Mags Lewis is tall and lanky, with a misaligned nose that curves sharply to one side like the bend in a stream, light watery eyes and a head of reddish hair. Oliver knows that this is who he is due to the name that Jack speaks as he picks himself up from the floor and dusts down his coat, before spitting casually but pointedly on the ground in front of their assailant. His companion, the man who put his hands on Oliver, is a broader fellow with a soft, undefined face. Both of them are positively twitching, poised for any hint of retaliation from Jack or himself that will give them the excuse to mount their next, more serious assault.

"Now, Mags," Jack says, very, very slowly, "I know you ain't the sharpest cove out there. You proved it often enough. But trying it on outside my own door's got to be the daftest move what you ever made. You want another round, let me have a place and a time, and I'll let you have some more of what I was so generous with when we last met."

"This is the place, Jack," Lewis says, "you can be sure of it." His speech has a pitched, sing-song quality to it that no doubt has him convinced that he sounds very clever indeed. "And there ain't no better time what I can come up with than when your fancy man's there to see it happen."

Jack takes a step forward, and, reflexively, Oliver grasps his shoulder. "Jack. Walk away. It isn't worth it."

"No," Jack answers, "he ain't. But it'd make me feel a bloody sight better."

Lewis jerks his head towards Oliver. "He's got the idea. Knows I don't take a thrashing without paying it back double. P'rhaps when you're in no state to protect him any more, we'll give him a taste as well."

"I don't need protecting, Lewis," Oliver replies, steadily. Theoretically, the two ruffians before him could as easily be armed with knives or bludgeons as with their fists alone, but he doubts that this is the case, for various reasons. The first is that, had either he or Jack been the target of an attempted killing, it would have been foolish not to take the chance to strike the blow from behind when it was available. Even if they were to survive, their assailants would be a mystery to them. The fact that Lewis and his cohort have such a strong desire for Jack to see their faces seems to indicate that their fate is intended to be a beating, not murder. Oliver hasn't had cause to use his fists for many years, his maturity having been focused on healing rather than hurting, but he feels a strange lack of objection to the idea of participating again.

"He thinks you do," the round-faced man pipes up to Oliver's left. "You oughter be paying him as your body-guard. You're a miser as well as rich."

"Whatever Jack's felt that he wanted to do for me has been as a friend."

Lewis emits a laugh, one akin to a gobbling turkey. His Adam's apple bobs in a manner that serves only to increase the resemblance to the barnyard fowl, and would have been comical in other circumstances. "You're green, ain't you? Might only be friendship to you. It ain't to him."

"Does the shit that comes out of your mouth ever leave your arse jealous, Mags?" Jack enquires.

"I think that I can safely say that I understand Jack's intentions," Oliver says. "I'm a very old acquaintance of his, you see. I trust him a great deal."

"Now, ain't that nice? Shame that, for all that time that's passed, you don't know him all that well."

"There ain't nothing what he don't know about me what matters," Jack says. He starts forward again, just a slow, casual swing of his foot that draws no undue attention. "Course, there's still a lot what he's got to learn about you. Like how your own tastes in company make a wicker privy seat look clean."

Lewis's pale eyes protrude, his features creasing into something far uglier and more revealing of the nature beneath. "Then he'll know how you're a whore, won't he? A bloody Mary-Ann what takes it up the arse -"

What the rest of his accusations were to be remains unknown, as his words choke off when Jack's knee finds a home in his groin, to be followed a second later by his fist smashing into his face. His companion makes a grab for Oliver's arm, but Oliver feels only the start of the pull, the attempt to twist it behind his back, before he reacts instinctively. With all the strength that he has in him, he drives his elbow back into the man's ribs, and the instant that he feels the grip release, turns on his heel and sends his fist in the same direction.

Lewis's accomplice gasps and stumbles backwards, winded. Sucking air into his own lungs, his heart thumping with both shock and a glorious anger, Oliver waits, watching him, assessing him. When the other man lunges with a powerful but clumsy punch, he takes it in his midriff, but not with the strength intended. He feels the spot bloom with hot pain, and nausea rushes momentarily up in response, but his movement backwards is enough to not only deflect the force somewhat, but throw his opponent off balance. As he wavers a little, Oliver lashes out with another blow that, by skill or fortunate accident, lands square on the man's jaw. The ruffian sways for only a moment or two before sinking to his knees, like one of the bellowing cattle hocked at Smithfield.

Out of the corner of his eye during all of this, Oliver has been able to see Jack laying into Mags Lewis with great enthusiasm. His shorter stature is an advantage to him rather than a handicap as he uses it to deliver a number of vicious and joyful body punches, and as the jerking momentum brings Lewis's head lower, Oliver hears the dull sound of Jack making contact with both of his cheeks in turn. Lewis spits back at him, a diffused, angry spray. "Sod," he says, heavily, before driving his bunched fist straight into Jack's face. The two of them go down in a tangle of limbs. With a glance that satisfies him that his own adversary has no present urge to continue matters and his chest heaving with both exertion and a fierce excitement, Oliver is searching for a window in which to drag Lewis off and deliver another punch himself, when the two wrestling men fetch up heavily against the wall of the arch. Lewis takes the worst of the collision. Swift and slippery as an eel and none the less so for his beatings, Jack rolls over to straddle Lewis, a knee planted on either side of his chest. Gasping a little, he grabs a handful of his hair and yanks his head up so sharply that the stunned Lewis croaks in both surprise and pain.

"Mags," he says, thickly, "you know what your bloody trouble is? Your trouble's that you don't know when you're out of your class." And he releases his hair and shoves him backwards to let him crack the back of his skull audibly against the slimy flagging.

There are comings and goings about the yard now, and the sounds of loud and interested conversation, and, after a short time, a shape looms up out of the dark close to them, revealing itself as it does so to be the sturdy form of Tom King. Grasping the shoulder of Jack's coat, he hauls him up with a grunt, a little roughly, but without anger. He peers down at Lewis, who is attempting to struggle to his hands and knees, then turns and disappears around the wall for a moment, before returning with a pail of water. With calm unhesitation, he throws the entire contents over the unlucky felon, who rises up coughing and swearing, his orange hair flattened like a wet cat's.

"Bugger off out of here, Lewis," he says, shortly, "and take your pal with you." He jerks his thumb towards Oliver's adversary, who is still half-sitting, half-sprawling in the spot where he fell. "One of my potboys saw this business start up, and I ain't having any thumping of the regulars."

Lewis crawls to his feet, and, still cursing beneath his breath, begins to edge back out towards the street, cuffing loosely at the head of his companion as he goes in what passes for an order to follow. Tom King stands with folded arms, watching, until they withdraw from sight. Then he shakes his head a little, and turns back to Jack and Oliver.

"The lad saw who started it," he says, "but you two fellers decided to do a fine job of finishing it between you. Less of the fisticuffs, eh? You'll have the bobbies down on me for an unruly house, and it'll be the worse for all of us."

Oliver inhales, filling his lungs, which have been starting to ache a little from breathing so shallowly. A twinge grips his abdominal muscles where the punch from Lewis's friend had landed, but he feels that, as a boy fighter now long out of practice, he might have come off considerably worse than he has. I didn't go down, he thinks, with a modest rush of pride. His trousers and coat are largely unmarked. Jack, by contrast, is quite stained and smeared on both cloth and face from his roll on the muddy floor, but he appears to think it worth it.

"Our apologies, Mr King. I'd never seen the man before, myself, but he was certainly waiting for Jack somewhere hereabouts. It was no coincidence."

A man could be forgiven for imagining that Tom King is doing his utmost to hide a grin of his own. "You don't throw half bad punches for a gent, Mr Brownlow," he says. "Just try and keep 'em off the premises in the future."

"I'd be glad to, sir," Oliver replies.

Tom shakes his head once again, and gives Jack a good-natured push. "Go on. Clear off upstairs while I finish closing, and I'll send Kate up in a bit with hot water. And see that she comes straight down again, mind."

"Tom, me and Oliver'll be licking our wounds, and as much company to each other as we can handle."

Jack's words echo in Oliver's head as they climb the stairs to the gallery floor where the rooms lie. Both of them are breathing hard with the crude rush of excitement, their blood still up. The buxom Kate brings a large pitcher of steaming water, and leaves them with a good fire catching in the hearth. Jack locks them in as before: then to keep safe his takings, now to do the same for their privacy. Stripped bare to the waist, with clothes from coats to undershirts slung over chairs, braces hanging unfastened, they keep themselves warm before it as they press hot cloths to where bruises will later come. Despite Jack's scorn of thugs and of violence, he's never looked so alive, as if this is all manna to him. The memory of the peculiar, disconcerting moment when Oliver had seen him slam Mags Lewis against the wall, straddling the man and gasping, now brings home to him the realization of how slim it is possible for the divide to be between a throb of pain and one of pleasure. Jack's eyes glow with intrigue and heat. "Oliver," he says, a tiny reflected flame dancing within each pupil, "I have to say that so far tonight, you're doing quite well. I might even call you 'magnificent'."

Oliver's smile won't seem to leave him. "I managed to land two lucky blows, that's all."

"Lucky for you - wasn't so lucky for him. Stand up." When Oliver obeys, Jack prods about his lumbar regions, producing a slight grunt when he hits the tender place. "Hurts, does it?"

"Somewhat, but my diagnosis is that I'll live."

"Mine's that you're a better pugilist than what you credit yourself with." Jack glances at him curiously, his fingers tapping an idle tattoo on the taut skin beneath. "I thought you'd shout for help when I walloped him. Like the law-abiding gent what you of course are."

Oliver lets this last irony pass without comment. "Actually, I think that if you hadn't swung first, I might have."

"'Cause of that shove what you got?"

"No. Because of what he said to you. I didn't like it."

The fingers stop moving, but rest where they are. "Oh. The Mary-Ann bit, or the arse bit?"

"No, the whore part. It struck a personal chord in me. I've always found love offered for money rather than passion distasteful. As strange as some men might think me for it."

"It's the way the world is for some, but if you're strange, it ain't in such a bad way. And I can't say I've disagreed with you." Jack looks down to the floor, then back up again. "Can I take it that if passion's in play, there ain't much what you find distasteful?"

Each time that Oliver breathes, Jack's fingertips make tiny brushes of his skin that draw his entire attention. "No," he says, after a moment, "not distasteful. Or not as much as strange... in the case of what Lewis saw fit to mention. I'm not sure what would make a man want to receive it. To be sodomized."

"Did you ever ask one of your girls why she wanted your prick? Why she wanted it in her cunt, before you ever got it in?"

"Indirectly," Oliver says. Before his knowledge of intercourse had extended beyond bawdy stories, he had been greatly concerned with those that declared that women bled and cried when they were fucked, and had sought to confirm later in his youth that he was causing pleasure, and not pain. It had been of supreme importance to him, and his anatomical curiosities had also played not an insignificant part in his pursuit of information.

"And what did she tell you?"

"That when she were roused, she felt as though she were empty, and missing and wanting for something, and when my cock was inside, she felt full again. And that sometimes she liked to think about how I had a certain power and could do all that I wanted."

"Ain't it ever occurred to you that it could be the same way for a feller at times?"

"But for a woman, it's -" Oliver says, and then stops. A word hovers on the tip of his tongue.

"Natural?" Jack suggests.

"Yes," Oliver admits.

"Oliver, let me tell you, it feels very natural to me as well."

The heat from the fire that divides him in half, burning one side while the room chills the other, coupled with the loose talk, is beginning to focus the blood rushing in Oliver's veins into something specific and deeply intimate that builds between his legs. Like the ticking of a clock-hand, every beat of his pulse sends another throb of warmth into his cock and fills it a little more. It seems impossible to keep his eyes away from Jack, half-naked, with his square shoulders and taut stomach and small, rosy nipples; not to be aware of his own similarly bare skin. Oliver feels almost lightheaded. For all his soft mouth and soft eyes with dark locks of hair straggling over, Jack's body looks as hard as nails, as hard as it had felt when he had pushed it against Oliver's own.

"Course," Jack adds, "there's some other things what make it enjoyable too."

Time seems contracted, as if it were only a few minutes since they had been together like this, in the same room, and Jack's mouth had been so compelling against Oliver's. There's a feeling of continuity, as if none of the events in between have ever happened and they are simply now resuming where they had left off. When Jack moves in to kiss him, he responds, as he had before, slowly at first, their lips meeting almost delicately.

The second time, it's with a swifter, stronger hunger that the pleasure that he had felt upon their last encounter seems to pale beside. They have fought side by side tonight, and now both of them desire spoils. Jack steps forward into the kiss, and his pelvis bumps and rubs against Oliver's. There's a high chance that it's deliberate and a somewhat lower one that it's accidental, but the result is the same: the press of a thick, fabric-contained lump of cock against Oliver's own that makes him suddenly self-consciousness. Had his female friends, feeling such a demanding thing, ever been afraid, or had their longing to be filled by him at the moment of consummation equalled his to perform the action? Nature would dictate that men and women be thrilled by their counterpart, but for a man's arousal to burn still higher at the feel of another's is something beyond nature alone.

Jack has evidently felt his momentary stillness, because he briefly stops, to ask, "All right?" When Oliver nods, faintly, Jack's hand leaves his stomach and runs up his back, beneath his shoulder blades, gripping him closer and tighter. Oliver cups and holds his jaw as they meet again to keep him there, his heart pounding as though it might burst through his ribs, feeling the shock of bare skin against bare skin. He's not gentle, not at all, but Jack only seems to delight in it, mashing his lips onto Oliver's, working his mouth, and sliding his tongue about his own. Oliver has neither kissed nor been kissed like this before; with an intensity that borders on violence, yet is anything but. Rather there is to it a rude and brazen sensuality.

"Don't you say 'no' tonight, Oliver. Don't you bloody say 'no'!"

"I won't," Oliver answers, hoarsely. No longer is he even able to. Each time that Jack's chest presses and rubs against his, new waves of warm, voluptuous want break over him that rush to culminate in his rapidly engorging cock. Jack emits something akin to a low, thankful groan, and begins to pull one-handedly at the fastenings of his own trousers, then with those of his linens beneath. Oliver watches with breathless anticipation as the cock beneath the flap is released and stands freely, the head protruding from beneath its fleshy hood like a plum.

"Feel my prick," Jack says, "frig me." It sounds closer to an order than a request, but Oliver finds himself stumbling to comply. He reaches down, and wraps Jack in a shaking hand, feeling his intimate heat; works long and slow up and down his length, alternately hiding and baring him, attempting to adjust his grip as he goes to accommodate the unfamiliar angle and fascinated by how another man is the same as him and much the same size, yet different. He's no stranger to genitalia in the examining room, but how much more apparent the subtleties are, when a cock is rigid. Jack's glans flares a little less from the shaft than his own, the knot of the frenulum is more widely spread, and, beneath, the sack of his balls hangs a little more loosely. His strokes grow steadier as Jack, by way of soft grunts and sounds of encouragement, lets him know the speed and pressure that he likes. He favours Oliver with a few more kisses before relinquishing his hold on his bicep and turning his attention to the remainder of his clothes, ever a treasure seeker, hungry for what lies within.

The second button of Oliver's drawers is barely open before he's bouncing stiffly out, bumping up against Jack's hand as if his cock has been waiting like a faithful dog to meet it. A confusing blend of pride and shame brings heat welling up and slows his own hand, but Jack seems to find his discovery ample compensation. His tongue flicks visibly over his lips before they spread into part of a dirty expression that makes every muscle in Oliver's pelvis tighten.

"Now, you see, Oliver? I was right all along."

"About what?" Oliver manages.

"You are magnificent." Jack reaches out a hand again, running a finger so lightly and swiftly up the seam of his cock that a spasm rocks him and makes it jerk in mid-air. "You're begging," Jack says, roughly, rubbing the underside before closing his fingers around him and treating him to a twisting rhythm that makes certain to cross the crown at the end of every upstroke.

Unlike Oliver's, his angle is perfect, born of practice; the ability to lace another's boots. The increasingly slick, viscous sounds move beyond lewd and enter the realm of indecency. Jack is mad and he is madder, and part of him is still afraid, but the same part is being swiftly overridden by that which only wishes to do it, and soon, and all else be damned. He clutches Jack's shoulders as his cock pulses with a particularly powerful surge of pleasure, and something like panic takes him as he feels his balls tighten.

"Jack -" he says, shakily, "Jack - I'm going to -"

He would have shouted out if Jack had not, as always, moved more quickly. With admirable reflexes, he grips the head of Oliver's cock, his fingers just short of the glans, and squeezes, unsympathetically hard.

"No you ain't, Oliver! Not until I want you!"

Oliver gasps, and he feels his hips thrust uselessly, but his climax does not come. Jack holds him for another few seconds, until he's satisfied himself that the inevitable has been staved off, and then he releases him entirely, turning instead to stripping himself bare and running his eyes over Oliver when he's tardy in commencing the same. Jack's boots and stockings are lost, his trousers dropped. Oliver mirrors him, the ties of his drawers defying his clumsy fingers. Jack moves behind him, unlacing him deftly and then pushing his hands inside the linens to slide them down over Oliver's buttocks.

The bed-sheet feels chill against the skin of Oliver's back, and he shivers, but it's not in displeasure. Jack moves over him, his shadow looming eerie and giantlike across the ceiling, handling him, not allowing his erection to wane. Oliver feels as though he must be in a dream; it seems dreamlike, that he should be naked, and that an equally naked Jack should be clambering atop him. When Jack slips a hand down between his legs, Oliver catches his breath, reaching out to stay it, suddenly uncertain of what is expected of him next in these sorts of encounters. Jack's eyes meet his.

"Oliver," he says. "It's Dodger. It's me. Trust me, will you?"

"It's myself that I don't trust. Not to lose control with you."

"If you ain't losing control, I ain't doing my job." Jack ducks his head and mouths a nipple, sliding the flat of his tongue over it and using the tip to tease it into tumescence. Sensations dart through Oliver, different to and subtler than the pleasure in his cock.

"I don't know what job you have in mind."

"Loving you," Jack says, matter-of-factly. The two of them grip one another in their different ways bruisingly tightly; he Jack's wrists, and Jack at the same time his thighs, but his friend's eyes are still sharp, watchful; reassessing the situation each moment, deciding whether or not to change his plans. He bends again with wiry ease, and draws Oliver's other nipple briefly into his mouth before releasing it with a wet sound. "How'd you like to go about that?"

Oliver has never derived much feeling from this part of his body before, much less pleasure, but he hasn't been caressed before in the same way. There seems to be a nervous connection to his cock that only makes it grow larger. He could never have imagined himself to feel so lusty with a man rather than a woman, and nor could he ever have imagined a man to have such lust provoked by him. Jack is placing the choice in his hands, certain that whatever Oliver might want can be nothing else but what he does also. What is it that he wants? To touch Jack. To take him in his arms; feel his warmth, his weight, his bare skin. He takes a breath. "Just come close," he says.

"My prick against yours?"

"Is it done that way?"

"Oh, it's definitely done. Actually, it's done quite a bit."

Slowly, Oliver loosens his hold, feeling Jack follow suit. He allows Jack to settle between his legs. Almost instantly, he gasps as their cocks brush; the first delicious moment when sensitive tissue meets. "You got a prick," Jack says, a hairsbreath away from his lips, giving him a squeeze to drive his point home, "and I got a prick," taking Oliver's hand and moving his fingers up and down his own length, "and two pricks soon work out what to do if you bring 'em together." He lowers onto Oliver, aligning them perfectly, and makes a steady, sensuous grind.

Jack is right. As the cock above him slides over his, Oliver simply cannot respond to it in any other way than by rocking his hips. It should be awkward; like poles should repel, but, instead, their bodies seem to know and seek out what is good for the other. Jack leans forward, rubbing, taking him in another hard kiss, gliding his velvety glans back and forth over Oliver's, teasing and coaxing. As they both grow slippery, the stimulation intensifies, until every stroke unleashes tiny bolts of lightning. Through them all, Oliver is aware of the undulating rhythm of Jack's body, and he moves in counterpoint, lifting into it, pushing when he pushes. He runs his hands over the small of the other man's back and down his legs, wanting to know all of him; instinctively grips his buttocks and feels their alternating clench and relax. Jack's skin is hot beneath his palms, so hot, rougher and muskier than a woman's, damp with sweat. Between their thighs, their balls roll heavily together. "Jack -" Oliver says, "oh, damn, damn!" and burrows his face into the hollow of his friend's shoulder to inhale the smell of him.

All he feels: hot, stiff, slick, need.

"You're bloody wonderful," Jack says. He's panting hard. "If you don't want my spunk on you, you ain't got much time left."

"But I do," Oliver says, breathlessly. The words shock him coming from his own mouth, yet he's unable to remember having craved anything as he does this. All his life, he's known nothing but the repetition that to engage in unnatural acts is to un-man oneself, yet he's never felt as utterly masculine as he does at this moment; never felt such a freedom or burning desire to share with a lover all that they are. He feels Jack shudder as his breath whispers over his skin. His own climax rushes dangerously close.

"Oliver, shove me off! We'll frig each other!"

For answer, Oliver ruts up against him hard, giving himself over to the marvellous moments when the body knows nothing but fucking, and wants nothing but to spend. "You asked for it," he hears Jack say, "you asked for it," and then he thrusts and jerks, and Oliver's stomach and chest are coated by long, obscene splatters. Pleasure curls for one more brief and beautiful moment before he feels it start to come. His cock throbs and pumps, and throbs and pumps again, out of his control; everything out of his control. He feels Jack's mouth upon his throat in what might be a kiss and might be a bite. He cares little which. He never wants it to end.

Inevitably, it does.

Shudders periodically rack both of them as they lie on the sheets, warm and weak. Jack is a dead weight upon Oliver's chest, but the pressure is pleasurable in itself, a satisfaction unlike anything that he's ever experienced. He feels as though a dam has broken and emptied him of something that he's been holding back for years, leaving his mind perfectly still, conscious of nothing save naked skin, the minute flexes of Jack's hips as he rides the aftershocks, and the breath that rushes into their lungs and out again.