Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The tram, the window, the dark.
Ten thirty and the carriage is half-empty—a woman with Tesco bags.
Two lads in puffers are comparing memes on a phone screen, laughing too loudly for the hour.
The automated voice announcing stops I know by heart now.
Chorlton, Firswood, Stretford. The geography of a city that, somewhere in the last four months, stopped being hostile and started being legible.
My reflection in the glass. Lips swollen. Stubble rash on my neck that’ll be gone by morning, but right now, it maps exactly where he kissed me. I look exactly like what I am: an eighteen-year-old leaving his lecturer’s flat on a Tuesday night.
He said show me what you like and my first thought was: you. My second thought was: shut up.
I like his voice explaining theorems at midnight because I asked, and he lit up.
I like how he drinks his coffee black, scalding, no milk, no sugar, the discipline of it, like the rest of the country is incorrect and he alone knows better.
I like the dent in the sofa cushion where I sit, and he sits, and we don’t touch, but the gap between us is small enough to breathe across.
I like mornings. I like how the flat smells like coffee, old paper, and him. I like falling asleep with the lamp on because he’s reading, and the light doesn’t bother me anymore. I like the after, the terrible, unscripted after I used to run from and now stay for.
The tram stops, doors open. Nobody gets on, doors close.
I wanted toys, I got toys. He said yes.
I pull my hood up. The reflection stares back. A boy who asked for the wrong thing because the right word has no frame for carrying it.
The tram rocks, Chorlton to Fallowfield. His world to mine.
My phone buzzes. Laurence. Get home safe.
My thumb on the screen.
Mum rings forty minutes later.
Back in the halls, boots off. Still in the coat. The phone is on the duvet face up with Mum on the screen and the little green circle. She doesn’t ring this late. She texts. The screen itself is a small alarm going off.
‘Alright, love.’
She says it like a check-in from someone raised to be polite to her own kid.
‘Yeah. Yeah, I’m alright. Why.’
‘No why. Was just up.’ Kettle in the background. Half ten and Mum’s making tea. Another hour before she sleeps. Means something today didn’t sit right. ‘Ron said you sounded tired.’
‘Ron always says I sound tired.’
‘Mm.’
She doesn’t ask where I’ve been. Doesn’t ask who I was with. Just sits on the other end of the line with her kettle coming up to the boil and lets me breathe.
‘Mum.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘I know you are, darling.’ The kettle clicks off. Domestic full-stop. ‘Wasn’t ringing ’cause I thought you wasn’t.’
The why stays unspoken. At some point today, at the sink, rinsing a mug, she got the feeling. One of her boys is carrying weight he hasn’t named. She waited till half ten and rang. A hand on the phone instead of on me, because I’m in Manchester and her hands only reach so far.
‘Your dad’s asleep,’ she says. Neutral, information. ‘In the armchair. Put a blanket on him about nine.’
‘Right.’
‘He asked after you this morning.’
‘Did he.’
‘In his way.’
My mum’s phrase for he said your name in a sentence that wasn’t about you.
I know the sentence before she tells me.
Is Ewan’s room warm enough for the books.
Did Ewan take the good charger. Little misdirection jobs.
My name is in his mouth without him having to look at a version of me he can’t see anymore.
‘Alright.’
‘I love you.’ Ordinary. How she always says it. No weather around it. ‘Sleep, Ewan.’
‘Love you too, Mum.’
Line goes.
I hold the phone for a second before I put it down because the weight of being somebody on the other end of a kettle in Lewisham is, right now, more than I can carry.
She didn’t ask. She knew, rang anyway.
The shop is in Levenshulme. Nowhere near campus, nowhere near Chorlton, nowhere near any postcode that would recognise either of us. Hood up, hands in pockets, the bell above the door announces me to a bored woman behind the counter who doesn’t look up from her crossword.
Spent three days researching with the rigour of a PhD student. Silicone, body-safe, tapered, the curve matters, the curve is the whole point. I pick it up, turn it over, and feel the weight. Smooth. Deliberate. Designed like architecture, not guesswork.
I bought it. And lube, the good kind, not the corner-shop emergency stuff. The woman scans both without comment. Professional indifference. My favourite quality in a person.
The bag sits on my lap on the tram. Innocuous. Black plastic, nobody would look twice. But the shape presses through, and my brain is already at Laurence’s flat, already past the door, already imagining his reaction when I hand it over.
‘I bought this thinking of you.’
I put it on the bed between us, still in the box. He looks at it like he looks at a proof he hasn’t seen before—tilt of the head, eyes narrowing, the first seconds of an equation he’s not sure he can solve.
‘Open it.’
He does, lifts the plug out. Holds it. His thumb runs along the curve. The calculation happens behind that focused stare, the size, the shape, the implications. He swallows.
‘You don’t have to,’ I say. Mean it. ‘We can just.’
‘I want to.’ The want in his voice is different from the want I’m used to hearing. Closer to the sound he makes going through a door he wasn’t sure would open.
I push him back on the bed. Gently. First time I’ve ever been gentle with this man without being asked, and the strangeness of it settles through me like a tool I haven’t learned to hold. He goes. Lies back, glasses already off, eyes wide and dark and trusting, and I have to look away for a second.
Lube. Generous. The click of the cap is deafening.
I start with my finger. First. Slow. Watching him like he’s the only data point that matters.
He catches his breath and shifts. The body accepts the unfamiliar.
Tight clench and then the gradual release.
He breathes silently, and I’m so hard it’s distracting, but this isn’t about me. Maybe not ever, with him.
Second finger. The stretch widens, and his hand grips the sheet. His head tilts back, and I can see his cock thickening against his stomach. Saying yes faster than the mind can object. I curl my fingers, find it—the angle, the pressure, the spot locking every muscle.
‘Fuck.’ Lancashire. Raw. Dragged out of him by anatomy, not choice.
He’s not moving as fast as he does during sex. This is different, this is slow-gone. I can see it in his hands, the grip on the sheet going slack, finger by finger.
The plug, I coat it. Press the tip against him and watch that focus dilate.
‘Breathe.’
He breathes, I push. Slow. The tapered point first, the widening, taking it inch by inch, and the sound he makes when the widest part passes, and the base settles. Christ. A groan that starts in his chest and dies in his throat. His cock leaks against his stomach. Untouched. Just from this.
I did that, my hands, my patience.
‘How does it feel?’
His eyes open, and he looks at me. He’s staring at me like I’ve rewritten the axioms and he needs a minute to check his working.
‘Full.’ His voice is wrecked.
He reaches for me immediately, finds my cock by feel, wraps his hand around me with a grip that answers the question better than any word.
I roll the condom on him with fingers that are less steady than I’d like. Slick him. Slick myself.
Laurence watches me the whole time.
‘Come here,’ he says softly.
I climb into his lap.
The first touch of him against me knocks the air out of my lungs. Hard and hot and slick where I guide him between my legs. Laurence’s hands settle on my hips immediately, broad and steady, thumbs pressing once into the bone there like he’s grounding himself before impact.
I lower myself slowly.
Heat.
Stretch.
The careful burn of taking him inch by inch while Laurence exhales through his teeth beneath me.
‘Fuck,’ I whisper.
His head tips back against the headboard.
The plug shifts inside him as I sink fully down, and the reaction tears visibly across his face. His mouth opens on a sound that isn’t language.
That more than anything undoes me.
Knowing it’s there. Knowing every movement of my body changes the sensation inside his.
‘Ewan—’
Broken already.
I brace one hand against his shoulder and move experimentally once, slow.
Laurence jerks underneath me hard enough to rock the bed.
There.
I do it again.
The vibrator must be catching against something inside him every time I move because each shift pulls a different reaction out of him. A sharp inhale. A curse bitten off halfway through. Fingers tightening harder against my hips.
He’s sensitive in ways I’ve never encountered.
And suddenly I want to wreck him with it.
I start riding him properly.
Slow at first. Lifting myself almost completely off him before sinking back down in measured strokes, watching every expression break across his face as the plug shifts inside him with each movement.
The effect is immediate.
His stomach jumps. His thighs tense hard beneath mine. His composure frays visibly every time I take him deep again.
‘Christ,’ he says hoarsely.
Hair fallen loose. Mouth open on uneven breaths. Nothing lecturer-clean left in him anywhere.
Beautiful.
Laurence’s grip on my hips turns bruising.
Not measured now. Not careful.
Mine.
The thought lands hot and possessive in my chest.
This sound is mine. Only mine.
One deeper drop of my hips and Laurence cries out outright beneath me, the sound ripped violently from somewhere deep in his chest. His whole body arches hard enough to throw us both off rhythm.
‘There,’ he says sharply. ‘Fuck—like this—’
I do it again.
Again.
Again.
The rhythm disintegrates after that. Too intense for precision. I’m riding him hard now, drunk on the sight of him falling apart under me.