Summer. This is what summer is for Blaine.

The pre-season football clinic is on at school. The heat shimmers a foot above the grass, and they’re all shirtless to heave at each other in the line of scrimmage. Their calves and biceps are round and baked brown as bread.

He gives them enough time to be stripped down and showering before he descends into the locker room. He sits on a bench and waits. Some of them will grab their towels and cut around the other side of the bank of lockers, scowling. But others will swagger up to him, greenbacks between two fingers, naked, shoulders held wide and aggressive.

He keeps the baggies in his left pocket, the takings in his right, and the float against his ass.

His week is busy. There’s a group of park basketballers that expects him — arcs of sweat down to their waists on flapping wifebeaters, hot-smelling and towering over him. An East Side cafe full of the prep school kids who couldn’t go to Paris for the summer.

He ignores the food his mom left him in the freezer, and starts ordering Manhattan Szechuan and Thai delivered out to Connecticut at a hundred and fifty bucks a pop.

He has so much money he keeps accidentally finding more. Every jacket he owns seems to have a crumpled hundred in the right hand pocket, and two twenties folded flat and forgettable in the breast. Greenbacks flutter back when he tips clothes down the laundry chute. The maid cleans the den and then bows and hands him a fifty, gritty from the vacuum cleaner bag.

He buys a brick of semi-cut coke so big he has to stash it under the seat in his car. He gets stopped for speeding on the way back through Brooklyn. Afterwards, back at home he does a fat line on his parents’ coffee table, hands shaking. He falls back on the rug, twitching uncontrollably.

About four in the morning he is able to get up off the rug in a different room and go survey the damage. There’s vomit in the kitchen sink. He remembers laughing hysterically while he delivered it — it would account for the splatter.

He finds a newsgroup called alt.queer.manhattan.hookups and goes to a disused upper floor of a run-down 1920s hotel. He kneels on a lumpy pillow over floorboards, and two guys get to fuck him in the ass in the time it takes him to suck one guy off — it’s hard to keep rhythm and suction when you’re being jolted from behind. Other guys are fucking against the walls. Then he gets to fuck a big, older guy with an ass like two flagstones in a wall. He struggles to grip hard shoulders too big to get the span of his hand around, and drags his fingers through thinning hair.

He forgets faces, but not dimples around the base of the spine, patterns of pigment in the damp crack of the ass, the tender weight of balls.

Greg McConnell he doesn’t forget. One afternoon Blaine lurks after the football clinic ends and brings Greg home again, and finally it happens. They’re fooling around on the rug, pants open, dicks out, Blaine across Greg’s lap, Greg’s long back bowed so they can make out. And this time when Blaine takes Greg’s hand and puts it down the back of Blaine’s pants, Greg doesn’t pull away. Blaine wants to lick Greg’s finger first but he thinks Greg might shy. He pushes Greg’s fingertip up against his asshole and rubs it back and forth, so that his body twitches at the provocation. And Greg takes it up, rubs Blaine’s asshole, and breathes frantically into Blaine’s ear, and pulls Blaine against him so hard with his other hand that his spine cricks. Greg pushes a fingertip inside, dry and clumsy, scratchy with loose cuticle. Blaine’s dick jumps perversely.

Then he gets to do it, to push Greg down and lay him flat like a continent, and oil him up and fucking slide down on his dick. Greg bounces him in his lap like baby in a bassinet. Greg’s hands are hard, braced under Blaine’s hipbones. His eyes roll under closed lids; he makes noises like weeping.

Greg rolls Blaine over, and Blaine holds Greg’s big heaving shoulders while Greg nails him like the star tackler he is.

Blaine loves competitive sport.

It’s almost a disappointment when Sebastian calls. Does Blaine really want to hear who’s been drinking the wrong kind of vodka tonic, and how many ways Sebastian has fucked the offender’s sister to make the point?

But that’s not what it’s about, as it turns out.

Blaine’s come down to Manhattan. They sit down, ice in tumblers, at Sebastian’s leather-covered desk. Every wall is mahogany-panelled, and the chandeliers might as well hang with coins. Sebastian’s golden head gleams against the dark.

“I have something for you,” Sebastian says.

“And what’s that?” Blaine says.

“Blonde. Tan. Big shoulders. Big tight ass.” Sebastian breaks into a grin. “No doubt a whole wardrobe of jockstraps.”

“Well,” Blaine says, “I already have a few of those in the toybox.”

“Good for you,” Sebastian says mildly. He spins around on his chair.

“So what’s going on?” Blaine asks. “Who’s the girl?”

“I can’t just do you a good turn without there being a girl?” Sebastian says. “Oh ye of little faith. Or is faith what I mean?”

“Spit it out, Valmont,” Blaine says. He turns the desk lamp on and off, click-click.

“Susanna Pritchard,” Sebastian says. “And Marcus is her darling big brother. He’s got the keys to the castle while Mommie and Daddie are away in Europe. And he doesn’t like the cut of the Valmont jib.”

“Fortunately a brief observation of the hero at work with his wrestling buddies has made it fairly clear what he does like,” Sebastian says. “Trust me on this.”

“I see,” Blaine says. And after a moment, “This sounds like a plan for me to get my head kicked in.”

“You’re not shying from a challenge, are you?” Sebastian says. He spins his ice in his glass, eyebrow raised.

“Do you have any idea,” Blaine says, “of the number of times I’ve already had my dick sucked this month? Why don’t you do it yourself?”

Sebastian puts his glass down with a clink. “I don’t think so!” he says.

“You’re right to be scared,” Blaine says. “Pretty little ass like yours, he’d snap you in half.”

“Five hundred, Blaine,” Sebastian says. “I’m being embarrassingly generous.”

“Sebastian, I don’t need your fucking money,” Blaine says. He mimes peeping under the desk, and meets and holds Sebastian’s eye. “What have you got that I want?”

“You cheeky little asshole,” Sebastian says. “You think my asshole’s up for grabs?”

“It’s only natural to be scared, sweetie,” Blaine says. “You are a virgin, after all.”

Sebastian stalks around the desk to Blaine. His tailoring, as ever, is lovely. It fits close without puckering.

He stands right in between Blaine’s knees. “You seriously think…”

Blaine slips a finger beneath the button placket of Sebastian’s shirt, and slides it upwards. When he reaches the collar, he grasps it and pulls. Sebastian bends towards him. In Sebastian’s ear he says, “You know I’d make it a point of pride to make it absolutely electric, don’t you.”

It’s pathetically easy.

The quarry likes to watch the club wrestling at the YMCA. It’s a YMCA in Harlem, curiously far from where he lives. He likes to pop outside between bouts, and chafe his hands in the cold. The quarry doesn’t smoke, but he peers at people walking past.

“You were talking like he was a closet case,” Blaine says, behind the tinted windows of the car.

“Yeah,” Sebastian says, “so?” Sebastian is wearing that black turtleneck, that clings.

“He’s cruising, you moron,” Blaine says.

“No way!” Sebastian says.

They drive around the block so Blaine can get out.

When Blaine sidles up to the quarry, he stands close enough that he has to look up.

Twenty minutes later, in a copse in the park, the knees of Marcus Pritchard’s scarlet parachute pants are soaked with dew. Probably the most amusing photo in Sebastian’s digital camera has Marcus noticing this with evident distress while Blaine stands resentfully with his dick out. A Pepsi bottle and some lunchwrap appear beneath a bush to the left, curiously distinct.

So here is Sebastian sitting on the rug, back against the couch, length of his thigh against the length of Blaine’s, arm around Blaine’s shoulder.

And Sebastian has got this fucking ambiguous half-smile on his face. Blaine is stroking his thigh, just for a little while, because it’s there and Sebastian has put it there, up against Blaine’s, to make it available, really, so he just wants to avail himself of it a bit, and he is going to master himself and speak any minute now.

“You got me over a barrel, don’t you,” Blaine says finally. “You know I’m not going to push the issue here.”

He takes Sebastian’s hand. How bizarre is it that he’s never done that before? “I’ve been trained well to keep my hands off the merchandise,” Blaine says. “I know the pretty things aren’t for dirty little boys like me. So. Have you had your fun now, or do you want me to fuck you?”

But Sebastian is still smiling his sphinx smile, and even Blaine carefully, helplessly nibbling his ear doesn’t firk it loose. Blaine gives up and kisses him to make the time pass — and he figures he’s entitled to, until Sebastian says he isn’t.

“I do like this look on your face,” Sebastian says at last. His fingers slip under Blaine’s jaw.

“Is it a look like, I’m really horny and I don’t know if you’re fucking with me?” Blaine says.

“Yeah,” Sebastian says. His face breaks into a real smile.

“But I’m not fucking with you,” he says.

“Oh good,” Blaine says faintly.

“This your impression of the vaunted virgin debutante, then?” Blaine says.

Sebastian’s lip twists, and suddenly the volume gets turned up. Sebastian pushes Blaine half over and his holds his head back to get his mouth open wider. Carefully, firmly and quite systematically, he kneads Blaine’s cock through his jeans.

Blaine levers Sebastian back over the other way and fumbles his bottom shirt buttons open, and strokes Sebastian’s tight warm belly, sight-familiar, touch-foreign. When Sebastian’s hand loses traction against his crotch, he presses his own over it frantically.

“You’re pushier than a girl,” Sebastian says.

“My dick is harder,” Blaine says.

He was stupid to think Sebastian would be shy, just because it’s with a guy. He lifts his hips sweet as can be for Blaine to take his pants down.

And hi, there, dimples beneath the hipbone like thumbprints in dough, braille for “eat me”; sleek dark blonde pelt that shows gold at the tips; pink translucent-sheathed cock, delicate-skinned as eyelids — they’ve swum together before but you don’t really know till you get to play, do you.

When Blaine sucks him down, Sebastian tastes like, well. He’s tasting Sebastian’s cock — they went together as Captain Corcoran and Little Buttercup to fourth-grade fancy dress day.

And Sebastian isn’t making this up. He’s resting his parted feet on Blaine’s hips and they’re curling spasmodically like a bird’s on a perch. Blaine can hear him breathing hard through his nose.

When Blaine pulls off at last, and says, “Taste it,” and kisses Sebastian, Sebastian has great big pupils and an open mouth.

“Do I have your attention?” Blaine says.

“I love your attention,” Blaine says, and maybe he really needs to get his mouth under control, but Sebastian is pulling Blaine’s shirt out of the waistband of his pants, and never mind, never mind.

And then he’s got Sebastian kneeling on the rug in front of him, bent over onto the seat of the sofa.

“I didn’t sign on for a back massage,” Sebastian says, but Blaine palms his sides and licks a little more between his shoulder blades anyway.

“For you,” Blaine says. “Special price.” Then he’s rubbing lube over the raised bump of Sebastian’s hole. Sebastian’s back stretches out a little, and Blaine hears him breathing.

Then he thinks the bump feels less compact, and he pushes his fingers in past the rubbery-tight stretch. He watches Sebastian’s hands contract over the edge of the sofa backrest.

“You had anything in here before?” Blaine says.

“The odd finger,” Sebastian says quietly.

“Yours, or someone else’s?” Blaine says.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Sebastian says.

“I would,” Blaine says earnestly. “I really would.” And he gives Sebastian another.

When he takes Sebastian’s cock in his other hand, Sebastian’s spine straightens as if a cord has been pulled taut. “Okay,” Sebastian says, almost sotto voce. “I get the appeal now.”

“You want the main event?” Blaine manages to stammer.

“Yeah,” Sebastian says.

“Tell me if it hurts too much, okay,” Blaine says. And he relubes his rubber.

It slides off first because it’s so slippery. He barely stops himself apologising.

Then he gets it in, and he thinks he might actually cry from how it feels.

Sebastian’s breathing makes him think Sebastian might cry himself, and Blaine stays still and fists Sebastian’s cock. Sebastian gets impatient and takes over, and then Sebastian’s body lets go and Blaine can get his cock all the way in.

“Ah,” Sebastian says, “come on.” And he reaches back for Blaine’s hip, and Blaine might cry again.

Sebastian’s hand is moving so fast, and Blaine fucking Sebastian is squeezing little tortured noises out of Sebastian. And Sebastian keeps thrusting out of time and Blaine has to clamp one hand around his waist and hook one around his chest and over his shoulder to stop him, and Jesus that’s obscene, holding him still and shunting it into him, and it’s possible Blaine sounds like a seal does when it cries.

Sebastian comes so extravagantly, all down the side of the base cushions and the dust skirt and down onto the rug, that Blaine thinks he may have to have the maid steam it.

“That’s infuriating,” Sebastian says. “Who would be a woman?”

“You would, baby,” Blaine mumbles, and kisses Sebastian’s shoulder. “And how.”

It’s pretty clear this is a good summer.