Richard will have to field some gay jokes on whatever chat show he's appearing on in the next couple of weeks - but then he's been doing that for years. No one's ever going to actually believe it for a second, and even those who do won't ever believe he's looked at me twice."

"You know they're going to be clamouring for a response. One that would be a lot more convincing if we weren't all out here shacked up in your Isle of Man retreat for the week."

"You're free to leave, James." He could hear the anger creeping into his own voice, didn't say more. James was the reason they were here, the reason they'd taken some time out together. He watched, guilty as hell, as the other man dropped his head forward and his raked long fingers through his naturally unruly hair. "Sorry."

"No. We needed this. I'm just… just scared to death of Richard deciding it isn't worth it - isn't worth the lies, the consequences. The worst thing I can imagine is losing him and if it came down to some oily creep who's accusing him of shagging you because of a photo taken at the scene of my car crash…. God, Jeremy, I'd hunt the guy down and… hang him by his pupils."

Jeremy's eyes widened, then scrunched closed. "What? Ow!"

His reaction and James' reminder brought a smile to his face at least. "A conversation Richard and I had when we spent a day in the Smartcar. We were talking about the ghosts in that forest we parked up for the night, and I was telling him about the teacher who was found hanging by his pupils."

"I see…." He nudged closer to James. "I don't know if I ever did believe you'd spent twenty-four hours in that thing."

"We did. Scouts honour."

It figured that James had been a scout. All too easy even now to imagine him in short pants with a scarf and a woggle…. "Did anything interesting happen?"

"We played to the cameras, we switched them off for hours and talked about nonsense. We had a came of Fantasy Car Garage but it wasn't as much fun without the whiskey."

"Yes. I asked if anything interesting happened."

"Well, it was very dark, and we switched the night-vision cameras off once the crew had gone off to the hotel."

"James!"

He laughed. "We zipped our sleeping bags up together, set alarms to wake us before the crew arrived back, and… had a cuddle. And a wank."

Very strange to hear words like that from James. Richard tossed them out - so to speak - without a thought, but James was almost still learning words like that from his younger lover and he didn't say them as naturally as they came out of Richard's mouth.

Reaching out, James picked up the newspaper and folded it in half, leaving the story on top. Although story seemed too grand a description for the couple of sentences the man had bothered to write.


'Just Good Friends?
Top gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond get close at the edge of the M4.
This reporter spotted the middle-aged, married men embracing at the scene of an accident involving co-presenter James May. Was all this emotion for May? Or is television's favourite angel cavorting off-screen with its infamous devil?'


"You have to admit, it's quite poetic for pond slime."

"More commonly known as journalists."

"Kate Adie's a journalist. This man's a waste of space."

Jeremy wasn't about to argue with that. "What's the bet Richard was just as upset by the reference to him as 'middle-aged' as he was about the inference that we're shagging?"

James' grin stayed on his face for a second or two before sliding off. "What are we going to do about it?"

"Nothing. I've phoned home and got the not-uncommon response, 'What article?' followed by, 'I seriously doubt Richard would give you the time of day even if he did prefer men.' Cheeky. I'm sure Richard's stopped off to phone home and will probably get exactly the same response."

"You do know, don't you, that if it came out he likes guys there would be a sudden explosion in the number of gay men on the British celebrity circuit?"

The thought made Jeremy chuckle. "David Walliams might finally come out. He couldn't keep his eyes off Richard all afternoon when he was at Dunsfold. Besides, he doesn't like guys. He just likes us."

He caught the roll of James' eyes but knew it meant as much to him. He took the paper from the long fingers, folded it the other way and dumped it in the bin beside him.

For a couple of minutes they stood side by side, shoulders pressed together.

Then Jeremy turned his head and suggested, "Do you think we should…?" He never managed to finish the sentence. James kissed him, hard and determined. It didn't take him long to respond to the persuasive pressure of a strong tongue demanding against his lips. He opened his mouth, turned his whole body and wound his arms around James' waist, as mindful of his healing injuries as he'd watched Richard being the previous night.

Bunching his hands in Jeremy's shirt, pulling his head back, James breathlessly asked Jeremy's mouth, "Do I think we should what?"

"Go back to bed?"

He tore his eyes upwards. "That wasn't what you were going to say?"

"No. I was going to say, do you think we should find Richard. But he knows his way around the island, he'll find his own way back."

James nodded, and kissed him again.

"We talked about this, a while back, but we never did it."

Jeremy curled one hand around the side of James' throat. "Well, Richard did pre-empt us."

"With one of the most incredible, most intimate moments of my entire life. Doesn't mean we satisfied what we talked about."

"No."

"Want to?"

"What if he comes back?"

"He can join in."

An offer he couldn't refuse. Strange how he very rarely encountered one that he could.

~

"Oh, please, who's going to believe that? It's stupid, Love, forget it. Are you having a good time? How's James?"

Richard wasn't sure how he felt. Sitting cross-legged on the bonnet of his 911, looking out over the raging sea, the cold wind coming off the water despite the general warmth of the day, he zipped up his fleece, pushing his arms up the wrong sleeves and wrapping his hands around his elbows.

Six months ago maybe he'd have ended it, walked away from James and Jeremy - told them it was over and he couldn't do it any more. He loved them more than he could put into words but…. But, what?

He did love them. More than he could ever tell them. More than he could ever admit to himself.

He couldn't end it because the idea of having to work with them - having to see them - having to be in the same city, the same country, the same hemisphere as them and not be able to touch, to not be held like James held him - as the greatest thing in the whole wide world, or as Jeremy held him - like he was one of the most precious things on Earth, was impossible. Inconceivable. Unthinkable.

Whatever the attraction, it was deep and it was solid. Maybe it was the idea that he could look into James' eyes and be the only one to see the love shining there - that it was for him and him alone. Or maybe it was knowing that he could rock the world of the great Jeremy Clarkson. It didn't really matter. He was in love with them both, it wasn't something he just end now.

So what did he do? Keep lying - or at least not telling the truth. Keep spending stolen nights at James' place and weekends away on shoots with them. Now his show was over he felt ridiculously freed from a prison of his own making. No more rushing back to London for four every weekday.

For this series of Top Gear, Jeremy was proposing more elaborate trips. One was already planned to Iceland for four days the following month.

They needed to do that. The last six weeks had been some of the longest of his life. Suddenly the balancing of three shooting schedules, a daily, live television show, guest appearances on chat shows and his family became more precarious than he could ever remember it being.

James had been moved from the ICU the evening following the accident; a third MRI scan confirming everything was fine. And for the remainder of the first week Richard had checked into a nearby hotel and remained at the hospital, sitting at James' bedside when he could, pacing the waiting room when he was ousted.

Jeremy had dealt with the Top Gear office, with the press and other interested parties, contacting James' family, meeting and greeting them when they visited. Richard had made himself scarce while they were around; walked the grounds or sat reading the newspapers.

On the Friday a young girl - a hit and run victim - was admitted into Intensive Care and Richard shared a few anxious cigarette breaks with her distraught father.

On the Saturday he'd driven home and returned first thing Sunday morning. When visiting hours were over, he'd headed to James' home in London and for the first time faced the mess they'd left when they'd set off for Bristol on the previous Tuesday morning.

He'd cleaned up, run the dishwasher through, chucked the bin out, cleared mouldy things from the fridge and furry things from the fruit and veg baskets in the larder.

Finally he'd collapsed on James' bed and slept until the doorbell had woken him at just after midnight - Jeremy wanting a whiskey and a warm man to sleep with.

Over the next five days he'd worked himself raw, burning the candle at both ends and in the middle, so that he didn't see much of Saturday at all, and by the time he got up and dragged himself under the shower, Jeremy had brought James home and got him settled on the sofa with three remotes, a mountain of books and magazines and some strong prescription-only painkillers that seemed to periodically send him a little bit loony.

Richard didn't go home that weekend. He looked after James - cooking for him then going out to the takeaway when his ward had refused to eat burnt non-descript fish and soggy rice. After forty-eight hours James seemed thankful for The Five O'clock Show's very existence.

It was on that Monday, sitting in the empty studio an hour before it filled up with people, that Richard had realised James didn't actually need looking after.

The BBC sent cars to pick him up if they wanted him to be somewhere and the rest of the time he was happy limping around the house. One evening Richard had found him on the floor of the bathroom cleaning bike parts in the bath, a plastic bag supposedly protecting the cast on his wrist.

The only real problem had revealed itself the first night Jeremy stayed over. However big James' bed was, it didn't stop them from making contact with either other in the middle of the night if they all tried to sleep in it. And Richard rolling over onto James' strapped-up ribs that first night had produced a scream loud enough to wake Jeremy's neighbours two counties away.

So they'd been banished to the spare room to sleep and Richard had missed the three of being together like that. Until then, he really hadn't figured out how much it had meant to him to wake up breathing the same air as James, with Jeremy's knee in his arse.

It was why they were here, now. A week's recuperation on their favourite island with Jeremy's GT and his new 911 to play with, as well as each other. No cameras. No public. Just them, relaxing, picking up more or less where they left off, still having to be mindful of James, but at least able to all sleep in the same bed without causing him any further pain.

The story in the newspaper was a glitch, he decided, nothing more. Bollocks. Bullshit. A good guess with a cheesy headline and no actual substance.

He knew they could only do their best not to hurt anyone now, and make the most of the time they had together, and if that turned out to be forty years or more, so be it. He reckoned his Morgan might still be around by then.

Lifting his mobile from the pocket of his fleece, he found James' number and rang it, calling Jeremy's when it went to voicemail. But he didn't answer either.

So they were out looking for him.

Or they'd found something better to do while they waited for him to come down from his latest temper tantrum…. With a smile on his face born of that idea, he slid down the long bonnet and got back behind the wheel.

~

The sounds coming from the master bedroom were unmistakable.

It amused him that faced with this kind of potential personal crisis he would storm off whereas Jeremy would have sex. It was that ability to think rapidly and rationally about something that he envied.

He closed the front door behind him quietly, toeing off his shoes and padding upstairs as silently as he could. The bedroom door was open and he could see from the landing his two lovers, naked together on the kingsized bed.

He moved closer, leaning against the wooden doorframe, eyes drawn to the pivot point of James' pistoning hips against Jeremy's arse. It took him a moment then to see the whole scene - Jeremy on his knees, hands grasping the black leather headboard, head dropped forward. James behind him, hands holding his hips so tightly his fingers were bound to leave marks on the pale skin.

Richard shifted uncomfortably as his own dick hardened at the sight, but other than that he kept his arms folded and didn't move. He wanted to watch, wanted just to witness this first time between two men he knew without a doubt now he was deeply in love with and knew they felt the same way about him.

Impossible to live without them now.

He was surprised at the distinct absence of any jealousy within himself. He was proud in fact; happy they'd left him to his own childish tantrum and put their time to good use.

Happy too that they felt this way about one another and not just about him. He didn't want to be the centre of this, he wasn't sure he had the stamina! Or the strength.

His erection pulsed in his jeans, demanding attention but he clawed his own fingers into his sides, not wanting to give in to it. Not yet.

Easy to recognise James' orgasm. Easy too to realise Jeremy hadn't come as he flopped down onto the bed and turned over, his eyes finding Richard's; the expression on his face priceless.

"Rich...."

James' head snapped round, mouth opening, eyes wide.

Richard smiled at them and cautiously stepped into the room, littering the carpet with his clothes as he went, naked by the time he reached the bed.

Kneeling up on the mattress he shared a kiss with James - deep and sexy as hell - then turned to claim Jeremy's mouth before putting his hand on the man's chest and pushing him back to the bed, engulfing his erection in his next breath.

He barely had time to make himself comfortable, to enjoy the sounds of his lover's surprise and the taste of his arousal before Jeremy was coming, splashing hot against the back of his throat. Richard grinned around him, swallowed it all then rested his head on the muscled thigh with a smug expression. He wasn't expecting the wet heat of James' mouth on his balls or the hot, rough stroke of a tongue along the underside of his dick.

He groaned, tipping his head back into Jeremy's wide hand as strong fingers carded into his hair. It was better than incredible, James was too good at this, and he lasted all of a minute or two before he was shuddering in James' hold, collapsing into James' arms.

They rearranged themselves, James sharing a long, luxurious kiss with Jeremy before they both settled with him between them.

"You don't mind?" Jeremy asked him, mouth an inch from his head.

"I don't mind. Actually, I'm pleased. It'll mean I can take a break sometimes."

He tipped his head back and smiled up at them.

Chin rested in the palm of one hand, James waited a while before checking, "Are we okay? I mean... about the story?"

Richard nodded. "I don't think anyone's going to believe it."

"That's what he said." He pointed his chin at Jeremy who winked.

"Hidden in plain sight."

"Yeah. And the question of how long for is immaterial. I'm not giving this up, so we deal with it when we have to."

"And until then?"

Richard planted a wet kiss in the centre of Jeremy's chest. "We seem to be working it out so far...."