Chapter 15 Saturday 17th May 2025
Lando
“Ineed a favour,” I say to Harry. “Well, two actually. And then we can do some more training if you like?”
Harry pauses his pint halfway to his mouth. His tongue pokes out the corner of his lips. “Go on.”
We’re sitting in The Little Thatch’s beer garden at the table furthest from the pub itself. It’s a lot closer to the kids’ play area, so we’re trying to monitor what words we use in case of tiny eavesdroppers.
Harry had an away game at Exeter earlier today, where he scored the winning try. He missed the corner conversion, but he’s still riding high, sitting opposite me with his chest all puffed out and proud. It’s adorable. There are only two matches left of the season.
“We’re putting on a . . . sort of charity rugby match next month.”
“Oh,” he says, his smile dropping. “Yeah, Gadget—I mean Mathias already asked me.”
“What is your beef with him? I’m desperate to know.”
Harry chugs his drink to avoid answering my question for a few moments, and when he does, it’s a non-answer. “I don’t have beef with him.”
“You clearly do.” I sidle up next to him on the bench and inhale a lungful of Lumière du Fant?me. I try not to sniff him like a spaniel in an airport luggage-checking room. “Listen, I don’t care. You know I live for the drama.”
“There’s no drama. No beef. I just. Don’t. Like. The guy.” He’s speaking through gritted teeth, holding himself back.
I try a different approach. “Did I ever tell you about last month when I accidentally cockblocked Mathias?”
“No!” he says, suddenly and unsurprisingly very interested in talking about him.
“Well, my IBS did.”
“Oh my god, no, you didn’t. I need to hear this.”
“So, it was at the sevens ground. Owen and Mathias were having a . . .” I check over my shoulder to the playground to see what kind of language I can get away with, and decide the two kids on the swings are too far away to hear us, but better to be safe than traumatising.
“They were having a mutual self-exploration sesh . . .”
“Okay. Oh, I see.”
“In any case, I was extremely, violently hungover, and my as—behind was about to explode, so I had to barge right on in there and napalm the shower block.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he says, and now he’s laughing uncontrollably. “I shouldn’t laugh. By the sound of it, you were all losers there. Did um . . . either of them get to finish?” Harry glances over at the swing set, but again I don’t think they’d hear or even understand.
“Well, if they did, they did it to the sounds of my bowels’ expedited evacuation.”
“Noooo.” He’s howling, slapping a hand over his mouth to stem the noise, because the swing girls are definitely looking over now.
“Naked Mathias is really very stunning, by the way,” I say.
Harry’s mirth vanishes quicker than throwing water onto a fire. “You had to ruin my moment of joy, didn’t you?”
It’s like a light bulb has been switched on inside my head. He’s jealous. Harry’s beef is because he wants what Mathias has.
“Aw, you’re gorgeous too. More so. You, Harry Sebastian Eugene Ellis, are infinitely more beautiful than Mathias . . . Flaffius Jones.” I boop him on the nose for extra measure.
He side-eyes me. “Don’t you full name me, Mr Orlando Reginald Oakham-Goodwin.”
I slap him playfully. “No. How did you find that one out?”
“Your little blonde ponytailed friend told me when I asked her for embarrassing facts about you.” Ah, good old Daisy.
“What else did she tell you?”
He taps the edge of his nose. “All in good time. Though it’s interesting to me why you bothered to research my middle names but not Gadget’s.”
“I . . .” My mouth hangs open for a moment before I snap it shut.
Damn.
“So, you want me to play in the ‘charity’ match?” he asks.
“Yes, please.” I hold on to his arm as though he might change his mind any second. “I’m playing.”
“You are?”
“On Owen’s team. I really want you on our team too. Please?”
His face cracks, and a soft smile breaks his previously stoic expression. “I’ll play so long as I’m not on Mathias Flaffius’s team.” He laughs. “I’m pretty sure that’s not a real name.”
“Is too. It’s ancient Greek,” I say, holding back my smirk. “He’s named after Flaffius the Interrupted. A legendary Athenian philosopher.”
Harry stares at me for a moment, his laughter ghosting his lips, and I think he might kiss me. He doesn’t. Instead, he swills his pint.
“What’s the other favour?” he says.
“You’ll do it? You’ll play?”
He shrugs. “Gadget already asked me, and I already said yes. Next.”
I pause for a second and gather my thoughts. “Do you reckon your mum would be able to help us out with security . . . maybe give us a discount? For the charity match, I mean.”
“I don’t see why not. I’ll ask her.” Harry stills, and stares off into the darkness.
Presumably he’s thinking about Lionel, or Lincoln, or whatever this security guard’s name is who he’s been mad crushing on for however many years.
“What happened after you walked in on Owen and Flaffius choking their chickens?”
My laughter shoots out through my nose like a pig snort. “Well, nothing really. They drove me home. My body continued its mutinous tirade at my place.”
“You should have called me. We could’ve hung out.”
“I didn’t know you then.”
“Oh, yeah.” He’s still staring off into the treeline at the very edge of the pub’s boundaries. “Do you ever do that?”
“Do what?” I say.
Harry glances towards the swings, but the girls have left to return to their families. Regardless, he still lowers his voice. “Choke the chicken.”
“Oh . . . well . . . I mean, I have . . . but I don’t . . . not often anyway. It rarely occurs to me as something to do with my time, like . . . I just don’t get the urge.” I could probably count on two hands the number of times I’ve masturbated in my six or seven years since puberty.
“Can I ask you a potentially rude question, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to?” he says.
“Sure. Though if it’s about asexuality, you should know that I’m still figuring this all out, so don’t take my word as law.”
Harry scoots closer to me on the bench. “Are you . . .” He drops his voice even lower. “Impotent?”
It takes me a few seconds to figure out how I want to phrase my answer.
“Technically, no. I do still get erections, like a reflex thing, I think. Like . . . it’s just a natural auto bodily reaction.
But honestly, it . . . feels like I’m mentally impotent.
” I can’t look at him and have to angle my body away. “Sometimes it feels like I’m broken.”
Harry twitches in response to my comment, but doesn’t say anything. He just lets me continue.
“Kids our age are sex-obsessed. It’s natural to have that all-consuming urge to reproduce—to come. Normal teenagers, and adults even, think about sex all the time. Don’t you?”
“Yeah . . .” he says, but there’s some hesitancy.
Maybe he doesn’t think about it as often as the average person our age.
Maybe he’s more like me than I first thought.
“I do. A lot. But I don’t just think about that.
I think about other things too, like . .
. I want to have a relationship more than I want sex. ”
I turn to look at him. Harry makes a weird, puffy lipped expression, his eyes wide. I want to take that piece of information home and replay it in my head, dissect it later.
“But you still wank?”
“All the fucking time, mate. I think I might have a bit of a problem. As soon as I’m left alone anywhere, I’m wanking. I need to go to wanking rehab or something,” he says.
We laugh until we both sigh and become silent again.
“Another horrifically personal question?” he asks.
“Shoot,” I say because I’m enjoying this conversation, or at least Harry’s approach to my asexuality. He’s not accusatory, dismissive, or demeaning, simply curious.
“You say you’ve wanked in the past . . .” He waits for me to nod before continuing, though I do it with squinted eyes and a furrowed brow. “What . . . gets you in the zone for that? I shouldn’t be asking this, but like . . . what makes Orlando’s juices flow?”
“Ooh! He went there!” I say.
Harry jumps to his feet and erupts into laughter. “Shit, I’m sorry. That was fucking forward. Don’t answer.”
“No, wait, I want to tell you.” Fuck, did I just say that? “Not everything because . . .”
Harry sits back on the bench, but this time he straddles it and faces me.
“You go first,” I say, like the absolute coward I am. “Tell me what you like, what thoughts you beat your meat to.”
He laughs once, and his face falls into a more serious expression. “Okay, but don’t judge me—”
“I mean, I will. Judging’s kinda my jam,” I say, interrupting him.
“Fair play.” A small smile ticks one corner of his mouth, and I mirror his bench-seated position, swinging my leg over and stretching it out under the table. “I hate to tell you this, but I’m really fucking vanilla.”
I feign shock. “I don’t believe it.”
“Fuck off.” Harry pushes my arm. “I have tried a few different kinks with old girlfriends, but . . . yeah, I don’t think any of them are for me.
Not like the super kinky ones, you know?
I don’t like pain, I don’t like being tied up, didn’t fucking know what to do when she was tied up.
” He looks off to the play area again, but it’s deserted now.
“I just like normal stuff . . . Fuck, why is this so embarrassing to say out loud? I really like . . .” He drops his voice to barely a whisper.
“The thought of . . . coming inside someone.”
“Well, cream pies are pretty hot,” I say, hoping to ease his embarrassment.
“And . . . I don’t know. I guess I just like the idea of . . . No, I can’t say. It’s shameful.”
I place my hand on his. “Piss? Scat? Bukkake?”
“No, much worse. Okay, fine, I like the idea of making love.” He hides his face, and my insides do a weird little somersault. “Fuck, you cannot tell anyone that. It’s so cheesy.”
I’m not sure when sex with feelings became so taboo for our generation.
“I won’t tell anyone.”