Night had fallen on New Year's Eve and after some alcoholic refreshment Antonin found himself being cajoled into visiting a gay club in Soho. Upon entering he found the place teeming with men, some shirtless and some not, some in sailor hats and some in obscenely tiny shorts of a sparkling, metallic lamé. The air was steamy with the sweat of men, and on occasion he caught whiff of something musky, or something sour-sweet, of myriad hormones ablaze. The music was turned all the way up loud, the beat of the music thumping to the throb of the heart. The crowds were out tonight for the ubiquitous countdown parties.
Lining the walls of the disco he could see contortions of human bodies engaged in obscene acts, in full view of the rest of the patrons. Why had Fabian brought him to such a place? It was rife with sin and filthiness, and he feared his soul might suffer yet another taint from being associated with such a place.
Fabian threw off his coat and began to shimmy on the dance floor, rubbing up against various men in a flirtatious undulation. Antonin felt horrified at this display of brazenness, and went up to Fabian to stop him from this senseless behaviour.
As he neared, squeezing his way through a leering, libidinous crowd with wandering hands he had to keep swatting off lest they land with success on some part of his body, he saw Fabian lean backwards, mouth gaping open from sheer ecstasy, onto a man who was grinding with much gusto at his shapeless, nearly nonexistent bottom.
"Ah, here's my dark Russian prince, come to rescue me," Fabian said, reaching out to Antonin to trail a finger down his cheekbones.
"Russian? What's your name, Ivan?" said the man who was grinding at Fabian's bottom, pronouncing the "I" like the visual organ.
Antonin frowned, as another man placed his hands on Fabian's gyrating body, dragging his palms down the torso to the waist and under Fabian's shirt. "Yes, my name is Ivan," Antonin replied, mispronouncing it deliberately. "Ivan Sod-off."
Fabian began to laugh but the other man became visibly annoyed. "Tell your boyfriend to share," the other man whispered loudly into his ear.
I'm not his boyfriend, Antonin thought, but the music was so loud he couldn't be bothered to exert the required energy to voice this thought. He grabbed Fabian by the wrist and pried him off that amorous pervert.
"You need a drink," Fabian said, tumbling opportunistically onto him, snaking an arm behind his back. Antonin was painfully aware that as they moved, heads were turning to look at them, or at him maybe, but this was evidently because Fabian was making a complete fool of himself by means of adhering desperately to any hot-blooded male in the room instead of any other reason beyond Antonin's comprehension, like his stunning cheekbones, for example.
They reached the bar, and Fabian ordered him to down some shots in quick succession. While watching him, some other man approached Fabian and started snogging him wetly with a lot of tongue action and Antonin wondered if Fabian had a reputation that preceded him? Why was he so popular here? Was he so completely in his element in this promiscuous, sex-driven place that he ruled the roost? Antonin felt some bile and recently ingested alcohol rise to the throat. The place was uncomfortably hot, which could account for the proliferation of shirtless behaviour, or it could be that the desire to be shirtless motivated the owners to keep the thermostat high in this place. He needed to get out of here before it became too overwhelming. He gestured to Fabian that he was going outdoors for some fresh air, and went outside as soon as he could.
The club being so full of people the entrances and exits were obscured, and Antonin went out of a door only to find he was in an enclosed courtyard where some other patrons were smoking and some were engaged in exhibitionistic sex. Upon seeing him, some tried to endear themselves but Antonin refused to even acknowledge them, standing alone all pure and lofty and unattainable.
It was the third time someone tried to grope his bottom when Antonin grew frustrated and stomped off back into the teeming crowd. He didn't quite know why he was feeling so indignant at this place—he was trying to comfort himself that the place disgusted him because he was a cleansed and beautiful creature of the Lord now, but at the corners of his mind guilt nibbled at his nerves that his former sins would always haunt him. He went back to the bar, where the bartender offered him a free drink with a wink and a nod towards the back room. Antonin gulped down the drink in one because the place was such a distressing assault on his senses but gave no regard to the bartender's proposition. Fabian was nowhere to be found.
He waded back onto the disco floor, where numerous men besieged him, all desperately flinging themselves at his body. It seemed to Antonin true that no one here had any dignity left in the soul. The mass of bodies was starting to seem like an amorphous blob, all connected to each other via some sexual act or the other. He had half a mind to abandon the place and leave Fabian to fester in his shameless frotting but he also felt a sense of heroic duty, like he had to keep Fabian from being wantonly defiled by this company of dirty muggles.
It was no easy task but he finally found Fabian in the loo, bent over on his knees and attempting to simultaneously fellate several men. As he did so some other man standing behind him gave him a hearty spank on the bottom and began tugging down his trousers in a bid for some penetration.
Without quite knowing why, Antonin immediately sprang over to pull Fabian away before the rest of these men could defile him further. Fabian was slurring and protested weakly at the sudden interruption of his orgiastic business.
One of the men grabbed him on the arm to stop him from moving. "Where are you taking him?" he asked gruffly.
"None of your business," Antonin snapped in reply.
"I don't like the look of you," this man said impertinently. "You look like you hate all of us. We can tell, you know. See, this one here, he is one of us and we love him, but something's not right about you."
"You can't say he's one of yours when you don't even know his name!" Antonin retorted. "It's Fabian, by the way."
The man looked to his side, seeking moral support from companions. "Fabian, is that really your name, Fabian?"
Fabian nodded, rubbing his nose sheepishly. Antonin wrested the man's hand off his arm and dragged Fabian out of the dank, stinking loo. This was a most unhygienic excursion, he thought, and full of stupid muggle impediments who thought they could have their way anyhow.
"Listen, Fabian," the interfering man called out as they were leaving. "I don't know but be safe, okay? Your boyfriend, or whoever this man is, seems borderline abusive. Or at the very least controlling and possessive..."
Antonin desperately wished he could use the Killing Curse on this man right there and then but it was impossible without blowing his cover. In his anger he began marching Fabian out of the club and all around in the cold night without much care to where they were headed. Fabian, for the most part, was pliant and submissive, allowing himself to be dragged all over town without much awareness of the fact.
"What were you doing back there?" Antonin demanded.
"What were you doing?" Fabian whined in return. "Why did you pull me away?"
"I didn't like what they were doing to you. It seemed so threatening, all these men standing over you with their dicks out."
"That was entirely consensual!" Fabian whined.
"It's still disgusting," Antonin said.
At this point, Fabian looked up at him like he had been slapped. His lower lip began to tremble, and Antonin felt his anger rise to boiling point. Fabian was weak, and reprehensible, being utterly without a backbone. He was completely without dignity or shame, and he was so infuriatingly floppy all Antonin wanted to do was reach out and break him into pieces, just so he would know what real hurt felt like and stop bursting into tears at the merest provocation.
They were waking down the streets at brisk pace, past the rowdy and merry and violent celebrations that burst through from pubs and homes and corners. Antonin was beginning to rage at these celebrating ignoramuses. What reason had all of them to celebrate? Did no one know of the suffering that was written into his or her futures? So what if it was a new year? The day would be no different from the last and humanity would continue to rot, driven to destruction by their inherent defects. Only one knew of the way out, only one amongst them knew the secret to perfection and that was the Dark Lord...
Fabian was sobbing now, in full public view, with moist eyes and ugly face and flabby fishlike lips distorted and wobbling.
"I feel sick," Fabian wailed. "I feel like I'm going to be ill—"
"Get a grip on yourself," Antonin snapped impatiently.
Fabian sniffled, rubbing his leaking nose unceremoniously with his coat sleeve. "You're so cruel," he complained, bursting into tears. "What did I do wrong? You have no idea how much I feel about you. I get sick at the mere thought. My stomach lurches and my heart collapses on itself. All you have to do is tell me and I would do anything I can to please you. That's how much I want you to be happy with me but you're never happy."
What a sick, desperate man, Antonin thought. He probably threw himself at every single person hoping they would love his unworthy self. They were reaching the Thames now and Antonin wondered if it would be kinder to just tip him over and let the heavy water enfold him out of existence. There was no discernible merit to Fabian's continued living.
"I have absolutely no self-esteem," Fabian wailed, in a sudden bout of self-awareness. "I have no dignity or self-belief and I think that's why people hate me but I have no idea how or where to acquire these things. I just want someone to love me. Is it stupid that I think that if only someone truly loved me I would be fine? That all my flaws would disappear and people would begin to like me."
The night's festivities were dying down as the countdown was over. The distant shouts and cheers from drunken hooligans and partygoers were fading away. Trafalgar Square had dispersed, as did the crowd by Big Ben and Westminster Bridge. Today was the first of January, nineteen seventy eight, and Antonin had spent it watching a grown man embarrass himself in public.
Fabian suddenly thought it appropriate to hurl, for he threw himself over the balustrade and heaved into the Thames. That done, he looked pitifully at Antonin, who was watching him from a distance. He was calling out to be loved, to have someone deem him of some worth, the basest, crudest yearning of all humans when faced with the problem of ever-looming mortality.
Antonin took a step towards Fabian and felt him fall into his arms, warm and trembling. He led Fabian to the side of the bridge and sat him down by the plaque with the poem. Fabian reached out to slip his hands in between his, yearning to be held. Antonin wanted to remain defiant to the end, but he knew by now that this city he loved had a way of breaking people down in the early hours of each morning.
Grasping his hands, Fabian nuzzled into him. By this hour, the bridge was remarkably deserted, and the air so still that the only thing left between them was an unbearable tension. Searching for something or anything to cut into it Antonin began to recite the first lines of the poem, without even needing to look at the plaque.
"Earth has not anything to show more fair: dull would he be of soul who could pass by..."
Fabian sniffled, a soft, gentle sniffle, trilling with welled-up mucous in the nostrils. Antonin leaned over, in a moment of tenderness, and kissed him on the mouth. He could still taste the sick reeking of alcohol and burning with acidity in Fabian's mouth, but he kissed him anyway.