Chapter 9 #2
‘The Stockport girl?’
‘Yeah. Girlfriend now. Met her at Thomas’s birthday do. She’s bringing my flask back.’
She looks up when we come through. Smiles at Gaz, quick, then the eyes slide past him.
‘You’re Ron, yeah? Gaz talks about you non-stop.’
‘Gaz talks about everything non-stop.’
She laughs. The line wasn’t that good. Her eyes go to my arms, the concrete dust still on my knuckles. Stay there.
‘So you’re building the whole thing? Like, actually building it?’
‘The concrete and the steel. Yeah.’
‘That’s mental.’
I give her the short version: columns first, then beams, then bracing, how the steel goes up before the concrete goes in. The site voice, the one that explains without rush. She listens like I’m describing surgery.
Gaz takes the thermos. ‘Right, curry. You coming, boss?’
‘Nah. Cheers though.’
They go through the gate, Steph glancing back once. Gaz is already talking about the menu.
The next week.
The door’s unlocked and there’s music. Something acoustic, a guitar and a woman’s voice.
I push the door. The flat smells different, just not mine: the garden-fruit thing, and underneath, toast. The toaster that does one side only. Someone’s flipped the bread.
Celyn’s on the bed, cross-legged, laptop open, the screen bright. Hoodie, my hoodie, the grey one I leave on the chair, over jeans. The feet bare, the nails on the toes, chipped green, the same as the fingers, three days into the week.
‘Door was open,’ I say.
‘I heard you on the stairs. You walk like you’re trying to get through the floor.’
‘Cheers.’
Then back to the screen. Typing. The sound of the keys, fast, then nothing, then fast. I stand in the doorway with my jacket on and the site still on me, the dust and the concrete and the sweat, and Celyn’s in my hoodie on my bed with the music and the toast smell and the key under the mat and none of this was decided.
It happened how the second mug happened. Same as the sugar.
Boots off, jacket on the hook. The shower, quick, the water too hot, the soap over everything. The dust goes grey in the drain. The tile’s cold and the flat’s warm.
The hoodie’s gone. The restaurant T-shirt underneath, washed soft. The stubble heavy enough to scratch, the hair pushed back.
I’m in boxers, towel on the floor, my hair’s still wet.
Celyn stands up, walks to me. Doesn’t say anything. The hands come up and rest on my chest. Flat, palms down, feeling. The heat from the shower, the skin still damp, the muscle underneath.
‘You smell like soap,’ Celyn says.
‘Better than before.’
‘Debatable.’
The hands slide up, shoulders, neck. The chin. My chin, Celyn’s fingers on it, tipping my face down. The eyes, grey-green, close.
We’ve done this, four times, five. The number’s blurred because the surface is different every time, stubble one night, nails another, the texture shifting, but the heat’s the same.
Celyn kisses me, slow. The stubble against my chin. The mouth. No lip tint tonight, just mouth, tea and the faint toast-butter underneath. The hands on my neck, pulling down, and I go because the body goes where Celyn pulls.
I put my hands on the waist. The t-shirt rides up, skin. Warm, pale, the hips under my thumbs. My fingers find the waistband of the jeans and the button and.
‘I’ll do it,’ Celyn says. Steps back. Fast, no ceremony, the same way I’d take off work boots. The jeans go down.
Red.
The. Red, lace, on the hips. The jeans pooled around the ankles and the three-day growth thick on the face and the thighs pale with dark hair and between the two there’s red lace stretched across the hips and the cock pressing against it and the elastic cutting a line across the lower stomach and.
I stop breathing. I don’t decide to stop breathing. The lungs just. Don’t.
‘Problem?’ Celyn says.
‘No.’ The word comes out wrong. Dry. My mouth’s forgotten how vowels work.
Celyn steps out of the jeans. Kicks them somewhere, stands there.
I’m in boxers. Stood at the end of the bed like a spare part. My hands are useless, open, close, nowhere. And I’ve been inside this person and I’ve watched them come apart and right now I can’t move because the lace is red and the stubble is three days and the combination isn’t. It’s not…
‘Ron.’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re staring.’
‘Yeah.’
Celyn takes one step and the hand comes up and touches my chin. Tips my face down, the eyes, the grey-green.
‘I’ve got others,’ Celyn says. ‘If you’re curious.’
‘You planned this.’
Not a question. My voice comes out lower than I mean it.
‘I planned everything about tonight.’ Eyes level, no shame. ‘Including you.’
My throat catches. Between the two.
‘That’s a yes,’ Celyn says.
I go to my knees. Gravity. The carpet rough on my kneecaps and my mouth on the hip, on the bone, on the lace.
I drag my lips across the elastic line where it cuts into the skin and the skin’s warm and the lace is warm and Celyn’s stomach tightens above me.
I can feel the cock through the fabric, hard, the shape pressed sideways against the lace.
I mouth at it through the red. Wet the fabric.
Celyn’s hips jerk and the sound. Fuck, the sound through lace is different.
Muffled. Like Celyn’s trying to hold it in and the lace is helping and I don’t want help. I want the sound.
I push my face into it. Breathe through the fabric, hot, and the cock twitches against my mouth and I can taste it already.
The salt through the weave, the precome soaking the red a shade darker.
My hands on the thighs. The hair there, fine, dark against the pale. I spread them wider, Celyn lets me.
I reach up with one hand. Find the chin. Three days of stubble under my palm, rough, and my mouth is on lace over cock and my hand is on a neck that hasn’t been shaved since Monday and my brain’s trying to—sort, file, put things in a row like rebar spacing, and it can’t. There’s no row.
I pull the lace to the side. Don’t want it off.
Want it bunched against the hip, the elastic digging a line into the skin, the red crumpled.
The cock springs free, hard, flushed dark at the head, wet.
I know this cock now. The weight when I hold it, the curve, the ridge under the head where Celyn’s most sensitive, how the foreskin pulls back when I stroke down.
I wrap my hand around the base. Tight. Celyn’s breath catches.
‘There,’ Celyn says.