Fanboy (boyxboy)

Chapter 3: Moment of doubt

"This is the real world Lucy. "

☆

"I hear you've been wandering off again." Noah says grinning as he lays on his bed, head resting on the headboard, his phone in his hand. 

"I hear you've been flashing at the window, you are such an exhibitionist Noah." Luca retorts as he makes his way to his own bed in the room they were sharing. "How many views now?" He looks over at the phone in Noah's hand. 

"Nearly a million already and it's only been an hour." Noah says with smugness. 

"You know the higher you climb, the harder you will fall." Luca replies, kicking off his trainers before letting his body fall back onto the comfort of the bed. 

"I'm not as reckless as you. Is it midnight walks now? It's complicated enough that we have to conceal the fact you are homosexual and now you are wondering around at night?" Noah says with a smirk. 

"As opposed to you being a player?" Luca retorts. "How much money has the company paid out already to buy the silence of those women? Plus how often have I covered for you? I think you owe me." 

"Hey, can I help it if I'm irresistible? I have needs and they're offering." 

"Use your hand like the rest of us." Luca argues back. He was tired of this conversation already. He needed to get some sleep before morning light and they would have to perform all over again, but as he went through his usual bedtime routine, that face remained. 

The man in the dark alley. Luca stopped brushing his teeth, finding himself smiling at his own reflection at the way the male had not recognised him. How he had rescued him from the excitable crowd. Not because he was Luca Brailsford, but because he was a person in need. An ordinary, everyday person. 

Luca had almost forgotten what it was like to be treated like an average human. Fame had made him happy, his dream to perform, a reality, but it also made him sceptical and paranoid. It made him grateful for the luxuries he could enjoy but at the expense of his freedom and how he would choose to live. But for that brief moment, that man gave him a taste of the freedom he had given up. To be a stranger to someone and Luca knew that somehow, he wanted more. 

He reaches around to the back pocket of his jeans to remove a tiny piece of plastic. He brings it back around, looking at the brushed gold effect metal with the name in black etched into it. "At least I know your name." he says with a smile…

***

"You weren't too late getting home were you?" Lucy questions as she follows Ash into the coffee bar as he unlocks the front door, ready for another day of probably making more coffee than pouring shots at this time in the morning. 

"No." Ash sighs, but he wished he hadn't put himself on the early shift the day after. He felt dead on his feet, almost trampling over the few letters laying on the doormat on the way in. He bends over to retrieve them, taking them in one hand as he heads to the bar and puts them on the counter top. He heads out back, finding the urge to open the door into the back alley. 

As he pushes down the handle and steps into the daylight of the alleyway, he looks at the dumpster. It was just a regular ordinary dumpster. Nothing special. Why would a man choose to hide in it of all places? Did he imagine it? Ash had encountered drunks and undesirables along this stretch of passageway before but never a man dressed to his calibre. "He looked too good to be true."

"Who are you talking to?" 

Ash turns to see Lucy looking at him as she hangs up her jacket. 

"Oh, just myself." He says smiling as he closes the door behind him. He bites lightly on his lower lip in thought. He needed to ask someone. "Lucy…"

"Hmm?" She says, looking at Ash as she pins her name onto her blouse. 

"Have you ever experienced something so surreal that you question whether it actually happened?" He looked hopeful at his friend, but even as the question left his lips it sounded silly. 

"Are you referring to that time when I swore I saw a big purple butterfly in the sky and you told me I was seeing things? I did you know. And they were holding someone's hand." Lucy insists, hands on her hips, looking unamused. 

"This is the real world, Lucy." Ash laughs. "How come you and no one else saw it?" 

Lucy sighs, deciding not to justify what she saw for the umpteenth time. "So what do you think you saw?"

"A man in the bins." Ash says, causing instant panic in Lucy's voice. 

"What? Was he dead?"

"No!" Ash furrows his brow at the conclusion she had jumped to. "He was alive, but looked out of place." 

Lucy's body visibly relaxes at the news that there wasn't a corpse in the bin outside the bar. "Ash, who looks like he should be at home in a bin?" 

Ash shakes his head at Lucy. "Just forget it." He replies as he pulls the door closed. He heads back out front to the bar, getting everything in order in preparation to be open. 

He pulls the unopened letters before him and begins to sort the flyers from the bills. That's when he sees it. A white, rather ordinary looking letter, but with no postmark. Obviously hand delivered. There was nothing unusual in that, but what got Ash's attention the most was one word written in blue pen on the envelope. 

Ashley