Chapter 1
Nick liked going out alone.
People tended to find that either suspicious or vaguely sad, as though enjoyment required witnesses ... he had never understood that sentiment. Going somewhere with other people meant spending half the evening negotiating other people’s thirst, boredom, romantic ambitions or sudden desire to leave precisely when the music became good because that another club three streets away would sell cheaper beer.
Alone, he could arrive when he wanted, dance when he wanted and go home without discussing it with anybody.
The Electric Ballroom suited him for much the same reason.
Nobody gave a shit.
By the time he arrived that Friday night, Camden was already heaving, people spilling from pubs and doorways beneath the lights of the High Street, traffic crawling past in bright, impatient streaks over wet asphalt. Inside, the Ballroom had begun acquiring the particular atmosphere Nick liked most about it: not packed enough yet to become physically unbearable, but far beyond polite - one single, overheated organism.
The wooden floor seemed to hold the movement of everyone who had crossed it that evening, the bass vibrating faintly beneath his boots even at the edges of the room, while the air had acquired that familiar mixture of beer, cigarettes, damp cotton, perfume and bodies which ought to have been revolting and somehow wasn’t. Light travelled badly through the smoke. It caught in it, turning white beams grey and coloured ones bruised around the edges, cutting across faces and shoulders before disappearing somewhere above the crowd.
Nick liked that too. There was something useful about places loud and murky enough to erase the day.
He had changed before coming, exchanging everything he had worn to work for dark jeans, a black vest and his white denim jacket. The jacket was already too warm, despite the sleeves being pushed to his forearms, but he liked it enough to tolerate the inconvenience.
His second drink of the evening was sitting beneath his hand at the bar while he watched the dance floor without really watching anybody in particular.
It was while he was sipping his drink that he noticed him.
He was on the dance floor several yards away, partly obscured whenever the crowd shifted, then visible again beneath the moving lights.
Red hair. A lot of it. Not ginger exactly ... more copper-brown until the light caught it, then suddenly red around the edges. It was too long to behave and apparently had no intention of doing so, falling into his face and across his forehead every few seconds only to be pushed back impatiently.
The man himself was smaller than Nick. Lean through the shoulders and especially through the waist, where a pale, very skingtight vest pulled close every time he twisted.
Nick watched for several seconds which were sufficient to realize that the redhead danced as though standing still had never occurred to him as a viable concept. He moved as though the music had taken him somewhere around the spine and was having its way with the rest, narrow hips turning, shoulders loose, one hand occasionally disappearing into the unruly mess of reddish-brown hair falling around his face.
There was no polished performance to it. No constant checking to see who might be watching. He simply moved with everything: shoulders, hips, arms, head, hair.
He appeared to know half the people around him without actually dancing with any of them. Every few seconds somebody touched his shoulder, shouted something into his ear or caught his attention. He answered everybody with a bright smile on his face.
Nick drank half his pint, remained at the bar through another song and then went onto the floor when something with a heavier rhythm began.
That was what he had actually come for.
Nick liked dancing.
He liked the precision, the clean certainty of rhythm; finding the exact place between kick and bass and letting everything else disappear around it.
He did not need to throw himself across a floor to enjoy himself.
For perhaps ten minutes, the redhead disappeared entirely before Nick saw only a flash of pale vest and copper hair before something - or more someone - slammed into his right side, hard enough to knock him out of balance. A shoulder struck his chest.
For one second they simply stared at each other.
Then Nick looked down.
His vest was soaked from collarbone to stomach. Something sweet and sticky had found its way through the fabric of his clothes with alarming speed, he was already running cold beneath it. More had splashed across the inside of his white jacket and one hip of his jeans.
Nick slowly raised his head - brown eyes in a freckled face widened in utter horror.
“Oh, fuck.”
Nick looked at him, the man in front of him raised his hands in a defensive gesture.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Nick looked down at himself again.
“No, I mean - Christ, I really am. Someone moved and I turned and I didn’t see you.”
“That last part was fairly clear.”
The man winced. Nick could see him deciding whether that was a joke. It mostly was.
“Sorry.”
“So you’ve said.”
“I know. I’m still sorry ... Jesus, you are soaked."
Nick peeled the wet front of the vest away from his chest. It slapped back against him immediately.
Lovely.
The redhead stepped closer, an expression on his face that simply did not suit him.
“Can I get you another drink perhaps?”
“I still have one.” Nick raised his own glass - remarkably, about a third had remained.
The redhead looked at it, then at Nick’s chest and almost recoiled at the enormous wet patch. “Technically most of mine is on you. So ... I owe you something.”
“I’m not sure that’s how economics works.”
That startled a laugh out of him. Nick glanced at his face.
“At the moment I’d rather not be wet,” Nick said and felt the cold liquid running down his stomach.
“That’s fair.”
Nick felt his mouth twitch.
The man noticed. He brightened immediately. “Right. Good. You don’t hate me. That’s promising.”
Nick stared. The redhead grinned. Nick was beginning to suspect he might be exhausting.
“I’m going to sort this out,” Nick said, indicating his clothes. “Try not to drown anyone else.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Reassuring.”
Nick left him on the dance floor and headed towards the next best sink. The toilets were packed, damp and unpleasant in several ways he preferred not to inspect too closely.
Two men were arguing beside the sinks about someone called Gary, someone else had apparently decided the floor was an acceptable place for himself and his pinkt.
Nick took off his jacket first.
The white denim had escaped reasonably well ... the vest had not.
He pulled it away from his skin and it immediately clung back like a second skin. Nick stared into the mirror and the damage.
“Excellent.”
He tried paper towels to no avail - they dissolved within seconds. After several minutes he accepted that the vest had ceased to be useful clothing and carefully peeled it over his head.
The sudden lack of wet fabric clinging to his skin improved his mood immediately. Nick dried himself as well as he could, gave up when the paper began adhering to his ribs and looked at his reflection.
Bare chest.
White denim jacket.
Dark jeans.
He shrugged at his reflection. He had seen three people downstairs wearing considerably less and none of them appeared distressed by it.
So Nick adjusted his jacket and left it open.. When he returned to the main room, he expected to see the redhead dancing. Instead he found him standing on a table.
Nick stopped dead in his tracks.
The table was near one of the walls, just far enough from the dance floor that several people had apparently decided it was suitable for coats, empty glasses and, now, one unstable man attempting to attach something to a pillar. Nick narrowed his eyes to see what he was holding.
Flyers.
Nick recognised them only because several were already hanging crookedly from nearby surfaces.
The redhead had one between his teeth and another in his hand while apparently trying to make tape adhere to painted brick.
It was not going well.
One corner came loose. Then another.
He slapped it back into place.
It fell again.
Nick folded his arms and watched with badly concealed amusement. This was better entertainment than expected.
The redhead stretched higher - the table shifted dangerously to one side.
A dark-haired man appeared beside him.
Tall and quiet-looking. Almost severe.
His face was adorned by the expression of a seriously annoyed father who had been dragged by his teenage son into this hell hole of a dance hall ... there was something profoundly familiar in the expression. It was the restrained exhaustion of someone who had spent considerable time negotiating with a person who viewed consequences as theoretical.
“Steven.” He sounded stern and exasperated.
Ah. Steven then.
“What?”
“Get down. You’re standing on somebody’s table.”
“They’re not using it.”
“There are six glasses on it.”
“They’re empty.”
The dark-haired man looked at the glasses. Then at Steven who finally gave a weak sigh.
“All right, all right.”
Steven climbed down.
Badly.
One boot missed the edge and the dark-haired man caught him by the arm before he could fall into the wall.
Steven righted himself. “I had it.”
“You very clearly did not.”
Nick laughed. Quietly.
Unfortunately, Steven heard. He turned and stopped on the spot when he saw Nick. His eyes moved immediately to Nick’s bare chest beneath the open jacket.
Then back to his face. Colour rose into his cheeks but Steven recovered quickly.
“Interesting way of sorting it out.”
Nick blinked. “Apparently.”
Steven’s eyes dropped again before he could stop them. Nick raised one eyebrow.
The dark-haired man followed the exchange, his eyes moved from Steven to Nick.
Nick glanced at the flyer in Steven’s hand. “What are you doing?”
Steven looked back.
“Nothing.”
Nick waited.
Steven added, “Well. Something. Obviously.”
“That clears it up.”
The dark-haired man’s mouth twitched. Nick allowed himself the faintest smile as well.
"It's probably nothing for you anyway," Steven said, which made Nick look at him with narrowed eyes. There was something in the way he said it that caught more than Nick’s attention. It wasn't dismissive exactly - more as though Steven had already put him into a category and was now quietly ruling him out of another one. Nick disliked being categorised by people who knew nothing about him.
“Why?”
Steven’s gaze flicked briefly to Nick’s chest again while he folded his arms. It was becoming difficult to pretend Nick had imagined that particular habit.
“We’re looking for a drummer.”
Nick looked at the stack in Steven’s hand. Several flyers were visibly curling at the edges, one of them bent where Steven had evidently been gripping it too tightly.
“For what?”
Steven blinked. “What?”
“The drummer.”
“Oh.” He glanced down at the flyers as if he had momentarily forgotten what was printed on them. “A band. We are a band.”
Nick’s eyes moved briefly towards the dark-haired man still standing beside them. He had the air of somebody who had heard this particular declaration made with great conviction before and had long since decided not to interfere.
“What sort of band?”
Steven opened his mouth, and for the first time that evening Nick saw him hesitate over an answer that did not involve apologising.
“Rock, mostly. Bit of whatever we decide sounds good.” His expression sharpened with the subject, some of the earlier embarrassment dropping away. “We just need somebody who can actually keep time and preferably doesn’t disappear after two rehearsals because of his new girlfriend."
The last part came out with enough specificity that Nick suspected there was a story behind it.
“A demanding list.”
Steven gave him a look, but there was amusement beneath it.
Nick glanced at the flyer again. DRUMMER WANTED was printed across the top in crooked black lettering, followed by details too small to read from where he stood.
“What do you play?”
Steven’s face changed. Only slightly, but Nick noticed. There was pride there.
“Bass.”
That made more sense than Nick expected it to. There had been something unusually precise beneath Steven’s dancing, an instinct for where the rhythm sat even when everything else about him suggested he might abandon structure on principle.
“And him?” Nick nodded towards the dark-haired man.
“Guitar.”
The man gave Nick the smallest nod, apparently accepting his inclusion in the conversation without feeling any need to contribute to it.
Nick liked him.
Steven lifted the flyers slightly. and Nick’s gaze dropped once more to the flyers. He could have told him then.
He could have said that he played drums. That he had done for years.
Instead he looked back at Steven. “Good luck with the drummer.”
For the briefest moment Steven’s expression shifted. Not quite disappointment.
Nick was fairly certain he imagined that.
“Thanks.”
There was the faintest edge to it.
Not hostile.
Something more complicated.
Nick held his gaze for another second before turning away.
He told himself he had no reason to mention the drums.
Steven had already decided it was probably nothing for him, after all.
Nick should have found that convenient.
Instead, as he walked back towards the dance floor, he discovered it annoyed him more than it reasonably should have. The music had changed again. Something with a driving bass line and drums loud enough to feel through the soles of his boots.
Nick let himself fall back into it.
The Ballroom had grown hotter. The crowd was thicker now, bodies moving so close that personal space had become theoretical. Smoke hung lower beneath the lights. The wooden floor seemed almost alive underfoot, vibration travelling through hundreds of shifting bodies and back again.
Nick loved this point of the night. When the room stopped feeling like a room. When individual conversations vanished beneath the music and thought became unnecessary.
He danced. Properly.
After two songs he stopped noticing the cool air touching his chest whenever someone moved past him. He did not notice Steven again until Steven walked directly into him.
Again.
Not hard this time. Just a shoulder brushing his arm as somebody squeezed between them, but Steven reacted as though fate itself had personally arranged the collision.
He spun around. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Nick shot him a look.
There was something almost impressive about the man’s ability to turn a minor physical inconvenience into an event. Nick had known him for perhaps twenty minutes in total and had already been drenched, apologised to repeatedly and now collided with for a second time.
He was beginning to understand the expression on the dark-haired man’s face.
“Developing a habit?” Nick asked casually.
“I didn’t spill anything.”
“You’ve improved.”
Steven laughed. Nick had expected him to laugh loudly. He did most things with unnecessary visibility. Instead it was brief, surprised, and for some reason that made Nick look at him properly again.
Steven was looking back.
Not at his face at first. His eyes moved over Nick with a small, unmistakable pause before lifting again.
Nick saw the exact moment surprise registered. “You actually can dance.”
Nick stared at him.
Steven immediately grimaced. “That sounded bad. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it then?”
Steven looked Nick up and down.
Nick waited. He could almost see Steven attempting to locate a version of the sentence that would improve matters.
Apparently none presented itself.
“You didn’t look like you could.”
Nick leaned slightly closer to hear him over the music. Steven smelled faintly of cigarettes now, beneath whatever sweet liquor he had been drinking earlier. His hair was damp around the temples and curling more wildly than before. Up close, Nick could see the freckles across his nose again.
“And how does someone who can dance look like?”
Steven opened his mouth.
Stopped.
Nick waited.
This was becoming unexpectedly entertaining.
“Not like you ... I suppose ...”
“Interesting. I hadn’t realised I was being assessed.”
Steven rolled his eyes.
Nick continued moving. That, he assumed, would be the end of it. Steven would find somebody else to collide with, climb onto another item of furniture or return to distributing flyers with a success rate that remained open to question.
Instead he stayed.
At first Nick could reasonably attribute this to the crowd. There were enough people around them now that moving in any particular direction required negotiation, and Steven was hemmed in between Nick and a group of women dancing beside them.
Then space opened.
Steven did not take it.
Nick noticed that.
He also noticed that he was pleased.
That was more irritating.
Steven moved beside him rather than directly with him, which Nick appreciated. There were people who interpreted proximity on a dance floor as an invitation to seize hold of whichever body happened to be nearest. Steven, despite apparently having very few other concepts of personal restraint, did not.
He simply danced.
Nick became aware of him in pieces.
The hair first, inevitably. Copper when the red lights passed over it, almost brown under the blue, strands sticking damply to Steven’s cheek before being thrown back again with a movement of his head.
The pale vest had come partly untucked and pulled close across his body whenever he turned. Steven was narrower than Nick had initially realised. Narrow through the waist in particular, with the sort of build that made the restless way he moved seem even more pronounced.
Steven was attractive. Nick was capable of acknowledging objective facts without turning them into a crisis. He was also, Nick suspected, profoundly exhausting.
Steven danced as if stillness might cause some essential system inside him to fail. His hands never seemed entirely at rest. Neither did his face. Even when he wasn’t speaking, expressions crossed it rapidly enough to make Nick wonder how much effort it would require to spend an entire evening in his company.
Probably considerable.
And yet there was nothing careless about the dancing itself.
Nick had expected chaos up close.
There wasn’t any.
Steven knew exactly where the rhythm was. He moved around it rather than merely throwing himself at it, shifting naturally when the bass changed, adjusting before Nick consciously registered the new pattern himself.
There was control beneath all that visible enthusiasm.
Steven simply wore his enjoyment differently.
Nick kept his contained somewhere inside his ribs, letting rhythm settle through his body until everything else became pleasantly irrelevant.
Steven appeared to need the entire room informed.
Nick ought to have found that annoying.
Steven glanced over. “You come here a lot?”
Nick looked at him. “Occasionally.”
“That means yes.”
“Does it?”
“You have the face of someone who says occasionally when he means every other Friday.”
Nick nearly smiled.
It was an absurdly specific accusation, delivered with complete confidence by somebody who had met him less than an hour ago.
“What does that face look like?”
Steven looked at him for a second too long.
Nick noticed that too. He was beginning to notice rather too much where Steven was concerned.
“Annoyingly composed.”
Nick tilted his head.
“Annoyingly?”
Steven’s eyes flicked away. “You heard me.”
There was colour beginning to rise beneath his freckles again.
Interesting.
Steven shoved lightly at his arm.
It appeared to be instinctive, the physical punctuation of somebody who apparently found words alone insufficient.
Nick looked down at the hand.
Steven froze.
Then pulled it away. “Sorry.”
Nick was beginning to suspect embarrassment suited him rather better than Steven would have appreciated hearing.
“You apologise quite a lot.”
“I’d like it formally noted that this time you remained dry.”
“So far.”
Steven grinned.
And there it was again.
That sudden change in his face. Nick had noticed it after the first spilled drink: Steven was expressive all the time, but smiling altered him more than it should have. It softened something around the eyes while making the rest of him seem even brighter, which was frankly unnecessary. The man already possessed enough visual presence without being additionally improved by happiness.
Nick felt something warm and irritating settle beneath his ribs.
He ignored it.
Ignoring things had generally served him well.
They danced through another song.
Not together.
Nick refused to call it that.
They happened to occupy the same small area of floor while responding to the same music. That was all.
It was also, technically, true.
It simply failed to account for the fact that when Steven shifted closer, Nick shifted rather than moving away. Or that he knew when Steven changed rhythm without needing to look at him. Or that when Steven turned his back for several seconds Nick noticed the damp curls clinging to his neck and the freckles scattered beneath them.
Steven looked over again.
Nick caught him watching.
This time Steven did not immediately look away.
For perhaps two seconds neither of them did.
Nick had no difficulty holding somebody’s gaze. Usually it was other people who became uncomfortable first.
Steven did not seem uncomfortable.
Curious, perhaps.
Amused.
Then a hand landed on Steven’s shoulder.
His tall, dark-haired friend had reappeared.
Nick experienced an immediate and unreasonable flicker of disappointment.
Steven turned. “What?”
“We’re going.”
Steven looked genuinely offended. “It’s early.”
“It’s nearly one.”
“That’s early.”
“We said we’d leave before the last train became a theoretical concept.”
Nick looked at the dark-haired man again. His opinion of him improved further.
Somebody had apparently accepted responsibility for transporting Steven through ordinary adult life, and Nick thought the man deserved recognition for public service.
Steven glanced at Nick.
Briefly.
Nick saw it.
His friend probably did too. His expression did not change, but something about the patience in it suggested very little escaped him.
“I’m dancing.”
Long fingerd caught Steven lightly by the sleeve. Steven resisted for perhaps half a second. Not enough to make it a real argument. More on principle.
Then he gave in. Before turning away, he looked at Nick again.
“Try not to get soaked after I leave.”
Nick glanced down at his bare chest. “Bit late.”
Steven laughed. Then he got pulled him into the crowd.
Nick watched them go.
Only for a second.
Maybe two.
There was no reason not to look. Steven was difficult not to look at in general. The hair alone functioned almost as a navigational marker among the darker heads around him.
Nick saw it moving through the crowd.
Then Steven turned. Just once before the bodies swallowed him.
Nick looked away before he could decide whether Steven had actually been looking back at him.
That would require interpretation and Nick disliked interpretation when facts were available.
Unfortunately, there were no facts.
So he returned his attention to the music.
It remained good.
He stayed another twenty minutes.
He danced through one song, then another. Finished what remained of his drink. Watched somebody knock over a chair near the bar, avoided a woman who seemed determined to involve everybody within reach in whatever argument she was having with her boyfriend.
The Ballroom was still hot. Still smoky. Still loud enough that the bass pressed through Nick’s chest before he properly heard it. The same coloured light crossed the floor. The same people crowded the bar. Nothing had altered in any meaningful way.
And yet the room felt slightly flatter.
Nick found that disproportionately irritating.
Nick finished his drink and left.
Outside, Camden had cooled. The change in temperature was immediate against his skin. Cold air slipped beneath the open jacket and across his bare chest, reminding him once again why most people generally wore shirts when leaving the house.
He pulled the denim closer around himself.
People stood smoking near the entrance, clustered beneath the awning and along the pavement. Traffic crawled past in a slow line of headlights, reflected in the wet road. Somewhere farther down the street somebody shouted for a taxi. A couple beside the kerb were arguing with the exhausted intensity of people who had been doing so long enough to forget what the original offence had been.
Nick shoved his hands into his pockets and started walking. He was nearly at the corner when something moved beside him.
Paper caught by the wind.
He would not ordinarily have looked twice.
Tonight he did.
Nick stopped. One of Steven’s flyers had been taped to a lamppost.
Badly.
Half the top edge had already come loose, and every gust lifted it away from the metal before slapping it back again.
Nick stood in front of it.
DRUMMER WANTED
Underneath, in smaller letters:
Original material. Gigs booked. Commitment essential.
Then an address.
A rehearsal room.
A time.
There were tear-off strips along the bottom. Several had already gone.
Nick read the flyer once.
Then again.
It was not particularly informative.
It did not say what sort of music they played. It gave no band name. No indication of experience, influences or whether any of the people involved possessed at least basic competence.
Steven had said they played rock and that it was probably nothing for him.
Nick still had no idea why. Perhaps because he looked too respectable.
That thought annoyed him.
He could already imagine Steven’s reasoning, if reasoning was the right word for whatever happened inside that head. White jacket. Composed face. Apparently insufficiently convincing dancing credentials who Steven had instinctively placed into whichever mental category contained people unlikely to spend evenings in rehearsal rooms.
Nick’s mouth tightened.
Perhaps Steven had decided one spilled drink constituted sufficient information to determine Nick’s musical interests.
Nick looked at the little strips of paper. He had spent years becoming good at drumming, then quietly allowed it to retreat behind work and ordinary life because ordinary life had an irritating habit of taking up whatever space it was given.
He still played.
Certainly not with anybody.
And he had not been looking for a band.
That fact seemed worth remembering.
Nick reached out and tore off one of the remaining strips.
The paper came away unevenly.
He looked down at it.
A rehearsal-room address.
A time.
Nothing else.
Ridiculous.
He folded it once.
Then again, more neatly, and slipped it into the pocket of his white jacket. Nick remained beside the lamppost for another moment. He had no idea what they sounded like.
They could be utterly dreadful.
Statistically, there was every possibility they were dreadful.
Steven himself did not inspire confidence in matters of organisation. Nick had watched him fail to attach a piece of paper to a wall, nearly fall from a table. The idea of that man successfully coordinating rehearsals, gigs and three or four musicians bordered on fantasy.
Then Nick remembered Steven dancing.
The control beneath the movement. The way he had found changes in the rhythm instantly.
The flyer said Original material.
That, unfortunately, made Nick curious.
Curiosity required nothing from him.
He could go once.
He did not even have to stay.
He could listen, establish that they were incompetent, confirm his suspicion that Steven was as chaotic musically as he was socially, and leave.
That would be sensible.
He began walking towards the station. The strip of paper rested against his fingers inside the jacket.
He could throw it away at the next bin.
He passed one before reaching Camden Town.
Then another.
The paper remained in his pocket.
