Sex in C Major

When he got home, Stefan stripped naked again, and stood in front of the mirror.

The bruises were coming up black. Dark smears covered his legs and arse. Fingerprints were clawed into his biceps, small but savage. A hand print was clear on his back, where he'd been held down. And there was a faint, indistinct shadow on his jaw that said the slaps had hit their marks.

He traced every one with his own hands, and beamed.

Beamed.

He felt...good.

The burning need had been soothed. The constant itch under his skin-to touch and be touched-had been assuaged. He'd always been contented with jerking it to porn before, but ever since that first shot of testosterone, that hadn't been enough.

And for the first time in eleven weeks, he felt fine.

It had been scary. It had been intense. He'd been terrified even as he'd been dissolving and coming apart under Daz's hands. To jump from a clumsy bathroom handjob years ago to have a guy's fingers buried inside him whilst he was pinned naked to a bed, hidden away from said guy's boyfriend...it had been overwhelming.

And yet, standing bruised in front of the mirror, Stefan felt incredible.

He could look at his breasts, and not cringe. He could see the curves, and not cry. He could instead admire the hint of muscle on his arms, and his swollen cock that was too large to have been there before.

And he could simply be.

The flat wasn't depressing, it was his. The tower block was just a stepping stone to better things. His name wasn't uneasy and incomplete, it meant him. And so what if the sex had involved parts he'd rather not have had? They'd be gone one day. And it had involved parts most women would never use anyway.

Stefan beamed at his reflection, and hugged the sensation close to his chest.

He felt okay.

The whisper started up in the back of his head-why did being held down, slapped and bruised, finger-fucked and forced, make him feel good about himself?

Stefan shoved it aside. Not now.

Instead, he went to the airing cupboard.

The cupboard was off the bathroom. It was tiny, and couldn't be open at the same time as the bathroom door due to the savagely small dimensions of the flat, but it housed Stefan's one and only precious thing.

The cello.

It was a grand old cello, over a hundred years old. It had belonged to Stefan's grandfather, and was the only thing he'd managed to keep from his family. The only thing he could bear to keep. His grandfather hadn't been able to play by the time Stefan had been born, but he could remember long summer evenings at the care home, listening to Grandpa's collection of classical records, and hearing stories of how he met Nana when he'd been-of all things-busking. Stefan had fallen in love with the strings at his granddad's knee, and it had never faltered.

Granddad had faltered.

He'd been disgusted when Stefan came out. He'd refused to see him, written him out of the will, and cut off all contact. But he'd forgotten about the keys to Nana's house. And when he'd died, Stefan had gone back to Huddersfield one last time, in the middle of the night, with an old brass key.

The police had come knocking a few days later, but Stefan had kept the cello in a luggage locker for months, so they'd never found anything, and he'd gotten away with it.

Now, two years and another flat later, it lived hidden in the back of his linen closet. More to prevent burglars than cops. Stefan wasn't worried about any of his family coming for it anymore-or him.

But for the first time in more than three years, Stefan simply didn't care anymore.

The satisfaction humming in his skin was echoed in the first long draw of the bow across dusty strings. Notes were rustled free, and drifted lazily up from the dark wood. Stefan closed his eyes, and listened to the long C fade away.

Then set about it. Cleaning. Tuning. The little rumbles and squeaks of notes falling slowly into line were as comforting as a fleece blanket on a winter night to Stefan. They were soothing and familiar. The mess he'd made of his own life suddenly didn't seem so bad, because his fingers still flexed on the wood like they had never left. He could still hear the slightly-too-flat tone of the A, to which this particular cello was prone. He had lost everything else but not the music.

Stefan had had lessons all through school. He suspected it had been mostly so he'd stop whining for them-his mum had never actually been interested in his ability-but he hadn't looked the gift horse in the mouth. His cello teacher had been the classical type, and Stefan had learned Bach and Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms. A whole summer of trying desperately to get into the school orchestra-thanks to a crush on one of the violin players-had left him still able to play large chunks of Haydn's "Cello Concerto No. 1 in C Major" without the sheet music.