Matthew put the flowers onto the night table and sat down in the chair. He didn’t know where Lukas was, but the bed looked ruffled. In a little while, after a few minutes, Lukas came round the corner, walking, with his IV pole on one side of him, and a nurse, helping him, on the other.

He was wearing a hospital gown, a white one, and it was too short for him. It was up around his thighs, and it was stretched across his chest. When the nurse helped him up into the bed, Matthew could see Lukas’ arse, and he turned his head away, embarrassed.

Lukas said that he had to piss, and the nurse went away to get a bedpan. Matthew wished he had come later. Five minutes or so later, so that he didn’t have to be there when Lukas needed to piss. It must be embarrassing for him, Matthew supposed.

When the nurse came back she asked Matthew to help her lift Lukas up, and then he had to watch while Lukas pulled the little cap off the tube and started pissing into the bed pan. Lukas was warm, like he had a fever. Matthew had his arm across Lukas’ back, and he felt warm. But while he was pissing, Matthew couldn’t do anything but watch. Watch the piss coming out of a tube in the bandage, a bandage covering a groin where there was nothing. No cock. And no balls.

Matthew felt awful.

Lukas strained a little, and it was obviously painful. When he came to the end, he couldn’t control it properly. While he was putting the little cap back on the tube there was piss spurting over his fingers.

And he was grunting. Making little noises of strain.

The nurse handed him a wipe, so he could wipe his fingers, and then she wiped the tube for Lukas while Lukas grunted again. When they lay him back in the bed, Lukas was wincing, and Matthew started to cry.

The nurse left, with the bedpan, and Matthew took Lukas’ hand. He sat down on the chair again, and held Lukas’ hand in both of his. He pressed Lukas’ hand into his face, and cried.

Lukas said nothing. He didn’t move, and didn’t draw his hand away.

After a long time, Matthew raised his head. He looked at Lukas through a blur of tears.

Lukas handed him the box of tissues, and Matthew took them, blowing his nose.

He didn’t think he could face Lukas, and he looked away a little, though he found himself staring at the spot on the sheet where the tube was tenting it.

Lukas lifted his knees up.

‘I brought you some flowers,’ Matthew said, looking at Lukas’ neck.

Lukas didn’t say anything.

Matthew glanced at his face.

Lukas was watching him closely.

‘You’re not doing anything else to me.’

Matthew opened his mouth.

‘If that’s why you’re being nice to me, you can forget it. I’ll tell the police.’

Lukas had his arms folded, and he was covering his nipples with his palms.

‘Did they come and see you?’

Lukas nodded.

‘What did you say?’

Lukas’ face contorted. ‘I told them I did it, like you said. I told them I flushed it down the toilet.’

Matthew nodded. He couldn’t look at Lukas. ‘They haven’t dropped the charges.’

‘They probably don’t believe me,’ Lukas said.

Matthew nodded, and then he looked up at Lukas. ‘Lukas, I really am sorry. If I could take it back. If I could make it so it didn’t happen…’

Lukas watched him.

‘All of it…I wish…’

Lukas was so beautiful.

And he wasn’t even angry.

‘I’ll come to England with you next year.’

Lukas nodded.

‘I’ll be your boyfriend.’

Lukas nodded again, but he didn’t look like he believed Matthew.

Neither of them said anything for a long time.

‘There’s a plastic surgeon coming, from Los Angeles. He’s going to make it – like you want it.’

Matthew turned his head away.

‘I spoke to him, on a video conference. And he said there won’t be any scar. After a few months.’

Did Matthew even care? He didn’t know. He didn’t even know where he had first got the idea, of seeing Lukas like that, with nothing in his groin. With nothing but a smooth patch of skin. Still, though, it was better than Lukas having a cock and balls if Matthew was going to have to live with him, and fuck him.

As Matthew thought this, he felt a horrible sinking descent grip him in the chest. It travelled into his stomach, and he felt physically ill. He turned his head back to Lukas and looked at him. Lukas was looking at him with open adoration. Looking at him with eyes wide, full of love. Asking Matthew, with his eyes, for something.

Matthew shuffled forward and put his arms around Lukas, hugging him, though it was awkward.

The problem was, he didn’t love Lukas. And he had ruined Lukas’ life. He had done something…

And still, Lukas loved him.

Matthew went home and when he woke in the morning, the full horror of what he had done to Lukas crashed down upon him with terror, and he groaned.

He couldn’t bear it.

He wrapped his head in his arms and squeezed and tried to think of ways to make what had happened not have happened. He tried to think of ways that it hadn’t happened, telling himself that it wasn’t real, and throwing the thought of it away time and again, and then, when he knew that was hopeless, he told himself that there was something that could be done about it, as though Lukas could get new genitals, prosthetic genitals, a transplant, something, when the truth of it was that there was nothing, nothing that could be done to fix what had happened.

Lukas had been perfect. The most perfect person Matthew had ever seen. Perfect in every detail. And beautiful. And Matthew had ruined that.

And he had done it deliberately.

He had got off on it.

After breakfast, he was walking through the gallery on the way back to Lukas’ rooms when he collapsed. A sudden dizzy spell, brought on by the absence of the tablets, made his legs fold underneath him, and he fell onto the rug. He looked along the gallery, at the long line of dark paintings, and the bright morning sunlight flooding through the windows, and he felt suddenly unreal, dizzy, and removed from the world, as though he was floating. It was the sensation he had had, when he was on the tablets, and he had used to go into Lukas’ mind, though he wasn’t going anywhere now. The gallery rippled around him, like water, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, everything was firm, and solid.

He pulled himself up and sat on an ottoman.

Lukas was having surgery today. They would be wheeling him into the operating theatre, slicing into his groin, slicing what was left of his penis in half, and moving his urethra. And then, a plastic surgeon, a man Lukas had requested, and Mr Sorensen would pay for, was going to make Lukas’ groin the way Matthew wanted it.

Matthew shook his head.

He put his head in hands and started to cry.

How had any of this happened? The tablets. Christian. Fucking Christian. If Matthew had never listened to him, had never taken those fucking tablets in the first place, had never gone into Lukas’ mind…

He stopped.

How could any of that have been real? he suddenly wondered. The whole thing felt like a dream. And yet, he had certainly done those things. He had certainly heard Lukas’ thoughts. He had walked in Lukas’ body. Wanked Lukas. Hit Lukas’ nuts with a mallet. Told Lukas what to do. Manipulated Lukas. He had been in his mind.

Matthew sobbed, and was only aware of McCady when he saw her all too familiar shoes on the rug in front of his feet. He looked up.

She sat down beside him and wrapped her arms around him, drawing Matthew’s face into her all too ample breast.

Matthew’s cock, which hadn’t move since yesterday, didn’t move now.

‘There, there,’ she said.

Matthew stared. Stared at her polyester dress stretched across her bosom, pressed right up into his eyes.

But still, it felt good to be comforted by someone.

Matthew thought of his mother, his father, his sister. He would have to ring them. He would have to go and see them.

He saw the looks on his parents’ faces the last time he had seen them, and then he began to cry all over again.

McCady smoothed his hair.

‘He’ll be alright,’ she said.

Matthew nodded, and she let him go.

They looked at each other.

Matthew felt embarrassed. She was looking at him differently, in a way she had never looked at him before.

‘So you’re going to England next year,’ she said.

Matthew nodded. England! What the hell was he going to do in England?

‘Well, I didn’t believe it. I didn’t think you’d ever…’

She stopped, and looked at Matthew again.

‘You know, he’s been breaking his heart over you since he was seven years old.’