Chapter Four #4
Laurie. I can’t believe I’ve met you. I’m still not sure that
you’re real; I keep thinking I died of hypothermia with poor Gyorgy
last night.”
“No. He’s okay. He said he could go somewhere.”
“Because you gave him enough to get him off the street. That’s
what I mean. You’re so bloody sweet, and last night—coming here,
doing what we did—it was perfect. You made me want to live for the
first time in as long as I can remember.”
“Then live.” Laurie choked. His throat had filled with coppery
salt. “Let me help. You might
die the next night you’re out there. I couldn’t
bear that. Come back here—I’ll find a way.”
“Shh. You know that wouldn’t work. Look, I can’t trace my
mother’s people. There’s reasons for that. But I know there are
Roma gypsy camps here too, on the outskirts of London. Would you
look online for me, see if you can find out where?” He smiled,
shrugged. “They don’t welcome the likes of me in Internet
cafés.”
They would, if I dressed you in my clothes. If I took you out
and bought your own for you, sent you to my hairdresser. If I kept
you. Maybe the old man is right—there’s nothing that money can’t
buy.
Biting
back a moan, Laurie drove off the darkly shining thoughts. “Of
course I will. I’ll do it now.”
He
pushed the duvet back, but Sasha’s grip closed tenderly tight on
his arm. “Not right now. What time is it?”
“About six.”
“And still pitch-dark. It doesn’t feel like morning yet to
me.”
Laurie
wasn’t sure how he had ended up on his knees beside the bed, except
that there had been a dispute, a brief silent tussle, which he had
unexpectedly won. He was stronger, he supposed—better fed, anyway.
Once Sasha had had a few more hot meals down him, he would be a
force to be reckoned with. Nothing Laurie would have liked better
than to have let him get where he had been trying to go, plunging
down the bed, planting hot kisses on Laurie’s chest and belly en
route, but he remembered the look on Sasha’s face as he had emerged
from his transaction under the bridge—the weary, dead sickness—and
he did not want Sasha even going through the same
motions.
Laurie
would go through them for him, though it was a first and he had
very little idea where to start. He’d seized Sasha by the armpits,
pulled him back up. Yes, that was how he’d come to be down here:
the moment Sasha had understood his intentions, he’d bolted upright
and tried to escape the bed. Laurie had stopped him, but only by
main force, a dirty tackle that had tipped Laurie out onto the
carpet. He’d scrambled to his knees, got between Sasha’s thighs,
and stilled him with a passionate embrace of his waist. “No. Let
me.”
“No. It’s dangerous, Laurie. I’m not sure I should even do it
to you.”
Laurie
wasn’t too sure, either. Like most of the boys in his year, he had
spent his single school-hour of sex education staring in desperate
embarrassment at the scuffs on the classroom floor.
He said,
in a valiant show of confidence, “It’s okay. I’ll pull back when
you—” And that was no good, was it? If he couldn’t even say the
word, he probably shouldn’t be doing it or trying to get someone
else to. “When you come,” he finally blurted out, blushing hotly,
looking hopelessly up at Sasha, who somehow seemed to find his
nonplussed ineptitude rather endearing than otherwise. Who was
smiling down at him even while he tried to detach Laurie’s grip.
And when Laurie sat back, there was no doubt who had won this
round. Sasha’s cock lifted straight and clear. Laurie whispered,
shivering at its explicit shape and detail, so close, so very
close, “I’ve never done this before.”
“You chose a great place to start, didn’t you? A homeless rent
boy.”
“Sasha, don’t. Tell me what to do.”
“Nn-nn. I should be stopping you, not…” He released an unsteady
breath, and Laurie saw his shaft lengthen, its tracery of blue
veins pulsate a little more clearly. “Not giving you instructions.
Oh, God. I want you, though. Just…”
His hand
brushed across Laurie’s nape. Not a pressure—a silent assent, a
signal that he should begin, uninstructed. Guided by whatever
instincts he had, Laurie closed his eyes. He loved the sight of
Sasha, but it was too much, overwhelming, to look at him and do
this—to lean forward, parting his lips, the blind movement bringing
him straight into contact. He heard his own shattered moan with
embarrassment and opened up, letting the head slide in over his
tongue, hooking one arm tight around Sasha’s thigh. God, what now?
His mouth was full; he couldn’t take him any deeper without
choking. Then Sasha made a faint sound of need. Peripherally Laurie
saw that he took one hand from its caress of Laurie’s shoulder and
used it to brace on the mattress. His touch on Laurie’s neck became
damply urgent, his thigh muscles stiffening.
Oh,
Sasha was struggling not to thrust up into him, not to drag him
down. Laurie understood and, with a sense of revelation, drew back
and plunged down again, creating the movement Sasha was forbidding
himself. Sasha gasped and writhed helplessly to meet him, making
Laurie choke as his cock hit the back of his throat, but he
snatched a breath and recovered. Breaking down Sasha’s good manners
was a powerful aphrodisiac to him; his own cock was hardening
again. Tears stinging his eyes, he kept up the back-and-forth
movement, bolder and stronger as he lost his fears of the act,
until Sasha jolted as if electrocuted and gasped out, “Oh, no. Let
me go now!”
Almost
too late. And Laurie would have disobeyed him if he could, even
knowing the risks. Wanted, more than anything, to feel in his
throat the explosion that had happened on the skin of his stomach
before—but Sasha’s desperate grip closed on his shoulders, shoving
him frantically back. “Laurie!”
Christ,
he was starting to come—alone and untouched, taut shaft spilling.
Laurie saw the lonely anguish on his face and on instinct put a
hand to him, clasping him tight. “It’s okay,” he told him roughly,
from a sore throat. He might not know much about much, but he had
at least this much experience—all his own lonely nights; he knew
this touch. Unfolding from the floor, he carefully tumbled them
both back into the bed, never letting go his grip on Sasha’s cock.
And now Sasha could thrust as hard as he wanted. Lying over him,
pumping him fast, Laurie cried out at the feel of him losing
control, his wild last movements, rhythm breaking down to rigid
stillness as he came.
“Laurie, come here.”
Laurie
barely heard it. His blood was roaring in his ears, and Sasha’s
voice was a ragged whisper. “What?”
“Come here, ves’tacha. Before you
explode.”
Soft
laughter touching the voice. Emerging slowly from the universe
where the only thing that mattered was getting Sasha off, Laurie
became aware of his own condition, which he had to admit was a
hopeless one, and painful too, now that the mists were parting.
Sasha struggled up onto one elbow, pushing Laurie down. He put one
arm beneath Laurie’s head and cradled him, smiling, planting
worn-out kisses on his brow, on the corners of his
mouth.
“Ves’tacha,” he repeated, and Laurie guessed this time he was
not being called an outsider or foreigner.
Sasha
reached down, seized his straining, disregarded cock, and stroked
Laurie to orgasm in a dozen slow, firm movements, holding him tight
when the wave hit, stifling Laurie’s cries in his
embrace.
* *
*
Laurie
sat huddled on the bed, the blanket—damp in places, but he couldn’t
bring himself to care, or find its scent other than lovely,
viscerally reassuring, like a caress in the dark—wrapped around his
shoulders. There wasn’t much to distinguish now between him and
Sasha, was there? Both clean and fed, stripped of the clothing that
denoted their status and rank. What would be the difference to the
world if Sasha stayed here and Laurie went out to some street
corner and curled up as he was now, a young male body in a blanket,
just like the thousands of others that starred the London streets?
Maybe on balance the planet would benefit, if Sasha were installed
as the son of this great house with all its privileges. He would
surely use them better. His brightness, resourcefulness, ability to
survive…
The pain
in Laurie’s chest, the edge of panic resting like a blade on his
heart, stemmed from his inability to extract from Sasha a promise
that they would meet again. Something had darkened between them
since they had woken for the second time. God knew they had sailed
close to the wind; it had been rising eight before the gathering
December light outside the attic window had called them from their
entwined, satiated sleep, the household coming to life around them.
They had lain still, breathless, while Clara and Hannah chattered
their way down the corridor outside; then Sasha had slithered out
of bed like a startled cat, and none of Laurie’s assurances that
they would be okay, that nobody else would come up here, had slowed
him down as he padded to the bathroom, then returned and began to
put on his clothes.
The
sight of that stirred Laurie from his thoughts. He’d had vague
plans for purloining the filthy garments and taking them down to
the laundry, but the night had got away from him. “Sasha, hang
on.”
Sasha
glanced up, dark eyes clouded and apprehensive. Beginning to look
hunted…
Shame
touched Laurie. How many times had he asked him to stay, pressed
him to agree to their next meeting? “At least take some of my
things,” he said. “We’re about the same size.”
Sasha
paused, doing up such buttons as remained on his jeans. He stood
for a moment, naked from the waist up, silhouetted in the morning
light. Then he came and crouched before Laurie. He stretched his
hands out and placed them in Laurie’s lap, palms up, the gesture
one of pleading. “Listen,” he said very quietly. “I go back onto
the streets in one of your cashmere sweaters, your Savile Row
coats, by ten o’clock tonight I’m mugged and stripped naked. I come
back here, spend nights here, every morning I…go back to the
underworld. I’d got used to it, Laurie. Begun to stop minding. And
just one night with you here… Well, this morning I already mind a
bit again. Do you understand?”
Laurie
did. Instead of telling Sasha so, he broke away from him and
scrambled out of the bed. “Not all my clothes are from sodding
Savile Row,” he said harshly. He pulled open first a wardrobe, then
the drawers of the pine dresser that stood beside it. Homely items,
these—lumber-room furniture, in a house otherwise fitted up with
priceless antiques and bespoke modern masterpieces.
“Why are you living like a refugee, here in your own
home?”
Impatiently he tugged from drawers and hangers some of his
older things, jeans and sweaters he used for backstage work, a
thick fleece jacket. They were worn but clean and good and could
feasibly have been bought from a charity shop. “Here,” he said,
holding them out to Sasha. “If you put your parka on top, you
should be okay. I’m never going to see you again, am I?”
Sasha
dropped the dirty sweatshirt he had been about to pull on. He let
it fall and walked up to Laurie, bare feet silent on bare boards.
Laurie briefly wondered why he was only noticing now for the first
time that he didn’t even have a carpet in here except for the
threadbare fireside rug where Sasha had held him and kissed him.
Then he could only stare at Sasha in hopeless longing. How bloody
lovely he would be if he ever lived long enough to lose his
starvation thinness. He moved like a panther now. He’d surged in
Laurie’s arms like the sea.
“I don’t know,” Sasha said, reaching up for him. “Don’t make me
make any promises now, ves’tacha. I wish I could
explain.”
* *
*
Laurie
straightened up from his desk. All the spartan features of this
room were of his own choosing, a reaction against Sir William’s
wealth, although until now he hadn’t allowed himself to see it. He
was a refugee, a far more hopeless one than Sasha. But his studies
required a good computer, and this his father had installed for
him, together with a top-end printer and fast broadband.
Sasha
was waiting by the door. It was broad daylight now, the whole world
awake. It gave Laurie bleak comfort to know his own clothes, dry
and warm, were next to that beautiful skin. He knew—they both did,
Sasha’s anxious look confirming it—that they were out of time.
Laurie handed him a printout. “There’s an encampment near Birchwood
Heath. There were some news articles about it. It’s all the way out
on the Metropolitan line to East Hill, and then you’ll have to take
a bus, so please, take this money, just to get you out there, okay?
Please don’t argue.”
“Okay,” Sasha whispered. “Thank you.”
“And this envelope. Take it, Sash. It’s just a note for you.
Don’t even read it until you’re well away from here.”
They
slipped silently down the corridor. At the door that opened onto
the concrete stairwell, Sasha turned. He planted a hand flat to
Laurie’s chest, reached up, and briefly kissed him. “Does the door
open to the outside?”
“Yes. I…”
“Shh. Don’t come down with me. Please, Laurie. I couldn’t bear
it.”
Laurie
stood for almost five minutes in the doorway after he was gone. A
thin December sunrise was making its way into the stairwell through
its cobwebbed skylight. When Laurie let his gaze rest on the dim
space below, let himself listen past the distant daily noises of
the waking city, he could recreate his last glimpse of Sasha—a
concentration of shadows slipping into shadows, a fish into
unknowable seas. He put out a hand—closing his eyes, reaching into
the air, as if he could clasp some last trace of him. Then a door
banged on the floor below: Sir William exiting the bathroom,
probably, in his usual lovely morning mood—and he shivered back
into the moment, turning away.