Page 23 of Playing to Win

“But what about—I mean, someone like you—”

“Someone like me?” Andrew gave him a sharp look.

Colin lowered his voice. “Someone so obviously gay.”

Andrew lifted his chin imperiously. “I don’t take that as an insult, but you should know that in my circle, refinement and fashion sense are signs of good breeding, not orientation.”

Did he actually use the phrasegood breeding?“I’m just saying, kids can be cruel.” Colin rubbed the insides of his forearms, where his tattoos lay, then stopped when he saw Andrew noticing the gesture. “At a boarding school there’d be no escape from bullies.”

“Who says I was bullied?”

He studied Andrew, who suddenly wouldn’t meet his eyes. Before Colin could respond, their tour guide arrived in front of their group.

“Greetings, everyone!” Dressed in medieval garb, the guide introduced himself as William. First he apologized for his “heavy Scottish brogue”—which to Colin’s ears sounded pure faint—then warned that claustrophobics might want to give this tour a miss.

“Once we’re down there,” William said, “it’s to stay. There’s no back door, and no doctors save the one in the plague mask. Seeing as he’s three hundred years old, he’ll not be much help. So if you think that might be an issue—”

“Right. I’m out.” An Australian woman behind Colin stepped away from the queue. Her friends protested, but she gave a firm head shake and said, “Meet me in the pub across the street when you escape.Ifyou escape.”

As she marched from the gift shop, Colin felt fortunate he’d never been claustrophobic. It’d be humiliating to chicken out on Andrew now.

“Any others?” William asked, gesturing to the door. “There’s no shame in it. My own phobia is cats. If the Real Mary King’s Close was packed with kittens, I’d never set foot in it again. Though it might sell more tickets.”

The tour group descended a long stone incline as William explained the history of the place. They passed warrens of alleyways between shops and flats, going ever deeper underground. Holding onto the railing to keep his footing on the uneven stairs, Colin looked up to see washing strung across the street. On one line, a single red dress stood out amongst the grays and whites.

“And you thought modern-day Glasgow was crowded,” Andrew whispered as they were shown cramped, single-room homes stacked atop one another, accessible only through windows and ladders. Colin thought of the lass on the bus last Sunday and wondered how a pregnant woman would get around a place like this.

As they entered a tiny chamber lit only by fake candles, Colin considered his own block of flats—the contemporary equivalent to these slums. There was definitely something to be said for the twenty-first century. At least Colin’s family had privacy. At least they had a bathroom with running water instead of a waste bucket to be dumped out the window. At least they were only metaphorically shat upon by the upper classes instead of literally, like these poor souls.

Also, in medieval times, he could never have touched up an aristocrat in public.

Andrew shifted closer at the first brush of Colin’s fingers over his lower back. There was no one behind them to see, and the rest of the tour group’s attention seemed focused on William’s ghost story.

Colin stroked slowly, letting his palm travel down over the impossibly round curve of Andrew’s arse, his thumb tracing the arcs of his tightening glutes. He could feel every contour of every muscle through Andrew’s thin cotton trousers, under which he seemed to be wearing a jock brief, a thong, or nothing at all.

“How much longer?” Colin whispered to him.

“Half an hour. The plague room’s next, I believe. You’ll fancy that.”

“Is it as dark as this?”

Andrew smiled and shook his head.

Colin sighed against the back of his neck. “Then I won’t fancy it.”

“On we go, then,” William said in a hushed voice, “to one of the most horrific moments in all of European history—the Black Plague.”

The tour moved out into the hallway, then down to the next chamber, which was a bit larger than the previous one and featured a bunk bed on either side. In one corner lurked a long, gray lump that Colin couldn’t identify. To their left, a black-draped figure bent over the lower bed. William instructed the group to stand across the narrow room.

As Colin took his place beside the other bunk, he saw a model of a sick child huddling beneath the covers. At her feet, a mother cradled a wee baby. All three faces bore blackened, rotting noses and lips. His stomach twisted.

When he turned back to William, Colin could now see that the bent figure in black was wearing a grotesque bird’s-head mask covering his entire head.Worst football mascot ever, he thought, suppressing a nervous laugh.

As William listed the symptoms of bubonic plague—swollen lymph nodes, fever, chills, continuous vomiting of blood—Colin felt his fingers begin to tingle. When William described how victims’ skin would decompose while they were still alive, the tingling spread up Colin’s arms and shoulders, then swept over his scalp.

“Is it hot in here?” he whispered to Andrew.

“Shh. He’s explaining the doctor.”

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