Muscling Through (2 page)

“No! No, you look great.” He blushed a bit. “And we’re only going to the pub.”

“I’m all sweaty,” I said, ’cause it’d been a warm day.

He went even redder. “It’s all right—we can sit outside if you feel uncomfortable.”

We went to this place down the river. Punters, it’s called. Used to be the Red Lion, but it’s gone all trendy. We sat outside and looked at the river, except I kept looking at Lawrence, and half the time, he was looking back at me. “Um,” he said, holding a glass of wine in his little hand. His nails were really clean. “Tell me about yourself?”

I just shrugged and had a swig of my pint, because I never know what people want to hear when they say that stuff. And it’s not like anything about me is interesting or nothing.

“Have you always lived in Cambridge?”

I nodded.

“Do you live alone?”

I nodded again.

So then he gave up on twenty questions and started telling me about himself. I liked hearing him talk. I thought he had a lovely voice. He talked with his hands, too, waving them about like he was doing sign language. He told me about teaching History of Art, about how the students didn’t get stuff, like making Jesus bigger than the saints in the pictures because he was more important.

“I used to think that was funny too,” I said. “But my art teacher explained it to me. It’s like this modern art stuff, innit? You’re showing what stuff’s like inside, not on the outside like a photo.”

“Yes! Yes, that’s it!” He smiled at me and leaned over the table, and I felt a bit funny, so I had another swig of my pint.

“Did you know you have the most incredibly sinister smile?” Lawrence said after a bit. He put his elbows on the table and leaned over toward me again. “It’s that scar by your mouth—sort of twists. I think that’s what really scared the shit out of me last night—your smile.”

I frowned, because why would anyone be scared of a smile? “You got a lovely smile,” I said, because I knew that was true. He went all pink. “Are you a poof?” I asked. I didn’t think he’d mind. And even if he did, there wasn’t nothing a little bloke like him could do to me, so that was all right.

“Er, yes. I hope that’s not a problem?” His ears went so red it was like they was sunburnt, and he leaned back a bit.

“Nah. I’m a poof and all.”

Lawrence laughed. “You know, you’re really rather refreshingly direct.” He didn’t say nothing for a minute, just put his elbows on the table again and played with the beer mats. “So, have you, er, got a partner?”

“Nah. I had this bloke, Ryan, but we split up.”

“Oh. What was he like?”

I had to think about it. See, I could have drawn him a picture easy, but I didn’t have a pencil. “Little,” I said. “And pretty.” I smiled, remembering, ’cause I’d thought Ryan was really pretty, but Lawrence was much prettier.

“Oh,” said Lawrence. His shoulders went a bit stiff. “That’s the sort of men you find attractive?”

I didn’t say nothing, because there Lawrence was sitting in front of me and he was perfect, but I knew I couldn’t say that, because it’d get awkward. I knew he wouldn’t fancy me or nothing.

He was building card houses with the beer mats. I couldn’t do nothing like that. My hands are too big and clumsy, ’cept when I’ve got a pencil or a brush in them. ’Course, Lawrence couldn’t bench press the table we were sitting at, neither. “Would you… Would you consider going out with someone like me?” he asked without looking at me.

Someone like him? That was all right, because then we weren’t talking about him. “Yeah, but someone like you wouldn’t go for a bloke like me.”

He looked up then. “Why not?”

“Someone like you’d want someone he could talk to. Not someone thick as pigshit.”

He looked at me like I’d told him he was a wanker or something. “We’ve been talking just fine.”

I had to think about that. ’Cause it was true, we’d been talking for ages, and he didn’t look like he was bored. I smiled. Then I remembered what he’d said and wondered if I should stop smiling, but I thought, what the hell.

“The last thing I want on a date is intellectual conversation,” Lawrence carried on. “I get
quite
enough of that at work—bloody Hardwicke with his
well, of course, if you want to take the simplistic view of the Renaissance
.” Lawrence put on a funny voice for that bit. I thought he probably didn’t like that Hardwicke bloke much. Then he downed his drink in one. I probably should have told him to slow down, ’cause of how he’d been last night, but I didn’t want to make him not like me so much, so I didn’t. “Come back to my place. We’ll get a takeaway—you like Chinese?” I nodded. I love Chinese. He laughed. “You’ll probably need to order the banquet for four, the size you are.” He got up, and so did I, and then he said, “And while we’re there, maybe you can tell me what happened to my kitchen knives? I haven’t been able to find them since last night!”

So we went back to his place, and we had a Chinese takeaway, and we watched old Charlie Chaplin films. I like them ’cause you don’t have to be clever to get the jokes. I never thought someone smart like Lawrence would like them too.

And it got a bit late, and I thought, well, Larry’s a poof—see, he said I could call him Larry, ’cause nobody else did—and he keeps smiling at me, so maybe I should make a move? So I put my arm round him and pulled him close, but he sort of shivered, so I let go again. I didn’t want him to start shaking like last night.

“No, come back,” Larry said, and he snuggled into my side. I liked that. Then he reached up and kissed me, and I liked that more, so I put my arm round him again and pulled him onto my lap. He laughed. “If we tried this the other way round, you’d flatten me,” he said, and then he kissed me again. So I didn’t have to try and think of nothing to say. I liked the way his kisses tasted—all sweet-and-sour sauce and white wine—and the way his lips were so soft, but his chin was rough with stubble.

“Where did you get this scar from?” he asked, rubbing his thumb along it. It tickled when he got to my lip.

“Beer glass.”

“Were you attempting to drink from it at the time?”

“Nah. Some wanker in the pub din’t like my face.”

Larry’s eyes went wide. “So he shoved a glass in it? Christ!”

“’S all right. I broke his jaw.”

“God, I bet you did.” He laughed. “You know, you’re really not the sort of person I’d want to meet down a dark alleyway.” I didn’t say nothing, ’cause where we’d met last night had been down a dark alley. Maybe he wished we’d never met? “Joke, Al, joke,” he said, stroking my face, and I felt better.

We kissed again, and I shoved my hand up his shirt so I could feel his chest. Larry hasn’t got any chest hair, and his skin felt so smooth and soft I was worried I was going to scratch it with my rough hands. “Oh, that feels good,” he said, like he could read my mind.

Sometimes I wonder, if people get really clever, can they read minds? But I don’t think Larry can read mine. Not really.

I put my other hand on his arse and pulled him in tight, but it wasn’t so good with stuff in the way. “Get your clothes off,” I said, and it probably sounded a bit rough, but there wasn’t nothing I could do about that, I was so turned on.

Larry sort of shivered again, and scrambled off my lap. It felt cold and empty without him. I pulled off my shirt while he was unbuttoning his, and Larry’s eyes went really wide. I guess he’d seen my tats. I got them all over my chest, plus the spider’s web on my neck that he’d seen already. I got more on my back too, but he couldn’t see those.

Larry got his trousers and underpants off really quick, and climbed back on my lap, his cock bobbing. It was a nice cock, thicker than you’d expect but not so long you’d gag on it. He didn’t kiss me, just ran his hands all over my shoulders and chest. “God, you’re a work of art all by yourself,” Larry said. “I mean, even without the tattoos you’d be amazing, but with them—where did you get them? I’ve never seen designs like these. They’re reminiscent of Australian aboriginal art, but there’s a subtle difference—it’s intriguing.”

I liked that he liked them. “There’s this bloke on Orwell Street. I told him what I wanted, and he done them for me.”

“You designed them?”

“Nah, I just drew a picture on some paper and told him what colours I wanted and stuff. It was him what done the tattoos.”

Larry smiled. “That means you designed them.” He started to kiss me all over, which felt really nice. I grabbed hold of his arse with both hands, squeezing it and pulling his arse cheeks apart. I think he liked that, ’cause he sort of moaned and started kissing me harder.

I still had my jogging bottoms on, but they were stretchy enough I didn’t need to take them off to get my cock out. I wanted him to ride me, but I didn’t think he’d want to do that on a first date, so I didn’t say nothing. So I rubbed our cocks together, and he wrapped one of his little hands around us both, and then I forgot all about doing anything else, ’cause it felt so good. I used my hands on his arse to move him up and down, rubbing up against me, and he made those little moaning sounds and threw his head back. I wanted to bite his neck, mark it, but I didn’t think he’d like that, so I bit and sucked at his chest instead where no one would see it. His skin tasted sweet, like white chocolate and fortune cookies.

“Oh!” he gasped, and I felt his hot spunk hitting my chest. It was so good, watching him come. He didn’t look like a teacher no more. He looked wild and happy. I could have watched him all night.

When he’d finished, he put his arms round my neck. “Oh God, that was… You didn’t come?” He looked worried.

“’S okay, I’m close,” I said, and I started jacking myself off.

“No, let me.” He slid off my lap onto the floor and put his mouth on my cock, and it felt like heaven. I think I grunted a bit. He started bobbing his head up and down, moving his tongue over the head of my cock every now and then. Watching his pretty little face, his lips stretched round my cock, was better than the best porno I’d ever seen.

“Going to come,” I told him, but he didn’t lift off. I tried to move his head, but my hands weren’t working so good, and I shot in his mouth. He swallowed me down, except for a little bit that dripped from the corner of his mouth.

When my breathing had steadied, I said, “You should of made me wear a condom.”

“Statistically, unless I had an open cut in my mouth—which I don’t—the chance of transmission this way is very low,” Larry said. He sounded like a teacher again. Then he looked a bit worried. “Um, are you positive, then?”

“Nah, my mum makes me get tested regular, but I always use a condom anyhow.”

“Thank God for that,” he said with a little laugh. “I’m not normally this reckless, believe me.”

I pulled him back up into my lap so we could kiss, ’cause I liked kissing him, but then we remembered at the same time that I was still covered in spunk, so we didn’t get that far. “Would you like a shower?” Larry asked, still half on my lap and half off.

“’S all right. I can have one at home,” I said, ’cause I didn’t want to be a bother.

“Actually, I was rather hoping you might stay the night? I have to get up for work, and I’m sure you do, but, well…”

I hope I wasn’t scaring him, ’cause I think I had a big grin on my face. “All right,” I said. I got up, lifting Larry up too. “Let’s shower.” Larry laughed and told me to put him down, but I could tell he didn’t mind, really. So I carried him upstairs to the bathroom, and then I put him down on his feet on the bathmat. He was still laughing when he put his arms round me and kissed me. He’s good at kissing, Larry is, even when he’s laughing.

There wasn’t a lot of room for both of us in the shower, so we had to stand really close together. Larry said he wanted to wash me, so he soaped me up with about half a bottle of this expensive shower gel that smelled like wood and leather. By the time he’d rinsed me off, we were both hard again, so we jerked each other off in the shower, and I got spunk all over me again. It was magic.

We felt really sleepy after that, so we went to bed. Larry’s got this really big bed. Emperor size, they call it. It takes up most of the space in his bedroom. I had to laugh at the thought of little Larry sleeping in there all on his own—but when I thought about it more, it didn’t seem so funny. I didn’t like to think of Larry being alone. “You must’ve been waiting for someone like me to come along,” I said. I meant, because of the big bed.

But Larry looked at me all funny and said, “Yes, I think I was.”

Chapter Two

So after that we kept on seeing each other, and Larry started asking me to these University dinners and stuff. He said he’d buy me a suit, but I told him I had one already from when I used to work as a bouncer. “Why did you give that up?” he asked. “I’d have thought that kind of thing would be perfect for you.”

“Din’t like the hours. It’s nice, working outside in the day and hearing the birds and stuff.”

“You’re just a big softy inside, aren’t you?” Larry smiled at me.

I shrugged. If anyone else called me a softy, I’d deck them. But I didn’t mind Larry saying it.

The night of the first dinner, Larry was all keyed up like I used to be before a fight. I didn’t get why he was nervous, ’cause he must have been to loads of them, so I thought about it, and I thought it must be ’cause of me. “Are you worried about your mates seeing you with me?” I asked him.

“No! No, Al, of course not!” He smiled at me and gave me a kiss. “I’m looking forward to it.”

So I kissed him back, and we ended up on the floor and had to really rush to get changed in time after.

When we walked into this big hall with the fancy woodwork, everyone stared at me and Larry. I wasn’t sure if it was ’cause of me or ’cause we were two poofs, but there was loads of other blokes without girlfriends, so maybe they were used to poofs.

We walked past this tall bloke going bald on top, and he looked at Larry and me and said, “My God! Since when have gorillas been allowed into Hall?”

Larry sort of huffed. “Really,
Doctor
Hardwicke, one would have hoped that an English don would have been able to come up with something a little more original and pithy.”