Crooked Truce

Rain made every lamp along the lane look drowned in its own small halo. Niall Balfour stood beneath the narrow awning outside Hallowbath, water darkening the shoulders of his charcoal coat, and read the brass plaque for a third time.

MEMBERS ONLY. CHECK IN. ASK CLEARLY.

The building had once been a municipal swimming pool. Its old civic frontage had survived, all soot-paled stone and severe windows, though somebody had painted the door a navy so dark it almost vanished into the evening. Niall had spent days imagining something theatrical behind it: leather, smoke, people arranged like props beneath coloured lights. Instead, when he gave his name at the inner door and stepped down into the old pool hall, he found quiet.

The pool itself had been drained and tiled over in a grid of glazed blue. Lamps sat low along the former deep end. Towels were folded in narrow stacks beside white-painted pillars. A few men moved through the far side of the hall with the calm purpose of staff in a good hotel. Nothing shouted. That made Niall more nervous.

Beside the reception desk lay a ring of twelve cobalt tiles, each square set into a shallow oak tray and marked with a brass number. Their blue was so vivid it seemed drawn from another climate, Mediterranean sea caught under Glasgow rain.

A man behind the desk rose as Niall approached. He was perhaps fifty, silver at the temples, in a black waistcoat with his sleeves rolled neatly to the elbow. His name badge said PIERS.

“Mr Balfour,” he said. “Welcome. Your membership was confirmed this afternoon.”

Niall gave his coat over, taking care not to drip on the desk. “Niall, please.”

“Piers, then.” The older man’s manner had the dry steadiness of a nurse who had seen every variety of foolishness and kept spare bandages for all of it. “You’re here for a service trial with Mr Strachan.”

“Yes.”

Piers turned the oak tray a fraction. “The tiles are for tonight’s protocol cards. One task, one tile. Nobody turns a tile until both parties have agreed that the task is complete and still feels right to them.”

Niall looked down at the numbered ring. “And if it doesn’t?”

“Then it stays facing up. Or it gets put away.” Piers met his eyes without making the moment grander than it was. “There is no prize for finishing a set.”

That should have been a simple thing to hear. It landed in him with the strange firmness of a hand placed on a door before he could run through it.

Piers offered a small smile. “Your partner is waiting in the reading room. You may leave at any point, including before you meet him. You may also ask us to intervene, if you need a practical excuse. We are very good at practical excuses.”

A laugh escaped Niall before he could stop it, brief and startled. “That sounds useful.”

“It has kept many an evening civil.”

The reading room had been built in what must once have been the women’s changing area. Green tiles climbed halfway up its walls. Above them, old plasterwork formed loops and shells around the ceiling lights. An electric fire gave off an imitation of coals, more orange than convincing.

Euan Strachan stood beside it with one hand resting on the mantelpiece.

He was taller than Niall had expected from his profile: broad through the chest, close-cropped dark hair greying at the sides, a face made of plain angles which might have looked severe on a less patient man. He wore black trousers and a white shirt with the cuffs buttoned. No costume. No display. At forty-seven, he had the settled air of someone who understood that a room did not need conquering to become orderly.

“Niall,” he said.

“Euan.”

They shook hands. Euan’s grip was dry, neither testing nor reluctant, and released at once.

“Would you like tea before we start?” Euan asked.

The question surprised him. “Tea would be good.”

“There’s a correct answer, then.”

That earned another small laugh, though Niall felt exposed by it. Euan did not seize on the sound. He poured from a blue pot waiting on a tray and handed Niall a cup.

For a while they stood looking at the false fire. Rain ticked at the high windows.

Euan spoke first. “I’ve read the form you submitted. I prefer to ask again in person. Are you here freely?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sober enough to make decisions?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want a trial tonight, rather than an audition you feel obliged to pass?”

Niall looked at the tea, at the tiny ripple his thumb had made against the handle. “A trial.”

“Good.” Euan’s expression softened, though not into anything careless. “Your hard limits?”

Niall gave them plainly. No pain beyond what had been separately discussed. No marks where work colleagues might see. No photographs. No public play. No assumptions about sex.

Euan listened without interrupting. When Niall finished, he repeated the list back accurately, then said, “Safeword is cairn. It means stop immediately, no questions until you are settled. Yellow means slow down or check in. Can you use both?”

“Yes.”

“Will you?”

Niall considered the shape of the word will. It seemed to require more courage than yes.

“I will try.”

“I need a clearer answer.”

Niall lifted his head. “Yes. I will.”

“Thank you.” Euan set down his own cup. “Last question for now. What kind of service do you hope to offer tonight?”

The room waited, quiet as the empty blue pool beyond the door. Niall had prepared answers that sounded useful, polished, easy to accept. None of them seemed sufficient.

“I want to be told what would please you,” he said at last. “And I want permission to say what would please me.”

Euan did not turn the answer into a compliment. That, more than praise might have done, settled Niall.

“Then we should write for both of those things,” he said.

He went to a walnut bureau beneath the window and took out a slim black folio. Its corners were softened by use, though the fastening remained bright brass. He brought it to the low table beside the fire and opened it with the method of a man laying out drawings before a meeting.

Twelve cards rested inside, each the size of a postcard, cream board edged in cobalt. A brass numeral sat at the upper corner of each one.

“This is for one evening only,” Euan said. “It does not oblige either of us to make another arrangement afterwards. It is not a test of whether you are suitable for anything. It is an agreement about how we conduct ourselves while we are here.”

Niall sat opposite him. The chair’s green leather gave a small complaint beneath him.

Euan turned the first card around.

DIRECT TASKS, it read. NO INFERENCE REQUIRED.

“I will tell you what I want done,” Euan said. “If I have failed to tell you clearly, you are not responsible for guessing correctly.”

The sentence seemed almost luxurious. Niall read it twice.

The second card said: ASK BEFORE ANTICIPATING.

At that, he felt the first small pinch of embarrassment. Euan saw it; he did not soften the card or pretend not to.

“Service offered before it is requested can be welcome,” Euan said. “It can also place the other person in a position of having to accept a thing he did not choose. I do not want you working ahead of me because you fear I will think less of you if you wait.”

Niall looked at the cobalt border. “I understand.”

“You may find understanding and doing it are separate matters.”

“Yes.”

“That is why it is written down.”

The third card stated that consent to one task did not carry into the next. The fourth dealt with any change in touch, clothing, position, restraint, or intimacy: it had to be named plainly, and it required a fresh answer. The fifth repeated cairn in capitals. The sixth gave yellow its full meaning: slow, stop, explain, reconsider.

The seventh was shorter than the rest.

EITHER PARTY MAY PAUSE. NO ARGUMENT. NO PENALTY.

Niall’s thumb rested at the card’s lower edge. He pictured himself saying it. He pictured Euan hearing it. The difficult part was not trusting Euan to stop; it was imagining himself as somebody permitted to interrupt an evening he had asked for.

Euan watched him consider it.

“If you pause,” he said, “I will not ask you to justify it before I listen. If I pause, you do not need to repair my mood or persuade me onward. A pause is simply a pause.”

“And if one of us wants to leave?”

“Then we arrange a safe departure, check you are fit to travel, and leave.”

The remaining cards covered privacy, water and food, the club’s checkout procedure, aftercare, and the fact that any card might remain unused. On the twelfth, beneath NO COMPLETION REQUIRED, somebody had written in smaller type: A SET IS NOT A SCORE.