Iceland Reloaded


They were essentially talking at cross-purposes. On the other end of the line, sitting anxiously at a desk in the London office, their Executive Producer, was fretting over the brand spanking new 599 GTB they'd somehow talked Ferrari into lending them. While standing in the lobby of a Hotel Spa just outside Reykjavik, Jeremy was worried sick about his friend and lover.

"Just... why, Jeremy?"

"We had an argument."

"Surprise, surprise. And of course this is his usual reaction; to take off in a car we shouldn't even by rights have our hands on."

Indeed. Their fiery Hamster was prone to temper tantrums that would make a withdrawn sixteen-year-old proud, but usually he would calm down too quickly to even make it out to a car and start the engine. There had been that one time... but then he'd been thwarted half-way along Jeremy's driveway by a two-foot high snow drift.

"Mind telling me what it was about this time?"


"I can't do Sunday, I'm filming two episodes of Petrolheads back to back."

"Jesus Christ, Richard! God forbid the shooting schedule for our show should interfere with your stampeding career."

"Oh, fuck you, you selfish bastard!"


"A professional disagreement, that's all."

He ignored the' pointed look from the man standing next to him; James, staring out at the dark and desolate surroundings and seeing more of his own reflection in the floor-to-ceiling glass than in the pitch beyond the hotel lights.

"That's all? You're telling me he's vanished into a labyrinth of icy roads in a exceptionally expensive car over a professional disagreement?! If he's crashed it and he's not dead, I'll kill him myself."

That very real possibility had been unthinkable up to this point. Swallowing, briefly closing his eyes, Jeremy wasn't surprised to feel James' hand on his shoulder. No point in blaming himself now - there would be time to feel guilty, and time to apologise, later.

"We're about to start the search. It's got dark very fast. We thought he'd come back once he'd calmed down but we can't raise him on his mobile or on the walkie-talkie and we're worried something's happened to him."

"So you do think he's damaged the car?"

A single crack appeared in Jeremy's otherwise calm facade. "For christ's sake, Andy! This is Richard we're talking about! He can bloody drive. We're worried something's happened to the car and stranded him out there where it's around minus ten!"

There was silence, then, "Sorry. I know. Bring them both back safe, okay?"

~

Richard knew full well that he'd done some very stupid things in his life, but this had to be close to the top of the list.

He didn't like Ferraris at the best of times and his current situation brought home to him exactly why. He'd run out of petrol. And there wasn't a station anywhere to be seen. In fact, there wasn't anything anywhere to be seen. It was like when he was a kid and he'd have dreams that he'd been eaten by giant dogs. Dark. Very, very dark.

He had no idea where he was, although thanks to his honed sense of direction he did have more than a clue about how he got here. Not that it was going to help. The only lights he had were his headlights, which he'd switched off to conserve the battery.

His mobile wasn't picking up a signal and all he was getting on the walkie-talkie was static.

At some point he was going to have to admit to being in trouble.

Sitting in the driver's seat of what he was starting to think might soon become the world's most expensive deep-freeze, Richard had already donned his spare fleece from the boot - thankful for the bottle of water he'd thrown in there earlier in the day in case his washers had frozen over.

He was running the car's heater off the battery, just high enough to keep him warm, hoping it would last, hoping all the expensive leather would keep in the heat when it did run out of juice. He didn't know what else to do. He was just waiting to be rescued and he hated the feeling of helplessness.

His eyes fell upon the camera still fastened to the windscreen on the passenger side. Leaning forward, he switched it on. It worked from its own power pack and at least it would give him something to talk to.

"I'm stuck," he announced. Good start. Maybe they'd find this along with his frozen corpse. No - best not to think like that. They'd come looking for him when he didn't turn up. They'd be worried - they'd have to be.

"I'm out of petrol and in the middle of nowhere. I have to say, one of my main problems with cars like this is the amount of petrol they consume. Not only isn't it good for the environment, it's not good for driving around freezing cold countries that don't have petrol stations dotted every couple of miles along every major road.

"But I'll say this. it is comfortable. Jeremy was complaining about his backside hurting after a couple of hours throwing it around the roads this morning, but between you and me, I don't think that was the car."

He probably shouldn't have said that. But despite his situation he was still pissed off. James had told him on a couple of occasions that Jeremy was a little jealous of his hard-won success. Jeremy had told him only once that he was proud of what Richard had accomplished. Frankly he didn't know what or who to believe.

He loved them both. James did his head in on a regular basis and Jeremy drove him nuts. But still....

It had been a long, long time since he'd known love like James'. All-encompassing, unconditional; knowing it was there was one of the best things in his life. And no matter how much they bickered and fought over the trivial things, it never wavered, never weakened.

He'd imagined Jeremy didn't feel the same way about him - James was in love with him, he knew that. But he hadn't thought Jeremy was. When they fought it felt as if a few wrongly-placed words would shatter everything. And it almost had.

The deeper it went with Jeremy, the less he understood him. Wasn't that the reason he was out here?

No. He was out here because he had short fuse and Jeremy had lit it. Again. He was the only person alive capable of pushing him that far that fast.

He glanced up, the camera's red light catching his eye.

"You're a bastard, Jeremy," he muttered. They could edit it out later, if there was a later.

The car battery cut out.

"Shit."

~

"He's broadcasting!"

The shout reached Jeremy and James just as they were folding their maps on top of the two remaining cars - having agreed between them who would cover which roads in which direction.

They jogged to the van, peering into the back - two laptops on a makeshift shelf of heavy cases and boxes of spare parts.

On the widescreen of one of the laptops they could just make out Richard's face in the darkness. He was staring off into the distance, not speaking.

"Why isn't he talking to us?"

"I don't think he knows he's broadcasting."

"Then why switch it on?"

The second guy shrugged - "Company?"

They watched his head turn, and heard him say, "You're a bastard, Jeremy," followed a moment later by, "Shit."

"He's out of petrol," the guy explained, "and I think the car battery just died."

"We need to find him."

"Well, we're not getting any clues out of the windows, it's too dark even with the zoom. He's had a good few hours' head start and I would guess he didn't run out of petrol more than an hour ago. My suggestion would be go with your plan. We'll take the van, see if we can do something spectacularly technical like triangulate the signal."

"Why isn't his radio working?"

"Don't know. Probably another flat battery. His mobile's going to straight to voicemail. Our best hope is that he works out he's broadcasting and tells us where he is."

"And how likely is that?"

"Hey - you know him better than we do."

~

He was getting cold. Thirsty too. And hungry. But he was always hungry - it wasn't too much of an issue at the moment - and he thought he probably had more water than he had heat.

Stuffing his hands in the pockets of his fleece he found his arctic-ready gloves and pulled them on.

The idea of freezing to death on a Top Gear shoot was frankly embarrassing. It was ridiculous to think it was even possible. But how the hell were they supposed to find him to rescue him when his mobile wasn't working and his walkie-talkie was out of battery?

The only thing still active was the camera and that only recorded - sending the digital signal... to the chase van.

Excitedly reaching for it he turned it to face him. "If you can hear me, if you're seeing this - help! I've got no petrol and no battery. This is where I am - or at least, how I got here...."

He tried to explain as best he could the roads he'd driven along and the turns he'd taken. The temperature was still dropping - he could feel it around his face - and he pulled the sleeves of his fleece over his gloved hands, hunkering down inside his winter clothing.

"I always wondered if cryogenics worked," he muttered once he'd finished giving directions to his current position.

He didn't want to think about the odds of his transmission being picked up. There was a high chance the chase van had already powered down the systems and left for home; slightly less of one that the crew were ensconced in the bar with James and Jeremy, drinking cold Icelandic beer, not noticing the time passing. Jeremy had started to make a hobby out of getting rid of film crews when they were out in some foreign country with the possibility of an early night ahead of them.

The only thing Richard could trust in absolutely was that James would miss him and James would worry about the fact that he wasn't back yet. Jeremy... maybe not. Jeremy would make the usually accurate assumption that he was old enough to look after himself.

"Not this time, Jez," he grumbled into the woolly collar of his fleece. "This time I've really screwed up."

~

Crossroads was too grand a term for the desolate, dark concrete tracks leading left, right and straight ahead from where he slowed the Aston Martin Rapide to a stop. He peered out through the windscreen into the pitch black beyond the reach of the headlights. Richard could be just ahead and Jeremy wasn't sure he'd be able to see him.

"Where are you, Richard?" Jeremy murmured to himself, not beyond admitting he was getting scared.

A couple of minutes back James had been on the walkie-talkie confessing the same thing. "I'm really worried. He could freeze to death out here."

That was an impossible thought.

The walkie-talkie on Jeremy's passenger spat out a stream of static before a fuzzy voice told him, "He's worked out that the camera's broadcasting and we have the directions he took."

The relief he felt was almost palpable and he could imagine James' reaction to hearing the same news. "Fantastic! Tell me."


He could see James' car coming forwards him as he slowed, indicated for James' benefit, and took the narrow road off to the left.

As soon as the car swung and the bright headlight beams cut through the blackness he saw the Ferrari a hundred yards ahead, dead on its wheels. A hundred and eighty thousand pounds worth of metal and leather, utterly useless.

Stopping the Aston at an angle behind it, cutting the engine and getting out, he saw James' headlights coming towards him but wasn't about to wait. He got to the other car in three strides, could see Richard in the darkness of the cockpit, and as he opened the door and crouched down, he found himself unsurprisingly with an armful of freezing cold Hamster.

Strong arms wound tightly around his neck and he wrapped his own around Richard's slim body and layers of fleece.

"It's okay, we've got you."

He knew when James crouched beside him, one leather-gloved hand reaching over to ruffle Richard's hair, the gesture thick with sentiment. Jeremy slackened his embrace and Richard sat up, smiling at them, eyes glistening with unshed tears, James touching his cheek before Jeremy gave him room to lean in for a silent hug.

"Sorry," Richard managed, "I'm sorry."

Jeremy shook his head. "Come on, let's get you into the warm and we'll figure out how to get this heap of junk back to the hotel."

The chase van pulled up behind their expensive road block as they were settling Richard in the warm interior of the Rapide. It was carrying the usual two five-litre petrol containers which they emptied into the 599's thirsty tank before jump-starting the engine.

"Don't ever tell the guys at Ferrari about this," Jeremy instructed them as it finally rumbled into life. He was about to ask one of the two production guys to drive it back when he heard his name called from the Aston. "Give me the keys to this."

"Richard...." But Jeremy could see he was already sitting in the driver's seat.

"Don't argue. I'm fine. And I just want to get back to the hotel."

~

The expensive convoy arrived back in the car park, the chase van having peeled off to return home, despite being offered the chance of a night at the hotel. They wanted to start back, they said, drive through the night taking turns to sleep.

The three men left behind barely spoke a word between them until they were safely in Richard's hotel room.

But once the door closed a string of apologies from Richard and Jeremy met in the middle, ignored by James who folded Richard into his arms and just held him.

"Don't ever do that to me again," he murmured in the silence that fell.

Richard held on to him just as fiercely. "In my defence," he murmured gently, "I didn't do it on purpose."

Jeremy joined them, sandwiching their young lover between himself and James, letting relief drain away the fear until he felt utterly wrung out.

"I think I need to be in bed with you both."

He and James undressed quickly, stopping Richard after he'd kicked his shoes off.

"We need to keep you warm."

"I'm not sleeping fully clothed!"

"Did we suggest that?"

They got him under the thick duvet, still sandwiched between them, worked his jeans and underwear off, James taking pleasure in slowly unzipping his dark sweater before easing it off over his head. "I remember you wearing this when we were on the Isle of Man - after the rainstorm, during that highly suspicious candlelit dinner party."

Finally naked, Richard plastered himself against James, Jeremy pressed along his back.

"Yeah. You wouldn't have had anything in mind with that setup, would you, Jez?"

After today, his easy, teasing tone was a joy and a relief to hear.

"Nothing at all. Hadn't even begun to find you unbelievably sexy at that stage."

James chuckled softly. "Liar."

"Oh, all right. Maybe." He kissed the nape of Richard's neck. "Nothing happened, though, did it?"

Richard squirmed in his arms, rubbing one firm buttock against his rapidly hardening dick, which he felt immediately and bizarrely guilty for.

"Something did happen."

James and Jeremy glanced at one another, both moving their heads once, side to side, silently claiming innocence. There hadn't been anyone else in the house....

"Perverts. I mean, it was that night I first thought maybe there could be something more between us."

"Really?"

"There was just something in the air, something... intimate. I lay awake most of the night listening to the house and thinking about it."

James curled one arm under his head and idly touched the other to Richard's chest, resting his fingertips over his heart.

"What, precisely, were you thinking about?"

"I don't know. I don't know if I knew then. It wasn't much more than feelings, colours, you know?" He yawned, eyes closing. "I think if I'd have contemplated anything actually physical I'd have run screaming from the house." Another yawn. "No offence."

"None taken. I was just imagining you running naked across the road in all that rain."

Jeremy pressed his lips again to Richard's throat. "I would pay to see that."

There was no response this time. Glancing up at James, Jeremy saw the gentle smile on his face and knew Richard had fallen asleep on them, possibly for the first time since they'd all started to share a bed.

Settling his head on the pillow, Jeremy reached over to rub James shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"Yes. Now."

Nodding once, Jeremy hooked his arm around Richard and closed his eyes. It would be some time until he got to sleep though, and when he did he suspected he'd dream of coffins and darkness.