James had often paused to look at the statue on his visits to Buchanan bus station. He regularly caught the bus to Edinburgh and whenever he did, he would make sure to take a look at this beautiful statue. Two reunited lovers, throwing themselves into each others' arms. He had a bag by his feet with a newspaper protruding from a side pocket. She was wearing a short dress and had a tear rolling down one cheek.
He had often paused to look at it. With admiration, appreciation of the emotions it captured, enjoyment in its beauty, simplicity and subtlety. She was shorter than he and had to stand on tiptoe to kiss him. He was leaning back and holding one arm round her back, another round her shoulders. Tenderness, sadness, happiness... all were captured in this statue.
He had often lingered and looked at it himself. With his own sadness, his own pleasure, his own dreams. He had never looked at it with trepidation as he did now.
Erin stepped up behind him, placed a hand on his shoulder and then circled the statue slowly, studying it from all angles.
"This is it, then?" she said, softly. "Your famous statue? This is what you've talked about so often? This is the infamous wincher's stance?"
James winced and the magic evaporated in a puff of snobbish distaste. Everything about that statue was great, perfect, beautiful... and then there was that name. The wincher's stance. The name that took a thing of art and dragged it down into the gutter of the Glaswegian Ned-Culture dialect. Why would someone take a kiss, give it such an ugly alternative name and then imagine that it could apply to a statue, This statue? This romantic, beautiful work of art?
"Don't be so melodramatic all the time," Erin said. "It's just a name. I think it's kinda funny."
"It shouldn't have a funny name." James protested automatically. He paused for a moment, looked at his girlfriend's face and gave up. It was an old complaint and no-one was taking him seriously any more.
He looked around the crowded station.
"Is everyone ready?" he asked.
"Yeah. I think so. Are you ready, though?"
He had to stop and think about that. Was he ready? Right up to this last moment, he had anticipated that he might have to get pretty persuasive to prevent Erin from backing down at the last moment. He had even been prepared to cancel everything if she really couldn't ultimately go through with this. But she hadn't backed down and now seemed eager to get on and suddenly, unexpectedly, it was he who was having the crisis of confidence. With no-one else to pass words of encouragement to, he was painfully aware that he no longer had any left for himself.
But lurking at the back of his mind, he knew that he would do this. He was under no illusions as to his own bravery and knew very well that when it came to that final moment of choice, he would be more scared to back down and face up to everyones' jeering and (even worse) words of consolation than he would be to just swallow back his fear and carry on.
"Yeah," he said eventually. "Yeah, I'm ready. Let's just wait a few minutes longer and give some of the people a chance to disperse, first."
They had timed this well. It had been a tough decision, admittedly. Choose a moment when there would be very few people around, so as to provide less of an audience – fewer people to be shocked, offended or (they hoped) amused, entertained and appreciative of the show? Or choose a moment where the place would be crowded, to create the level of confusion that might make the difference between them getting away with what they were about to do or being apprehended and facing an embarrassing interrogation at the local police station?
He looked round and made sure that Erin was right. Yeah, there were all their friends, lurking around with various cameras. Video cameras, digital cameras, plain old ordinary everyday run-of-the-mill cameras – whatever could be rustled up. They wanted as much evidence of this as possible. For every picture that would be a good one, surely there would have to be half a dozen or so that failed to make the grade – so they would saturate the whole event with as many as possible. And the tapes would be taken away and edited together to form some decent video coverage as well. There was even talk about selling the tapes – it was widely believed that Channel 4 would be interested in showing the results.
Suddenly he realised that although the place seemed crowded, their friends were currently outnumbering the travellers by nearly two-to-one.
"Now or never, darlin'," he muttered to Erin in a moment of dynamic abandon and swiftly started to unbutton his jacket.
She grinned nervously, and did the same. In the background, the flashes were already going as their friends moved in closer and one or two strangers began to turn in their direction, curiously.
He cast his jacket aside and kicked off his shoes – carefully chosen for their ability to slip on and off, ordinarily he would never have allowed himself to be seen publicly in them. All he had been wearing under the jacket was a pair of loose fitting, jogging trousers. No shirt, no underwear. And still, he had been wearing that little more than Erin.
By now, she had undone her last button and was holding her jacket closed, waiting until the last possible moment before she would throw it aside. It went down to her knees. The logic was that while a woman could wear a long jacket and have bear legs without anyone looking twice or wondering, a man would simply be screaming "flasher!" to the world at large. So, not wanting to draw any attention to themselves until the moment of truth, it had been decided that although James's jogging trousers would slow things down by a vital few extra seconds, it was worth the time.
He hooked his thumbs into the waistband, caught Erin's eye and then quickly pulled them down and stepped out of them. Anna stepped round the statue and took in the scene in its entirety, as Erin finally discarded her jacket as James straightened up.
People were freezing in midstep now, turning to take in the unexpected piece of cabaret in their midst. Even now, most of the faces were still blank as they struggled to assimilate the events and decide on the most appropriate response. Outrage? Excitement? Encouragement?
Erin and James threw themselves into each others' arms in a parody of the statue's pose and now their friends were snapping away in a complete frenzy. The video cameras were circling them eagerly. Erin pushed her lips towards James's and he leaned back slightly, encouraging her to fall into the same posture as the girl in the statue. Her cheeks were flushed red with excitement and it occurred to her that he had never seen her look so beautiful. He could feel his cock swell, where it was trapped between their bodies and also feeling it, Erin giggled throatily and pushed her groin against it lasciviously.
Out the corner of his eye, James was aware that they were genuinely the centre of attention now and even some of the passers-by had pulled out cameras of their own and were joining in with the photographs. An old lady was standing by with a look of jaw-dropped, stunned amazement and a young male youth was turning away and adjusting his trousers to conceal the bulge that had formed there. Enjoying himself now, James dropped a hand and cupped one of Erin's arse cheeks and suddenly, people were cheering and offering encouragement.
