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There’s a gang of them, out for a night of it because Billy’s going to be a swan. Dancers and friends and Michael, and of course Michael has a boa, which he wraps him in, brisk and drunk so the feathers are snared around his neck a little too tight, then fluffed up by Michael’s fingers until they tickle his chin.
Billy makes his hand a beak and honks, a loud, crass sound and he throws his head back for haughty effect. Michael laughs, still standing close enough for Billy to feel it, his breath, the vibrations traveling down to the fingertips still twisted at his throat. He folds the tips of his fingers in to brush skin and mouths a word through the music. Cold. It’s become a joke between them over the years. “I’m cold,” says Michael and Billy smiles, quick and lop-sided and he’d grab Michael’s hands and tuck them under his own jacket.
Billy loves London, loved the school, loves the company, loves the way everything changed. Not suddenly, more that things were revealed over time until it was comfortable and fluid and okay. Before — there — it’d been a matter you had to be sure about, a great declaration. Something you didn’t fuck around with, not on your life.
But, now. Now, he can drag Michael onto the dance floor and let himself go loose-limbed and careless. He’s a ragged, angular dancer here. Michael is the smooth one. Michael, who somewhere between home and Soho has learned to dance like a screen siren and moves his shoulders like they’re draped in a mink stole, or a wrap of shot-silk, sheer as a breath and with nothing else underneath, he can make you know it. He can, now, under the pink and gold lights and the mirror ceiling, make Billy imagine he has his face tipped into the curve of his neck, into the scent of sweat and Chanel and the warmth, the taste. He can make him imagine so intensely that now his body’s a few steps behind this thing that’s got to happen, that has turned out to be so inevitable that he moves to catch up. One hand on his waist, a hand brushing his hair where it falls in dark, lavish curls against his neck and Billy can’t decide where he will kiss him first. He’s only sure he will.