Junction X (23 page)

Half of me hoped he wouldn’t come. If he waited until the weekend, I could at least make the place more attractive. Minutes ticked by in the gloom and I thought, half-relieved, half-despairing—
he’s not coming.

But when he rushed in through the door, all wrapped up in a duffel coat, scarves and gloves, I forgot all my inconstancy. His face, what I could see of it, was pink and cream, and his smile was so wide that he looked like I’d given him the world instead of a tatty Railways Board flat. There were snowflakes in his eyelashes and I melted them away.

In between: “Dad insisted on driving me to Neil’s house. I had to run all the way back.”

I dreaded him looking around and I kept him occupied as long as I could, but as he shrugged himself out of his coat and scarves, he turned his head to see.

“This is great!” He obviously saw something in the brown wallpaper and bedspread that I did not.

“It’s still cold.”

“It’ll warm up.
I’ll
warm you up. Don’t spoil it, Ed—Edward. It’s a start.
Our
start. Don’t you see?”

Every nerve ending between my waist and knees tingled at his words.

He slid close in that sinuous way he had, dropping his shoulders and leaning his face against mine. “I want to undress you, Edward.”

“I…”

“I
must
.” His eyes had that urgency I’d seen before, when nothing would stand in the way of his youth. Wives, children, age, law—what were they? Mere mountains. “You have the advantage of me, sir.” He roared with laughter at his dreadful southern American accent and I had to kiss him to keep him quiet, warning him that I didn’t know how safe the flats were. “Well, I’ll do it quietly,” he said. “Sit down.”

Still, I was stupid. “Wouldn’t you like a drink or something, first?” Where he’d touched my face, my skin felt numb.

“Edward…please. We’ve got so little time.” I sat on the edge of the bed and he knelt down before me, as if proposing. “I’ll come to your house on Saturday and you can give me a drink then. We’ll toast this moment. This night. Like a secret.”

Like
a secret. But…
wasn’t
it a secret? Perhaps it was a game to him, I realised. A glorious adventure.

His eyes shone, never leaving mine as he unbuttoned my shirt and slid his hands, warmer than nearly every piece of me, inside it. I could feel the heat of him through my vest…and then even that shield was gone. I helped him where I could; it was not effortless—not with each of us trying to kiss the other whenever either had the chance—but nor was it flurried desperation. It was almost measured, on his part at least. He was outwardly calm, betrayed by fingers which shook as hard as mine. I caught his hands and kissed them, before standing and letting him take the remainder of my clothes from me, shivering, hard and suddenly lesser than Alexander—he was only dishevelled.

He took a step back, and I wondered what I’d do if he pointed and laughed. Laughed and ran away. If it was nothing but a boy’s cruel joke. I felt stupid, large, cold and awkward. The erection I got from the second he’d melted into my arms withered away. I went to get into the bed, to cover myself with the counterpane, but he stopped me with a word. “No.” His eyes were wide, hungry, desperate. “I’ve never…” And he blushed.

“Come here.” Something changed a little at that moment, and I felt powerful again—or perhaps for the first time with him. I unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it roughly over his head. “You went to a boys’ school, you must have seen…”

“Boys. Yes. Showers.” His breath hitched as I pushed his trousers over his hips. “Exactly. And my Dad. Horrible. No, not
that
.
That’s
nice.”

He stepped out of his trousers and I pulled him backwards with me, onto the bed. At last.

At first it was a little awkward as we settled into the horizontal. He seemed to be all legs and arms with nowhere for them all to go, but suddenly, as if someone had touched a switch that brought it all into focus, he tipped up his head, my arm went around him and we fitted together. My arm around him, and his body pressed against mine. A circle, a perfect match, each made for the other. Each waiting for the other to complete the track.

I remember my heart was racing, though it wasn’t the cold making me shake uncontrollably. With each determined move he made, I breathed in time with his affection. A kiss here, there. Lower. Lower still. He roamed around my chest, letting his tongue make patterns on my skin. I heard him chuckle with delight over the three hairs I was so proud of. I could have been witty, I should have been dazzling, but all I was was grateful.

He was playful, and I suppose I should have expected that, but somehow I didn’t. The one other time, in his bedroom, it had been too hurried, too unilateral to be anything other than release—but that evening he lit up inside as if laughter and his own hidden sensuality had been burning him up for so long that it had to combust or it would consume him unfulfilled.

He could hardly keep still, wanting to do everything, try everything. One moment he was adult and serious as he stroked my cock, positioning and re-positioning himself as if I were some great experiment. It was all I could do not to come too soon. Then he’d suddenly lose focus and come bounding up the bed to kiss me, as if I’d given him some great present. His exuberance was exhausting, and I’d never laughed during sex before.

Finally the mood changed, turning from play and even serious experimentation to intent. Smiles dropped away; speech replaced by heavy breathing and the softly caught breath of reaction. I ended up restraining him beneath me, his wrists held tight in my grip. Not tight enough to mean anything, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to still us both. We just looked at each other for a long moment. Then I kissed him and we were together, two interlocking cogs. He opened to me with a sigh and his legs moved apart, his hips twisting as he rubbed his cock against my leg, and his hand keeping a tight, slow steady movement on my own.

“Oh God…” Whatever I’d thought sex should be like, I hadn’t been expecting this. Or rather, my very wildest dreams had come somewhere close. But the figure below me, gasping and running its hands over every inch of my skin, had always been Val. Today, as I write this, I find it hard to remember ever being aroused in her company. And that’s a cruel thing to say, and I’m sure that it can’t be accurate.

He tipped back his head, encouraging me to attack the beauty of his neck with my teeth. When I did, he groaned. There was no doubt in my mind what I wanted, had to have, and he knew it, had always done.

“Let me up,” he whispered.

Reluctantly, my hands clinging to him until he was out of reach, I released him and he bounded away, returning in a heartbeat with a kiss and a jar of Vaseline. I stared stupidly as he opened the jar and handed it to me.

Then he wriggled back under me, and turned over. The jelly felt chill on my fingers. I rubbed them together until it liquefied a little then reached for the cleft of his behind. He flinched and I kissed him, removing my hand as if burned. “Alex. We don’t have to.”

“We do. We must.
Please
, Edward.”

He rolled over onto his side and clung, whispering things I can’t even bear to write down, sweet, beautiful things, arousing, wicked and lewd. Keys to the hidden depths I wanted to drown in.

He took my hand and guided it back. “It was only a little cold. Go on.”

I pushed my fingers back and he wriggled with a satisfied sigh. “Yes. There.” My cock, which had wilted a little at his flinch, rose again as I dipped my fingers into his cleft and found his entrance.

To use the vocabulary of this moment now—for who narrates sex?—would be to make it dirty and less than it was. Looking back over time, I could anatomically list what we did that night, but it wouldn’t do justice to the good or the bad. But if I tried to use the vocabulary of sense and feeling, it would result in a purple mess of euphemism and evasion. I learned to say the words, for Alexander’s amusement, mainly, but what I did to him, lips and fingers, hands and heart, was never coarse, never dirty. Not to me. Not to us.

So I’ll say that I slid a finger in, hardly knowing where to look, either at the terrible thing I was doing—or at the incredible reaction he gave, arching his back like a wave on the sea. Each bump on his spine seemed to shiver with delight. One can’t write down the way noises sound, fresh from a wanton mouth, pressed hard into a pillow. One can’t write how it felt to watch him writhe, catching the blankets in his fist, how it felt to feel him want more, demand more, push back and back until a finger—my fingers—were no longer enough. The room dropped away from us; there was nothing but the rhythm of my hand sliding backward and forwards, and his body rising and falling in time with each sweet gasp.

He begged me, swore at me, ordered me. How I pushed in past his pain and his resistance, I hardly remember. I knew he was in pain, that alone was enough to make me shrink—but then I was there, and no longer afraid.

We paused while the sweat dried on our skin. My hands gripped him tightly around the hips, constantly moving and kneading as if to reassure him; I couldn’t imagine how he was feeling. Apart from his almost animalistic, shallow breathing, he was so very still that I became concerned.

Then it changed; he pulled forward a little, and I thought he was moving away. But he didn’t. Instead, he took a breath that took all the air from the room, from my own lungs and he pushed himself back, firmly seating himself on my cock. Then he did it again and some fire lit itself between us, under my hands—and deep inside where we both were joined.

I could have asked, should have said, ‘Does it hurt?’ How trite, how very stupid that would have sounded. But then, maybe he’d have known I cared.

I didn’t know, couldn’t guess as I finally began to
fuck
, falling up towards him, how important that was one day going to be.

Chapter 18

There is a stillness that happens after love. Not the hushed quiet of the deep breaths which slow in time, but a moment of perfect silence when both hearts stop and then a new breath is taken which leads to clothes and reality. The trick is to delay it.

There was no embarrassment. Well, to be honest, there was a little on my part. I had, after all, just sodomised a teenager, muttered his name into his neck as I spent myself within him. But he showed none. I had collapsed onto him, but had moved quickly, rolling on to my side and stroking his back. I remember a moment of panic that I had so forgotten myself in the ecstasy of his body that I might have hurt him, but his face—“beatific” sums it up nicely—quelled any fear I might have had. He curled into my arms as if he’d done it a hundred times before, nuzzled his mouth against my shoulder and looked at me with half-open eyes.

I touched his hair and something bright and fierce happened inside me.

“It hurt a bit.” He always had a tendency to answer questions I never asked. “At first. But once you got going…” The edge of his mouth tipped up on one side, and he reached down and gave my tender cock an affectionate squeeze. “Can’t complain.” Then he wrapped his legs around mine and shuffled closer still, opening his mouth, drawing me toward him. My stomach gave a little flip as his damp cock slid along my thigh.

I could describe every second of that first evening: the eggy-damp warmth cocooning us from the chill of the world; the look on his face as I sucked him, eyes screwed up and the biggest smile from ear to ear; the taste of his skin and the subtle differences in the texture of his skin, from place to place. The way, later, we went again and for longer, our sweat adding more stains to that horrible bed. But I am not going to do it. This isn’t really a story of my sexual conquests—however it might read like that. It’s a record of the reality that we shared for so few times that I can list them—and what a fine party trick that would make!—hidden away from the falsehoods we wove for ourselves in the world.

He betrayed his age when I started to tell him that it was time we were going. His complaints that we could have “five more minutes” were all too familiar to a father. I had to leave him in the bed before he was willing to pad after me into the tiny bathroom where we washed thoroughly, now strangely formal with each other, waiting patiently for a turn with a new white flannel, bought especially for the occasion. Funny, isn’t it, that a man will scrub the traces of his lover’s love from his skin, attempting to disguise the scent—and never consider what the fresh-washed smell of soap and water might say after a supposed long day at the office.

It took me another ten minutes to persuade him to leave, during which time we worked ourselves back up into a state where we could have begun all over again, but eventually, with kisses and promises of more, I closed the door on him. I turned off the light, opened the curtains and watched him walk across the snowy road. He stopped on the other side, turned around and waved with both arms outstretched, dark angel wings in the dim lamplight. Then he ran off, nothing more than a dwindling figure soon lost to the thickening snow. I didn’t move for a long time.