The Trojan Project

By Richard Rider and John T. Fuller

Written by John T. Fuller (When the Music Stops) and Richard Rider (The Stockholm Syndrome trilogy and Captured Shadows), The Trojan Project is a collection of twelve original stories of gay romance.

A couple move into a new home with that unsettling feeling of being watched; a young man who rescues an antique mannequin from a skip gets more than he bargained for; a lonely campsite worker finally gets up the courage to make a move on the man he admires; an over-privileged student gets more than the standard treatment when he's recruited into a secret society; Andersen, Rimbaud and Verlaine as you've never seen them before – plus fairies, vampires, rockstars, and a surprise appearance from Pip Valentine.

From historical to horror, poetry to porn, there's something to whet every appetite.

We just hope that you like sausage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781326458591

Book preview

The Trojan Project

THE TROJAN PROJECT

Ebook Edition | Copyright © 2015 John T. Fuller & Richard Rider

ISBN: 978-1-326-45859-1

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

@JohnTFuller | @knightrrrider

DEDICATION

For Alex Cambusmore.

Maître D.

FALLING (ON MY ARSE) IN LOVE

Richard Rider

We met years ago. It's got to be seven years, I reckon. It was just after I started working at the campsite, cleaning up people's abandoned shit from the end with the tents. I dunno why you'd come to a nice place like this just to leave crisp packets all tangled up in the grass when there's like flowers and rabbits and stuff, it's just weird and rude. Anyway, my best mate Maffers got me the job and I took his shift this one time on my day off cos his girlfriend got them tickets for the footy. His job was well more cushy than mine. I mean, it wasn't really, it was the same thing, but he worked up the end with the cabins where people seemed a bit nicer behaved. Fewer beer cans and pools of sick up there, just had to do a bit of garden pruning and fix shit and wash windows when people were out, stuff like that.

Well, it had been raining and I'm a clumsy fucker at the best of times so obviously down I went in the mud. My leg just ran away with itself, I stepped funny on the grass and went flying down the hill flailing like Eddie the fucking Eagle, landed right on my arse in this puddle about the size of Windermere. And Dave come out his cabin then in one of them old bastard cashmere cardigans he wears and stood there leaning against the door frame with his cuppa, looking at me like I was something foreign in the zoo.

You alright? he asked, and I sat there bollock deep in that muddy water thinking you fucking blind prick but I gave him two thumbs up til he smiled a bit and wandered back inside.

I saw him round now and then, especially after I got moved up the nice end full time. I weren't like a stalker or anything but you sort of get to know people when you're around them a bit, don't you? I can't even remember how I found out his name was Dave, it just sort of appeared in my brain. I thought I might've made it up then I heard someone call him that one day so that must be how I knew in the first place. The other fella looked older than Dave, not much but a bit, and he weren't as buff as him. And he didn't have a beard. I didn't even know I had a thing for beards but apparently that's cos all I got off with before were tosspots with goatees and them stupid little soul patches. Dave's beard was a fucking force of nature, all brown and grey and kind of red and this one weird little patch of black at the side. I mean it was neat – he just seemed like a neat sort of fella, you know, all crisp shirts and that, polished shoes, his beard was always trimmed nice, just you could tell if he left it alone for like two days it'd explode like whoah. That was, I dunno. That was like this primal sort of fucking hot. Just this feeling that he could clench his jaw just slightly and sprout out hair like—

Sorry, I sound like a fucking nutter! I'm not, I swear. Long story short, he just had a really nice beard.

Anyway, turns out that other guy was his boyfriend. I weren't all cut up about it or whatever, just one of them things. They used to stay in that same cabin for two weeks every summer. Don't people get bored? Suppose not. I hate going on holiday somewhere I've been before but people keep coming back to this campsite like clockwork. Suppose some people just like what's familiar. That's alright. The other guy, Pete, he looked like he fit in more. He had these cagoules in all different shades of khaki and brown and navy and he used to march off on walks with this massive grin on his face even when it was pissing down out. Dave went with him usually but he never looked right. He looked like, you know when your nan wears trainers and you just wanna laugh? It's like that. He wore nice Oxfords that time he talked to me from the doorway. He just looked daft in walking boots. I used to see him sometimes hiking through the rain looking miserable while Pete told him boring shit about like birds and leaves and stuff, and I couldn't help wondering what he was actually into. I mean I kind of understand why you'd come on holiday to the countryside for a fortnight every year, to a place where there's nothing to do except go on walks or learn windsurfing and that on the lake, and wander round the whole time looking like someone's shat in your pocket. I understand opposites attract and all that. You compromise when you're with someone, you do stuff you don't want to do sometimes. Or maybe he was actually having a nice time but he had one of them faces you can't tell whether it's happy or not. I dunno.

The third year he came on his own. We were sort of on nodding hello terms by then, so I nodded hello and he nodded hello back. Then he said, The delphiniums look nice this year, and went into the cabin with his holdall. It sounded like a code, like something a spy might say in a cheesy old film, and first I felt like laughing, then I didn't know what to say back, or what might happen if I got the response right. Or wrong. Not like it mattered though, the door was shut anyway.

The next time I saw him a few days later was down near the lake. I was fixing a sign some absolute calamity had knocked over with his car and he come wandering down the path in them brown walking boots that never suited him, wearing jeans he never looked comfortable in and a white linen shirt. He nodded hello again, and somehow it felt like I was meant to speak then because he'd been the one to say something before. I said, Your fella not with you? which on second thoughts wasn't very professional but whatever, I thought, I'm a gardener handyman caretaker kind of thing, not a lawyer or bank manager or whatever Dave is for the other fifty weeks of the year, don't matter if I'm not professional as long as I'm polite. Well, foot firmly in mouth as it happens, cos Dave smiled a bit then, a sad sort of smile, and said, I wish. He died just before Easter. Then I went, Oh fuck, because I'm a fucking idiot, then, Shit, because I just said fuck to a grieving man, then I glared at the heavens for a sec and pulled myself together and said, Mate, I'm really sorry, I'm just gonna shut up now, alright? and Dave said, Yeah, probably best, but there was this amused little twinkle in his eye as he passed by me to follow the path down to the lake.

The years kind of blended together after that. It was three, I think? Maybe four? Three or four before we talked again properly and in that time I got a boyfriend of my own, dumped him, found another one, got dumped, found another, mutually broke up, found one I thought was the one but then he started getting on my nerves so probably a good thing I never got round to asking him to move in. I had my own little cabin by then, perks of being made head groundskeeper. Not as nice as the guest ones but alright, definitely nicer than them poxy little shoeboxes they rent out as single bed flats in town. It was right near the gate leading into the site and that last fella, Duff, the forest gave him the shits cos it was so dark at night so he stopped staying over and the whole thing between us just kind of faded away. I didn't mind that much, to be honest. You can't have sex with someone called Duff. That was his actual name. That's not a real name, that's one of them words you get drawn in red and yellow when Superman punches someone in a comic. You can't like try and nicely breathe someone's name in their ear when you're shagging if they're called something like that. Fucking disaster.

God I ramble on. Anyway, yeah, it was four years later, I reckon, I took a few days to go and see my mum and sister back in town and I went to pick Kathryn up from school cos she wanted to go shopping with Chloe and Rohan and muggins here got to be taxi driver. I drove right in the school gates even though you're not meant to cos it was pissing it down and Kathryn texted to say they weren't coming out from reception and walking all the way up in the rain, so I pulled in behind where the buses park and there's Dave hiding behind a corner having a crafty fag like an overgrown Year 11! I'd always wondered what he did. Didn't really expect teacher somehow. I reckon you don't ever grow out of that idea that teachers kind of stop existing after the end of day bell goes. Remember being a kid and seeing your headmistress wearing jeans in Asda and totally fucking freaking out then feeling smug when you catch her eye in assembly back at school like you've got some juicy information to blackmail her with even though she was just buying potatoes and beans like every other normal person? Felt like that.

Is that one of your teachers? I asked Kathryn when they all piled into the car, and she looked out the window as she was belting herself in and waved to him but I don't think he saw.

Yeah, Mr Delgado, he's head of history.

Is he nice?

Yeah, he's alright, he's funny but you don't always realise it til after. Why?

No reason, I said carelessly as I dodged around the buses and headed for the gate but little sisters are fucking little bitches sometimes.

"Oh my god, do you fancy him?"

Oh my god, the other idiots chorused in the back, all three of them laughing in that way only teenagers do. Rohan went, Yeah but imagine getting off with someone with a beard, though! and I wanted to say look you little shit I have imagined it and if I told you the details you'd catch fire and get burned alive, but I just put the radio on instead and by the time we got to the shopping centre they were too dazed from Bohemian Rhapsody headbanging to remember to take the piss any more.

Dave moved in for his usual two weeks soon after that, and something felt different. He had a name now – a proper porn star name, though, or a character from some shitty Mills & Boon book. Dave Delgado. It made me laugh, I couldn't help it, he sounded like someone Liam Neeson might play in an action film. I don't want it to sound like I went after him or anything cos I really really didn't, it wasn't that kind of thing. He was just this fit guy I sort of liked seeing around every now and then, I never had any plans to chat him up or be his mate. All I did was nod hello and smile and get on with my work like always – but like I said, something was different this time. Also I'm a fucking idiot, which I think I've mentioned before as well. This time when I saw him down by the lake I leaned casually against the barrier on the steep bit of the bank trying to look like one of them suave fuckers in Home and Away and stuff, only obviously I fucking fell right through. Good thing it was me and not some kid or some old pensioner, we'd have got sued to high heaven. The whole bar just went and there's me, yet again falling arse over tit down a hill in front of Dave Delgado, action star slash porn star slash history teacher with the beautiful beard.

Turns out he actually is a bit of an action hero. I landed headfirst in that dangerous deep bit of the lake and even though it was a pretty warm day the water was that cold it felt like getting punched all over, it was so cold I gasped without meaning to and I started choking. I thought for a wild moment I was going to drown in a lake full of boats and people who were just too far away to see me, then like some giant bearded merman Dave was there in the water with me – not gonna lie, even heaving and spluttering like I was I couldn't help noticing the way that soaked linen shirt clung transparent to his biceps as he swam me over to a shallower bit and pulled me out of the water.

You're alright, he kept saying, quiet and slow and calm with his hand on my back while I was trying to breathe through the eye of a needle. Take it easy. Just breathe. Seriously, like I'm trying to do anything else?

I took it easy. I just breathed. After a while

Reviews for The Trojan Project

[dmwells42 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Truly lovely, and oftentimes firmly tongue-in-cheek, little stories from two wonderful writers. There's a bit of variation in genres, with a few stories veering into light horror and paranormal fare, while others are more mainstream romance. The stories are varied enough that it's really hard to pick a favorite because they all stand out on their own merits. Some are a little bit darker, while others are very light and humorous, and other still are quite sweet.

If you're a fan of the genre, I absolutely recommend you check this out - you're bound to find something you like in it. And it's a quick read, I finished it in about six hours, and well worth a second or third re-read, in my opinion.