Chapter Fifteen #3
be purchased in LA, but Laurie had had so much fun in Lillywhites
picking him out the smallest pair of designer trunks available that
he hadn't been able to resist. A benign despot over things like
that, his Laurie. Sasha had closed his eyes at the checkout while
the bill was being rung up. He didn't want his damage to define him
for the rest of his life, didn't want to question how a Lycra rag
could cost so much when people were still starving in the
streets...
The
trunks were upstairs, still packed. If he went to fetch them he
would lose the impulse stirring in his blood. And who was there to
see him? Laurie had called the Fitzroy Mayfair mansion a gilded
cage but really that house had nothing on this one; the terracotta
walls glimmered like the ones in Gaudì’s Barcelona park but were
barriers still, eight feet high and curving out of sight into the
bougainvillea. None of the neighbours could see or be seen, and
Sasha had stopped believing in their existence anyway. He was
utterly alone.
He lifted the hem of his T-shirt, the Biffy Clyro one Laurie
had bought him after a gig at the Swindon Oasis.
Thirty pounds for a T-shirt, Laurie?
Shuddering, he pulled it over his head, and
instead of folding it carefully and finding a dry patch for it on
the steps, he dropped it where he stood. He tugged off his jeans
and briefs as roughly as he’d torn down Laurie's last night,
stepped out of them and tossed them aside.
Laurie,
writhing in pain and ecstasy, Sasha's fingers shoving deep inside
him with only the water to ease the fuck. It was strange, Sasha
thought. They were typical young men in many ways, no more delicate
with one another in the sack than anybody else, but it was only in
recent months that they'd begun to play a little rough, to exert
muscle and force. They'd been so desperately awkward, diffident,
their first few times! Sasha supposed it was the difference between
the lovemaking of boys and of men. And he adored it, of course. The
very thought of it was giving him a hard-on, swelling and raising
his cock.
Just as
well the neighbours couldn't see. Sasha, solitary in paradise,
pushed away the idea that he'd rather be back in Birchwood Heath,
with a dirty mattress under him and Laurie on top. A man who
thought such things had no place in the California sunshine.
Possibly didn't deserve to exist.
Not
quite sure that he did, Sasha folded his arms over his chest. He
touched himself on each shoulder, fingering the bony crests on top,
then the too-prominent arcs of his collarbones. They'd been like
this when Laurie had rescued him. He'd put on weight for a while,
and he ate what he could even now, but the headache drugs killed
his appetite, except when they unleashed on him one of those
mortifying episodes when he had to devour junk food immediately or
die.
Uncrossing his hands, he brushed them lightly down his chest.
His nipples tightened obediently at his own touch. He hardly ever
masturbated, he realised. Was that odd? It wasn't something he
could ask about in the Guidance Council restroom when he sat down
with his colleagues for a break. He and Laurie made love so often
that he never had the chance to build up that kind of hunger, he
supposed, but it fed into his theory that he might not be quite
real, not alone in his own right. He ran his palms over his waist,
his narrow hips. He was nice, Laurie said. Laurie, caressing and
kissing, used words like peach skin
and suede. Sasha tried to feel it for
himself, but although his nerves fired and reported sensation to
his brain, in some lonely way he was numb.
His
erection had subsided. The pool glittered still, though, cerulean
and gold. He put his hands forward, thumbs touching lightly, just
as his mother's had when she made bird-shadows for him on the
stained wall of their flat in the mahala. Oh God, that memory was
real. He was sure of it. He tucked his head, stretched out his
spine and dived in.
He swam
and swam. The water was pierced like a cathedral with shafting
columns of light: like Sagrada Familia, another Gaudì miracle
Laurie had shown him in Barcelona during their holiday there.
Sasha's head was full of all the things Laurie had given him, shown
him, done for him. Laurie had opened up the world for him like a
treasure chest, and it was Sasha's fault if his own dirty rags and
bones lay at the bottom of it still—old parkas, bad
dreams.
He swam
faster. He found that if he kicked off hard enough from one end he
could make it to the other without coming up for air. How beautiful
it was down here, the gentle press of silence on his ears! He
plunged deep, and felt the scrape of his hips and ribs on the
pool's mosaic floor. He skimmed along the bottom to the end. His
heart was pounding but he didn't feel breathless, not yet. He had
so little sense of up and down that he could curl round in a
somersault and hardly know which way he would come out of it, and
that would be fun. He could try.
There
was the far wall. He pulled up just short of it and ducked his head
down—misjudged his distance and cracked his brow hard on the tiles.
The pain and the shock broke his trance. Shit, he needed air after
all—desperately, right now—and before he could think or control
himself, had sucked in a lungful of blue liquid light.
Sasha! Sasha!
His
chest and guts seized. Stars burst at the back of his eyes. He
could still hear, though, and it wasn't his mother calling to him
from the poolside. It was a male voice, high and tense. Joy and
embarrassment hit him. Laurie was back. Something had gone wrong—a
burst tyre, a cancelled shoot. One other possibility for an
oxygen-starved brain—Laurie had packed in this whole stupid idea
and come to take them home...
He broke
surface, gasping. “I'm okay,” he managed to choke out, then
submerged again so he could have the worst of his coughing fit
underwater. By the time he reached the side he was almost in
control, near enough anyway to convince Laurie that he hadn't gone
nuts and jumped in here naked to try and drown himself. He braced
his hands to the rim and got ready to haul out.
No, not his mother, of course. Not Laurie either. The poolside
was empty, and when he played back that voice, just what the hell
had he heard? Not Sasha
at all.
Senor! Senor!
The
jacaranda tree in the corner of the courtyard rustled and shook.
Sasha dragged himself out of the water and knelt coughing, wiping
his hands over his eyes. When his vision was clear again, it
brought him an extraordinary sight: their handsome pool boy from
the night before, halfway up the wall, making athletic use of the
jacaranda to clamber the rest of the way.
Sasha staggered to his feet. “Stop,” he called, then had to
brace his hands to his knees and choke up more water from his
lungs. “Stop. It's okay. No te
vayas—I won't hurt you.”
The boy reached the top of the wall. He started to vault
across, then glanced back. He was wearing next to nothing, just the
same denim cutoffs and sandals. It was still twice as much as Sasha
was wearing himself, and for a long moment the two of them stared
at one another. Then Sasha grabbed for his T-shirt. “I'm sorry,” he
said. “Lo siento.
Please come back down.”
Cautiously the boy let himself down through the branches and
bright purple flowers. Some of their pollen had adhered to his
skin, gold dust on deep olive. “?Hablas
espanol?” he said, emerging into the
light.
“No. Only a little, anyway.” Sasha had taken a few online
classes as soon as he'd learned their destination, puzzling Laurie
considerably. An immigrant's reflex, he supposed, to grab at the
cultural ropes; he had a smattering of courtesies and emergency
vocab for every country he and Laurie had visited. He coughed
again, vertigo sweeping him. “I really won't hurt you. What were
you doing... ?Qué estàs hacienda
aquì?”
“It's okay. I speak English.” The boy padded swiftly across the
yard. To Sasha's surprise, he took his arm in a gentle grip and
guided him away from the pool. “You're hurt. I thought you were
drowning.”
“No, I'm all right.” Sasha put one hand up to his brow. “I just
think I've bumped my head.”
“Sì. You are bruised. Sit here.” He
helped Sasha down onto a marble bench in the shade of the
bougainvillea. “I get your clothes. You have a towel?”
“No, I... I left it inside. But clothes would be a good idea,
yes.”
The boy
went to collect his crumpled jeans from the poolside. Sasha watched
him through a wondering haze of pain. He wasn't a kid, as he'd
initially thought—eighteen or nineteen, probably, which was a
relief, considering Sasha's state of undress. He had curling sable
hair and a build consistent with a habit of shinning up walls in
the sun—lean but strong, smooth muscles shifting under his tawny
skin. He brought the jeans to the bench and crouched in front of
Sasha, examining the bruise. “I must go. You want me to call a
doctor?”
“A doctor... No, of course not. I really am fine. I'll let you
out through the house. Did you ring to be in when you arrived? I'm
sorry—I didn't hear.”
The
boy's mouth quirked in an odd, charming smile. “No. I don't
ring.”
“Well—next time, do. You don't have to scramble in over the
wall.” Sasha felt gingerly at his brow. His fingertips brushed
those of his new friend, who had just been doing the same. Then he
tried to recollect himself. He was being na?ve, wasn't he? Laurie
wouldn't approve, or at least not Laurie as he had been over the
last few weeks. “Look, who are you? How did you get in without
setting off the alarms?”
The boy
glanced up at him. Sasha had seen that look from the far side of
his desk in the immigration department—assessing him, sizing him up
like a fox through the undergrowth. Worthy of trust, or only of
skin-saving lies? The brown eyes cleared suddenly, decision made.
“I will tell you. First—can I ask you your name?”