Chapter Thirty #2
seagulls cast shadows on the canvas over Laurie’s head. They’d set
up their tent beneath a young ash sapling, also rooted in the wall,
and the swaying of the leaf-shapes and the spiralling birds gave
Laurie a sense of lost moorings, of drifting between sea and sky.
It was beautiful and fearful. “Sasha!”
“What’s wrong?” Sasha left off his slow, tongue-caressing
exploration of Laurie’s belly and sat up. “Are you
cold?”
How
could Laurie be cold? Not only had Sasha known how to fix even a
draughty old hired tent so that no unwanted tendril of air could
make its way in, but he’d remembered to pack blankets. He knew how
to conjure fire from a handful of twigs and some stones. Even
without all this, his lightest touch was fire to Laurie, the rich
erotic warmth of all their shared days. “No,” Laurie whispered.
“I’m fine. I just can’t believe you’re here with me.”
“I am.”
“I felt as if I was floating.”
“Away from me?”
“At first. But then it was like... you were anchoring me and
floating with me at the same time. Like we were both
flying.”
“Are you still on those interesting painkillers?”
“No, just the boring ones now.” Some people could drink and pop
a few pills at parties for fun. The surfer kids gathered here for
the show could sit around the firepit with a joint and a pint or
two of cider. Laurie wasn’t one of them and never would be again:
he and Sasha had sat among them hand in hand, contentedly sober.
Laurie had traded his hospital drugs for the over-the-counter kind
as soon as he’d been discharged. “I think it must just be
you.”
The
breeze ruffled the canvas. The seagulls set up a cascade of mewing
cries that opened up a wild infinity of space around them. Sasha
watched fern-coloured sunlight come and go on Laurie’s skin. Sasha
had been so glad to get him out of the city, glad enough to consent
to this crazy one-night gig provided it was wrapped up in a
leisurely week touring the county. Provided Sasha did the driving,
and he’d presented his pass certificate to Laurie on the night
before their departure. It hadn’t been hard: Sasha understood
machines, and for years had observed the traffic-dance of his city,
the choreography behind it. A dozen lessons, taken on the sly while
Laurie was occupied with physio, and there he had been, in charge
of the red Merc whose elegant shape was so incongruous amid the
Volkswagen buses in the campsite’s parking field. “I think it might
be both of us. Feels like that Atlantic wind could pick us up and
blow us away to Lyonesse.”
“Where we spend the rest of our lives fucking, and the mermaids
sing to us, and we eat...” Laurie cast around his imagination for
what might sustain them in the magical kingdom. “We eat the golden
apples of the sun. To make us immortal and keep up our strength for
the fucking.”
“We’ll need it, if we’re gonna be immortal. I’ve got some tea
left in the flask and a couple of biscuits, if that would help you
out.”
Laurie
grinned sheepishly. Sasha’s kisses had raised his cock, but if he
was planning on doing anything with it... “Yeah.
Please.”
“You’ll be okay, you know. Please try and remember you just
came back from the grave.”
“I know. I’m just so used to being able to – well, hit the
ground running and...”
“Have your tea and see how you feel.” Sasha knelt by him,
pulled off his own T-shirt and helped Laurie out of his sweater.
That left them both completely naked. They sat in a companionable
tangle of limbs, exchanging body heat, passing the cup of the flask
back and forth. “There’s to be no hitting or running for a while.
The doc told you that. She said it was okay for you to do this,
only you weren’t to exert yourself.”
“My God, I’m under doctor’s orders to get bottomed.”
Sasha
choked on a biscuit crumb. Carefully he set the tea cup down. “I’m
sure she never put it quite like that,” he managed. He ran his hand
slowly down Laurie’s chest, feeling the sweet shifts of life
beneath his skin – the acceleration of his heart, the tautening of
nipples, a whirlwind flurry of gooseflesh that followed his touch.
“Would it be so awful for you?”
“Oh, Sash. You know when you do that to me I just want to lie
there forever.”
“And if you’re on your belly, it won’t hurt your scars so
much.” Sasha dipped his hand down, captured Laurie’s returning
erection and lifted it, squeezing. “I don’t know about forever, but
if you’re finished your golden apples...”
“We could try. Do we have time?”
A roar
rose up from the amphitheatre just across the field. It was
followed by bloodcurdling screams. “Teudar’s martyring your
sister.”
“Doing a good job too, from the sound of things. They’ve still
got the whole Arthurian bit to get through. And everyone from the
camp site’s down there watching, I reckon.”
Sasha
smoothed the blanket. Gently he pushed Laurie onto it, helping him
roll onto his front. He straddled him and reached for their shared
rucksack. “Are you planning to be noisy, my love?”
“Not so much planning.” Laurie stretched out, muscles quivering
in pleasure. “More like not able to help. The lube should be in
there – I remembered to pack it. Not going to leave all that kind
of thing to you any more.”
“My reconstructed hero... You do know you left your wallet on
the table at home, don’t you?”
“Shit. Really?”
“It’s okay. I picked it up.” Sasha found the KY. He uncapped it
and squeezed a good amount onto his fingers, then ran a firm caress
down between Laurie’s buttocks before he could think about tensing.
“You remembered the important stuff. Oh, love, don’t try too hard.
You were perfect to me anyway.”
“I don’t see how you can say that. Not after...”
There it
was – the anxious shiver, the uncertainty of a boy who had crashed
the barricades of manhood and stumbled away in pieces. Who would
blame himself after the whole world had forgiven him a hundred
times over, and Sasha a hundred times more. Sasha stroked his hair
with his free hand, gingerly traced the long incision between
Laurie's ribs. It was healing well, no obvious damage done by his
struggle with the bath. Other things were healing too, and to
prevent the build-up of scar tissue, he and Sasha talked about Wes
– not often, but whenever his shadow threatened their day. Their
phone rang still with the occasional reporter hoping for a story.
They talked about Mateo as well, Sasha hoping to blunt Wesley's
edges, show Laurie that temptation could cross the path of any man.
It had seemed to help – although, as Laurie half-gratefully,
half-resentfully pointed out, the paparazzi could have dogged
Sasha's every second with Mateo and got nothing but a sweet,
romantic gesture for their pains. “It's over,” Sasha told him,
trying to put into his voice a finality Laurie could believe. “All
over, for both of us.”
He found
the tip of Laurie's tailbone and rubbed his thumb back and forth
across it. Laurie gasped and lowered his brow onto his folded arms,
resistive tensions melting. “Please,” he said vaguely, scarcely
sure of what he wanted or what he could bear. His sexual exchanges
with Sash since leaving the hospital – and once before – had been
tentative, mouths and hands only, restoring the strained links
between them. To let Sasha inside him now would be Laurie's final
acceptance of his own deserving. He'd made the mistakes anyone
growing up might make, Sasha had said. Anyone with Laurie's
background, the jungle of circumstance that had sprung up around
him...
Laurie
supposed it was true. He still could scarcely believe the miracle
of Sasha here with him – loving him, pushing that knowledgeable
thumb inside him now. He groaned and lifted up to meet him. “Oh.
Ouch.”
“Ouch your back, or ouch what I'm doing?”
“My stupid sodding back.”
“Lie still, then. I've got this.”
Oh, he
did. Laurie lay flat and let him take over. He reached for the
pillow at the back of the tent – remembered at the last instant
what it concealed and left it alone, gathering up the blanket to
hide his face instead. He tried to spread his thighs, but Sasha
prevented even that, crouching over him with delicate power. He
closed his hands on Laurie's waist, gently pinned him down, found
the target his circling touch had prepared and thrust in. Laurie
opened to meet him with anguished pleasure, every inch a
homecoming, an astonishing welcome. “Sash, yes!”
“Is it good?”
“There isn't anything more than this. There isn't
anything,”
There was a whole world, but his words flashed over Sasha like
sheets of velvet fire. No more than this. Just this moment. Sasha
plunged into it, fearlessly into the future he at last believed he
would have with this man. He pushed deep, reached his length within
Laurie's flesh. Clenching spasms up and down his cock signalled his
lover's climax on the way, and Sasha let the next tidal heave
squeezing up from his balls reach the delicious prickling at the
back of his skull. The current connected itself down his spine. He
leaned close over Laurie, kissed him and rasped out his name
– Laurie, oh, Laurie – and then the first endearment that had passed between them in
a time long lost but resurrected between them now.
Ves'tacha, ves'tacha,
repeated over and over again until his last orgasmic breath had
been spent, until Laurie was melting beneath him, crying
incoherently into the sound of the wind.
***
The
thing beneath the pillow was a brand-new tablet PC, the smartest
and best of its kind. It was big enough for Sasha to work on, small
enough for him to carry it about. Tangled with him in the warm-musk
aftermath, Laurie made sure nobody's fingers were sticky and handed
him first the neat little screen, then the separate keyboard it
could slot into. Then he showed him how the whole thing would fit
into a soft leather case so he could throw it into his satchel and
go.
Sasha
turned over the sleek little device with something akin to awe.
He'd seen them in the shops, noticed commuters using them on the
trains, but hadn't paid much attention: he'd had his own laptop,
which in a time of peace he'd have hung onto until it had become a
silicon antique. There was no need to jump at every upgrade, was
there? And Laurie must have spent a fortune... He was smiling over
the gadget now, showing Sasha how it switched on, searched for the
nearest wifi hotspot. “And I got loads of memory for it. You can
have as many books and as much music as you like. This app here is
a word processor – I'll just download it...”
“My God, Laurie. This is too much.”
“Is it?” Laurie glanced up anxiously. “I'm starting my new run
with Paul Jacobs in November. He can't pay much, but it’s a great
new play and he reckons we'll get a really good run with
it.”
“I know. I don't mean the money.” Sasha's wages for his C-grade
appointment would keep them both nicely now. He had told Laurie to
take any role he wanted, to take all the time he needed to rebuild
his rep and his career. “It's just...”
“And I think you left your laptop behind in the States, didn't
you? So you'll need a new one to work with. God knows how long
it'll take to get all our stuff back and cleared through
customs.”
The
laptop was in starry fragments in some Californian landfill site by
now. There were some things Laurie didn't need to know. There were
some things Sasha needed to stop worrying about. He needed
particularly not to let his long-gone past destroy the beauty of
his lover's generous impulses. This was who Laurie was. Whatever he
earned, after a newly sincere effort to make sure his bills and
parking dues were paid, he would shower the rest on Sasha. On good
things and good times for them both, because if life could be
dangerous and short, he had an undying desire to make it sweet. He
was watching Sasha now, one corner of his lovely mouth caught up in
an uncertain smile. “You like it, don't you?”
Sasha
tucked the screen carefully into its case. Then he set it aside. “I
love it,” he said, reaching to haul Laurie into a fierce embrace.
“God, and I love you!”
“And that's my last splurge for months anyway,” Laurie
whispered, lips shaping the words warmly against Sasha's neck. “I
talked to Clara. Her run with Jane Eyre won't finish till just
before Christmas – she can't get back before, then,
so...”
“So let's have a midwinter wedding.”
“Yes. Yes. My ma started waving her magical chequebook again,
but I don't want to do it that way.”
“No. Let's pay for every monogrammed Fitzroy-Petrica napkin
ourselves.” Sasha leaned his chin on the top of Laurie's head,
listening. “Sounds like Clara's just danced her set piece out
there.”
“Yeah. I didn't think her solo from Scheherazade would work too well
here, but...”
“Seems to be going down a storm. They’re calling for you
too.”
“Even though I did duck out on the second act?”
“Even so. I think that there’ll always be people calling your
name, Laurie. Can you learn to live with it?”
“As long it it's in your heart too.”
Sasha
took hold of his hand. He separated the fingers, kissed the one
where the plain gold engagement band gleamed, and he pressed its
open palm to his chest, to the place where Laurie would feel most
clearly its steady and deep-seated beat. “Yes. For as long as we
live.”