Perhaps it was just that he was so hard up, that he had been here for so long, but Dick thought that watching Simon eat peaches was the most erotic thing he had ever seen in his life. If he hadn't had the rough wooden table in front of him he would have had to grab a hat or a coat to throw over his lap.

Fork, tin, lift… The beads of pure syrup dripping from the slice. The look in his eyes, eyes which could look so blue in the sun of the exercise yard, but so grey here in the poor light of their quarters. His lips parted, his lips that were rich despite the amount of weight he had shed since he first arrived in this place; and that shed weight only added to the richness of his lips, which were accentuated by the angle of his jaw and his cheekbones. His lips were pale. A month in solitary would make anyone pale. But god… His lips were parted and the smallest hot breaths were coming from between them as he held that peach slice suspended before him, his eyes focussed on nothing else.

Drip, drip… Precious sugary juice falling back into the tin. His lips were already glistening from the first slice that he had necked like liquor. And then he counted, and he couldn't hold himself. He counted himself up to the time when he could eat the next golden slice, and he couldn't even get to nine let alone ten before he made such a sound of need, before he swept that piece of peach right in, and it drifted over his lower lip as it went into his mouth, and he chewed and swallowed it like a man in love, in lust with those peaches.

Dear god…

The others were talking, but he could hardly listen. Even when Simon got possession of the tin for himself and moved away from the table Dick was still watching, watching his tongue flickering out to brush the syrup from his lips, watching the look of delight on his face.

He got distracted at Brent's sudden outburst. They all did. Simon even stopped eating for a while. And he felt for poor George, he really did. The chap had muffed things on a number of occasions. He just didn't have enough backbone, but he couldn't really help that. He was a nice chap, a talented artist, an all round good egg. Just didn't have enough backbone, and always felt like he was letting people down. Poor George.

But then things settled down, and after a decorous interval Simon started lifting the peaches to his mouth again, and Dick watched and felt that burning need grow even harder now, with the adrenaline spike and frustration of finding their latest escape plan wasn't going to work out.

'Here, steady on. You'll make yourself sick,' he managed to say. He was standing by Simon's bunk, looking down at him, trying to not look like he was a voyeur at a peep hole.

Simon looked up from the tin with which he was having an almost indecent relationship, and smiled. He lifted the tin to his mouth and carefully, avoiding the jagged edges, drained the last drops of juice. Syrup sparkled in his moustache. His tongue flicked out of his mouth to lick it away.

'I couldn't be sick,' he said with feeling. 'Those peaches are part of me now. They're an intimate piece of my soul.'

And Dick laughed, and Simon's eyes met his, and they read each other perfectly. They always did in these moments. It had been a long time with Simon in solitary, for both of them.

'Here, come on,' Simon said, and he tossed the spent tin aside and jerked his head towards the door.

So Dick followed him to their alcove, their private alcove in the twisting bowels of the castle, a place where no one went, a place that stunk of damp and earth, where the walls were green with slime and the floor was cold. They didn't care. Simon pressed Dick back against the wall and when they kissed his lips tasted of syrup and peaches and he held him so hard he almost couldn't breathe. Simon's hands pressed against him through his coat as if he were trying to feel his heartbeat, to feel the rise and fall of his lungs.

Solitary would do that to a man. It would make him feel as if he were the only real thing. Even if he saw men, even if they spoke on occasion, that lack of touch could make a man go crazy, make him think they were all ghosts and he was the only one with a beating heart. Sounds became magnified. The clanking of the bucket. The scrape of a chair on the floor. The boot steps outside when the guard was changed. The keys in the lock. But nothing seemed real, not quite as real as the touch of another human being.

When Simon pulled a woollen sock out of his pocket and looked straight into Dick's eyes with such a naked look of lust and need, Dick thought his knees were going to give up on him.

Hurriedly, roughly, they each opened their own fly, fumbled with cloth, pulled free their aching cocks and pressed them together. This had to be quick, almost professional. They had practised enough, and they had to be quick, before they were discovered. So Simon drew the thick sock down over both their lengths, trapping their hard heat together, and together they wrapped their hands around it and together they pumped and squeezed and rubbed until they were coming together with muted grunts of satisfaction. For a moment everything disappeared, no old castle, no guards, no near starvation or guns or hardship. Just white heat so large it made everything else null, the heat of his flesh against Simon's flesh, their hands bony hard and locked together.

'God, it's a long time in solitary,' Simon muttered as he refastened his clothes, shoved the dirty sock back into his pocket, and stood back, looking almost wistfully into Dick's face.

'Yeah, I know,' Dick said. 'But it's worth it for peaches.'

'Peaches,' Simon said, his eyes very intently on Dick's lips. 'Yeah, peaches. That's exactly it. It's worth it for that.'