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Felix sees India at the party, wrapped tight in a sequined dress with wings on her back, the exact costume she wore when she played Peaseblossom in the spring theatricals, and it’s the first good thing about this disaster of a day. The first good thing, at least, since Olly saw the road sign for Prescot and started acting twitchy.They had a fine morning before that, Olly blushing and preening from Felix’s attention, Felix driving the Range Rover too fast on single-track roads with the top down, both screaming along to ‘Mr. Brightside’ because that song is a cliché but it’s a cliché that fucking rules. But after that came the revelation Olly is a liar, that so much of what he’s said and done, everything maybe, has been fabrication and performance. And Felix -- whatever Felix has given Olly, all the confidences and casual intimacies, the private jokes and silent favours, the deep and sincere friendship in spite of what people said, in the face of all the moments that might have seemed off -- Felix turns out to have poured all of these into a gaping maw of the unknown. This new understanding doesn’t erase that idyllic morning, the times at Oxford, the entire sun-soaked summer. Worse. It stains them. Irrevocably.Felix doesn’t know if he can ever get clean.So he sees India, thank God, sweet agreeable India, who’s always up for a good time and demands nothing. India, who can be lovely on Felix’s arm and wild in Felix’s bed and never needs it to mean more than that.Felix goes to India and circles her slender waist with his hands, lifts her off her feet and kisses her forehead. “India, darling, you came!”“Of course I came, you begged me to.”Unlikely, Felix thinks, except he remembers now, how different everything felt a week ago. With Mother going all out to celebrate Olly’s birthday, Felix wanted to have some of the Oxford set here who actually knew him. Maybe India didn’t like Olly, particularly, but unlike Annabel, she hadn’t been a total cunt about it. And Saltburn had been good for Olly. He'd developed confidence, a little bit of style. He would be wearing that white embroidered suit Mother ordered from her man in London, showing off the well-muscled body that, back in college, he used to wrap in too many ill-fitting layers and guard like a secret.Last week, it crossed Felix’s mind that pleasant, agreeable India might not be above throwing a birthday fuck Olly’s way. Or both their way -- Felix warming her up, tasting her pussy and pinching her tits, then rolling on his side and touching himself while Olly took the driver’s seat. Felix hasn’t done anything like that since Year 11 with Eddie and what-was-her-name, before Eddie turned out to be a traitorous sister-fucking twat. Maybe Felix had been too distant with Olly, too withholding, and that accounted for the oddness that had crept between them.As of this morning, that was all gone to shit.But he does have India, smiling wide and already high on something.Felix would very much like to be high on something. Felix would like to finish off his evening deep in India’s cunt, or at least to have that option if nothing better presents itself.“Of course I begged you. I just didn’t know if you’d come. Saltburn is so far from fucking everything.” As though anyone turns down an invitation to Saltburn. Felix just hasn’t been issuing them lately, not while Olly and Farleigh and Venetia have felt like enough. “And I barely heard from you all summer.” One of the things he likes about India. Never clingy. Since he ditched her at the end-of-term ball to spend the evening with Olly, she’s only texted once.“Where the hell is Olly, anyway?” India yells over the music.Felix bends down, far down, to say in her ear, “Who gives a fuck?”India claps her hands. “Oooh!!! What happened?” Such predatory glee. So she hasn’t been a cunt about Olly, but she’s been waiting for the rupture like all the rest of them. Felix can’t tell her what he's learned. He wishes he wasn’t so bloody ethical, but he has to be. Between Mother and Farleigh, anything that's come out of Felix’s mouth since he learned to speak might as well be broadcast throughout the Home Counties. He only shared Olly’s sad story with his family in the first place because he thought they'd never meet, and when they did it was too late for takebacks. Now, the goddamn irony of it, Felix can’t set the record straight -- actually, Oliver Quick’s parents have a lovely home in a lovely town, his father is alive, they fed me spag bol, he lies to them too -- because he's cursed with a sense of honour.Besides. He has to figure out what it all means, what it could possibly mean, before he tries to put his disappointment into words.Two hours later, or five, or the following Thursday -- do the rules of time even apply during a Saltburn party? -- Felix takes India to the centre of the garden maze. She’s asked him to show it to her; she lives in a flat in Canary Wharf, her family has oil money, but they don’t have a real country house. She’s never seen a topiary maze outside of school trips to Hampton Court. This might be her only chance, she says. If she wants reassurance she’ll be invited to Saltburn again, Felix doesn’t give it, and if India minds, she doesn't show it. This is what makes her the kind of person he needs with him tonight.Hedges are prickly places to fuck, Felix knows from experience, and in the warm night, he doesn't have a jacket to put under India's clothes if he lies on top of her. The only thing for it is to steer her against the looming base of the Minotaur statue. She moans prettily as he kisses her and when he undoes his jeans she raises her legs to wrap around his waist. India is an athlete -- hockey as well as theatricals, she’ll make a well-rounded wife for some hedge-fund manager -- and her body works well with his. Two fingers inside her until she’s impossibly wet, and then she clutches him with her thighs and makes eager noises as he thrusts into her. He could come now but he holds back, letting her climax take time. “Lovely, India. You’re absolutely lovely,” he gasps in her ear. She’ll go back to Canary Wharf with a good story.“Feeee-lix." Two clear syllables, one long one short. Olly's voice travels across the clearing.Felix almost drops India in his startlement, but she’s already tearing herself away from him, pliant lovely India spitting fury. Felix swears as he tucks himself back in, throbbing with frustration. When he’s decent enough to turn around, he finds her wild, screaming, accusing Olly of spying on them, while Olly does his soft spoken doe-eyed denial. But Oliver’s never been a doe, has he? Those antlers strapped to his head say hart, not hind and, far from a prey animal, Oliver Quick is the lurking, skulking persistence predator Felix has spent the entire evening pretending not to see.Why won’t he go away? Anyone else would go away in the face of Felix’s disapproval.Everyone else always has.“You two are fucking gross,” India throws over her shoulder as she staggers out of the clearing. She will be taking a good story back to Canary Wharf after all, an unfair one that pierces Felix’s chest. Why us two, when Olly’s the one. . . ?Then Olly is grabbing at him, fisting Felix’s T-shirt while still gripping a champagne bottle that Felix can feel, cold and dewy through the thin fabric. Christ, Olly must be drunk. Maybe it’s only that he’s drunk.But his words are careful. Olly’s always been good with words, and he’s talking now, saying he only did what Felix wanted, how everybody puts on a show for Felix. He apologizes that his performance wasn’t good enough, whatever the fuck that means. Why did Olly think he had to perform? Why not just be a friend if he wanted a friend? Everyone wanted to be Felix’s friend, but not everybody needed him for a friend, and Olly with his shimmering eyes and his sad stories had cut in line. He’d jumped the fucking queue, that’s what he’d done.“. . . how much I fucking love you . . . how well I actually know you . . .I’m still the same person.”Olly’s hand rests on Felix’s cheek. Felix is still breathing hard. From the interrupted sex, from the anger. His groin throbs inside his jeans and, fucking Olly, he could at least have waited until Felix and India finished, instead of leaving Felix with this angry cock that won’t settle down, that should have settled down. Blue balls are bad enough, but it’s worse to stand with his confused body, blood pounding as though in response to Olly’s touch, Olly’s words, Olly’s eyes that see him like no one else has ever even tried to see him.“I don’t know what you are,” Felix says. “But I do know you. You make my fucking blood run cold.”Then Felix pushes away. He means to push away. He’s definitely pushing away and walking out of this place and Olly can lie in the dirt and moan and cry but tomorrow he’ll be on the train back to nowherestown and this episode will be another disappointment in a life of disappointments for poor little rich boy Felix Catton with his palatial home and his sun-burnished face and his fuck-off money and his naive stupid longing to know, to touch, to share a connection with another human being who is real.Aye, there's the rub. Oliver is real. Felix doesn’t know what he is or what stupid game he’s been playing for how long, or why, and the questions he wants to ask make him feel insane: Did you even need money that night at the pub? Did you let the air out of my bicycle tyre and wait in just the right place so that you could come to the rescue? Do you see how unhinged and paranoid you’re making me? But Olly’s eyes on Felix are real. The breath catching in Felix’s throat is real and now, goddammit, the erection straining against Felix’s jeans has nothing to do with sweet patient India. Fucking India knew that. “You two,” she said, as she was storming away.Everyone storms away. Everyone leaves. Everyone disappoints, and then everyone disappears. The only exceptions have been his parents, his sister, Saltburn. And now Olly. Olly is still here, staring straight in Felix’s eyes, hand on Felix’s face.
How much I fucking love you.
Felix Catton kisses Oliver Quick.It could have happened so many times before.It’s happening now. It’s happening in Saltburn’s stupid hedge maze, under the ridiculous Minotaur statue, with Felix wearing stupid golden wings and Olly wearing those idiotic antlers. They're surrounded by irony and artifice, but this moment between them is real.The kiss takes as much time as it takes. The champagne bottle presses between their chests, separating Olly’s skin from Felix’s shirt. When they rest after kissing, Felix laughs, and Olly laughs like he’s Felix’s mirror, and Felix touches the bottle. “For fuck’s sake, let’s finish this off.”Olly shakes his head, and tosses the bottle away. The glass shatters against the Minotaur's leg. Who gives a fuck?Olly’s cold hand slips inside Felix’s jeans. “Let’s finish this off,” Olly says, and he squeezes.Through some superhuman power Felix didn't know he possessed, he manages not to come right that second. He digs his fingers into the top and bottom of Olly’s wrist, and Olly loosens his grip, just a little. With his other hand, Felix traces a thumb across Olly’s lips and lets it drift inside, rest on his tongue. “How about you finish me off?”Olly's tongue's tickles Felix's skin as he answers. “And then we’re even?” He must realise the complexity of any equation that would make him and Felix even, so he corrects. “And then you forgive me?”It’s going to take some sorting out, in Felix’s head, if he’s forgiving Olly, what he’d even be forgiving Olly for. Felix doesn’t say the words but takes his thumb out of Olly's mouth, presses it to the centre of Olly’s forehead, then brings both hands to Olly’s shoulders to guide him downward. “Finish me first.”Olly starts to sink to his knees. Then he hesitates, looks up at Felix, and points to the white trousers. “Your mum. She had them made. I wouldn’t want to -- ““Ruin them?” Felix fills in, then he pushes down again and commands, in his most heir-to-the-manor voice: “Ruin them.”Olly laughs, then he kneels, and then his hands are on Felix’s zipper, easing him free, and it’s Felix’s turn to laugh because as Olly tilts his head forward, that big pair of pagan antlers Mother definitely bought off someone who shot a real live stag are moving towards Felix's face and if he’s not careful -- “Mother always said I’d put an eye out playing around down there.”“Your mother?” Olly has a hand around Felix’s shaft, his mouth inches away, and he looks up with the most impish, hungry smile on his face. "Elspeth Catton said that?" It’s like he’s not the same person he was a minute ago, far from the same person he was in Prescot. I don’t know what you are. “Maybe not my mum. More like the collective wisdom of centuries of British motherhood or. . .” The tip of Olly’s tongue dances over the head of Felix’s cock, and his whole body shudders and he can’t fucking believe they are talking about his mother. His fingers find the headband attached to Olly’s antlers, ready to get rid of the silly things.“Leave it,” Olly says, and Felix doesn’t know what Olly is, but he hears an echo of the commanding tone he used himself a moment before, except, although this doesn't make sense, Olly might perform heir-to-the-manor better than Felix does. Then, playful again, Olly says, “You’ll need something to hold on to.”So Felix grips the antlers and angles them away from his face, while he tilts his head back and rests his body against the base of the statue. Olly touches Felix’s cock with his lips, then opens up and swallows him.Felix closes his eyes and lets Olly take him in. It feels amazing and he wonders if Olly has done this a hundred times to a hundred other boys or if he’s making it up as he goes along, Felix can’t begin to guess because he knows Olly completely without knowing him at all, and what matters in the moment is that Felix is about to come, any second. He tightens his hands around the antlers and squeezes until the decorative bones dig into his skin, and Felix wonders whether, when he opens his eyes, he will see that Oliver’s sharp edges have drawn blood.