For Real (Spires)

6 Toby

Oh my God, I can’t stop thinking about him. My days go by in this blur of not-Laurie, his finger marks fading on my wrist. I feel stupidly fairy tale about everything, but at least this time he hasn’t dumped me on the cold hill side and buggered off. I can get back to his magic kingdom where I’m a prince and I’m happy and so very, very seriously, expertly fucked.1

Swoony sigh.

I’m totally crap at work. I burn things, I under-cook things, I forget how everybody likes their eggs, as if Laurie is now the only egg-eater in my universe. I try to make a carrot cake without any carrots. I refill all the sugar shakers with salt and don’t notice until a cabbie spits up a mouthful of tea.

I get a bollocking from Joe, but he doesn’t fire me. Just threatens me with it a bunch of times, which is, y’know, pretty usual. He probably actually won’t because Hairy’s still in this insane boot thing that makes him look like a robot, and I’m probably just as good at cooking as he is. Cheaper too, since I’ve got no qualifications and no experience, so I’m still on the minimum wage. Which wouldn’t keep a frugal monkey in Tesco-value peanuts.

Not that it matters because I’m still living with Mum anyway. Like the loser I am.

I’ve thought about saying something to Joe, but I’m kind of afraid it’ll backfire. Currently I’m doing everything, which is hard, but it’s still way better than someone else doing all the cooking and me doing all the shitwork. So if I push too hard, I might lose what I’ve got. And I’m not sure I could stand it because it’s already so fucking little.

I’m just…

I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be. Or how I find out.

And it’ll be Easter soon, so I’ll have to see all my mates from school again. I say all as if there’s loads, but there’s some, and they’re kind of totally different now, totally changed. Like life is really happening for them and taking them places, while I’m still here, still the same. Maybe even going backwards, because they’ll all do the university thing and have careers, and I’ll be…I’ll be what? Washing dishes.

I used to be exactly where they are. Except it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.

Sometimes I kind of fantasise about walking out right in the middle of one of Joe’s rants. It makes me feel awesome for about five seconds, and then I get terrified because I have no fucking clue what comes next. I mean, couldn’t be a lawyer is one thing. Couldn’t keep a shitty job in a shitty caff is epic suck.

So I just get on with things. Every day, I wake up and get on with things, and time ticks on. It’s easier now Laurie’s in the picture. The week lasts forever, but it has this structure now. This reward waiting for me that makes it all worthwhile. Of course, Joe’s regulars take the piss out of me because I’m so starry and ditzy. But I don’t care because it means I get to hang out the serving hatch and talk about my boyfriend.

My boyfriend.

My amazing, sexy boyfriend who is a doctor—no, a consultant actually.

(Who gets on his knees for me, fucks me into a pile of wet tissue, and doesn’t come until I say he can. Though of course I don’t talk about that stuff. Not because I’m ashamed, but because, first off, it’s ours, and second, some of the regulars are pretty old and it might literally kill them.)

I know Laurie gave me all this bullshit about how he wasn’t my boyfriend, but the way I see it: we’ve had sex a bunch of times, talked about deep shit, he actually seems to like me for some weird reason of his own, I’ve cooked him food, stayed over at his place, and I have a standing invitation to go back there. If it walks, talks, and quacks like a boyfriend, it’s a boyfriend, right? And it’s not like he’s ever going to find out what I call him to a bunch of East Enders.

The best times are the afternoons when Joe isn’t breathing down my neck about how worthless I am, the caff is quiet, and I’m doing the next day’s baking. It gives me time to daydream, which probably explains the Great Carrot Cake That Wasn’t, but honestly I just really like baking. It’s a welcome relief to know I’m definitely good at something. I don’t have any hearth-and-home-type memories of it. I think I’m supposed to have been lovingly taught by a doting old person, but I’ve just kind of picked it up as I’ve gone along, and that’s good memories too. Also, there’s Mary Berry who is like the best person ever. I mean, I don’t know her personally or anything, but she’s on TV all the time so it’s like I do.

I have to make simple stuff, otherwise there’s rioting. I tried mille-feuille once, and they came out really well, just like they’re supposed to, but everyone was like, “What the fuck is this French shit?” So it’s cupcakes and Victoria sponge and carrot cake and coffee cake. And the occasional lemon meringue pie. But I’ve promised myself that the next one of those I make will be for Laurie. Oh man, the thoughts I have. Filthy and delicious and probably not compliant with food hygiene standards. I know I’m supposed to be converting him to Team LMP, but God, I’d love to lick lemon curd from his skin while he shakes and gasps and fights and tries not to come.

Ngh. Ridiculously fucking gorgeous man. How did I get so lucky?

If this is my consolation prize for totally ruining my life, I’m pretty fucking consoled.

The other big advantage of Joe’s is that nobody really cares what I’m doing as long as things are clean, there’s food happening, and it tastes good, so I whip up a random batch of red velvet cupcakes. I’m going to take them to the hospice for Granddad and his friends. He’s actually my great-granddad, but since I don’t have any others and it’s kind of a mouthful, I’ve always just called him Granddad. He’s really my favourite person in the world. No offence to Mary Berry.2

And, well, he’s kind of dying. He’s got cancer. All the cancer. But he’s ninety-four. So, if you’re going to get cancer, we reckon that’s probably about the best time to get it. And I know it probably sounds a bit weird to be taking a bunch of bad-for-completely-healthy-people cupcakes to a hospice full of the fragile and terminally ill, but that’s kind of the point. The worst has already happened. They might as well have whatever they like. There’s this whole thing over there about dying as, like, a person, with dignity and love and, y’know, cupcakes.

I remember when we first took Granddad in, I was shit scared it was going to be this hospital place, smelling of disinfectant and dead people. But we’d just got him settled in his room—number nine—when a nurse came in and asked him if he’d like a drink. Just like he was in a hotel or a guest in her house or something. It was kind of the last thing we were expecting, so he wanted to know what they had, and she told him he could have anything.

“I’ll have a sherry, then,” said Granddad, just for a joke.

And they totally got him one. Not his usual type, but they made sure they had that in for him the very next day.

And that was the moment I knew it was going be okay. I mean, no, it’s not going be okay. My granddad is going to die, and that’s going to be really, really sad. And when he’s gone, I’ll be a bit more alone in the world. But it’s going to be okay for him. Because the horrible stuff, the tests, the treatments, the hospitals, the long words and the lack of information, the too-busy doctors and the people who can’t remember his name…that’s over.

And all that’s left for him to do is live. Until he stops.

And eat my cupcakes.

He’s frail these days, really frail. But he seems all right. Sad and in pain sometimes, but all right. They make sure most of his days are good days. And I think his mind isn’t quite… I don’t know. Like he’s still there, he’s still my granddad, but I think he’s losing time a bit. Recent stuff confuses him. Which is probably for the best, because it means I don’t have to explain to him about me and university and all the rest of it.

It means the last things he remembers about me won’t be the ways I’ve failed him.

I’m totally going to tell him about my boyfriend, though. I know he’ll remember that.

He was the first person I came out to. Not the first person who knew I was gay—I guess my mum knew all along—but the first person where the telling mattered. I was kind of accidentally out at school, after the business with my best mate, and some of the kids were shitty to me about it and some of them weren’t and some of them were shitty to me for totally different reasons, because, let’s face it, school is kind of an institutionalised shittiness generator. Like the Stanford prison experiment.

The way I see it, and this is what I tell myself all the time, if you’re bothered, like actually really bothered, that I fall for men, not women, then we’re not going to be friends anyway. So fuck you.

But it’s different when you love someone and their love is the best thing you have.

Also, it’s a generational thing. Like they were raising them racist and sexist and homophobic back in the 1920s or whatever. I mean, they still are, but there’s at least a certain amount of social understanding that it’s supposed to be a bad thing. Like if somebody is randomly homophobic at me, they’ll at least look sheepish and then give me this speech about how they’re not actually a homophobe because Reasons. But my great-grandmother genuinely used to call black people the word you’re never ever supposed to say if you’re white. She didn’t think she was being racist. She just thought that was what black people were called. Yeah. Awkward.

Probably a good thing she’s dead. I’m kidding. Well, she is dead. But I was quite young at the time so it wasn’t a big deal. Like, for me. It probably was for her. And Granddad. But since they didn’t seem to like each other very much, who knows? Grown-up relationships are a complete mystery to me. I don’t know at what point you go from being in love and bonking to not really talking about anything and being mildly annoyed with each other all the time. But at no point remembering that you chose to be with that person in the first place. Although actually I have a pretty small sample size. The Finch family can’t keep men. It’s our curse or something. And I hope to fuck I haven’t got it, or it doesn’t count if you’re gay, because now I’ve got a man of my own, I bloody well want to hang on to him.3

But, anyway, once Great-Grandma snuffed it, Granddad started going dancing again.

That was how you got laid back in the day, and he used to totally rock at it but then the war happened, and then he was married and stuff, so it was like this amazing thing for him to suddenly have dancing again. Like a bit of lostness coming back to him after all these years. And he taught me. Really patiently because I’m a bit of a klutz. He didn’t actually say it was for getting laid (though I’m telling you the implication was there). He said it was how a gentleman wins a lady’s heart. An important life skill.

And so I told him. I said, “Does it still work if a gentleman wants to win a gentleman’s heart?”

He was quiet a moment.

And my own heart was like thudump-thudump-thudump. To the rhythm of ohfuck-ohfuck-ohfuck.

And then Granddad said, “Definitely.”

So I was a regular twinkle toes after that. Commitment. Quickstep is my favourite. It’s so good, so light and elegant, like you’re both flying.4

I’d love to dance with Laurie. Anything. But especially that.

After I clean up and we close up, I stick the cakes in a box and head for Saint Anthony’s. It’s out in North London, so out of my way, but seriously, he’s my granddad, who’s counting? I go to see him pretty much every other day. That’s another great thing about the hospice. It’s not like hospital where they hate you turning up and getting in the way, and only let you in for like two minutes and sixteen seconds when Mercury is in retrograde. You’re always welcome at the hospice. It’s so full of people being together. You can even stay over if you want to, or need to, or if you’re scared.

It’s the closest thing I know to what family means.

As I sit on the emptying, darkening Tube, I suddenly realise that if I hadn’t come unstuck, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do this at all. I’m honestly pretty messed up about university—and this black hole of a future I’ve made—but maybe what I did was to gift myself this: these last few days with Granddad.

It’s dark when I get to the hospice, but that’s okay because it’s light inside. And I can hear music playing, people talking. Everybody knows my name. Not just the staff, but the volunteers and the families. I sort of miss some of the people who used to come here, which is weird, I guess, but you get close quickly. And you don’t tell when you catch each other crying.

Soon I’ve given away nearly all of my cakes, and I take the rest up to Granddad because he’s up in his room.

He’s been in his room a lot lately.

It’s not one of his best days, but that’s okay.

That’s okay.

The nurses helped me make the place really nice. So maybe it wouldn’t look, y’know, temporary. There’s always flowers in the window. And it’s full of photographs and his favourite things, small stuff that’s just always been around him, but I don’t really know much about or why he has it. Like this battered wooden box he’s got that somebody carved for him. And these medals he likes to have near but never looks at. And a lot of crap I made him when I was a kid, like this mug in pottery class and this deformed pom-pom parrot from having to do needlework because I was too sissy for woodworking.

They used to rip the piss out of me at school because when you had to draw your family, it was always me and Granddad. And sometimes Mum. But apparently this was weird and wrong and not the way it’s supposed to be.

Looking back, I just think they can go fuck themselves. I mean, I wouldn’t actually say that to them. They were like six. But if I ever have a kid of my own, and maybe someday I will—I hope so—I’m not going to raise them like that. Believing the shape of their world is the only shape for the world to be. Well, I guess the poor bastard won’t have much choice. They’ll be starting life with two dads after all.

But Granddad’s still got all those pictures. There’s like a whole series of us on Primrose Hill, one for every season, stick figures in scarves and sun hats. And there’s the first poem I ever wrote. It’s lovingly hand illustrated, and cut out with the special scissors that do crinkly edges, and it’s called “Frogs.” It goes like this:

Frogs5

Leaping in and out of the pond.

Hop hop hop hop HOP.

That’s some deep shit right there, man. Everybody acted like I was a total genius when I wrote it. It’s probably the single most successful thing I’ve ever done. I mean, yeah, it’s crap, but I was what? Five? I think I was the only one there who got that a poem was a different sort of way of writing. For ages, I actually thought I was going to be a poet when I grew up. The same way Mum’s an artist.

But then I noticed the fundamental flaw in the plan, which was basically that I sucked.

The weird thing is, I do kind of get poetry. A bit. Maybe in an idiot-savant way, since I probably osmoted it in the womb and early childhood, because the only books Mum owns are art books and poetry books. But that’s how I was able to recognise my own suck before anybody had to sit down and tell me.6

Without Granddad, I wonder what’s going to happen to all this nonsense. All this stuff only he cares about.

God, way to make it all about me. But it doesn’t mean anything to anyone except him. And if it doesn’t mean anything, it’s nothing. Which means…so am I.

I take my shoes and socks off and sit on the end of his bed. Granddad’s resting at the moment. He sounds all wheezy, but not like he’s in pain, and I find myself sort of breathing along with him, like I’m helping or something.

Of course, the moment he wakes up, which doesn’t take long because he doesn’t sleep that deeply, just kind of a lot, he says I shouldn’t have let him nap through my visit. And then I’m all like, “Yeah, you’ve made me late for my dinner with the Queen,” and we go on from there.

He tells me he’s feeling good, which is probably a lie.

I tell him the snowdrops will be out soon. We used to pretend we’d see them again together some day, but we don’t anymore.

I tell him that Mum’s doing this exhibition in a disused railway arch.

I tell him I’ve added cider vinegar to the cream cheese frosting on my red velvet cupcakes.

He tells me he’ll let me know what he thinks. I don’t think he’s got the energy to eat one right now.

But that’s okay.

That’s okay.

I ask if he wants anything, but he doesn’t. I get him some fresh water anyway. Because you always need water, right?7

We talk a bit about some of the people we know here. You don’t really call them friends. They’re kind of something else, more and less than that.

It’s really weird the way you can have everything in the world to say, and fuck-all. And I can see he’s starting to drift again.

“Granddad?”

He blinks at me a bit. He’s all in his eyes right now. That’s where he lives. Not in his body anymore, which is just hollow skin. “Toby?”

“I’ve kind of met someone.”

He lights up for me, and I smile right back at him.

“Who?” he asks. “Where? Not on the whatsit…the interweb.”

Great. My granddad’s a meme. “No, at a…” Oh shit. Shit. Kinky sex club? “Uhh…party. His name’s Laurence. Laurence Dalziel.”

“Like Dalziel and Pascoe?”

“Huh?” He breathes in a particular sort of way that I know is what’s left of his laugh, so I let it go. It’s probably some old person reference I’m never going to get. “Anyway, I call him Laurie.” Casually ignoring the fact that I had to beg and whine for the privilege. It was totally worth it. “He’s…really nice. Clever and funny and kind and handsome.”

I’m simplifying of course. I’m starry-eyed, not completely mind-controlled. I mean, Laurie is all those things (well, not so much on the handsome, but you don’t say “hot” to your granddad), but he’s also…other things, as well. More complicated things. And weirdly, that just makes me like him more. Or want to, anyway. If he’d let me. If he’d give me enough so I could.

“He’s a doctor. And you know those fairy tale houses round Primrose Hill? He lives in one. I mean, not at Primrose Hill. But one of those type of houses. The white ones. Isn’t that totally weird?”

It was my favourite game when I was a kid. We’d walk past these sugar-cake houses on the way to the park, and I’d tug on his hand and go, “Who do you think lives there?” And he’d say, “A sailor who met a mermaid who gave him a pearl the size of a cantaloupe.” And then we’d go on a bit further, and he’d point at one and say, “But who lives there, Toby?” and I’d say, “The prince of a kingdom trapped in a marble.”

The truth is way better than any of it. Even though it’s just a man called Laurence Dalziel.

“But how’s his dancing?” asks Granddad.

He makes me grin, the cheeky old bugger. “Steady on. I haven’t asked. Can’t have him thinking I’m only after one thing. But honestly, I’d still like him if he had all the left feet in the universe. When I’m with him…it’s like…” I have no idea how to explain this. Partly because it’s sort of connected to kinky sex and partly because it sort of isn’t. “Zing, you know?”

“Strings of your heart, eh?”

I nod, feeling a bit of a dork. I’d really liked that song when I was little. It sounded how I thought being in love ought to be: all bright and brassy and full of joy.8

In any case, Granddad seems pleased. “That’s…good to hear.”

I think he wants to say more, but he can’t quite get the words out. I give him some water. And I know what he’s probably going to tell me anyway. The truth is, my granddad’s a pretty biased man. He thinks I’m this astonishing, talented, wonderful person, in spite of all available evidence to the contrary. But that’s sort of what love is, I guess. A perpetual state of semideranged partiality. And I think he’s sort of worrying that, without him, I’ll have nobody to feel like that about me.

So I say, “Laurie gets me, Granddad. He really does.” I mean, okay, he’s not going to keep my frog poetry. But the least understandable bit of me—the part that wants to make him suffer and cry and beg because I like him—he understands. And that’s not nothing. Hell, it’s practically something. “I think you’d like him.”

“Well. We’ve definitely got something in common.”

“Huh?”

“You…you plonker.”

I laugh. It’s a good day when you’re being called a plonker by your granddad.

But that’s also when I realise Laurie is never going to meet my granddad.

Because my granddad is going to die, and Laurie isn’t really my boyfriend. I can tell him to get on his knees for me, I can tell him to fuck me, but I can’t bring him here. I can’t introduce him to the person I love most in the world. And I can’t expect him to be there when I lose that person for good.

Granddad’s looking pretty tired, so we don’t talk much after that. When he first got ill, I used to read to him a lot, but when we kind of realised he wasn’t going to get better, we quietly gave up on novels. He likes whodunits but imagine how rubbish it would be if he died…like…in the middle, never ever knowing whodunit. Now I read him poetry. Just so he has some words to take with him, and my voice to keep him company in the dark.

I read him Rapture. Or bits of it anyway, which you probably shouldn’t do because it’s meant to be a cycle, but I want him to have only the love and not the loss, which is wrong again because you have to have both. Except I can do this for him now because he’s dying. Because the loss is already happening.

I like the poems at the beginning best. The poems at the end scare me a bit. But I guess if you want “You,” there has to be an “Over.” And for every “Hour,” there’s “Grief.”

I think of Laurie while I’m reading.

I wonder what it’s like to be in love and—zing aside—how I’ll know. If this could be love. Or if it’s just sex and infatuation. And if it matters.

I know I’ve only been with him twice. That I hardly know the guy.

But I also don’t know how you fall in love, except by wanting to.

So maybe that’ll do. For now, anyway.

* * *

I see Laurie on Sunday this week because I had to work the weekend, but the moment I get through his door, he pins me against the wall, and we end up fucking in the hallway.

Because that’s just how we roll.

It’s so good, the way he touches me, like he’s been waiting for me all week, and everything comes spilling out of me, how happy I am to see him, how much I’ve missed him, and how much I want him, along with about eighty gallons of come. Which means my clothes end up in the washer, and me in the bath, him with me this time, and I float hazily in the water and under his hands. It’s only when I’m standing on his doorstep at half past five the next morning, because he has to go to work, that I realise that the time is gone. And Laurie too, back to the rest of his life. Leaving me sore and happy and empty all at once.

And next week: rinse and repeat, with, y’know, a few variations, which are mainly how and where we fuck.

And it’s not that I don’t want what we’re doing. Because I do. I want it so much I can hardly think straight. And it’s not like we don’t talk. Because we do. And it’s not that he’s not nice to me. Because he is. He’s nicer to me than basically anyone who doesn’t have to be because family and shit.

But it’s like there’s a line in his head or something. And I can have everything up to the line. But nothing after it. I’ve seen glimpses over it. The night we met. The night he scraped me off his doorstep. Sometimes after sex when he lets me hold him. Enough, basically, to make me want to live there, on the other side of him.

Except I don’t know how to get there. And I’m afraid of pushing—again—in case I lose what I’ve got.

This is turning out to be the theme of my fucking life. The thing is, there’s nothing I can put my finger on. There’s nothing for me to complain about. No way for me to challenge him. The best I can do is hope for those moments when he forgets the line is there, and make him feel so safe, so perfect, so fucking cherished that he’ll never want to cross back. So he’ll see that this is where it’s real.

But the only way I have of getting there is sex.

Which, y’know, is okay. If I’ve learned anything, it’s how to work with what I’ve got. And, let’s face it, the sex is a-maz-ing.

I like it all the ways we can imagine—and he can imagine a lot—but I like it best when I’m on my back, so I can look up at him and touch him, and we can kiss, softly or savagely or however we like. Sometimes I kind of hold his lower lip between my teeth so I hurt him while he makes me come. It makes him go fucking feral and then helpless, utterly helpless, his body enslaved to the simplest touch of mine.

Once, when we were going at it sort of slowly, for the togetherness of it, our bodies becoming one in slick, deep strokes, I reached up and put my hand against his throat, not pressing or anything, just resting there, and the sound he made. Jesus. It came into me like his cock. And all he said was, “Oh, Toby,” but it was the way he said it. His voice breaking as if I’d finally touched his heart. Except afterwards, it was sealed up tight again. Out of my reach. As usual.

So, in another week or so, I wait until after, when he’s quiet and lax and soft-eyed, and ask him straight: “Laurie, are you doing this with anyone else?”

He rolls over with a groan. “No, darling, I’d probably be in hospital.”

Well. So far, so good. “Do you want to?”

“Why? Plans to share me?”

He says it in this totally laconic way—as if it’s a perfectly reasonable fucking suggestion—but even the idea of it makes my heart clench like a fist. Mine. “No!”

He laughs.

And now I feel ridiculous. Gauche and on the wrong side of the line. As if I’ve been set up somehow. I nearly abandon the whole conversation. I hate it when he does this. When he pretends the things that matter to me—the things he gives me—are small.

“So, uh…” Fuck, how do you say this stuff? “Um…if we’re like exclusive, does that mean we…can ditch the condoms?”

“I don’t see why not,” he says. In this bored way.

I’d somehow imagined that this might have been romantic. More of that husky-voiced I trust you, Toby stuff I’d got when I’d been scared of hurting him. I tried to match his tone. “Uh, cool.”

What now? Do we lovingly exchange STI tests?

I lie there, awkward and uncertain until finally Laurie offers, “I was tested after Christmas, and I haven’t slept with anyone but you since then.”

Well. We’re definitely exchanging something. It feels embarrassing, though. Dirty, in some way I can’t quite understand and definitely don’t like. Not so much the sex, or the implication of sexual history, but the fact there’s a fucking health-and-safety checklist. This is about intimacy. It’s not…pulling out of a parking space into single-lane traffic.

Mirror.

Indicators.

Condom.

Also, I’m going to have to ’fess up to my lack of sexual shenanigans. “I–I’ve been with three people, not counting you. We always, y’know, used stuff.”

“For all forms of intercourse?”

Omg. Now I never want to have sex again. Mortified, I mumble, “Yeah.”

“Then I’m sure it’s fine.”

“You’re sure it’s fine?” I sit up, kind of startled, and he makes a noise of protest as I accidentally disturb the duvet, leaving his back exposed…and the marks I’ve left there. “You’re supposed to be a doctor. Is that what you tell your patients? ‘Hmm, there’s a weird blob on this MRI scan, but I’m sure it’s fine.’”

“I am a doctor—” His voice is different now. Not apathetic at all. Which makes me slightly pissed at him for the earlier nonsense. “But I’ve still had your cock down my throat and my tongue up your arse. So it appears my desire to fuck you and please you has consistently overwhelmed any politically correct concerns.”

Okay, I’m not pissed anymore. Now I’m just worried. “Laurie.” I slide a hand over the curve of his shoulder. “Aren’t we supposed to be careful?”

He turns onto his back, and he’s laughing. But it’s a nice laugh. Not the sort that makes me feel silly. “Come here, you ridiculous, wonderful boy.”

He cups a hand around the back of my neck and pulls me down into a kiss. He doesn’t kiss me so much when we’re not doing it, so it’s unexpected. And good. So fucking good. It lasts for a long time, just this slow dance of mouths, rocking together to hidden music.

When he lets me go and I can breathe, I try again. “Seriously, though. I could be riddled with the pox like the Earl of Rochester. He was debauched at the age of fourteen too.”

“Darling, you’re about as debauched as a Lladró shepherdess. If you’re at all concerned, I’ll get tested again, but if you’re not…please let me fuck you. Let me be inside you. I want to feel you come like that. I–I haven’t for a long time.”

“You made me come like half an hour ago.”

He gives this exasperated sound. “You know what I mean.”

“I do, but I like to hear you say this stuff.”

His arms are still round me, holding me tight, his body growing taut and eager and subtly yielding under mine. I’m over the line, I know I am. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been this close with anyone. Or wanted to be.”

I probably should be grown-up and insist on being absolutely certain—not just fine—but having Laurie like this is too special to waste.

And I want this. With him.

It’s not…it’s not how I expect it to be. Even though we’ve fucked six ways to Sunday the past few weeks, I’m suddenly kind of shy again. Like I haven’t been since the first time, upended and upside down on this very bed.

It’s just this is a proper first time. Nobody has ever been with me like this. Touched me like this. With nothing between us.

It makes me trembly and self-conscious and thrilled. Even though we’re back on that slight edge of awkward and Laurie ends up using nearly a gallon of lube because it’s like my arse has turned into Sleeping Beauty’s castle and grown briars.

This is the reality of skin: rougher than you’d think.

But, oh God. Oh God.

I love that extra friction, that edge of pain, the stretch and drag and burn, because it’s the way Laurie feels. It’s the way Laurie feels as he eases into my body.

It’s not so very different in the physical sense. But it is different. It’s totally different. I’m sure it must be all in my head, but I’m so kind of…shocked by it…and all I can think as I lie there, like a concussed rabbit, watching Laurie through the V of my own legs is that…he’s in me. This stranger who I’m probably in love with is in me.

I know the sort of stuff that gets said about boys who like to take it up the arse. I know what it’s supposed to mean.

Except it isn’t anything like that.

I’m greedy and powerful and closer to Laurie than I could have imagined it was possible to be. Literally joined, our bodies fitted together, and all their secrets bared without barrier.

It makes me fly.

Because this is how it’s supposed to be. When you strip away the dogma and the politics and the blah blah blah.

This is what sex is. This is what love is. And this is what we are. Laurie and me. Together. Touched and touching. As deep as two people can go.

He’s looking down, watching the place where we meet, watching me take him in, and for a while we’re both staring at the way our bodies fit—me wrapped around him, him pressing into me, inch by inch by inch. But then I tell him to look at me instead. And when he does, even in the gloom, I can see the fear in him. The fear and the wanting. Exposed to me, given to me, like when I put the tie over his eyes.

I beckon him, and he covers me.

Kisses me. Clumsy-rough, moaning into my mouth. And I sing right back. Same song.

We’re both just so naked.

And when I’m ready, I tell him, “Okay, now,” and he draws back again and fucks me the way he knows I love to be fucked. His hands tight and strong and hot on my ankles, holding me spread wide for all the goddamn glorious pleasure his gorgeous cock can thrust into me. It’s even better now. Raw and beautiful and nothing held back. All skin. Just us.

I lie there, his wanton prince, and let him serve me.

He’s perfect like this: all strain and shadows and sweat-gleam. Harsh breath and agonised self-control. A wild stallion of a man who tames himself for me. And that’s when I come, hot jerky jets all over my chest and stomach, like my cock is surprised.

I’m almost disappointed.

Not because it wasn’t good, but because it’s all so good. And I don’t want it to stop. I don’t want to lose this heat and this fullness and this closeness.

I don’t want to lose Laurie.

“God. Toby. Oh Toby.”

He leans over me, and for a moment, I think he’s come too, but then his mouth is on me. I feel the fluttering warmth of his breath against my chest and then the soft strokes of his tongue as he licks up everything I’ve spilled. I’m so sensitive right now it’s almost tickly, but I like it. And especially like having his still-hard cock nestled inside me while he does it. Knowing he’s desperate for me.

I think about playing with him. Pretending I’m not going to let him come, to make him beg. We’d both totally get off on that.

But not this time.

No games just now.

“Laurie.” I stroke his hair. “Come for me.”

He makes this lovely incoherent sound and braces himself on his elbows. His face is pressed against my neck as he starts to move again. I know this is for me as well, how careful he is with his own pleasure when I’m spent. I wrap my noodly arms around him and hold him as tight as I can. I’d do my legs too—he likes that—but I’m too shagged out to be able to move them.

When he comes—though it’s telegraphed in the usual sort of ways, and I’m not sure what I can really feel in my arse because it’s all well fucked and lube-slick—I’m overwhelmed all over again by the realisation that Laurie is in me.

Is coming in me.

I think, for all his casual-casual nonsense earlier, he gets it too. Because he’s almost sobbing. And for a while we just cling to each other like that.

It stings a bit when he pulls out. I’m definitely kind of…warm and wet. Very aware of still having some part of Laurie up there. Though I guess it’s going to…come out again at some point.

I don’t really know why I do what I do next.

It’s not something I’d ever have planned. But when I’m with Laurie and Laurie’s like this—when I’m over his line—I have this courage I don’t have any other time.

He makes me believe I can do anything.

So while he’s kneeling there between my splayed legs, I roll onto my stomach. Push myself onto my knees and my elbows.

I don’t need to tell him what I want. His mouth is on me, his tongue in me. Filling me with these soft shocks of renewed pleasure. Not enough to get me hard again. Although this is going to be wank bait forever: Laurie lapping his own come from my freshly—and indeed thoroughly—fucked arse. Just like he’d drunk mine from my skin.9

But, God, we’re definitely going to have to arrange something with light and mirrors. I need to be able to see this stuff sometimes.

Otherwise I could just be dreaming.

When he’s done and I’m half-unconscious with…just…feeling everything…he tucks me up and kisses me gently. His lips are closed, but I shove them open with my tongue and get right into his mouth. He tastes of delicious, filthy things. Him and me and pure, unadulterated sex.

“Oh, Toby,” he says. “Toby.”

I grin at him. Touch his lips. “And we two…mingled be.”10

And I guess I must be asleep after that.

* * *

I don’t know what I’m expecting to happen the next morning. Something different. But he kisses me, just like usual, neatly on the forehead. And leaves me on his doorstep in the pinkening dawn.

Getting on with his life. Abandoning me to mine.

I drift through the next few days in a haze of confusion.

Like…what the shit just happened? How can he do that? Is it normal? Or am I the one being weird here? Maybe I’ve made up the line, and this is just what Laurie is like. What grown-ups are like. The problem is, I don’t have anything to compare it to or anybody to ask, and I can’t really figure out exactly what it is I want anymore. I mean, I’m getting mind-blowing, kinky sex on a regular basis with a man who is perfectly nice to me the rest of the time. And I’m…apparently…still not satisfied?

Which is when I figure it out. I want to be good enough for more than sex. I love being his fuck buddy, I love everything that we do, but I wish he could see something else in me.

But how can he? I’m nineteen. I have no talents, no future, no prospects, no clue. And he’s this powerful, educated, gorgeous man. With a prestigious job and a fairy tale house and most likely real relationships against which I’m always going to fall short.

Because I’m not his equal.

I’m just…not.

It’s the wet-fish slap of reality I need as I’m standing there, up to the elbows in greasy soapsuds washing up after the lunchtime rush. It’s pretty fucking depressing, but…better to see things clearly, right? I promise myself, then and there, that I’m not going back. Laurie can easily find somebody else to fuck, and I’m sick of playing Russian roulette with my heart.

Except for the bit where I’m a complete fucking idiot.

Without Laurie, my life is just Greasy Joe’s forever. And now that I’ve found what I’ve been looking for my whole life—now that I know what it’s actually like to have a man on his knees for me—how the fuck am I supposed to go back to fumbling about with kids my own age?

Who the hell am I to get all pointlessly principle-having? To get all pissy over the hottest sex I’m ever likely to have? Granddad would say I was cutting my nose off to spite my face, and he’d be right.

Of course I’m going back. And if sex is what we have—if sex is all I’m good for—I’m going to make sure I am good.

Fuck school, fuck my future. Maybe this is my talent: knowing this thing about Laurie like I know it in myself. Knowing how to peel him open and take what he needs me to take. Sex, submission, pain.

Oh, I am so going back.

And I’m going to fuck his goddamn brains out.

So that Friday, when I’m barely over the threshold, I look straight into those wild, cold eyes of his and say, “I want to tie you up again.”

He kind of flinches a bit, but I know it’s not me or the idea he’s flinching from. It’s because he wants it too. And then he nods. “All right.”

“Get me something I can use. Then meet me in your bedroom.”

It’s weird—and also not weird at all—that it’s so easy. The truth is, I like telling him what to do, and he likes doing it, and I like the edge of uncertainty to it as well. Because it feels so wrong, wrong in a good way, to be saying the things I say with this…expectation of obedience. I mean, he could turn round at any point, and just say no, but he doesn’t.

As I go upstairs, I’m kind of mulling over some stuff. Because once I got over my idiot moment, I’ve basically spent my week planning to fuck him.

I know this shouldn’t be a big deal. Laurie’s made it pretty clear that, when it comes to his body, nothing’s a big deal. I can do what I like. And it’s not about power, because I love how he fucks me, I really do. It’s amazing, obviously, but also like I’m in control of him. Like my pleasure is chains on his wrists. A collar round his neck.

So it’s not like I think sticking a bit of my body into a bit of his is going to make a blind bit of difference. But especially now there’s not even latex between us, I want to know what it’s like. To take him a different way.

But there’s a problem. And that’s… Well. I’m not very good at it. I have, a couple of times. And I know this seems a crazy-beans thing to say when I have aspirations to tie people up and hurt them, but fucking someone right is this huge responsibility. And it’s hard to be responsible when the moment you get inside, your cock is all ohyeahmanyeah, and going for it like a beggar at the feast or whatever. Though, to be honest, before Laurie, top or bottom, most of my sexual encounters tended to include a fair bit of apologising and “Oh no, it’s fine,” and while that’s all very polite and important, it’s not…well…sexy, is it? I guess it’s just experience and knowing what you want and how to get it.

The truth is, I’ve just never felt that way about anyone else. Putting aside the smooshy side of it, what we’ve got here is lust. Pure, dirty, possessive, greedy lust. The burning kind. Like a Molotov in my chest.

So basically, I know I’m probably going to explode in a fountain of stupid uncontrollable bliss the moment I stick my cock inside him. And while I know that—for whatever weird reason of his own—Laurie finds me exploding in fountains of stupid uncontrollable bliss kind of hot, it’s not what I want for this. I want to make him feel the way he makes me feel. And I don’t think I know how to do that. At least, not solely with the prowess of my wang.

But I can do it another way. I think.

If I can get him so desperate, so mindless, so pleasure struck, so completely mine that he’s begging me to fuck him—so that just me entering him is enough to break him—then we can break together. And be whole after.

“Take your clothes off,” is what I tell him in the bedroom.

And while he’s doing that, I look at what he’s brought me. Ropes and cuffs and chains. And a roll of what looks like duct tape, which kind of scares me for a moment, until I realise it’s not sticky. I pick up a coil of rope, which is when I remember I know fuck-all about this. The rope has a slightly silky texture that feels nice between my fingers. But I got thrown out of the Scouts for smoking weed behind the community centre, and basically the only thing I tie regularly are my shoes. And even then I toe them on and off when I can.

Laurie is suddenly behind me, his now-naked body embracing mine. I lean back into his arms, into his warmth.

“It’s just rope,” he whispers. “You don’t have to use it.”

“Isn’t it sort of traditional?”

He shrugs. “Some people like it, some people don’t. Some people like to pretend it’s a status symbol because there’s a bit of skill involved.”

“What do you think?”

“If you liked it, I’d like it. If the ritual was something that mattered to you.” I think about it. Maybe someday. But, right now, the need to have him helpless—to make him helpless—is too raw. I don’t have to say anything because he reads the answer, somehow, in my body. “Then I don’t care how you do it. I just want you to”—one of his hesitations, so sweet they drive me fucking crazy—“tie me up. However you want.”

I pull away and start faffing around with the rest of the stuff on the bed. I guess I should really have thought about the kinky side of things a bit better. I glance over my shoulder, to see if I’m fucking everything up, but Laurie’s gone to his knees for me. I hadn’t thought or known to ask just then, but it helps. His patience. His understanding. His acceptance. I’m still holding a wrist cuff, but I like him so much for doing that, I get down next to him and kiss him. I kiss him until it’s like we can’t kiss enough.

Which is when I stop.

My mouth still full of the taste of his moans.

“Get on the bed.”

His eyes are all hazy like a rainy day. “How do you want me?”

“On your back, holding the rail.”

He knows how hot I am for him like this. All stretched out for me. It makes his muscles line up like soldiers. Draws his body into stark relief. Shows how strong he is. To be willing to be powerless.

For me.

This is a thing he can do. He can make himself into a gift.

And what it makes me feel is humble.

Honestly, I really fucking admire him. And the more he gives me—pain, dignity, shame, tears, this weakness that isn’t weakness at all—the more I admire him. The more I just totally adore him.

So much for pretending I was sophisticated enough for whatever we’re doing together. But I don’t give a fuck. Worrying comes later. This is now. And right now, I’m king of the world. Well, king of his world anyway.

I get rid of my clothes and climb onto the bed, pushing his legs apart so I can get between them.

“Toby, what are you doing?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute.”

Which, of course, I won’t. He brings his head up and watches me in this half-excited, half-wary way. So fucking beautiful. I reach out and run my fingers across the muscles of his abdomen so I can feel the quiver in them. Turns out my beautiful man is a little bit nervous.

Good. I like him that way. It soothes me and fills me with small fires. All for him.

I pick up what I guess is an ankle cuff. It’s weirdly good to touch, leather and suede and metal, this sort of weight and certainty, and it’s warm and cold at the same. It’s equally good to buckle it round him, and from the sound he makes, maybe it’s good to have it buckled.

I wonder if it feels like my hand holding him.

I do the other leg, and he lets out a very long, slow breath, and I sit back a moment, just to look at him again. I don’t know why, but somehow he seems more naked with the cuffs on. Or maybe they draw attention to the fact he is naked except for some bands of black leather I’ve put on him. There’s a set of wider cuffs for his thighs. They’re kind of a bit tougher. It’s not like it’s a fight or anything, but he kind of has to actively consent to them.

And that drives us both a bit crazy.

Heavy breathing all round. Very hard cocks. But my hands are steady with the buckles, so I’m secretly a bit proud. And when I’m done, I push against his knee, and use one of these double-ended clip things to connect the ankle cuff to the thigh cuff. He makes a startled noise at the second snap, like he’s only just realised what I’m doing. It’s not actually very restrictive—heh, yet—but the heel of his foot is drawn towards the back of his thigh, and he can’t straighten his leg. As I do the same on the other side, he curls his knee protectively over his body. Can’t say I blame him, which is why I let him get away with it. While he can.

I don’t know where it comes from, but I’m suddenly having this rush of…I don’t know what to call it. Joy, I guess. But it’s so…so…sharp and kind of dark. And I realise this is it: I’m a card-carrying sadist. And it’s okay.

As well as the clips and the rope and the cuffs, he’s brought me a collection of chains. I go for a shortish one, fitted with another set of double-ended snap hooks. Clip one end to the spare ring on the thigh cuffs, and the other to this cunning little eyelet I noticed ages ago set into the bed frame itself.

I wonder if I should be bothered they’re there. I mean, obviously I know I’m not the only person who’s been in Laurie’s life, but they’re a pretty strong reminder that he’s lain here for someone else. I think about it, and it turns out I’m not jealous.

Well, not really. It’s becoming my new mantra: I’m here now.

That’s what matters. And the eyelets are good thinking.

So, uh, thanks, random person.

As I reach for his other knee, Laurie sort of twists away from me, the chain rattling. I think he’s cottoned on to what I’ve got planned.

“Toby…I don’t…”

“Stop wriggling.” His grip tightens, which turns the sinews of his arms all knotty and delicious. Ngh. I pull at his leg, but he’s still resisting me. “Laurie.”

He shakes his head, eyes tightly closed. “I can’t.”

“Yeah, you can.”

“Can you…can you”—his throat ripples gorgeously as he swallows—“tie my hands first? Please?”

Definitely better than two out of ten. But there’s a problem. “I’m not going to tie your hands.”

His eyes snap open. And now there’s definitely a kind of fear there. So fucking hot. “W-what?”

“I’ve got things for them to do. So just…like, cling on to the rail like I’ve said, okay? That’s your cuffs.”

He throws back his head and groans. And, just like that, the muscles of his thigh yield to my pressure, and I clip the last chain into place, spreading him wide.

And holy shit, he looks amazing. Like a butterfly on a collector’s tray, completely exposed. His knuckles are white, his arms shaking with the strain of not moving, and his sweat-gilded chest heaving with these deep, desperate breaths. He’s got his head buried into his upper arm, like he can’t bear to think about what I’ve done to him.

What he’s letting me do.

Because he could let go of the rail, sit up, and free himself in like…a second.

But he doesn’t. He just shakes and hides his face because he can’t hide anything else from me like this. I lean in and run my tongue all the way up his glistening, rock-hard cock, and he muffles a sound so gloriously needy it’s practically a sob.

God. I could come right now, with the taste of him fizzing on my tongue.

“Laurie…Laurie…look at me, love.”

He shakes his head.

“Come on, it’s okay. Look at me.”

Very, very slowly he does. There’s this dark flush sweeping his cheekbones. And it’s like he doesn’t know if he hates me or wants me. Maybe both.

“Please,” he says. “Please don’t. Don’t…”

“Don’t what?”

I don’t think he knows what. I drag my thumbs along the wide-open creases where his legs meet his groin, and his hips arch kind of compulsively into my touch, making the chains tighten and chitter a bit in their moorings.

I reckon I’ve judged it about right. He’s not uncomfortable—except in the psychological sense—and he’s got enough freedom of movement that I can still feel his reactions. But he can’t close his legs or pull away from me.

“Don’t what?” I ask again. “You totally want this.”

“Yes, but…” His voice is so soft, so ragged, I don’t know how I’m hearing him. “It’s…just…it’s hard to bear.”

“Yeah, I know.” I kiss the exposed interior of his thigh, and the powerful muscle there jumps under my mouth. “But do it for me. I like you like this. You’re so fucking beautiful.”

“I feel ridiculous,” he mutters.

“Then you’re just going to have to trust me.”

For a long moment, he just stares at me, so flushed and angry and frantic and ashamed, and then his head falls back against the pillows, his body not quite relaxing, but surrendering, just a little bit, opening to me.

I press myself between his legs and drop little kisses over his stomach and hips and up, up, up, as far as I can go. He flinches under each one, greeting them with a soft nhh of fearful pleasure. When I fasten my mouth over one of his nipples, something like a growl catches at the back of his throat, and he pushes up into my touch, into my teeth. He tastes a little coppery. Zing.

By the time I’m heading south again, I think he’s kind of forgotten to be bothered by the restraints, or why it matters that he’s helpless and not helpless and completely vulnerable to me. There’s just my lips and my fingers and the way I’m making him feel. Which, I flatter myself, is pretty fucking good.

I leave him a few souvenirs to keep him company during the week. I guess it’s a bit tacky, but what else have I got? A love bite close to his heart, another on his hip, a third on his thigh. He moans really sweetly when I do them, eyes fluttering as he watches.

I settle myself between his legs again and kiss the tip of his cock kind of playfully, so that it twitches a little and weeps for me, pooling eagerly on his stomach. His balls are drawn up tight beneath, all tender and delicious and forbidden like the fruit of the goblin market. I sort of want to take them into my mouth and suck until I’m totally pleasure-cursed and can’t live without them. Or, y’know, something like that.11

My brain’s unravelling a bit for Laurie.

Because, oh God, oh fuck, the way I’ve got him trussed, his arse is this unprotected valley, with a tight little knot of darkness nestled right at its heart, almost begging me to press inside and claim him.

“There’s two rules.” I’m totally, hopelessly dazed, but I don’t care. “You have to stop when I tell you to stop. And you can only come when I’m inside you.” Okay, that’s ambiguous. Something I’ve learned recently—you can be inside someone a bunch of ways, and you don’t even have to touch them. “When my cock’s in your arse.”

“All right.”

“What’s the rules?”

His lips part a moment before he speaks. The words come slowly, like I’ve drugged him. “Stop when you tell me. Don’t come until…you fuck me.”

“With my cock.”

I skate my fingers over his arse to make the point, and he kind of erupts into a full-body shiver. “Until you fuck me with your cock.”

“Okay. Good.” I kiss the side of his knee. “Now touch yourself.”

“What?”

I’ve startled him again. Turns out I like doing that. “I told you I had a use for your hands. Touch yourself.”

“And”—I kind of see the realisation hit him—“stop when you say?”

I grin at him, nuzzling at his leg. “Yeah.”

“Oh God.” He unpeels a hand from the bedstead and very gingerly takes hold of his cock. Whatever he feels makes him sort of shudder and cringe at the same time. “Oh God. Oh, Toby.” He gives a weird, shaky laugh. “Complicity is your master weapon.”

I’m not sure what he’s getting at. I honestly just like watching him. All the little responses you miss when you’re distracted by involvement. Like the glide of skin over skin, how that sounds, this rough-silk whisper, the strength of his hands, with the bones all ridged up along the backs, and the way all his muscles tighten as the pleasure hits him.12

And, oh my God, his face. I could watch his face forever. The flicker of his lashes. And sometimes he squeezes his eyes so tight, it’s almost like he’s in pain. But his mouth, his mouth has that softness to it, and it makes the softest sounds.

While he strokes himself, I crawl round to his side and slip a finger between his lips. And he just takes it in like it’s my cock, like it’s a fucking gift, moaning into my skin.

And I kind of come all over him. Which really wasn’t the plan.

But it comes out of nowhere, like an awesome sneeze. White light in my brain. Bam. A fucking orgasm, somehow dragged out my fucking finger.13

So fuck the plan.

“Oh God.” That could’ve been either of us, but it’s Laurie. He shudders like he’s been hit with a whip or something as my cock empties itself over his side and chest.

And, fuck, he looks debauched. Completely fucking debauched. Lying there, pinned open, flushed and sweating and streaked with come, one hand on his straining cock, the other still locked around the bed rail, a frantic man, half-chained and half-free, waiting for sex and covered in it.

I take my wet fingers from his mouth, and I get between his legs and circle him there so lightly. Until his arse glistens like his mouth.

“Oh God,” he says again. His eyes open slowly, like they’re heavy, and meet mine across his body. “Toby.”

Wow. There’s everything in my name just then. Hope and fear and need, and some stuff I’m probably inventing that makes me feel so warm inside. Like I want to give him everything back.

“I’m here. Right here.” I rub my cheek against his inner thigh. I wish I had scent glands like a cat because then I’d own him, wherever I touched him, and all the other cats would know he was mine. Maybe I need to get a signature cologne or something. Like in that Britney Spears song. “You’re so amazing right now.”

He shakes his head. But his breathing has an edge to it, an urgency, and his hand is moving harder and faster on his cock, so the sound of skin on skin is a shout, not a whisper.

“Yeah, you are. Stop.”

I think he’s actually so close to lost he’s half forgotten. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do if he doesn’t obey, or if I’ve misjudged it and he comes before I’ve said he can. But I haven’t misjudged him. He gives this deep groan and yanks his hand away, slamming it into place on the bed rail. And I’m suddenly so fucking proud of him and so full of need because I want to hurt him and please him, make him suffer and make him happy, and all I can think is what a fucking miracle it is that just now, with him, those things aren’t any sort of contradiction at all.

It’s also when I know I’m definitely, undeniably, impossibly in love. With this man I know and don’t know at all.

And I can’t pretend anymore that this will ever be just sex for me.

It never was, and it never will be.

I love him. And I love this. And they’re inextricable.

While he lies there, breathing harshly, his brow creased with the agony of denial, I scramble back over him. I’m actually trying to get lube, because I forgot earlier, but on the way I kiss him, and he opens to me, sweetly, almost hesitantly, and I slide into his mouth.

A kiss for lovers, tongues entangled like our bodies.

He arches after me, whimpering when I go to pull away, so I fall back into him, and we kiss and kiss, and kiss some more. I’m so deep in him, held by his raised knees, and I want to say it to him—the magic words I’ve never said to anyone who wasn’t family—but I’m not sure it’s fair to do that sort of thing when you’ve got somebody tied up and forbidden to come. Maybe after, if we can kiss like this again.

He lets me go this time, and my cock nudges up against his when I reach over him to get the stuff. I enjoy the clumsy intimacy of it, as I get back into position. “You can touch yourself again, now.”

He hisses out a breath and wraps his hand around his cock, stroking himself slowly, like he’s afraid of the pleasure.

I cover my fingers in lube and rub them together until it warms a bit. When I touch him, his whole body responds, his cock shuddering and leaking and his head falling back onto the pillows so that his stubble-rough throat is all ripply and vulnerable.

I press into him, and there’s very little resistance.

He wants me. He wants me so bad.

“Oh…God,” he sighs. “Yes.”

He’s hot inside, hot and tight and strong, and I can feel him all around me, wrapping my finger in this carnal embrace. Even the thought of what it’s going to be like when it’s my cock is enough to make me pretty urgently hard again.

I move in and out of him, just kind of teasing him and because I like the way it feels and how it looks, his body dragging my finger in, greedy and desperate. And Laurie’s kind of pressing into the chains now, opening himself to me even further, moaning softly with my every thrust, and rocking his hips to meet me, his hand matching my rhythm.

I’m totally entranced. Watching him turn wild. Shameless.

At one point, I kind of slip on the lube and fall out of him, which is a complete accident but an awesome one.

He jerks gracelessly after me, arching off the bed, and bursts out with, “Oh please, God, don’t stop.”

So, of course, I stop. Instead, I circle him, round and round and round, with the slick pad of my finger. And I think I kind of break him just a little bit because suddenly he’s begging and begging and begging, the words catching and then tumbling from his mouth like pearls on a broken string.

And I swear to God, it’s the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. The same dark, sharp joy uncurls inside me like some wicked, clawy monster thing, and it’s practically purring.

“Wow, you really want me, huh?” I sound almost as breathless as he does. So much for playing it cool. But compared to him, I’m the fucking Snow Queen.

“Yes…yes, I do. Please.”

He’s so beautiful, and my little monster is so pleased with him that I have to reward him. I thrust two fingers inside and tear this deep, wonderful, slightly shattered groan out of him. I actually don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I know I’m supposed to be sort of angling up and forward to get the high score, but maybe it’s a good job I’m not sure because he’s kind of going nuts as it is, fucking himself against my hand, his every breath a frantic little moan.

“God.” I stare at him in a kind of blissed-out wonderment of my own. “You totally love this.”

He twists and gasps. “Y-yes. I–I…love this.”

“All chained up and at my command.”

“Yes, yes, I’m yours.”

Mine. My heart melts into blood and rubbery tube bits and wet candyfloss. “You should probably stop, by the way.”

He makes another amazing sound. Pure despair. “Toby—”

“Stop.”

And, somehow, he does. Both hands on the rail, chest heaving, cock throbbing, arse still swallowing my fingers. “Please…I need…” he says, so softly, so miserably. “Please.”

I smile at him, completely full of love. “Please what?” There’s a kind of wet gleam to his eyes. Jesus, is he crying? Is that okay? “What do you want?”

“You.” He lifts his head as he says it, staring straight at me with his gold-and-silver eyes. This one moment of stark coherence he’s somehow found a way to give me.

“You can touch yourself again.”

“I can’t. I’ll—”

“Touch yourself.”

He’s kind of wrecked before he even touches his cock. His whole body pulled tight and held open and trembling. The sound he makes is closer to pain than pleasure, and it’s gorgeous, just like he is. The truth is, I fucking love the way he suffers. It makes me feel ridiculously good, like I’m turning into caramel from the inside out.

“Show me how much you want me.”

“God, Toby,” he groans, “I want you. Isn’t it fucking obvious?”

Technically, that’s telling, not showing, but it turns out my sadism draws the line at pedantry. Nice to know. “Yeah, but I like when you go all, y’know, frantic and slutty.” His breath catches on this mortified little moan. Shit. Might have gone too far. “Slutty in…like a good way. For me.”

After a moment he nods. “For you.”

The truth is, he does look kind of slutty. Impossible for him not to, really, the way I’ve got him, and the way he can’t seem to stop twisting himself on my fingers. But it’s magnificently slutty, everything about him sweaty and straining, from the sinews on his neck to his hand on his cock, and not yielding in the slightest, despite the chains, except his eyes, and his mouth, and his arse, the places he lets me in.

“Want me to fuck you, Laurie?”

“Yes. God. Yes.” Now he sounds almost angry, like he’s reached a new level of desperate.

I’m honestly talking it up a bit because I’m nervous. I mean, it’s not rocket science, I know—locate arse, insert cock. But what if I’ve got him so wound up it’s a letdown?

What if I’ve overhyped my own wang?

I’m really glad I don’t have to faff with a condom. It’s one more thing to mess up. I tried to put one on backwards once. It rolled about halfway, so I thought it was fine, and then it went all weird and started squeezing my dick off like a latex bear trap. And I didn’t know what to do, because once you’ve put a condom on wrong, it’s hard to keep selling the idea that sex with you is going to be fab.

“Please,” he says again, somehow making my hesitation part of this whole experience, as if I’m deliberately doing it to torment him. “Fuck me. I’ll be your slut. Make me yours. I’ll do anything.”

I totally drench myself in lube, getting it on my thighs and onto the sheets.

I really, really don’t want to hurt him in a bad way. First few times I let someone do this to me, I was way less ready than I thought I was, and it’s kind of hard to stop once it’s started. I was fine, but I remember.

Maybe I should have stuck an extra finger in there. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? One, two, three, dick. I can’t remember how Laurie does me. By the time we reach that point, I’m so delirious, I probably wouldn’t notice if he used a cucumber.

“Toby.”

He’s not pleading now, not really. But there’s something in his voice—trust, maybe, and all this warmth, along with that sharp edge of need—and it gives me everything I need to stop dithering and remember I really fucking seriously want him.

So I grab myself, line up, and go for it, and I guess he’s good at this too, because it goes way better than I’m used to. I don’t miss, or slip, or have to apologise, and there’s no kind of tense negotiation about relaxing, so I’m not hanging around like a party guest who’s turned up at the wrong house.

Instead there’s a bit of resistance and then it’s gone. And what’s really weird is it’s that first moment that makes the next one—when his body yields to mine and takes me in—utterly fucking amazing.

It’s nothing like the other times I’ve tried to do this. It’s not just how insanely good he feels around me—tight, hot, silky-slick with lube, no condom in the way—it’s the fact it’s him. Laurie. My Laurie. So I’m just absolutely…complete. Completely held by him.

We both make slightly silly noises. I think I babble something stupid about loving him, because I do and when we’re like this I can’t not say it, and he just sighs out my name in that sweet, sweet way he sometimes does.

And I press into him until we’re… The word that comes to me again is joined. Because that’s how fucking ridiculously romantic I am right now, deep in his body, cradled between his thighs, my (pretty excited) balls kind of tucked against his arse, which is the weirdest, tenderest kind of intimacy, all these soft and secret places, all pressed together.

Fuck yes.

I tilt my hips a bit because it’s so fucking good, though it’s not like there’s any more of me going in, but suddenly Laurie flings back his head and cries out, his hand tightening on his cock and his whole body tightening around me.

And God, if I wasn’t about to come before, it’s a fucking miracle I don’t come now.

Watching him like that. Because of me.

I brace my hands on his pelvis and pull back, not fully out because I’m worried I’ll screw up reentry, but enough that it’s like I’m coming in again. So that there’s a sense of absence and then connection, all in the deepest places of his body. And I manage to do that thing with my hips again.

He tenses, his muscles snapping into alignment, and his eyes flutter in this weirdly vulnerable way, like he’s half dreaming. And then he’s coming, spilling wildly between his fingers, gasping out my name again, along with an incoherent rush of thank you thank you thank you and tears, actual tears, all for me.

And, wow, I feel everything. I feel him come. The build and the release of it, the way it takes him, everything I’ve done to him.

Like this perfect apotheo-wossname.

Which obviously makes me come too. Because I can’t not. Even though I’d like to stay like this forever or, y’know, a bit longer than two seconds. It’s a good orgasm though, drawn out of me by his, like we’re links on a chain. I let it roll through me and into Laurie, kind of vast and gentle and awesome. I don’t see stars, but I see the spaces between them, and all there is…is him.

Afterwards I collapse over him, still inside, and lie there, spent and shivering, between his legs. He reaches down to undo the chains and then he folds himself round me, holding me tight in an embrace of skin and leather.

At last, I draw back, and watching my naked cock slide out of him is almost as thrilling as watching it push in. He grips me as if he doesn’t want to let me go, this warm, sticky drag like the pull of a mouth. I’ve left him shiny and open, and I can’t help slipping a finger in, wanting to feel myself inside him.

Which is probably odd of me, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Just gives this surprisingly sweet little moan as I fuck gently into the wet heat of him and me together. I look up, meet his eyes. I’m sure my expression is absolutely one hundred percent goofy, but I don’t care. Right then, the whole world is soft around the edges, and everything is okay. “You’re the first person I’ve…” I don’t know how to finish that sentence. But it doesn’t matter.

Laurie gives me this gorgeous smile. “I’m glad it was me.”

Eventually we clean up, get Laurie out of the cuffs because while they’re hot, enough’s enough, and then we’re back in each other’s arms. He’s still a bit teary, which makes me feel bad and not bad at all, and anxious, and aroused. Internally aroused anyway. Externally I’m totally out of it, and probably will be for, like, maybe a whole hour.

I reach out and touch the damp corners of his eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, darling. Pure physical relief.”

“Okay, good. Because it’s really hot.”

He laughs, blinking moisture from his lashes. “You depraved little monster.”

“Yeah.” I wriggle in and kiss him, first on the mouth, then on his closing eyes, tasting salt. “Your depraved little monster.”

We’re silent a bit.

“And that was…that was okay, wasn’t it?” I ask.

I guess I’d know if it wasn’t. But better to check, right?

“It was… Well, ‘okay’ doesn’t begin to cover it.”

I can tell he isn’t in one of his talking moods this time. I don’t think he means to shut me out. But I guess it just takes him a bit of time to settle between being the man who’s giving me his body, and the man he is the rest of the time. Which is obviously kind of a problem for me because I want everything.

Everyone he can be.

And I need…I need him to know I can’t pretend any more. I can’t play this game. I’ve never been playing it. All of me is his.

So I press. “Uh, what does cover it?”

“I don’t know. Terrible, perhaps. Wonderful.”

See, that’s what I want to hear. It’s like still being inside him, still having him in chains, when he says stuff like that. “So you liked it, then?”

“Yes, yes, I liked it, Toby.” And now he sounds a bit impatient with me. Great.

But I’m not ready to give up yet. I push against him until he rolls onto his back, and I straddle him, not trying to turn him on or anything, but to try to get that closeness again. I lean down and kiss his chest, and he tastes awesomely of sex.

“Because I fucking loved it.” I kind of whoosh my hands all over him. Possessive as fuck. “It was amazing. I love it when you’re like that. I love having you at my mercy. I love what you let me do to you. I love watching you fall apart. And I love y—”

His hand comes up, and next thing I know, there’s a finger against my lips. “Shush.”

It’s not exactly a ball gag. I can talk round a finger. But I’m actually too fucking stunned.

He pulls me down again and tucks me up, arms around me, mouth pressed to the back of my neck. It’d be nice except…except for…

Shush.14

Seriously? Shush?

He kisses me super gently, all soft and wet and open-mouthed, just the way I like it. Right on that tingly spot that makes all these lovely shivers run up and down my spine.

“My beautiful boy,” he whispers. “Thank you.”

And I’m so fucking confused I can’t even. Usually I’ll say, For what? so he has to admit how much he loves everything that I’m not really making him do at all. But this time I just lie there, curled against him, covered in his kisses, and let everything fucking die.

I feel like…

I don’t know. I just don’t know. I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to be doing now.

From his breathing, Laurie has actually fallen asleep. The bastard. So I’m stuck here, being held and being pissed off, which is a deeply weird feeling.

Then I just get sad. Really, really sad.

And I wonder how he can be so close to me and so far away at the same goddamn fucking time.

And what the fuck I’m supposed to do about it.