Low

Prime Minister James Booth, him of the insincere, jaw-aching smile. It’s the smile people fixate on, in the newspapers, or where their eyes go when he’s stopped speaking. Bill has never bought all that for a minute. When he’s feeling particularly proud of himself all it takes is a few words, a prudent little dig about CCTV, or unpopular policies on homelessness, and he’s back in line. Like a tug on his leash.

Bill lunges for him, presses against him close, and the fear flashes in Jim’s mind that he’s going to have his eye gouged out or something. Worse, that Bill is going to kiss him, to extort that joyless act of obedience from his pathologically wet mouth. But no, just swearing, spitting, jostling, and for an ill-advised moment Jim tunes him out entirely – the part of his brain responsible for listening just shuts off and he’s nothing but a loose collection of animal impulses, hatred and furious arousal and shame. He’s close enough to feel the pen in his shirt pocket, snagging on buttons, and he doesn’t have to look to know why that and not another of hundreds of interchangeable shitty writing implements over the years. He kept the fucking pen he’d thrown at him, like a serial killer with a trophy.

The doorknob gouges against his back; something else presses insistently against his hip, unavoidable.

“Step into my fucking office. I need to have a word with you.”

Jim nods and grimaces, with teeth. If it happens to look like a smile to anyone scurrying past in the hallway, so much the better.

On his knees is how he likes it. Bill likes him down on his knees as he leans back in his stinking leather office chair like a sordid corporate cliche and watches him take it. He’s half-hard already before they start, from the verbal reaming he’d given him in the hallway; his cock makes a nice fat outline through the cloth and Jim is appalled at himself for what he does with it out of sheer instinct, mouthing at it before he comes unzipped. He can taste some carcinogenic blend of fabrics he shouldn’t have licked in the first place, his nose is full of the smell of sweat and balls and leather and aftershave, he can feel the twisted heat of his thighs at the juncture of his legs. Bill moans just a little, palming at his own thigh, and so he does it again. Finding the things that unhinge him, that damage his mask of calm, and then worrying at the raw edges between the big man he purports to be and the sticky-palmed freak he is is curiously gratifying.

When he does get his cock out it’s angry-reddened, as thick and ugly as Jim remembers. It’s a near-miracle he can still get it up for anything other than the white-knuckle grip of his own bony hand. Jim’s hands find the base of it, and he looks up at Bill’s face one last time before he starts, the angle affording a stunning view of his fuckawful beard. His eyes say, without me you’re nothing. The set of his mouth says, without me, you’re fucked.

(Say the words. All three of them.)

Jim licks his lips, his teeth; he steels himself.

“Right, you cunt.”

He sucks and licks like he’s getting paid, proficiently in order to get the job done; it’s impossible not to appreciate the sensory experience of it, the taste of another man’s come and the way his mouth tightens around his shaft. He’s achingly hard himself, despite all reason, and no chance that Bill will return the favour except maybe to squeeze him hard and tell him to finish himself off in the gents’, filthy fuck.

(Much better. There’s a good boy, Jimbo. Easy now, Christ, you’re greedy for it.)

His fingers ruin the immaculate smoothness of the hair on the back of Jim’s head, raking through and scratching runnels. He moves on to fucking his face, pressing him down against each thrust and murmuring filthy things that leave his face on fire and his cock aching and his head full of nothing but the wish that he’d shut up. His thumb sticking into his mouth alongside his cock, scraping and gouging and making an already unbearable fullness worse, his fingernails catch against his cheek.

He likes seeing him gag almost as much as seeing him choke. That’s the full story of this delivered in brief – you just grasp in the right place, apply pressure, squeeze. Jim nearly gags himself trying to avoid tasting it. His come is nicotine-sour against the back of his mouth and it elicits an involuntary moan from him, another burst of pornographic hostility from good old Bill as he insists on seeing him swallow.

When it’s all done he rises up shakily, blinking back involuntary eye-watering and acutely aware of the soreness in his knees – Christ, he is too old to be anybody’s unwilling fuck-toy. He has nothing to say for himself, wants to rasp out a meagre fuck you and can’t get the words out of his sticky throat. He can glare, though, even forcefully debrided of his dignity.

“I’m glad you’ve come to see things from my perspective.” Bill’s leonine eyes are shut, like he’s listening to music. Hearing an argument they haven’t had, an answer he hasn’t given. “You’re free to go.”

Jim finishes himself off in the gents’ as directed, shaking with unwarranted mad laughter that leaves his salted throat stinging. His mouth aches now, the back of his throat’s bruise-sore and his lips feel as if they’ve been scraped raw. Even his teeth ache. He can’t bring himself to stand in front of the mirror, to wash the taste of hypocrisy from his tongue, even when he knows he won’t look as bad as he feels. No one could look as bad as he feels. Give him a shower and a fresh-pressed suit and he’ll be ready to go again, looking to all the world like a man who isn’t going through the process of a complete implosion. If you don’t get too close, you’d never notice. It’s Bill’s job to make sure no one ever gets that close.

James Booth strikes the drinking glass from the sink’s edge with one sweeping movement and hears it shatter. That much is satisfying. He rinses his hands under the running tap, full-blast on cold, takes his wedding ring off and puts it back on again, straightens his damp cuffs, checks his mobile phone.

He’s going to polish up tomorrow’s speech and go home and change his clothes. He’s going to eat dinner, and have a drink and sleep with his wife. Properly, in a bed with sheets and with her voice consoling him in absolute privacy. He’s going to drink, and smile, and forget.